Filed under: Ireland, Lauren Selden, photography, travel | Tags: adventure, beaches, blue skies, Clouds, cottage, Donegal, Drive, Dublin, Euro, Ireland, Lauren Selden, memory, Road Trip, ruins, sand, sea, sheep, silver strand, stone, surfing, thatched roof, tourist, travel, Weather, wind, windy
First off, Apologies for the lack of blog posts these past weeks. School has ended and I’ve been trying to tie up a bunch on loose ends before I leave Ireland for London on Sunday. (tomorrow! yikes!) I made sure I had a full week after the end of the semester to travel around Ireland- but let me tell you I wish I had another 3 weeks to spend! Ireland may be a small island- but it’s packed full of beauty and adventures!
The last weekend of March I took a roadtrip with my good friend, Anaelle, to Donegal- an area of Ireland that is on the north-west coast. Everyone told me that Donegal was beautiful, except Anaelle who claims that there is nothing there but sheep! Really, Anaelle must have become immune to the scenery because Donegal is amazingly beautiful! Some of the beaches were really breathtaking, the one above actually had a group of surfers enjoying it! The water must have been cold- but you can’t beat the scenery.
This is a traditional styled thatched cottage, there are still a few left dotting the landscape of Donegal. The house where I stayed in Donegal was also an older property- the walls are made of trampled stone. Which means that the shells were put in place, and then villagers would trample lime and sand and stone down into the shell of the house to create a solid wall – one whole meter thick! It gets chilly inside a stone house like this, so I was grateful for the wood fire that kept us warm.
It was a four hour journey from Dublin to Donegal but well worth the drive. I’m glad we had a car, as most of the things to see in Donegal require a car to get to, or to enjoy. We took a drive through the blue-stack mountains, visited several beautiful beaches and enjoyed the amazing barren landscapes.
This is beach is known as Silver Strand- and boy it was WIND-Y! Looking out onto the water I could hardly breathe for the wind.
Up next: A fantastic tour to The Giants’ Causeway and the historic northern town of Derry.
Filed under: Ireland, Lauren Selden, art, craft, food, personal intrests, photography, travel, writing | Tags: art nouveau, Aubergine, Cafe en Seine, craft, DIY, Dublin, Euro, food, Grafton Street, Ireland, Lace, Lauren Selden, Marks and Spencer, ribbon, Rubanesque, SaBa, study abroad, travel
I’m having a great time in Dublin, my only trouble is trying to find the time to catch up with my blog as by the end of most days I’m so tired it’s straight to sleep!
On Friday I went out an about for a bit, with the primary goal being to find a replacement for my poor broken suitcase. Lufthansa has a connection with a luggage shop in downtown Dublin and I was able to go down there with the old suitcase and trade it in for a new one! I actually think the new suitcase is even nicer than the old one, and it’s such a relief no
t to have the heart-break of looking at the old broken one. After that, Johanna and I wandered through Dublin for a while. I’d been searching high and low for an eggplant (they call them aubergines here)and I hadn’t had any luck- we ended up checking a specialty food store and found my eggplant at last! Now I just have to decide what to make with it. Perhaps baba ghanoush?
Filed under: Lauren Selden, aura, emily carr institute, food, personal intrests, travel, vancouver | Tags: Dublin, study abroad, Ireland, travel, Lauren Selden, emily carr institute, NCAD, food, Euro
Things are great here in Dublin, its actually much warmer than in Vancouver, and very mild – although it is chilly and windy. No snow to be found, and actually my roommate says that it hardly ever snows in here. (yay!)
My flat is super nice, a bit away from the city but still very nice and in a good, safe area. We have a cute little garden and the kitchen and bathroom are beautiful and modern (thank goodness!) For now I’m sleeping in the spare room in the attic, it has 4 skylights! The the stairs leading up to it are quite steep and narrow- but I’m sure I will get used to that. I move downstairs into the bigger bedroom on the 13th January.
Yesterday I arrived home(here) around 3pm, exhausted and frustrated because of my poor shattered and completely destroyed suitcase. (you can see from the photo above that one wheel was torn off- and that’s not even the worst of the damage!) The airport people were not very helpful but my taxi driver was extremely nice, thank goodness! Johanna my roommate (whose room I will be taking over later on) was home and we sat and had tea for a bit, then I cleaned up and we ran some errands in a cute little part of town (reminded me a bit of 4th ave or maybe Main street in Vancouver). I had a great warm salad of grilled vegetables and red pepper cous cous which was delicious, at a little cafe/restaurant there and we had my key made and did a bit of grocery shopping.
EVERYTHING here is expensive. Euros are scary!! Plus they have weird amounts of coins, 2 cents, 20 cents, along with the usual 1, 5, 10 and 50. Strange!
Today I slept in, then headed downtown to the tourism office in search of a map of the city. The tourist office is in a huge old church, pretty amazing! All the buildings here are beautiful.
I forgot to bring my camera out with me today so you’ll have to trust my descriptions of Dublin. When I first noticed I’d forgotten my camera, I was crushed, but then I realized that I will have the next four months to take photos, its nice to be able to just walk about and relax without having to worry about documenting everything.
Found a map, and a power adapter and then headed for a walk to my new school, being Sunday it was closed of course- most smaller shops and institutions in Dublin are closed Sunday. But I had a good walk around the city and enjoyed looking at all the architecture, even if it can be challenging to walk on the cobblestone streets.
Another strange thing about Dublin is that there are NO STREET SIGNS ANYWHERE! Some of the buildings have the street name written on them along with the number, which was helpful when I was trying to find my way to school. Thank god I had a map to follow the streets along with, as well as a good sense of direction- or I might have gotten lost.
Above, you can see the area that I’m living in, downtown Dublin is further up and to the right of the area in the photo. If you can tell, behind our house there is a beautiful little river and hills, with a trail that goes along it. I will have to cross over the river in the mornings as I go to the train station. It’s a picturesque walk. The train here is very similar to the skytrain in Vancouver, and is called Luas. It takes only 10 minutes, maybe less to get to the city center probably the equivalent of 3 stops or so on the Vancouver Skytrain.
Now I’m settling down with my computer for a while, and planning a relaxing night in. Tomorrow morning I will have my first day at school- I’m very nervous about it, but hopefully all goes well!
