Home Is Where The Heart Is

This post is a little bit more personal but I felt the need to address it.

When I first moved to university I could not have been more excited. I was looking forward to having independence, cooking and shopping for myself, meeting new people and just experiencing the next stage in my life. Of course there were a good few tears when my parents left me at my accommodation but in general I was happy to be there. After speaking to all of my friends from home, the same seemed to be applying to them too. Now I was a little unfortunate in that the building I moved into wasn't actually finished, and so this meant no Internet for what (was supposed to be a week maximum) ended up being months before we had a semi-reliable connection. I was also in a studio room consisting of two bunk beds which I had to share with a complete stranger (that it turned out I didn't get on with that well). After fresher's week died down I began to feel really homesick, especially with not being able to facetime my family. I found this incredibly difficult. The worst part would be eating alone some nights, staring at a blank wall because I couldn't even watch youtube or netflix! This was the disadvantage of not being in a traditional uni flat with a kitchen/living area shared between at least 6 people.

Exploring Ireland

A few weeks ago I went on a little tour of Ireland with my mum. We got the ferry with our car to Dublin and left 8 days later from Belfast, stopping in Galway and Donegal on the way. Every night we stayed in places found through Airbnb and had such an amazing time! We finished in my boyfriend's home town in County Down. These are a few photos from a lovely mother-daughter bonding trip.

 Dublin
We got there pretty late so our hosts recommended we go just round the corner to The Oarsmen for dinner, such a great meal! The next day was mainly for shopping and a little bit of site seeing. That night we did an organised 'Musical Pub Crawl' that involved two local musicians providing an insight into traditional Irish music with information on the history and instruments of which they played at each venue. They took us to three pubs that apparently 'even Irish people still go to... not your typical Irish theme pubs' -The Oliver St John Gogarty, The Ha'penny Bridge, and Brannigans (a little outside of the Temple Bar area). This was honeslty the best night! It was so much fun everyone was really up for it (especially after a few Guinesses) and with around 50 people from all over the world there was a great atmosphere. They even taught us a song or two! Needless to say the CD became our soundtrack for the rest of the road trip.
The only thing I would recommend against is parking in St.Stephens Green multistory... €19 for 4 hours!

Pub Crawl, Alchemy Juice Co., Powerscourt Centre - Dublin

Trinity College & Molly Malone