Dublin .... again

Halli hallo hallöchen alle zusammen :)

Today I am going to tell you about the last weekend in January. We had another assistant meeting in Dublin, so Friday afternoon I met up with Lena and Isabel in Tralee to travel up to Dublin together.

We booked into our hostel with Sophie and Louis and had a relaxing night. We listened to some live music and I brought them to my favorite pub in Dublin (the one with the buzzer). The seminar was surprisingly good and afterwards we were taught some Irish and even some Irish dances, although I must admit that I'm not practicing enough. As soon as it finished, Lena, Isabel and I ran across Dublin to make it to our bus in time and we even succeeded ;)

That night we went out in Tralee and the next morning Lena brought me to the bus stop so I was home nice and early (and super wet from the half hour walk in the rain) on Sunday :)

So many lovely colorful doors in Dublin! They look great!

Us girls (and Louis) had to go into the Disney shop where we fell in love with the little princesses <33

Dublin at night .... Romantic :)

Live music in one of our favorite pubs :)

The gang ;)

Dublin on a rainy day ...

And welcome to a crowded major city ...

A weekend in Cork

Hey there,

While I'm writing this, the Easter holidays with two and a half amazing weeks full of great people, breathtaking nature and fun are over and I have sooooo many stories to tell. But first things first.

Today I will tell you about a lovely girls weekend I had with Siobhán and Sophie in January. Basically the third weekend back the wanderlust came over me again and Siobhán and I planned a weekend in Cork.

It all began with a relaxing Friday morning. After school a teacher who lives in Cork brought us to Killarney, where we met Sophie and the Austrian assistant, Sarah. We spend the afternoon and evening together, starting with a two hour chat in DanJoe's, a very good chipper next to our hostel, and moving on across the street to a pub with live music. We had a good chat and went to bed happy and excited for the next day.

The next morning, Shiobhán and I took the train to Cork. I still find it very cool that your names are displayed :) On the journey I worked a bit on my Irish. We tried some learning strategies and I can still ask how old someone is and say how old I am.

After our arrival in Cork, we walked around for a while and looked at buildings, did a bit of shopping and we also managed to spend an hour in a souvenir shop because it was so full of interesting things :D
As you can see, I even found a Sakura restaurant, which strongly reminded me of home ;)
Then we strolled through the center, climbed up the steep part of Patrick's Hill, from where you have a great view over the city, and ended up having an early dinner in a cute little place called Perry Street Market Café, where we were chatting and eating for the the next three hours. After that, we even let out our artistic side by going into an art gallery close by.

We decided then to go to the cinema and we saw Sing!, which left us singing for about 100 minutes straight and all night afterwards ;)
Back in the hostel, we decided to make the most of our girls night out, got changed, put on our face and went out for a few drinks.
We even passed the Cork Corner House, which made us feel like being in Cahersiveen again for a moment ;)

Seeing this reminded me of my first weekend down in Cork back in October, which was a very good night

The next morning, we made our way to a shopping center in Mahon Point where we did another bit of shopping and afterwards we went to a rugby pitch close by to support the Eagles. The weather was great and the game was interesting. With the crowd from Cahersiveen we made our way back home, stopping in a sports bar, where we had some food. So that was the perfect start of a great time of traveling :)

First Two Weekends Back

I've been back in Ireland for a good while now and I never got around to tell you all about the great craic, amazing travels and beautiful scenery that I experienced lately. Now I will try to write post by post until I'm up to date ... (wish me luck!) Here are a few impressions about what welcomed me back to my second home in the first two weeks.

This is the lovely view out my window that I love so much! It was great to return to that scenery and the sea :)



I also went for a little cycle one of the days and got some great views over the water (which is the actual name of the place that you can reach by going over a bridge).
 

But Cahersiveen also welcomed me back with some hail believe it or not...

Sunday afternoon Paul took me for a walk to the Kimego forest which is completely different to the forest I would have next doors at home but it is a beautiful spot in the world with (surprise) nice views! Even better pictures will follow ... 
They even had a "Christmas tree", where people would just hang up decorations (not only for Christmas) but unfortunately it was cut down just a few weeks later ... :(

This is Kevin, one of the "lads" (Irish word for guys, but doesn't necessarily have to be male). They brew their own beer which we tasted the first weekend I was back. It is really nice! :)
The weekend after we had a little session in their house. We had all sorts of guitar, cachon, bouzouki (never saw this before!) and singing going and the drinks were going down handy enough... ;)

And I finally saw the original "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" with Siobhán! :) It's apparently popular to watch it around Christmas.

So that was the first two weekends that were fairly packed with nice activities and there is a lot more yet to come .... :)