Everything is perfect when I'm just along for the ride

This Ireland and UK trip was planned by my wonderful brother and his (equally wonderful) wife, so naturally it was a pretty seamless adventure, with the (very) few hiccups caused by your favorite blogger right here :P

We met up in Newark, before which, I naturally prepped with a bottomless brunch. After discussing the itinerary for the week over a beer (at this point all I knew was that we were doing castles and cliffs...), we all went our separate ways to our seats.

Needless to say, Julia slept the majority of the way... which if you ask me doesn't make sense. We left at 5pm and the flight was only 6 hours. How does she do it, you might ask? IT IS A MYSTERY. The rest of us did not sleep.

Upon our arrival in Bristol, I heroically held the bus to Bath while Julia and Phil grabbed some cash. The bus driver politely asked, "Ma'am, do you mind if I just go on without you?" After getting over my astonishment at his chivalry, I immediately took advantage of this strangely nice man and said, "Yeah, I actually would... please wait." AND THEN HE WAITED. Granted, he maybe waited two minutes tops, but the fact that he waited over one second blew my mind away, and I am extremely grateful to you nice bus driver, wherever you are!

Bath was GORGEOUS. Wandering around the city was a dream - the endless limestone throughout the city is unlike anything I've ever seen. The abbey in the center of town was exquisite, and the Roman baths were out of this world. Just the thought of people TWO MILLENNIA AGO bathing in those baths and walking on the same stone completely blew me away.

Next came the walking tour which I was so excited about! About thirty minutes into the tour, Phil turned and looked at me with a very simple question... "Are you gonna make it?" If you're wondering why he asked this, there is quite a simple explanation: I was wobbling around like I was drunk. Not five minutes into the tour, I could feel myself falling asleep STANDING UP. And I spent the next 25 minutes trying to stay awake. Don't get me wrong, the tour was incredible, but if you hadn't noticed, everyone but Julia had jumped into the day without a second of sleep, and I just could NOT hang anymore.

My response to Phil? "No - I'm going to lay down in this little park... come and get me when this is over? K. Thanks."

An hour and a half later, they came and got me, and I was super ready for the rest of the day. We had some great food, wandered around and they showed me all of the highlights of the tour.

Next stop? Cardiff. After some confusion as to where the city center actually was, we walked about five minutes and found the castle that was number one on everyone's list. Cardiff Castle was unique with its mix of history from the 1100's to the Victorian era to World War II. The rest of the day consisted of gin, a church, random ruins, some beer, a boat ride, missing a bus (still not sure exactly how that happened, but since we're all impatient, we sped walked back into town) and then finding the most amazing meal to end the day with. SUCCESS :)

Dublin day 1: Grabbed a taxi at 4:30am so that we could catch our 7am flight. Were in Dublin around 8am ready to start the day! Took another walking tour which I was actually able to stay awake for this time (yaaayyy!!). After this, Julia really wanted to see some library and this book at Trinity college (weirdly it was super famous... I guess Julia's not the only nerd in the world?!?!). So she did that while the rest of us went to enjoy the first Dublin Guinness outdoors. So everyone won! But we actually won...

This is Julia. Excited about library...

After this, we hurriedly taxied to the jail to get a tour before it closed... I put the blame for this mistake on Julia and I, we both thought we knew what we were talking about, and it turns out that you have to book ahead OOPS SORRY. After a quick browse of the annexed museum, we headed back into the town along the river, which ended up being our highlight of the day, we wandered across bridges, in and out of whiskey distilleries (you know, the usual).

After some delicious stew, we gathered for a literary pub tour, which is just as amazing as it sounds. Two actors led us around Dublin, pausing at different sites and pubs to perform excerpts from Ireland's best literature. A highlight of this? Watching Julia try to chug beer when we were only given 20 minutes in each pub :)

Julia flirting with the actors (can't figure out her type: one was super old, and one super young)

Dublin day 2: Cliffs of Moher! We had the weirdest tour guide for this trip... I've never before been lied to so many times in a row. Once we started fact checking him, we realized that NOTHING that he said was true.

When we left Dublin the sun was shining high in the sky. When we got to the cliffs, it was raining incessantly. I, of course, was wearing sandals and was slipping all over the place while walking along the edge of the cliff. (That was my low of the day.) Not the safest thing I've ever done per se, but worth every second of fright that I caused myself!

One of the muddy paths that I almost died on. I LEARNED MY LESSON.

After scrubbing all of the mud off (just me, everyone else was miraculously clean), we sauntered through the city and caught a lot of lovely live Irish music.

I took charge of our trip to Belfast. Booked our bus, figured out where it would pick us up - the whole nine yards! Long story short, even though I was sure it was a 3 minute walk from our hostel, we somehow ended up running up and down the main road in Dublin for over thirty minutes (when I say run, I mean RUN), as I tried to pinpoint the spot that we were supposed to leave from. With the help of a lovely Irish man, we flagged down the driver at the wrong spot and convinced him to let us on the bus. I was then cursed out incessantly for much longer than I thought was warranted BUT... WE MADE IT TO BELFAST :)

Belfast day 1: Belfast has my heart. To the core. I CANNOT WAIT to go back. I've never gone into a city so ignorant and left so educated. The people of Belfast (tour guides, taxi drivers and random bar folk alike) are sooo happy to talk to you about their history, whether it be from long ago or the past few years, the history of the city or their own time working for the IRA (Irish Republican Army). If you want to grab a beer with me so I can go into detail, I would LOVE that.

We did sooo much in Belfast, so here we go again with lots of highlights in the least amount of words possible. After a horrid breakfast experience, off to City Hall...

Tour here = amazing

GR8 lunch, then super cool black taxi tour. Essentially, a tour guide that lived through The Troubles (ask me about it over that beer), drove us around for a few hours, stopping at different sites to detail the triumphs and (mostly) troubles (get it?) of the city.

Julia flirting with tour guide again. He's old. Conclusion: that's her type?

There is a wall between the Catholic and Protestant sections of the city. Our tour guide convinced me this was a good thing. I signed the wall. And wrote.. "keep wall." No regrets.

We hopped into a couple of churches, had a stellar time at the Titanic museum, got caught in some rain, walked the city at night and landed in a couple grand bars (where the man I mentioned before, not only bought us all beer, but detailed his time working for the IRA, his time in jail for them, cried on Phil's shoulder and just so so much more in our one hour with him).

Belfast Day 2: This day was perfect in every way. We had a tour guide who didn't lie to us like our Dublin trip! We headed to Giant's Causeway (8th Wonder of the World - look it up), did some hiking, tasting at a distillery, visited a couple of castles, walked over the most insane bridge and got to watch Julia sleep a ton!!! AKA Perfect Day, duh.

On our final day, I spilled my coffee all over my last clean shirt. Could it have been a more typical ending?!