Drove up north of Galway. Saw Kylemoor Abbey, Connemara National Park, and Killary Fjord.
North of Galway
Dundalk > Galway
Now the real fun can begin with seeing all the pretty places. We took the train back to Dublin to rent a car and drove to Galway, stopping in Trim and County Offaly to see the Trim Castle and Clonmacnoise Monastery (which we may or may not have snuck into after hours through an open gate).
Dundalk Institute of Technology
The day we’re all here for, the tour of the campus. We explored a Tesco and ended the night at a bar with some music; we’ve found that they’re pretty much stuck in the 70s, the musician was playing lots of Eagles and Beatles, and stores/restaurants in both Dublin and Dundalk play almost exclusively all the oldies but goodies.
Dublin > Dundalk
Took a stroll to the Ha’penny pedestrian bridge to see a bit of Dublin without the rain, then took a quick train ride to Dundalk. Today was mostly meandering around, walked around Ice House Hill Park (where I took my obligatory European duck pictures – though not the best cuz all the kids were trying to pet them), and ended the night as the “Comfortably Dumb” trivia team and actually not doing terribly!
Arriving in Dublin
Landed at 1am – I mean 7am – so the perfect time to get started with our day! Got some breakfast, saw the Book of Kells, toured the Guinness factory, then grabbed dinner at the oldest pub and are taking an early night.
Munich, Last Day
We took a couple different routes on the Hop-Off-Hop-Off buses so I feel like we really got to see a lot of the city. That includes Marienplatz, St. Michael’s church, the eternal flame monument for those lost in WWII, Nymphenburg Palace, Olympic Park where we went to the top of the tower, a market where we saw a maypole,  Odeonsplatz, and the English Gardens. The gardens were beautiful, and we stumbled across a place where apparently a lot of people go to surf the little waves coming out from under the bridge.
Train to Munich
Spent most of the day on the 7 hour train ride which was a new experience for me and everything went very smoothly so it was very good. When we got to Munich we went to the Hofbräuhaus beer hall where we had some very good wiener schnitzel and strudel. It began raining while we were there so we went back to the hotel and called it an early night.
Last Day in Budapest
We visited the Shoes on the Danube, a memorial there to honor those lost in WWII. We also went through the Labyrinth, naturally made, but now used in connection to Dracula; they were quite creepy with very few lights, fog, and opera music echoing throughout accompanied by wax figures as a masquerade ball. We took the funicular down Buda Hill, rode the Budapest Eye, and as we were sitting having a milkshake to cool down, a random parade came by as there are multiple festivals happening around here, but what mostly caught my attention was the guy having to wear a fur coat in 90 degrees. We had a great dinner where we cooked our own meat on a lava rock (I had some Mangalica Pork, mostly because I was really intrigued by the concept of eating a fuzzy pig). And then we were supposed to take an overnight train tonight to Munich, but we ended up missing that one, but we were able to get another train to Munich tomorrow morning and a hotel room in the same hotel we stayed in last night so it all worked out. Plus we were glad to be able to take a shower after sweating all day.
Margaret Island
The cruise is over but we are still hanging around Europe for a little while, so we checked into our hotel where we got a very fancy room for just one night. We explored the city a little more and visited the oldest church in Budapest, the Roman ruins of which can be seen through glass in the floor of the new church built over it. We took a tour of Margaret Island on some electric scooters – the traffic was crazy but it was quite a fun way to get around. Margaret Island is located in between Buda and Pest (on one side of the Danube is Buda and the other is Pest – the two cities joined a while ago, first being called Pestbuda, but since Buda was the previous capital they decided to put that first). The island is so beautiful, basically just a giant park as there are no residences and no cars are allowed to drive around, and it contains an English rose garden, a Japanese garden, a zoo, and a waterpark, as well as a fountain that does a light show in the evening and lots of green space.
Hiking Gellert Hill
So we went to Gellert Hill and went in the church that is inside the hill (for the rest of the day’s activities and pictures of the church search “History in Budapest”). I wanted to climb up to the cross (which at the time I forgot was pretty much directly above the church/cave opening). I assumed I would just be able to follow a path up but I was sorely mistaken; a couple feet into the trek up the hill, the path split in multiple directions and all the way up there were many different paths you could take and they were all paved so there was not one correct one – I saw one sign, but it was in Hungarian so not very helpful. I figured “up” was a pretty safe direction so I just continued that way exploring some of the different paths. I got to one intersection and was standing there deciding which way to go (and catching my breath), but was about to go the wrong way when a Hungarian woman told me that there were good views the other way, so I assumed I had finally made it to the cross. I again was sorely mistaken. I had accidentally climbed all the way to the top of the large hill to Budapest’s Statue of Liberty – not what I was expecting, but the views were absolutely fantastic. On the hike up there I only saw like 4 other people, but at the top there were many other tourists coming from all different paths all around the hill, so I assume any of the separate paths I could have taken would have eventually gotten me to the same place. But alas, even with the very rewarding views I had not accomplished what I had set out to do and visit the cross. I looked at some pictures I had taken before we started up the hill and then realized how far away I actually was and started wandering back down on different paths and eventually found my way to the cross. It was a fun detour and added adventure to the day, plus I think it’s a funny story.
