After Joe and I left Malta, we flew to Rome to part ways. I head off for Bristol, England, where I would spend the night in the airport. These next few days were the only ones I was alone on my trip. Ironically, I ran into another travelling American from one of my classes around 3 am, so I had some company for Hotel Bristol Airport for a bit of the time. Finally, at 6 am I got on a flight to Edinburgh.
I stepped off the plane in Edinburgh, Scotland, to a snow storm. It was a surprise coming from sunny, warm Malta, to cold, snowy Scotland. Needless to say, I got a good variety of climates over the break. The first day I just found my hostel, bought some warmer clothes and rested from the lack of sleep the night before. The next day I woke up well rested and went on a 3 hour free walking tour of the city. I learned all about the buildings and the history of the city, which is really neat. Edinburgh was an awesome city, all the buildings were so old and beautiful! After the tour, I saw a large hill in the distance that I decided would be nice to climb, so I just started heading in that direction and eventually found the park it was a part of. It was too bad of a hike up and once on the top there were amazing overlooks of the city, with snowy mountains in the distance and on the other side the ocean. You could see the castle clearly in the city. It was amazing!!
The following day was when my backpacking tour of Scotland began. We headed out around 9 am in a rather small bus. Not long after our journey began and we were out of the city, we began to all introduce ourselves. There were all nationalities, including lots of people from Australia, along with India, Germany, France, New Zealand, China, Wales, and then me, the only person from the States. Our tour guide, Colin, was wearing a kilt and had such a thick accent, I often wondered if he was speaking English. He was great though, he told lots of stories all along our ride. Our final destination for the day was the Isle of Skye. Along the way we made many stops, such as Lochness (I spotted him this time!!), numerous castles, and a whiskey distillery.
Once we arrived in Skye, one of the Aussie girls and myself watched the sunset over the ocean behind the mountains, which was right outside our hostel window. The Isle of Skye is just how I remember it, gorgeous!! The next day we woke up and explored the island. We saw amazing cliffs on the ocean, with castle ruins there. We hiked up some mountains with overviews that are indescribable! Everything was so incredibly green, it was awesome!! Skye is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been!!
The next day we headed on our long journey back down to Edinburgh, where a few of us went out for a drink, and then to bed. I woke up the next day to begin my tour of Ireland. We left around 7 am to catch a 10 am fairy across the Irish Sea. We got off in Ireland and made some stops before arriving at Port Stewart, where we would stay the night, which is in Northern Ireland. One of the stops was the Giants Causeway, it was really cool. All the rocks are in the shape of a hexagon. It truly is amazing how they were naturally formed like that. There were 15 of us on this tour and we were travelling in an even smaller bus than the Scotland tour. We had lots of Australian people on this tour, as well as people from the US and Canada, Taiwan, China, Germany, and Spain. Our tour guide, Michael, was from Scotland, and also did a wonderful job of telling us all the stories and history of the area. We all went out to the pub for dinner the first night, which gave us time time all to hang out as a group and mingle. It was a lot of fun.
The next day we carried on throughout the island country. We passed through Derry, which is where Bloody Sunday took place. It was an extremely political town, with murals from the traumatic events all over the city. It was really neat to get to see it all, but very sad. We stayed in Donogal that night, which was a tiny place. We went to a pub to see live music, which consisted of a man playing the guitar and singing, along with another man playing the accordion. At one point our tour guide got up there and sang with them, it was good! It was a lot of fun to see the country town. One thing I loved about the country this time of year too is because all the little lambs...they are so precious!!
The next day we headed off for Dublin. When we arrived, we went to the old jail, called Kilmainham Gaol. We did an hour tour of it which was so neat to learn all about the history. It was built in 1796. Afterwards, a couple of us went to the Jameson Whiskey Distillery. That was a very interesting tour which taught us all about how they make their whiskey. At the end we did a whiskey tasting comparing Jameson with Jack Daniels and Scotch, telling us the difference between them, which was interesting. That night we all went to see live music, which was a man playing guitar and singing with another guy playing the flute. It was really good, and sounded really Irish, which was so cool!!
The next day we had a couple hours before leaving, so I just kind of walked around town and checked out one of the main roads, O'Connoll Street. Dublin was a cool town, with a river in the middle, like all European towns, and it wasn't too big, so we were able to walk everywhere that we went. When heading back to the Ferry, we passed through Belfast, which was a nice looking city. One back in Scotland, we passed through Glasgow and made it back to Edinburgh in time to go out for one last drink with the people from the tour.
I slept for a couple hours before catching my plane back to Bristol at 6 am. Once to Bristol, I hopped on the train and was back in Swansea before noon. My break was over and it was time to get back to work for school. I had a week before classes started again. This break was so amazing, and it flew by. I have over 1000 pictures from it all so I can remember these places forever!!
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