Hello from Wales!

I'm currently on a 4 hour bus ride to Wales from London, so I decided to write you an email about how my trip has been so far, what I've been up to.

The first day in Dublin was tough at first, I was exhausted and just drained physically, emotionally, everything. It was good to finally be done moving for a bit, get settled in one place after being on planes and busses for 18 hours. 

That first night we visited the oldest pub in Ireland! It was like walking back in time when you walked through the gated entryway, just up the hill from it is the last remaining part of the original walls of the city from the Viking era, around 1230 or so, pretty awesome stuff if you're nerdy like me :p then we met up with some' locals' (they were from Galway in western Ireland) at a pub down in the Temple Bar area, Dublin's culture capital district. That was fun, they enjoyed our accents and we laughed at theirs and we all had a few pints and talked about soccer, it was fun.

The next day we wandered around Dublin, checking out some sights : the Guinness storehouse, which was amazing, it was so cool. Over 2/3 of all the barley/grain grown on the island of Ireland is bought by Guinness to be used for making their beer. That's crazy! We also found a few more cool little pubs and shops, everything was quite expensive, and i had run out of euro bank notes, and no bank would break the $100 bills I had, which sucked. So I didn't get many souvenirs from Dublin, but I'll be back for sure. That night we signed our initials and "Michigan State University" on a dollar bill and tacked it on the wall of a pub in Dublin, kind of cool :)

Thursday was fun, we got up at a decent hour and had breakfast, then off to see trinity college, its so beautiful there. If the study abroad program you mentioned is there, it's in an awesome part of town. Then we visited Dublin Castle and my favorite part, Kilmainham Gaol (jail) which was a huge piece of Irish history, it was where the British executed the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rebellion, which directly led to the Irish war of Independence. We ended the day by visiting the old Jameson distillery, which was a cool tour as well. Tempted to buy a nice bottle, but the prices quickly stopped that temptation haha.

We went back to the oldest pub in Ireland that night, The Brazen Head, and just had a drink before going back to our hotel and finishing packing.

Dublin was a lot of fun, I'm definitely going to go back sometime! This time hopefully with some traveling companions who know to take my advice on traveling issues (booking tickets in advance).

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I've been Wales for a day now, it's interesting to say the least!

More posts later :)