On Thursday, we woke up relatively early so we could get ready and pack up our things. We checked out of the hotel around 10am and then walked to the train station to catch the train that would take us to Kildare.

I don’t think I mentioned the hotel we stayed at in Galway, but it was called the Park House Hotel and I would highly recommend it! It was a bit of a splurge (my mom has very specific tastes when it comes to hotels, ha, so we didn’t stay in anything that wasn’t four stars), but a really beautiful hotel in a great location (next to the train station and right across the street from Eyre Square).

Once we’re situated on the train, I open my Kindle to begin to read. And then hear this little mewing sound. I turn to my mom and say, “I know I miss my kitties a lot, but are you hearing the mewing sound, too?” Ha! I was hoping I wasn’t going crazy, but nope – there was indeed a cat on the train. A woman who was flying back to the States after living for a year and a half in Galway had her cat with her! The cat softly mewed throughout the entire train ride, but it was sweet, not annoying.

It wasn’t until we were nearing the time we were supposed to arrive in Kildare that I realized I had made a mistake. As in, the train had already stopped in Kildare and I hadn’t been paying attention. I thought the train’s final destination would be Kilare; it didn’t even cross my mind that it would just be one of those quick stops in the middle of the passage. Instead, we wound up going all the way back to Dublin, and I felt like a real big idiot for not reading my train email closely enough. Ah, well. It happens!

Thankfully, there was a train leaving for Kilkenny within 15 minutes of us arriving in Dublin, so we were able to purchase tickets and get on the right train. And we still arrived in Kilkenny at the same time we would have originally, so it wasn’t too much of a big deal. (Just an expensive mistake, as we had to eat the cost of the ticket from Kildare to Kilkenny, and cough up €56 for the second ticket.)

We got to Kilkenny around 12:30 and when I looked at how far away our hotel was to the train station, I figured it would be easy enough to just walk there. It was maybe 3/4ths of a mile but boy oh boy, did that feel like walking a marathon, especially towing 40-lb suitcases up steep inclines while starving since my only food up until this point was half a chocolate muffin. I felt hot and clammy, shaky with hunger, and irritable – definitely the signs of a hypoglycemic episode.

Eventually, though, we found the hotel, and what a beautiful sight it was! In Kilkenny, we stayed at the Pembroke Hotel. This was another snazzy hotel, but it was actually pretty reasonable (we paid €117 for one night). Our room was beautiful with a gorgeous view of Kilkenny Castle in the distance.

Our room, however, wasn’t ready when we arrived so we dropped off our luggage at the front desk and then decided to eat a quick meal at the hotel bar. We just needed food at that moment – sustenance!

While we were at the hotel bar eating lunch, I encountered one of the most curious exchanges between what I assume was a boss and an employee. The boss was concerned that the employee hadn’t taken a long enough break. I think she’s given a 30-minute break and the employee came back after 20 minutes, and the boss told her, “You take your full 30 minutes. Take 40 minutes! But you only took 20 minutes today, and that’s not a long enough break.”

Y’all. Coming from a culture where employees are celebrated for working through lunch and skipping their breaks, this was pretty novel to me. We need more of this in our society.

Anyhow, our lunch was good! I ordered a chicken Caesar wrap with fries, and it had a little too much dressing, but was otherwise very filling and really hit the spot for me.

After eating, we visited Kilkenny Castle. It was amazing to come face-to-face with it – we just turned a corner and there it was! This centuries-old castle in the middle of town. We had to walk by a slew of vendors on our way to the castle and if it wasn’t freezing (I think the temps were in the mid-40s that day), I would have loved to stop and have a bite to eat or look at their wares, but as it was, it was a little chilly for us! We had to keep moving!

The castle was so beautiful and I’m glad we had plenty of time to walk around and take it all in. We started in the main courtyard, and I was blown away by the gardens, realizing that for Kilkenny residents, this is a place they can go for a walk anytime they want! One guy walked in with his dog, and his dog was just running around the grass, happy as can be.

Eventually, we made our way into the castle to tour the interior.

Kilkenny Castle was built in 1195 to control a fording-point of the River Nore. It was also a symbol of the Norman occupation and provided a defense point for the city due to its four large circular corner towers. In 1967, it was sold to the people of Kilkenny for €50 and is now managed by the Office of Public Works. (Thanks, Wikipedia!)

It was beautiful inside, most of the rooms were decorated Victorian-style, as it looked in the 13th century when the castle was used as a method of defense. There was even a rendition of a water closet!

After touring the inside of the castle, we walked around the rose garden and then the rest of the grounds, taking it all in. It was all so beautiful, and such a gorgeous day to explore the castle! (We lucked out so much with the weather – no rain, aside from the short downpour on our way to the Cliffs!)

Next stop on our list was visiting Smithwick’s to do their guided tour. I bought the tickets online before we left the States and we were able to get in for the 4pm tour, which gave us about an hour to walk around Kilkenny. I was feeling a little hungry at this point, so we stopped at the Black Cat Cafe (you know I had to have a bite to eat here since I have a black cat of my own!). The food was okay – my latte was a little bitter and the brownie wasn’t anything to write home about, but it was nice to sit down and chill for a minute before going on our tour.

The tour of Smithwick’s was really cool, and I’d highly recommend it! (We didn’t do the guided tour of Guinness in Dublin, mostly because my mom doesn’t like Guinness, and the whole point of doing these tours is the beer at the end, right?! Plus, the Guinness tour is more expensive than Smithwick’s – double the price! – so we definitely made the right call, I think.)

Our tour guide was this adorable Irish man, who gave me George/Fred Weasley vibes, even more so when he made a Harry Potter reference for one of the rooms we went into. I believe both his grandfather and his father worked in the brewery when it was a working brewery, so he definitely had deep roots in Smithwick’s.

The location of Smithwick’s was originally a Franciscan abbey where monks in the 14th century brewed ale. (I never knew monks were brewing ale centuries ago!) Eventually, the abbey was shut down and in 1710, John Smithwick founded Smithwick’s on the ruins of the abbey.

We learned how the brewery’s ownership changed throughout the years but mostly stayed within the family. (This is where the Harry Potter reference came in, as we walked into a room that had talking pictures.)

Lastly, we learned about how the ale is produced, which is a super complicated process! It would have been cool to see an actual working brewery, but Smithwick’s was acquired by Guinness in 1965 and in 2013, all production moved to Dublin. This location in Kilkenny is now just used for tours, but our tour guide said they are planning to return it to a working brewery in the next few years.

After the brewery tour, we got to try their ale! I am not a fan of beer, so I opted for a Coke while my mom got their blonde ale which she said was super delicious. (She even got it for dinner that night!)

We stayed for a bit and then started walking back to our hotel. It had been a busy day! But on our way back, I spotted a bookstore and we had to stop in for a peek at their collection. I ended up picking up another Sally Rooney book!

After that, it was finally back to the hotel to pick up our room key and relax for a bit before dinner. Just like in Galway, I had researched the restaurants within walking distance of our hotel and selected a few that seemed to be a good fit for our tastes. I gave my mom the list of restaurants and let her pick out the one she liked the most, which ended up being Paris Texas Bar and Restaurant.

The restaurant was a little overwhelming at first because when you entered, you walked straight into a pub-like space that had loud music and tons of people. But towards the back was a much quieter restaurant, which is always preferable for me.

I ordered a cider, and it was probably one of the tastiest ciders I’ve ever had (very fruity!). I ordered a burger with fries and a side of mac-and-cheese because, well, I just wanted some carbs on top of my carbs?! It was a great decision, though, because it was probably one of my favorite meals of the trip.

After dinner, we went back to the hotel where I enjoyed a very luxurious bubble bath. The bathtub itself was rather tiny (and this is coming from someone who’s five-two and generally doesn’t need a lot of space in a bathtub!) but it was still sooooo nice, especially for my feet which were getting a workout from all this walking!

I was also so, so excited to sleep in tomorrow because our train to Dublin didn’t leave until noon. Sleeeeeep!

Our second day started bright and early as we had fun plans for the day: going to the Cliffs of Moher! This is obviously a must-do while you’re in Ireland – just about every taxi driver we rode with on our trip (as well as the customs agent at the airport!) asked us if we were going to the Cliffs.

I chose to use a tour company to see the Cliffs, and I’m really glad I did. I chose the Galway Tour Company, which came highly recommended by Rick Steves (whose tour guide I used religiously to plan our trip). And they were great! Our tour guide was fantastic and the tour didn’t feel long at all, even though we left Galway at 10am and didn’t get back until 6pm.

But let’s back up a bit because I need to talk about breakfast. We ate breakfast at the hotel and it was truly delicious! I ordered a traditional Irish breakfast and while there were certain items on my plate I didn’t like (like the Canadian bacon), the shining star was that perfectly cooked egg. It tasted so fresh and delicious! I could have eaten, like, three more of them.

After breakfast, it was time for our tour! We started it at Dunguaire Castle, which is a 16th-century tower situated right outside of Galway. I spent so much time taking pictures of the outside of the castle that we didn’t have much time to actually explore the castle itself. (I was also very anxious that the tour bus was going to leave us, so I always made sure we were back on the bus within 5-10 minutes of when we needed to be.) (I’m very fun to travel with, yes.)

Our next stop was The Burren, which is an area that has this otherworldly landscape caused by geological forces that happened millions of centuries ago. It’s a gray, rocky area that doesn’t look like much when you visit it at first, but it really is crazy that most of Ireland is full of green, lush landscapes and then there’s The Burren, which makes you wonder if you took a wrong turn and landed on the moon. 🙂

After The Burren, we took another stop to visit Kilfenora Cathedral. The cathedral was originally built in the 6th century but after a series of fires burned down the cathedral not once but twice, it was eventually rebuilt in the 12th century. The area surrounding the cathedral is filled with graves, so that made me a bit uncomfortable. (I don’t love walking around graves and reading gravestones as entertainment.)

Then, it was time for lunch! We ate at a little pub that was a short drive away from the Cliffs where they did an amazing job serving 50-something people in an hour. The food was good, too. I ordered a lamb burger with fries and a Coke. (Side note: they only had soda with regular sugar in Ireland, which tasted okay but I learned quickly that I really, really crave the taste that soda with good, ole HFCS gives me. I’m not proud of this.) It was a filling lunch, though, and definitely hit the spot.

I was hoping to get a picture of the front of the pub – because it was so quintessentially Ireland – but when we stepped outside to walk back to the bus, we found out it was pouring down rain! Ack! Annnd… my rain jacket was on the bus. Oy vey.

In any event, we arrived back on the bus a little damp, but it wasn’t too bad. The price you pay for going to Ireland, right? 🙂

The next adventure on our list was the one we had all been waiting for: the Cliffs of Moher! It was still raining when we got off the bus at the Cliffs (and freezing), so I zipped myself up in my rain jacket and put on my hat. I was prepared to tough it out in the downpour because nothing was going to stop me from exploring the Cliffs.

Not two minutes after we got off the bus, the rain stopped and the skies cleared up. Ha! I mean, it was preferable to pouring down rain, so I’m not complaining in the least!

We had beautifully clear views of the Cliffs and our tour guide said we got really lucky because the views aren’t often as clear as they were that day. The whole view was so beautiful and awe-inspiring, there’s no other way to describe it. I had been looking at images of these Cliffs and I knew what I was going to see, but there was something about seeing such a majestic sight in person that cannot be beat.

We decided to start our hike on the right side of the Cliffs and stopped many times for pictures. I couldn’t stop taking pictures because it was all so beautiful and hard to fathom I was seeing it all with my own two eyes.

We walked up a path to get to the top of the cliff and I’m grateful for a relatively easy walking path because, you know me, if there’s a way to injure yourself on a hike, I’ll make it happen. Thankfully, we emerged from this entire vacation injury-free!

Before getting on the bus, our tour guide told us over and over again to be very careful when walking up the Cliffs and that the wind can be monstrous. He mentioned there were signs keeping people away from the edge, but there were no signs on this walking path and it was surprising because there was no railing to keep us from the edge of the cliff and the walking path was closer than I would have liked to the edge. Eeps! (In the below picture, the walking path is that sandy patch on the bottom right. We were that close to the edge!)

We were probably 3/4th of the way up when we got hit by this monster gust of wind and I had to engage my core and stand really tensely to remain upright. It was scary! After that happened, I turned to my mom and said, “Yeah, I think I’m done. I’m a little too scared to keep walking.” Ha!

We made our way down the cliff and I was very happy to be closer to the ground! We continued to walk around, taking lots of breaks to take pictures, and started to walk up the other side of the cliff but we didn’t have a ton of time left before we needed to be back on the bus. (I could have easily spent five hours at the Cliffs rather than the two we were given.)

Instead, we made our way over to the visitor’s center where I bought myself a latte and then we strolled around the gift shop for a while, trying to decide if we wanted to buy anything. There were some really nice paintings of the Cliffs that I thought about buying but ultimately decided against getting anything.

We left the Cliffs a little after 4 p.m. and I felt a little pang in my stomach as the bus pulled away. I couldn’t believe our trip to the Cliffs was over! I definitely felt a pull to revisit this beautiful place in the future.

Before beginning our drive back home, we took a pit stop at this little place our tour guide called the “Mini Cliffs.” It was this little stretch of water and rocks with the “Mini Cliffs” in the background, and it was so peaceful and serene. One of the tour guests brought out a ukelele and was strumming it while walking around, which added this gorgeous background noise to the whole scene.

And then it was finally time to head back to Galway, and boy, was our tour group tired by this point! I put on a podcast and let my eyes close and found myself nodding on and off into sleep. I dearly hope I wasn’t snoring. 😉

We got back a little after 6 p.m., and we were hungry at this point so we went back to our hotel to freshen up before heading to The Dáil Bar, which was another restaurant on the list I put together for my mom to choose from. It was a great pick, even though we found a seat right under a TV that started playing a soccer game halfway through our meal so we had a bunch of people staring in our direction for the majority of dinner. Awwwkward.

However, our meal itself was delicious! My mom and I both got fish and chips (I figured I had to order it at least once while I was in Ireland!), and it was so, so good. I am super picky about my fish (surprising, I know), but I gobbled it down happily.

After dinner, we walked around Galway, first stopping into one of those super touristy souvenir shops where I bought an Ireland Christmas ornament as well as a really nice leather bookmark. I’m not huge into buying souvenirs when I travel, but these items seemed perfect!

We also found an ice cream shop and even though it was 50 degrees outside, we both decided that walking around and eating ice cream was a great idea. (It totally was.) I met a really fun girl in the ice cream shop who just had this electric personality. I’m not really one for chatting up locals (I wish I was, but I’m just too socially awkward most of the time), but she was so nice and easy to talk to. Once she found out I was an avid reader, we got to chatting about books and bookstores and what books I should buy while I was there. 🙂 It was such a great conversation!

Ice cream in hand, my mom and I proceeded to walk back to our hotel but I was not following my phone’s GPS directions correctly and we walked for a mile in the wrong direction! I was so confused why we were walking through what felt like the suburban area of Galway and I soon figured out I had completely messed up. Oops! We eventually started walking in the right direction and got back to our hotel close to 10 p.m. Whew.

What a day! But there’s no rest for the travel-weary – tomorrow, we were heading to Kilkenny and would have a full day of exploration ahead of us!

We arrived in Ireland early Tuesday morning (7am Ireland time, 2am Eastern time). I didn’t sleep at all on the plane and since my body decided it was ready to be up for the day at 3am on Monday, I was functioning on zero sleep and pure adrenaline.

We took a taxi from the airport to Heuston Station to take a train to Galway. It took some time to get to the train station since we were running up against rush hour traffic, but thankfully, there was a lane specifically for taxis and buses that allowed us to skip a lot of the backup. We got to the train station about an hour before our train was departing, and this is when my exhaustion hit me. I was soooo tired at this point; all I wanted was to sleep for hours and it was overwhelming to realize that I had a whole entire day to get through before I could sleep! Ahh.

The train station was excellent for people-watching, though, and it was fun to see all the people from nearby towns streaming into Dublin for their day. I wonder how many people live in other towns and take the train to Dublin for work! I sipped a vanilla latte that I was hoping would wake me up, but it was a bit too bitter for me so I didn’t drink much of it.

Soon, it was time to get on the train, and during the entire two-and-a-half-hour ride, I slept. Every time I tried to rouse myself and read my book or look out at the countryside, I would fall asleep. I needed it, though, and it definitely perked me up a bit.

Around 12:30 or so, we arrived in Galway and our hotel was thankfully a short five-minute jaunt from the train station. We were thrilled to find out that our room was ready because we both desperately wanted showers after our long travel day.

After taking showers and getting presentable, we ventured out to find something to eat and take a stroll through the city. When planning this trip, I spent a lot of time researching restaurants because my mom and I are picky eaters and it’s easier for us to have a place in mind rather than hoping we’d stumble across a good restaurant. (Although that did happen quite a few times during our trip!) So, I had a list of restaurants ready to go that I was able to give my mom and let her choose.

For our late lunch on Tuesday, she chose The Front Porch, which was an excellent selection for our first official Ireland meal! I got a cider and shepherd’s pie, both of which were excellent. We were there at a slow time (I think it might have been around 2 or 3 pm), but service was fast and this was one of the few restaurants where they brought the check right to us!

After eating, we decided to do a little sightseeing, starting with the Spanish Arch. My phone’s GPS was super unhelpful as we tried to locate this historic structure and it took forever to find. Eventually, though, we found it and… it was a little underwhelming to be honest, haha. All that work!

We also stopped into St. Nicholas Collegiate Church, a medieval church founded in 1320. It was incredibly moving being in that space. It was holy and reverent and peaceful and filled with so much history and significance that it was hard to wrap my head around.

Since Ireland is an incredibly literary country, I knew I wanted to visit some of their indie bookstores and buy some books to remind me of my trip. Our first stop was Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, which was tucked away in this nondescript street and could be easily missed if you weren’t careful! The bookshop was small, crammed full with books and I could have easily spent hours in there, perusing the stacks. I purchased Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, a book I’ve heard a lot of great buzz about and since Sally Rooney is an Irish author, it made sense to buy her book while in Ireland!

We also did a lot of walking around Galway, stopping into some of their shops along Quay Street but mostly just walking around taking in the city. After a while, though, our exhaustion caught up to us and I got a bit grumpy, so we decided to go back to the hotel and call it an early night. Tomorrow would be a busy day: our tour to the Cliffs of Moher!

Hello, my friends! I am back from my lovely Ireland “holiday” (as they say there, hehe) and it was filled with so many highlights. I could have spent another two weeks exploring the country, as there were so many places we missed like the Dingle Peninsula, Belfast, the Aran Islands, Cork, etc. It just means we need to make a trip back to Ireland someday, right?

I’ll be diving into trip recaps later this week, but before I do that, I thought it might be good to talk about some of the things I learned during my first international vacation:

1) Give me smaller countryside towns over busy cities.

My friend Amber told me that she much preferred the smaller Ireland towns over the big cities during her trip to Ireland a few years ago… and I kind of ignored her advice. (Oops!) But it’s good advice, especially for me since I get very overstimulated and overwhelmed easily by loud, chaotic environments. Like Dublin. With more than half a million in population, not to mention all the tourists (especially worse on Saturday as there was a cruise ship in port), it’s a very crowded city. I had some fairly epic meltdowns while we were in Dublin. Sometimes, it was because I got hangry and we couldn’t find a place to eat that had an empty table. Other times, it was because I got us lost on our way to a pub or museum even though I was using my phone’s GPS. I didn’t feel this way at all while we were in Galway or Kilkenny, which just means I’m not into the big city life. I’m glad I visited Dublin, but two days were more than enough for me.

2) Give me trains over cars.

So, here’s the truth: I didn’t drive in Ireland. While everyone I talked to about driving on the other side of the road told me it was easier than it looked, I was anxious about it. My anxiety ramped up when I arrived in Ireland and saw the driving IRL. It looked complicated and the drivers were more impatient than I expected (lots of honking!), so I made the decision to cancel our car reservation and take the train wherever we needed to go. It was the right call and I really enjoyed traveling by train! Although, I did make the expensive mistake of not getting off the train at a connection point on our way to Kilkenny. So, instead of getting off the train in Kildare to take another train into Kilkenny, we went all the way back to Dublin and had to buy another ticket (for a cool 56 euros) to Kilkenny from Dublin. Read the ticket email, Steph! Argh.

3) I get super stressed out when plans change.

I love itineraries and on this trip, I took the lead on planning our itinerary, checking in with my mom every few weeks to review it. And it was fun! I really, really enjoyed all of the planning – finding out what cities to visit, what places to see, what restaurants to eat at, etc.

And when our trip followed my itinerary line by line, I did fine. I had a very intricate itinerary, down to the exact restaurants to visit, and it made me feel comfortable as we traveled around Ireland. And then Dublin happened. We arrived in Dublin earlier than expected (Friday afternoon, not Friday evening), so that threw me for a loop in trying to find something to do that afternoon. (We ended up not doing anything.) Another change was recognizing that we needed to cancel our plans for our day in Belfast on Sunday, and instead spend another day in Dublin since we hadn’t seen half of the stuff on our sightseeing list (like Trinity College and the Book of Kells).

I’m not great at responding well when things change and I have to alter my expectations. It really stressed me out to continually adjust our itinerary in Dublin. I wish I was better at spontaneity and going with the flow, but that’s not one of my strengths. I’m working on it!

4) Restaurant culture in Ireland is vastly different than the U.S.

Okay, this is very dumb American of me because of course it is, you’re in an entirely different country, dummy. But hey, first international trip for me – I learned some stuff!

In a typical Irish pub (and in some restaurants), there’s no waiting around to be seated. Usually, you just have to pray you can find an open table. This is not totally unusual, as there are some bars and restaurants that operate similarly in America, but that’s usually during slow times. When the dinner rush starts, you usually wait for a table. Not in Ireland! You better hope you can find an empty chair or two somewhere around the pub to sit.

The serving culture is also a bit different because often, we would order at the bar and pay at the bar. Sometimes, we would have a dedicated server who would take our order and bring us our food, but it was very rare for them to drop off a check at the end of the meal. We typically had to go up to the bar, point to where we were sitting, and they could magically bring up our entire order that way.

Lastly, tipping! There is no real tipping culture in Ireland, something we learned during our second day, after noticing there was no place to add a tip on our receipt. Obviously, you can tip your server if you’d like and it’s standard to give a 10% tip rather than the 15-20% that is typical in American culture.

The more you know, right?!

5) Irish people are genuine, friendly, and helpful.

We had been told how nice and friendly Irish people were, but I was blown away by their genuine warmth. Every person we came across – from bus drivers and waitstaff to taxi drivers and locals – was so friendly and helpful. They never made me feel like a dumb American, and it really made my time in their country so much better.

And there you go – some of my biggest lessons learned after my first international trip. I’m happy to report that my anxiety stayed pretty even during the trip. I was worried that I would spend the whole time just wanting to be back home in my familiar environment and not fully immerse myself in Ireland and be present on this trip. That’s how I felt on my last big vacation, and I was hoping it wasn’t going to be my new norm. Thankfully, it wasn’t an issue. I remained present in each moment and was sad for the trip to come to an end. Hooray for that!

I’ll have my first two trip recaps up this week, talking about our first day in Ireland and our second day, where we took a tour of the Cliffs of Moher!

What’s something you learned on a recent trip you took?