Traveling within Europe is so much cheaper than traveling in the States. This is not the first time I mention this, but it’s worth mentioning. I’ve spent the last few days getting my April trip sorted, and it continues to amaze me. Suddenly a $50 flight from Bulgaria to Spain seems expensive! It’s easy to get used to this. It’s also easy to let it get into your head. It’s so cheap to travel to other places that I haven’t travel within the UK and Ireland enough. I’ve only been to Dublin in the Republic of Ireland and I have only seen the Giant’s Causeway and Cavehill in Northern Ireland. I’ve been thinking this for quite some time now, but I hadn’t done anything about it. So, when a friend asked if I wanted to join an excursion of Northern Irish Forest Parks, I said yes. I knew I would not like waking up early, but the trip would likely be fun, and perhaps more importantly, a wonderful look at what Ireland is most known for: it’s beautiful scenery.
The excursion did not disappoint.
I have a short 2/3 minute vlog about it on my Youtube channel if you want a short look into it. We went to Castlewellan Forest Park and Peace Maze, as well as Tollymore Forest Park, where many Game of Thrones scenes have been filmed. The places were magical. I was originally a little worried about the weather, as it seemed to be a fairly grey day, and it was likely to rain. We did get caught up in the rain for about 20 minutes in the first park, but the rest of the time (which was most of the day) was dry and sometimes even sunny. We walked a lot. My legs were even sore the next day. According to one of my friends, we walked over 30,000 steps that day. That’s about 2k more than my previous record.
My sister is coming to visit this weekend. She arrives in London on Saturday. We are meeting at the airport and spending two full days there. We will attempt to see most of the main tourist spots in just a weekend, which is certainly possible (I know because I did it last semester), but also quite exhausting. We are then flying to Belfast so I can attend my classes. She will have a few days to see as much of Northern Ireland as possible. My hope is that we will get to hike the Mourne Mountains, which are near the Forest Parks I visited last weekend. Then, probably on Wednesday, we will go down the West Coast of Ireland to the Cliffs of Moher. It’s only about six hours away by car, I think. I don’t have classes on Thursday because of St. Patrick’s Day, so we won’t be too rushed to get back to Belfast. We haven’t agreed on a plan for the weekend yet, but I want to return to Belfast for St. Patrick’s Day, which falls on Friday. It’s definitely the experience of a lifetime.
Because of my sister’s visit, I have spent the last week trying to get ahead on my schoolwork so I can spend as much time with her as possible. I haven’t gotten enough done to fully ignore homework next week, but I certainly will have more free time than usual. Hopefully I will finish the essay I am working on before the end of the week.
Until next time~