Ireland
Let me start with this; Ireland was never high on my list of places to visit. I knew the country has sweeping landscapes of deep green pastures with sheep roaming endlessly, but I just didn’t have the desire to visit. That is, until my future sister-in-law, Laney had been accepted into a program at University College Dublin. Naturally I jumped at the chance to visit another European country and begged my fiancé, Robert to join me!
Robert and I started researching shortly after and decided to go. We found flights for only $500 roundtrip. The only downside? We would have to leave on Thanksgiving Day to get the best deal. Luckily, the travel bug runs in both of our families, so they understood the importance of a great deal!
When we arrived in Dublin, we were able to meet up with Laney and she took us to Bunsen, a burger restaurant in the heart of the city. I know what you are all thinking – you’re really going to get a burger outside of the United States? However, this was one of the best burgers I have ever tried. I really wish we would have taken pictures, but anyone that knows me knows I take maybe 30 pictures a year.
My favorite part of the trip was when we visited Killarney National Park, the first national park in Ireland and encompassing over 25,000 acres of diverse ecology and breathtaking landscapes. This isn’t particularly the reason the park was my favorite part of our ten-day adventure – but rather because this is where Robert proposed to me! I won't pretend that it was a surprise. The truth is, a couple of days before we were leaving, I was browsing Pinterest on Robert’s iPad when I saw the text message pop up “Do you have the ring?” “Yes.” I immediately told him what I saw as I would not have been able to keep it from him.
We were driving through the park and decided we should get out and walk around before it got too dark, when we came to the perfect spot, a secluded area where not many locals or tourists were. We parked the car and began our fifteen-minute hike to our destination; “Meeting of the Waters”. I started snapping pictures of the landscape and turned around to see Robert bent down on one knee with the gorgeous ring, a family heirloom I have been waiting for basically my entire life. I had assumed he would try and throw me off by not popping the question on our trip, but I am so happy he did!
Fun fact about yours truly: I love rocks! So much so that the majority of my college electives were geology, so I was obviously intrigued by Giant's Causeway. Legend says the columns are the remains of a causeway built by a legendary warrior, Finn McCool, which was challenged to a fight by a Scottish giant, that was threatening Ireland. Finn, grabbed chunks of the Antrim coast and threw them into the sea, forming the causeway for the two to meet. Finn's wife decided to disguise him as a baby, which led the Scottish giant to question how big the daddy giant was and retreated back to Scotland. However, us geology nerds know that it developed when a flood of lava oozed from fissures in the earth. The molten rock cooled and contracted, cracking into a series of some 40,000 columns, in perfect hexagonal shapes.
This beautiful country will always hold a special place in my heart, and I encourage you to visit if you ever get the opportunity!