Trip to Howth

Today I took a daytrip to the beautiful peninsula, Howth (rhymes with both). It's only a 30 minute train ride away, and it is such a beautiful town. The views there are spectacular! There was a harbor, a little shopping village, and a castle. I took a ton of pictures that I just added to the photo page (http://picasaweb.google.com/Megan.Nolan1/Howth).

Some highlights of the day were the seal feeding and lunch at the Bloody Stream. On the West Pier they feed fish to the seals every day, and it was pretty cool. There were 5 large seals that came right up to the pier. After we saw that we went to the pub for lunch. That was an interesting experience - the service was incredibly bad, but I think the waitress was just way over her head. It was really quaint and beautiful in the pub though. Kelly and I were going to get fish and chips because Howth seems like the perfect place to do it, but we ended up just getting soup and salad. It was really fun though - my first experience eating in a pub.

Another fun thing was seeing Howth castle. You couldn't walk inside it or anything, but it was really cool to look at. I'm fascinated by how old the stuff here is. When I was looking in the National Gallery the other day I was looking at art from the 1400s. Even just walking around Dublin, the buildings are so historic. You don't see really old things in America, so I especially loved the castle and the ruins by it.

The trip was really fun! Even though we've been here for two weeks this was the first time we really felt like we were in Ireland. Being in Dublin is amazing and it's definitely an Irish experience, but seeing the beautiful landscapes and the castle made it all the more real.