Going Home!

    Tuesday was the day that we left from Ireland. We got up at 6:45 AM so that we could take a cab to the airport at 7:30 AM. We got everything cleaned up, and we were ready to go at 7:30 AM. We took 2 cabs to the airport. Once we got there, we met up, and went to check our bags. Then, we had to go through a bunch of security. After that was all over, we finally went to our first gate. We were hungry, so we got some food from a nearby shop. Caleb got a sandwich, I got a muffin & Ben got 2 smoothies. 
  
     Once we got on our first flight, we watched movies throughout it because it was the 8 Hour flight. I watched 10 Cloverfield Lane, Paranormal Activity The Ghost Dimension, and The Martian all on that same flight. Once we landed in Atlanta, we were hungry, so we got some food at the food court. Our next flight was 2 & 1/2 Hours long. 

At the Atlanta Airport!

Waiting for our next flight. 

      On that flight, we played Mario cart the whole time. We landed and went to our next plane, which was 2 hours long. We got there, and we found out that our flight was delayed an hour, so we had to wait for it an extra hour. We finally got on that plane, and arrived in Grand Rapids at about Midnight. We had almost been up for 24 hours straight. Everyones parents were waiting for them. 

At the Airport!

      Everyone went home, and Max gave Me and My Dad a ride home. I went home and slept because I was really tired!

                   It was a fun trip! -6/22/2016

  

Dart Adventure & More Climbing!

     Today, we woke up at about 9:30 AM. Mama was gone because she was going to China. She left at about 6:45 AM, so we didn't see her when we got up. We were just hanging out for a couple hours, then we decided to go get Coffee at Coffee Angel. Coffee Angel was right across the street from my house, so we went there. We all got Hot Chocolates, except Max, who got sparkling water. Caleb thought the Hot Chocolate was really good, but I liked the Hot Chocolate at Cafe Sol better. After we got Hot Chocolate, we were going to go down to the D.A.R.T. to go on an adventure.

     We walked down to Pearse Station, which is the nearest Dart station near us. We got family day passes for all of us, and got on the dart. 

On the Dart. 

       We went from Pearse Station, all the way down to Bray. Here is a map. 

Started at Pearse, and went to Bray. 

      When we arrived at Bray, we got off the Dart. From Bray, we walked all the way to the next station on the map which is Greystones. We were walking on the cost, and on the mountains. There was a place where we could go down the stairs, and climb on the cliffs that were right next to the water. 

Chillin on the Mountain.

This was down the steps on the walk to Greystones.

Cool Graffiti. 

Theres Ben and Max.

Walking out on the water. 

     After that, we continued to walk to Greystones. When we got there, we would take the Dart back to Pearse. While we were walking to Greystones, we were walking on the side of a huge mountain, because we were right next to the Sea, so we were walking on the side of a mountain. It had a path, and on the other side of the wall protecting you from falling off of the mountain, were cliffs leading down to the water. 

We walked on this path to Greystones. 

      There were a lot of paths that led up the side of the mountain that we found while we were walking on that path. I was the only one that took any of those paths to go explore them. Sometimes they would dead end, but sometimes they would lead down awesome pathways and be shortcuts. 

We had to duck under these plants. This was a fun path!

Another grassy path. 

This was a fun, steep one. 

       While we were walking to Greystones, I stopped to wait for Ben and Max and My Dad, because they were behind us, and Caleb decided to keep walking to Greystones. When Max, Ben, and My Dad showed up, I walked with them to Greystones. When we got there, Caleb wasn't waiting for us. We found him soon he was just waiting for us at the Dart Station like we had thought. We took the Dart back to Pearse Station, and walked home. 

      Tomorrow, we would be flying back to Grand Rapids, and getting there at about 11 PM. This trip was really fun! I will keep blogging on this blog hopefully when I move for good. I will also be going to Maine for 3 weeks on July 20, and I have my own blog for that also. I blog about my Lobstering Expierence! 

                        -6/20/2016

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Secret Beach & Church in Adare!

     Today, I woke up on the floor. I had slept on the floor last night, because there was no more room on the beds. I put some pillows down, and it was pretty comfortable. We got up, then Me, Caleb, Ben, and Caleb went downstairs for breakfast. We got pancakes and cereal. After we ate breakfast, we had to leave the awesome B&B. We got our stuff, and put it in the cars. Then we started to drive. 

     We started to drive to the place where we would go to Skellig Michael. When we got there, it was raining and my mom said that the trip was canceled because of the weather. She said that it was hard to get a spot in the first place, and then hard to get the weather to work, so it was a 50/50 chance. Its to bad, we can go sometime later. From there, we had to start to drive back to Dublin. 

   
     When we were driving, we found this really cool secret beach along the side of the road. We decided to stop and we went down and checked it out. My mom said we could stay and check it out because we were in no hurry. We went down, and we saw there were these huge rock structures that we could climb, and some caves also. The rock structures were really cool to climb on, because they were at an angle. Its better to explain with pictures.

The water came up into the rocks. 

The rocks are slanted, like a pyramid of rock. 

The highest point in this picture, has grass on it, and its really high up, but we managed to climb up there some how!

This is what the rock looked like that we were climbing on. 

View from the rocks. 

Cool Pic of caleb on a rock, looking out to the Sea. 

This was fun!

Thats Caleb the top of that rock island!

Thats Max and Caleb at the top there.

      I took a video of me standing right by the waves at that beach. 

     After we visited that beach, we continued to drive to Dublin. At about 3 PM, we stopped in a city called "Adare". We were going to eat at a restaurant called "The Wild Geese". We walked in, and we waited until we could be seated. We had 7 people. We were taken upstairs into a room, and it was really fancy. We looked at the menu, and there were starters, main dishes, and desserts. I ordered Goose spring rolls for a starter, and a medium rare stake for my main dish. The food was really good! We had home made ice cream for dessert. 

     Before eating at "The Wild Geese", we stopped at a church. It was really pretty inside! 

Inside the Church!

Cool Windows!

Inside the Church.

 

     After we ate, we drove to Dublin. We got to our house at about 7 PM. We had the night to chill out.

                  -6/19/2016

Bunratty Castle, Crag Cave, Old School House B&B!

      Today, we woke up at our hotel "Auburn Lodge Hotels" We got up at about 8:20 AM. I had to get Caleb up, and he didn't want to get up at all. When we were all up, we packed all of our stuff, and got in our cars. We got in the cars, and we were on our way to Ennis. We were heading Westward to the coast because tomorrow we are going to Skellig Michael. We got to Ennis in about an hour, and we went to eat.

    We found this cute little street, and we found a place to eat breakfast called Mocha. They had Coffee, and a ton of Breakfasta items. There was a man playing the banjo near us, so we got to listen to that and eat breakfast. Me, Ben, and Caleb all got different types of Hot Chocolate, and it was amazing! Most of us got the Full Breakfast. 

This is the Street with all the stores, and restaurants.

Hot Chocolate!

Eating Breakfast.

Full Breakfast

      After we had finished Breakfast, we tipped the Banjo player, because he was pretty good. We then got in our cars to continue our journey. Our next stop on the path Westward was at Bunratty Castle. It was a good castle, but there was a whole area of things to do like Archery, and other things for little kids. There were cool buildings around like cool old farmhouses. 

Awesome View!

Bunratty Castle!

      

Old Farmhouse!

      Me and Caleb tried archery, but it was kind of annoying with both of the guys trying to show you exactly how to do it, and we already knew how to shoot a bow and arrow. Plus it cost money. The castle was fun to go in though. We were able to get up really high, and we got some really cool pictures from the top of it! 

Picture from top of Castle.

Roof of Bunratty Castle.

Selfie!

       We threw some mini paper airplanes off of the roof of the Castle just for fun. We explored the whole Castle, then we went down and started our adventure again. We drove a while continuing Westward, and we stopped next, at Crag Cave in Castleisland. We went in, and we were going to get a tour of Crag Cave. Once our tour guide showed up, we were all guided down into the Cave. 

       There was a bunch of different things he showed about how the caves were formed. There was a bunch of Stalagmites and Stalactites. You could see the places where the water had formed the cave. 

     It was really cool in the cave. The guide told us that it was the same temperature all year long. It was a bit colder in the cave then up above ground. There were really long passageways, and amazing shaped rocks and it was really awesome to learn about. 

     After we visited Crag Cave, we continued to drive. We saw a random Graveyard on the side of the road while driving, so we decided to stop and look at it. Max really wanted to stop. We stopped and checked it out. We got some really cool Black and White pictures of the Graveyard.

Graveyard.

     We got back in our cars, and continued to drive. It was about dinner time, so we wanted to stop somewhere to eat dinner. We stopped in Kells to eat Dinner. We stopped at this really cute place that served Thai food. It was literally right next to a crazy awesome mini rain forest. Here are some pictures we took literally right outside of the Restaurant.  

Inside the Restaurant. 

Awesome View!

River Crossing. 

Awesome Waterfall!

      We ate there, and it was really good! It was like really good Chinese food. After that, we were headed to The Old School House B&B where we would be staying the night. We got there, and it looked really nice!

Nice!

       When we got inside, we met some other people who were also staying there. There were 5 girls and 2 of them were from Utah. We played cards with them. It was fun. We then went upstairs and went to bed. Well everyone except me, Goodnight!

        -6/18/2016

 

       

Western Ireland Adventure! (Cliffs of Moher!)

     Today, we all got up at about 8:30 AM because we were going to drive to the West side of Ireland. After we got up, we went down to have breakfast. We had eggs. To drive to the West side of Ireland, we needed 2 cars. My Dad went to rent a car, and then we had another car in the garage (we had rented that one the day before). We needed 2 cars to fit all Me, Ben, Max, Caleb, My Dad, Sue, and Kitty in. We left at about 10 AM.

     First, I rode with Caleb and My Dad, and Max & Ben rode with My Mom and Sue. We drove for about one and a half hours before we stopped at Athlone. We visited the Castle that was in Athlone, and visited the Church right next to the Castle. Churches in Europe are always so cool to look at we just had to look at it! 

Inside of the Church. 

     We got some cool pictures of us inside of the church. Also some cool pictures of the Castle.

Candles

In the Church. 

Black & White pics by the Castle.

       So that was our stop in Athlone (the Castle and the Church). We then continued to drive Westward. Our next stop was to eat. We stopped at a Restaurant called "The Old Barracsks" It was voted #1 on Trip Advisor for that area. We told the people that we needed a table for 7, so he led us to this table that had its own little room, which used to be a prison cell! It was so cool, it was just a little doorway then the room with the table. Me, Max, and Caleb got the beef burger. It was really good! 

Squad

Our Table! (Caleb looks very happy)

The Beef Burger was delicious!

      Right after we ordered our food, we went to walk 2 blocks to a nearby store to get Ben a Sandwich because he has allergies. He is allergic to tree nuts, and the guy said there was sesame seeds used all over the kitchen, so he told us a nearby store. We walked to it, and got him a chicken sandwich. By the time we got back, our food was almost done. We got it and ate it, it was delicious! After that, we switched up the car rides. I was riding with Max, and Caleb rode with Ben. We continued our adventure!

     Our next stop was going to be the Cliffs of Moher. Those cliffs are really tall cliffs on the West Coast of Ireland. They were about 800 ft. high from water to the top! We were going to go on a boat first to see them from the bottom, from the water perspective. We got on the boat, and the trip over was really rough waters. There were pretty big waves, and it was shaking a lot. It was also windy. Here are pictures from the Boat, and of The Cliffs of Moher. 

Trying to hold on to the Boat!

   

The Cliffs of Moher.

Selfie!

Pretty!

     They were really awesome! Whats interesting about these cliffs, is that on the pathways, there is nothing to keep you from falling off the cliffs. There is no like chained fences, so if you fall off, its your fault. My Mom didn't let us go close to the edge at all. It was really pretty, and I'm glad we got to see it from both perspectives. 

     Another funny thing... There was a little shop at the top of The Cliffs of Moher, and inside, there was a whole thing of pictures about people climbing the cliffs. There was also a virtual reality animation of the Cliffs going down and under water. It was really cool! There was a green screen, and we could stand in front of it and it looked like we were on the Cliffs. Here's the picture.

Amazing!

        Everybody, was tired, so from then, we drove another hour, then finally got to our hotel called "The Auburn Lodge Hotel". It was a nice hotel! It looked like a lodge from the outside, because it was made of wood, but the rooms were more like hotel rooms, so it was pretty cool! 

      We ended up going to a Grocery Store to get dinner because in Ireland, everything closes at like 9 PM, which is annoying, so we had to go get things to make a sandwich from a store. In the store, there was like 3 people, and us, and it looked like they were closing. Its so weird because in GR, the Meijer's are mostly open like all the time, and I have never been to a store where they actually close. We got stuff to make sandwiches. We then went back to our hotel, and made sandwiches. 

      After we were done eating, we had leftover meat, cheese, and other stuff that needed to be refrigerated, but we had no fridge. I decided that I could just put it outside our hotel window, so that's what I did. I opened the window, and there was this little hook thing on the window, I thought that I could hang the bag of food on it. I tried, and the hook fell, and the bag fell on the ground. I couldn't go out of the window, so I just left it there. Ah well. 

                  -6/17/2016