Well it is good evening for you and definitely good night for me. It is way past my bed time at around 11:35 pm here. Especially after a long day of hiking up a mountainside at Howth in Ireland. Phew, but that was not all of our day. Today started out a little later than the others because we all decided we needed to sleep in a bit! So around 10:30 we headed out to town and picked up where we left off on the 24 hour tour bus. We decided to take it around once more so we could better orient ourselves of everything in Dublin. This way we could go back and see some of the sights later, as some of them were better for rainy days. I mentioned in the last blog most of the places that the bus took us so I will not go through that again. But after we took the 1 1/2 hour loop around Dublin we got off nearest to where we were going to take the train to Howth. Unfortunately, three of us girls walked to the wrong station first and then had to hoof it back to the right one in ten minutes. No worries though, we made it on time :)
Then we actually took the DART train to Howth and first saw the small marketplace they had there and I personally got a delicious nutella and banana crepe from the stand. It was YUUUUMMMYY and really filling. Then it was time to go and feed some seals. I did not put any pictures of them up here but they were fat as all get out because the sit up near the shore area similar to the photo to the left, and wait for people to throw buckets of fish down at them. Lazy seals! But it is quite neat, one of them knows how to wave and flap its flipper to you. As you can imagine that one is a bit plumper because people throw more fish at it so it will wave. Too bad the other seals didn't learn the tricks!
Then we started on our gorgeous hike up the mountainside. You can see some of this in the two pictures of the scenery below. Let me just say, from down near the pier where we were, it did not look as intense as it was. But like the pictures show, there were plenty of cliffs and one wrong step and you were goin in! So if you look at the map that is the first picture you can see the whole area of Howth. I am going to try and upload another one with our almost exact route on it (which will probably be nearly impossible because we dont even know what route we took for the second half of the hike). Well thanks to Genevive our nice tour guide for the day. She took us to the Summit, which is labeled on the map and from there on, six of us wanted to continue down the mountainside on our own and make some stops at other really interesting places along it. Genevive and one of the other students (Ilana) decided to head back straight down the mountain and make it back to the six thirty train back to Dublin. Needless to say we started around 3 on the hike and they were only heading off around 5:45 or so.
As we continued on we thought we knew where we were going. But soon found that our map was TERRIBLE. Massively terrible and did not show all of the trails or roads or anything! Most of what we were trying to achieve on our way down was lost! We wound up going too far down then hiked back uphill a little on different paths, got send in different directions by people that supposedly knew what they were talking about. Turned off the right path and found the other one lead to a golf course so we decided to make some history with our names carved into a tree. Then tried to get back on the right path, but god knows where we even were at this point. We thought we found the Rodadendron trees (however you spell it) but apparently we were still wrong and took the wrong path still. This lead has half way across the OTHER side of the mountain and at this point there was no turning back.
We finally got off the trail after crossing over a golf course and being able to see where we wanted to go miles and miles away and where we were when we were coming IN on the train from the trail! But alas, we made it to the castle that we wanted to get too. And at this point of it being almost 7:45 I don't think any of us cared! We finally (with some help of smarter locals ;)) made it back to the train station and got on the first train back into Dublin Finally getting home to our apartments (after another 3o min walk) at 9:30! Lets just say, I am now going to get off the computer and go to bed. See you tomorrow!
Then we actually took the DART train to Howth and first saw the small marketplace they had there and I personally got a delicious nutella and banana crepe from the stand. It was YUUUUMMMYY and really filling. Then it was time to go and feed some seals. I did not put any pictures of them up here but they were fat as all get out because the sit up near the shore area similar to the photo to the left, and wait for people to throw buckets of fish down at them. Lazy seals! But it is quite neat, one of them knows how to wave and flap its flipper to you. As you can imagine that one is a bit plumper because people throw more fish at it so it will wave. Too bad the other seals didn't learn the tricks!
Then we started on our gorgeous hike up the mountainside. You can see some of this in the two pictures of the scenery below. Let me just say, from down near the pier where we were, it did not look as intense as it was. But like the pictures show, there were plenty of cliffs and one wrong step and you were goin in! So if you look at the map that is the first picture you can see the whole area of Howth. I am going to try and upload another one with our almost exact route on it (which will probably be nearly impossible because we dont even know what route we took for the second half of the hike). Well thanks to Genevive our nice tour guide for the day. She took us to the Summit, which is labeled on the map and from there on, six of us wanted to continue down the mountainside on our own and make some stops at other really interesting places along it. Genevive and one of the other students (Ilana) decided to head back straight down the mountain and make it back to the six thirty train back to Dublin. Needless to say we started around 3 on the hike and they were only heading off around 5:45 or so. 
As we continued on we thought we knew where we were going. But soon found that our map was TERRIBLE. Massively terrible and did not show all of the trails or roads or anything! Most of what we were trying to achieve on our way down was lost! We wound up going too far down then hiked back uphill a little on different paths, got send in different directions by people that supposedly knew what they were talking about. Turned off the right path and found the other one lead to a golf course so we decided to make some history with our names carved into a tree. Then tried to get back on the right path, but god knows where we even were at this point. We thought we found the Rodadendron trees (however you spell it) but apparently we were still wrong and took the wrong path still. This lead has half way across the OTHER side of the mountain and at this point there was no turning back.
We finally got off the trail after crossing over a golf course and being able to see where we wanted to go miles and miles away and where we were when we were coming IN on the train from the trail! But alas, we made it to the castle that we wanted to get too. And at this point of it being almost 7:45 I don't think any of us cared! We finally (with some help of smarter locals ;)) made it back to the train station and got on the first train back into Dublin Finally getting home to our apartments (after another 3o min walk) at 9:30! Lets just say, I am now going to get off the computer and go to bed. See you tomorrow!
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