So Busy...So Much to Do!

Things have been absolutely crazy lately!  I keep wanting to write on my blog and just don't find the time.  The past few days we have been busy working on trying to get reservations and figure out where we will be and when.  This isn't easy because anytime we have a question, we have to send an email and wait for someone to get back to us....it is so much easier when you can just pick up the phone and call!  While I am getting very excited, my mom is getting more and more stressed.  Something about euros and pounds and remembering which sign is which and then trains and more trains, ferries and buses...it is going to be quite the experience!  

We finally managed to get the first leg of our trip all planned out and I am most excited.  We will spend our first day in London taking it easy and then the next day we get on a train to Holyhead which is a port city on the Isle of Anglesey.  My mom is really excited about that part because it is where Prince William is stationed with the Royal Guard and she is all into the royal family since she shares a name with like the most famous Princess ever!  In Holyhead we get on a ferry and take a two hour boat ride to Dublin, Ireland.  This is where I get excited because one of the guys from One Direction is from Ireland!!  For all the adults reading my blog, my mom says it is a teenage girl thing!  I have been so excited over the thought of running into One Direction somewhere, but naturally I had to find out that the whole time I am gone, they are in the US doing concerts!  But I at least still get to see where they are from (and have to get me and my best friend Kealy Ireland sweatshirts to wear).


From Dublin we take a two hour train ride to the opposite side of Ireland (which apparently is not all that big since it is only taking two hours) and arrive in the city of Galway.  Originally we planned to stay in Dublin, but they must have a really big event going on because most of the hotels were booked.  All we could find were hostels with spaces in the coed rooms and my mom said no way was that happening!  In the end though it worked out even better because she found this amazing Bed and Breakfast located on the Galway Bay.  Here is a photo of the bay....

We will spend the evening enjoying Galway and the beautiful bay.  The next day we will be heading to Aillwee Cave and thanks to a suggestion from Ashley at WJHG in Panama City, the Cliffs of Moher.  The pictures I have seen of the Cliffs of Moher are amazing and I can't even imagine how incredible it will feel to stand there and look over the edge.  It is too bad I will not have the torch and uniform because standing on the edge of the cliff holding the torch up would be an awesome picture!!

The next day we head back to Dublin and spend some time exploring before catching a train to the southern part of Ireland.  One might ask why we are spending so much time on the trains....that would be because in Ireland they drive on the wrong side of the road.  My mom was worried she might get confused and cause a major accident and then after she read about how the roads wind and curve and that you have to watch for sheep standing in the middle of them, she decided we'd stick with the trains.  We spend the night there in another beautiful Bed and Breakfast in Rosslare.  We will spend time exploring Rosslare and Wexford some the next day before we head to the port.  This time we will be heading to France on a really big boat.  They call it a ferry still, but I think they must call every boat a ferry because this one looks more like a cruise ship if you ask me!

I have never been on a cruise ship before, so as far as I am concerned, this works for me!  It has two movie theaters and we have a room with beds.  We leave around 3:30pm and get to Cherbourg, France the next day around 11am.  Cherbourg is located in the Normandy region and there I will get to go on a tour and see some of the places I learned about in my world history class this past year.  We will likely spend the night in the Normandy region and then head to Paris, then Brussels and finally arrive in Brugges where we will stay in a real castle!  I know it is a real castle because it even has a moat.  We still have planning to do from that point, so I will save it for another post.  Plus this is the longest post I think I have written and some of you might be getting bored and tired of reading it!

As of right now, I actually have a weekend off and can maybe manage to get some more posts done.....of course tomorrow my schedule could change!  I promised some younger friends of mine that I would tell them about the Olympic mascot and they have been waiting for a long time to hear about him....he is quite the funny dude!  Til next time...thanks for reading!