We woke up this morning with plans to go to Howth, a seaside village north of the city. We had heard good things from roommates and friends we figured it was a perfect day trip. Claire, Laura, and I met at 11:30 ready to roll. We took the bus into the city, and after picking up some snacks from Tesco, we headed to the Connolly Station to catch the DART. We bought our roundtrip tickets for 4.20 Euro and had to run a little bit to catch the train. The DART took us through more of residential Dublin. Most of the houses are duplexes here, but they paint their individual sides different colors. I'm not sure that would fly in the USA where we have so many ordinances and village rules.
Howth is like a little elevated peninsula on the north side of Dublin. As soon as we pulled into the station we were surrounded by the seascape and the smell of ocean air and the sound of seagulls and waves crashing. Definitely my type of town. We had read in our guidebooks about the cliff walks and after exploring the pier for a bit we decided that's what we wanted to do. After our typical tourist photos we headed up the little road to begin our exploration. Before we left the pier, we found a new companion, a little dog that Claire named Fernando. 
Not sure where that name came from, but it kind of stuck, even after we found out its real name. Fernando was so friendly and the perfect man's best friend. Fernando came with us up the hill and after about 10 minutes of walking with our faithful dog, we all became a little attached to him. He ran ahead of us, almost leading the way, but always looking back to make sure we were with him. He lead us down a random path and we got to take in more beautiful views. Not a picture in the world could capture how perfect this place was. After a little walking, we decided to venture of the path and down the hill to sit on some big boulders and have a little snack. The hill was a little steep and gravelly so we were careful not to slip and plumet to a rocky death. We found a perfect rock to sit on to eat our hobnobs that I had bought at Tesco. Hobnobs are a new favorite snack that I've developed here in Ireland.. they are called Digestive Biscuits and are like wheatmeal covered in chocolate on one side. They say that they are healthy and they are delicious so definitely a fan of that. We sat on this perfect boulder listening the waves crashed, with our new dog companion, in Ireland, on the coast, with beautiful blue water, it was surreal.
We walked up the road some more and found my future Ireland residence.
A little bit further we found the trail and began to hike up the hill. We stopped to take a picture (I only took about 150 pictures today) and met some more girls studying abroad. We did the old "I'll take a picture of you if you'll take one of us" deal. Turns out they had met our dog companion earlier and her name turned out to be Sally. We determined she was kind of a tourist whore, following them around all day before going home. But she followed us as we continued on our path and we weren't complaining.
The explorer I am sent me off the path to climb another mound and found me sticking my foot into a big mud puddle. Second time in Ireland with a wet shoe. Luckily the sun was out so it warmed my feet as I took off my sock to ring it out and get the excess water out of my shoe.
We kept hiking and stopping every once in a while to enjoy the views. We sat on the cliffs, in some tall grass (perfect for snakes and wombats, according to our Aussie expert on wildlife). The water was so blue, the sky was so blue, the sun was shining, the grass was green, there was a horse in the distance, and a perfect pup at my side.
After many attempts with the self timer we got some great photos. But they don't even do justice to how pretty it was. I just wanted to nap there, or daydream there.... you forget that the real world exists. Or that snow exists. Or that somewhere someone is doing accounting cases and that someone could be you. But it's not, you are sitting on a cliff in Ireland watching waves crash with a lighthouse, a bay, and the silhouettes of mountains in the background.
After soaking in the views, we headed back down the mountain towards the village. We were hungry and tired from the 2 hours of hiking we had done. We found a quaint little cafe called Quay West (pronounced Key West-- hello USA reference) and got some dinner. We were going to explore some more but it was cold so we caught the DART back into the city. We had planned to go see a movie when we got back into Dublin...we figured we wanted a chill night so a little American culture would be perfect. After wandering to see what movie theater played the movie soonest we bought our tickets at the Savoy Theater (hello Champaign) and went to the local BK lounge to hang out for the 1.5 hours til our movie. Let me tell you, Ireland's Burger King's are a rip off...Claire got a large fry (which looked like a small) for 2.40 euro (which is almost $4) and they were very stingy on the ketchup.
It was finally time for our movie. The theaters are much nicer than ours and I was expected to see the movie, Valentine's Day, for its allstar cast. I really liked it, laughed a lot...typical chickflick, but perfect after a long day and no recent interaction with TV or movies.
Home on the bus. Skype the family. And now it's time for bed. LONDON tomorrow, so I'll be off the blogging world until Tuesday Night or Wednesday.
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