Day trip to Howth

I can sum this weekend up with one word: rain. Although the weather has been really bad we still managed to have some fun around the city and actually ventured outside of Dublin for the second time since I've been here. On Friday we had our follow up orientation at the IES center where we learned about some volunteer opportunities and the Northern Ireland trip in February. I think some IES people are going to get involved in an organization that fixes up houses outside the city on the weekends and I'm excited about that. The Northern Ireland trip sounds awesome and I'm really excited that I signed up for it. I'm looking forward to having a trip where everything is planned out, all the meals are provided, and all the hotels are planned and actually nice. I don't know all the details about the trip yet, but it looks like we'll be going to the Giant's Causeway, Belfast, and a Whiskey distillery. After the follow orientation we all competed in a scavenger hunt around the city center which sounds pretty lame, but was actually fun. It was pouring most of the time so everyone got drenched and it helped us find our way around and see some lesser known attractions. The prizes for the hunt were really great so my group practically ran the entire time, but our efforts were not good enough and we didn't win. Afterwards, we met up in Duke's Pub off of Grafton St. and had some drinks and dinner and it was great eating a decent meal that was not prepared by me!

Today we took a day trip on the DART (train) up to Howth. I went with Tessa, Kayla, and Katie and we had a good time. After getting on the wrong train and getting a little delayed we finally made it up to Howth around 11 AM. Howth is a little fishing town just to the north of Dublin. It's on the peninsula at the top of the bay where Dublin is and the views from the town were great. The town is usually a summer destination so it wasn't busy at all. We walked on the pier, saw some sailboats, saw an old abbey, and went to the Hurdy Gurdy Radio Museum (wouldn't really recommend it), and finally got to see the ocean. Surprisingly, we saw a seal at the end of the pier, I guess I didn’t realize there were seal off the coast of Ireland. At the end of the pier there is a tiny island where a 6th century monastery is located. It was a pretty good view even in bad weather. After walking around the town, which is really hilly, for quite some time we headed down to where the restaurants were close to the harbor. For lunch we went to a little restaurant and got fish and chips- which was delicious. The DART was a pretty good way to get out of the city for a day and I think I'm going to go south on it tomorrow. It was also very cheap and if you pay attention it's not that hard to figure out how to use it.