Yesterday after updating our journal we hopped on the bus for our longest trek - a five hour trip to get us down to Killarney. We saw some unbelieveable countryside, so beautiful that I took almost a whole roll of film of pictures of our drive. The bus even went on one of those huge ferry's to cross the Shannon River, and we passed through Tralee to catch the bus the rest of the way. We stayed at Neptune's hostel, our first hostel that's in the middle of all the ...

Yesterday morning we meet Ronin (one of our two Galway friends) in Eyre Square for breakfast and goodbyes. Then we took a bus to Doolin, which brought us through the Burren and Lisdoonvarna - both beautiful towns. Once we arrived and checked into our hostel in Doolin, Karley and I tried to walk the 4 miles back to Lisdoonvarna (the location of the nearest pharmacy) and made it just in time to catch our bus out to the Cliffs of Moher (and so really just took a lon...

Today we took a bus up to Knock for the feast of Our Lady. For the morning the four of us wandered around the shrine on our own (it's much more out in the country with priests and nuns everywhere), then met up for noon Mass. They had a separate building where confessions were heard all day long, and the priest said some things that really pierced my heart, things he somehow knew I needed to hear. The coolest part, though, was that at Mass we realized there were o...

Saturday morning we decided we'd seen enough of Dublin (kind of a dirty big city, not so much cultural), so yesterday we hopped on the bus and came to Galway - actually with no plans for a place to stay. Not even five minutes after stepping off the bus a man who owns an apartment building in town offered us hostel rates to stay in one - it has two bedrooms, a full kitchen and laundry, our own bathrooms, and a balcony overlooking the street. I love Galway - it'...

We arrived in Dublin yesterday morning at 7:30. After everyone found each other and our luggage, we took a bus through the city to the bus station where we picked up our Open Road passes. Afterwards we hopped on a taxi (my first taxi ride ever!) to our hotel, which was so very nice! Our room has a giant bed and two fold-out chairs, and it is NICE! We enjoyed the first drink of the trip in the bar of the hotel while waiting for our rooms to be ready. After settl...