Ireland

My most recent stop was in Ireland, the Emerald Isle. Ireland was undoubtedly one of the highlights of this adventure due to the beauty of the landscape and the friendliness of the people. While there I stayed in Cork and Dublin, but very nice cities with a lot of things to do and people to meet. After arriving in Cork a few hours later than planned (due to missing my flight from London as a result of traffic) and was helped enormously by the airport bus driver. Once In Cork I discovered the beauty of the area, met interesting people, helped an Italian guy find an apartment (he struggled to speak English over the phone and had me call people for him),and went to a beautiful small Pub and drank local beer while a live band played. It was an interesting two days to say the least. I also managed to visit the Old Jameson Distillery in a small nearby town named Middleton and managed to get a certificate of being a . After Cork I went to Dublin, the Capital. Dublin is a very vibrant town with a mixture of local people, students, and immigrants. In Dublin I spent a lot of time walking through the streets wide and narrow and through some of the very lovely parks in the city The most splendid of the parks is St. Stephens Green, a beautiful park with a nice lake and great walking trails and vegitation. In Dublin I also managed to visit the Guinness Storehouse, which is a huge museum dedicated to...... Guinness! It was a very nice tour capped off with a visit to their bar at the top for a pint of...... wait for it....... Guinness!!! The bar/observatory gives a brilliant view of all of Dublin as it is a 360 degree circular area with glass walls. Ireand also has some splendid monuments and museums dedicated to the heroes of the Irish Independence movement, including a very interesting exhibit about the Easter 1916 rising at the National Museum (which is free). The evenings there is nothing finer than going to a Pub and having a nice cold pint of Guinness (which tastes 100 times better in Dublin) while listening to traditional Irish music played by a live band. Ireland is certainly a land of character, from the cities to the countryside to the people, the place just oozes friendliness and welcome. I would definetly reccomend to anyone to visit if they have the chance.