The end of England, all of Ireland, and the introduction of France

We had an afternoon flight out of London, so we decided to take the underground partway to the airport so we could hangout there with less stress. We explored the train station by the King's Cross station some and had some really delicious pasties and tea. My pastie was chicken and vegetable. Unfortunately we ended up being rushed after all, but we made it on the plane and that's what matters. Could've done without the brisk run through the airport.

Dublin was awesome! I had thought that Irish was kind of a dead language, but it turns out it's used there much more than I thought. We saw it on all the signs everywhere. We got there in the evening on Saturday, so most things were closed. It was kind of weird how early everything closes on the weekend in Dublin. Our hostel there was pretty good. It had the most disappointing breakfast ever, but we also met two really cool people from Croatia who were staying in the same room as us.

The time we spent in Dublin felt like really productive travel. We got in a lot of museums, tours, and other experiences. We went to a museum about vikings, churches, parks, stores, walking tours, pubs, and the coast. Going to the coast was probably my favorite part of Dublin. We just took bus 31 east to its very last stop. From there we walked a little ways to where there were paths along the side of mountains at the edge of the sea. The view and scenery was absolutely spectacular. Just indescribably beautiful. The mountains were small and lush, with green grasses and kind of scrubby, thorny plants with yellow flowers. The descents were steep-cliffs in some places. The sea was beautiful and the sky seemed endless. Sadly I won't be able to post pictures of it until I'm back at the hotel room and can recharge my camera's batteries.

The only bad thing about Dublin was that the rain followed us there. Sometimes the rain there is so light it's like a heavy mist, and they call days with that kind of weather 'soft' days. Also, it was even colder there than it had been in Sweden, somehow. Plus we had to get up at 3:30 to catch our 6:30 flight, which was not particularly great. But at least we had plenty of time at the airport and weren't all rushed for once.

Paris has been great! We've eaten a seen a lot in our two days here. However, I'm going to detail all that next time I'm on the internet, either later today or tomorrow. This internet cafe is kind of slow and pricey, so I'd rather hold off until I can be uploading pictures at the same time.

At this point I've uploaded all of my Sweden and Denmark photos to my Picasa account, as well as some of my England photos. You can find them all here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mdekenzie. One of my travel companions, Constantina, is ahead of me in uploading and has all of hers here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/irisi/.