A Beautiful Start to the Emerald Isle

A couple friends and I decided to spend some time in Ireland. Lindsey and I flew out a few days before Mona, and the two of us were spending time in Dublin.

We had literally just checked into our hostel and decided to have lunch by the river. I was eating my sandwich when I hear this splash and look up.

Lindsey was covered in bird crap. Literally everywhere - on the apple she was eating, in her hair, on her coat, on the backpack. We both thought we were going to vomit. So we wiped it up with some tissue and went to McDonald's to wash it out. It was incredibly disturbing, and the smell was atrocious. Needless to say, I did not want that sandwich. I bought McFlurries because it was just that kind of day.

Then, we get back to the hostel and tell the woman at the front desk. She says, oh, you should buy a lottery ticket because that's supposed to be lucky.

We didn't feel very lucky, though. 

Lindsey and I did a day trip to Wicklow, where P.S. I Love You (which is a terrible movie) and Braveheart (which I have never seen) were filmed. 

It was beautiful. Everything was just amazing. And, we saw the river that Guinness gets its water supply from. 

A guy owns a private lake - affectionately nicknamed the Guinness Lake because it looks like a pint of Guinness.

An Ernest Hemingway Kinda Day

On our last full day in Tours, we decided to just walk around the city before eating lunch down by the river.

We decided to have a picnic lunch a-la-Ernest Hemingway. We grabbed a baguette and a rotisserie chicken to eat by the river. We were already blocks past the grocery store, so we didn't have a bottle of dry white wine like Hemingway always drank, especially with his chicken and baguette lunches.

I got chickened out pretty quickly as did Lindsey, but Mona scavenged that chicken. Weird thing was, the grease was a strange neon green color, but the chicken tasted good.

We went out for Moroccan for dinner, which just reinforced my desire to go to Morocco. God that food is amazing.

Tours was everything I think of when I think about a smaller French town. Kind of quaint in a great way - amazing architecture, delectable cuisine, châteaux, croissants and wine.


After an anxiety-ridden airport experience, Tours was just the thing I needed. Besides one day of feeling terrible, I only have good memories of Tours. It was another city, like Belfast, that wasn't too touristy, and I can't wait to have an excuse to return.

Châteaux-ing in the Loire Valley

After a lovely breakfast of croissants, pastry, and tea, we went to the tourism office and decided to visit a couple châteaux, and the office provided a driver.

It was the three of us and a couple from the UK plus our driver, Pascal. The weather was gorgeous, and I loved the châteaux we visited.

The first one was called Chenonceau, and Pascal told us that the King had given it to one of his many mistresses, but the Queen Mother reclaimed it once the King had died.

Anyway, it was built over the river. The inside was classic royalty - everything was detailed, even the extremely high ceilings. The grounds were beautiful; I love French gardens.

Then we went to Amboise. Apparently, Leonardo da Vinci spent the last couple years of his life there. The castle wasn't as impressive, but there were these weird bushes there.

We wandered about the town - it was really cute. When we got back into Tours, we just walked around for a bit before calling it a day.

A Series of Stressful Events

So our start to France was not exactly ideal. We ordered tickets online for the Stansted Express train from Liverpool Street station to the airport, and we were taking the tube to Liverpool Street. We left plenty of time - or so we thought.

Only one line of the underground was open (since it was Easter), and it had major delays because a train up the line had problems, so we sat at the station for 10 minutes. It finally went to the next station, but there was still going to be delays for who knows how long. We just walked the half hour to Liverpool. So the 10 minute underground trip took about an hour.

We figured we still had time because the train only takes a half hour, but the tracks were closed for maintenance. We got on a bus. All of us were freaking out that we'd miss our flight but thought security and stuff wouldn't be bad, so we were going to be fine.

Turns out our bag was over the weight limit (as much as I love RyanAir, I hated it twice as much in this moment), so we had to repack it. Twice. And in the confusion, a corkscrew ended up in Mona's hand luggage. So her bag had to be searched and repacked after security.

But no worries; we made it to Tours.

I absolutely love France. Even though every thing was shut down for Easter, the city we stayed in was beautiful. Tours is in central France, so not on a coast, but a river splits the city. We mainly wandered around the main plaza for a while on our first day.