Weekend Away | Photo Diary

I'm back to the usual college routine at the moment and life feels like it's getting back into it's usual busy order, which is tiring. Before I went back to this though myself and the boyfriend decided to go on a little weekend away before everything got hectic in our lives again. We went up by train and traveled to Galway which is a pretty big city in Ireland, if you didn't know where it was. I've previously posted about a trip here before and I really love the city and it's right on the coast so it's such a perfect destination. I thought I'd try do a photo diary as I love taking photos when I'm travelling and also love documenting it. Hopefully you enjoy.

This was the view from our hotel room, it was close to the city centre and the beach. I thought the view was very pretty.

  

   

On our way to the city centre everyday we took a stroll along the beach, this is along Salthill beach. Also a picture of us enjoying being by the beach when it wasn't raining (it rained a lot).

Along the beach was a pier for diving and trust me, it was way too cold to even think of doing that. Although it was always dull and cold it was still beautiful. 

 Main Street in Galway is covered in flags and bunting and I love the look of it, it always looks busy and happy. Eyre Square is the focal point of the city and contains beautiful statues and historical sights. 

   

 Our first night there we visited a very nice Italian restaurant which I loved, where we got margaritas and roast potatoes, they were amazing and still look delicious.

We also visited the local aquarium which was cute and interesting. It's such a cute date place.

Around the city centre is some really interesting historic places, which I learned about from the museum and the walks from the rivers to the ocean are so pretty and tranquil to walk, we did a lot of this. 

I had such a relaxing trip away, it makes me wish I lived near the ocean. I hope you enjoyed looking through some of the photos of my trip. 

Has anyone ever been here before or would like to visit?

Dublin Comic Con 2016

This is another one of those posts that should've been up ages ago. I genuinely need to get back on track with blogging again as it's so easy to fall behind. Also going back to University soon means I really need to prepare and stay on top of blogging even more.
Anyway, since I'm sure everyone's sick of reading me apologizing for slow posts (and also no one cares except me) so, moving on; I attended Dublin Comic Con a few weeks back and thought it might be a good post for fellow nerds like me who might be interested in my experience.

Last year I went to the same convention, I have a post from last year here if you'd like to check it out too. They put it on in the Convention Centre and it's such a pretty building. If you've never seen it before it's a six or seven story building that has a huge glass side with such a pretty view over Dublin City centre. It also lights up so nice during the night, it's one of my favourite buildings to be in in the city.

     

    

I attended with my boyfriend and met up with some friends and family. There was only one talk I wanted to attend that was in the afternoon so we spend most of the morning exploring and checking out all the stalls, We bought the above Doctor Who artwork as we both fell in love with it. I love the idea of mixing David Bowie and Doctor Who together, it just works so well, plus the art is so good. I also got really tasty strawberries with chocolate and marshmallows, yum.
The Comic Con's in Ireland are no where near as big as the one's in America, no surprises there, so there's not much to do and not too many stars to see but there was a few guests that I really wanted to meet.

    

I met Michael Biehn who stars in the Terminator and Alien and also Robert Maschio who plays the Todd in Scrubs and they were both lovely. We got to talk to Robert for a little bit and bought an original script from him, how cool is that? 
The main thing I went to comic con for was to see Jim Beaver, who plays Bobby Singer in Supernatural, which is like my favourite show ever. I went to his Q&A session and it was genuinely so funny. He's such a down to earth and funny guy, literally like he is in the show and I enjoyed listening to everything he had to say. That was the only talk I went to and I kind of wish I went to more. I didn't have the most eventful comic con experience but it's so much fun meeting and seeing people that you watch in shows and movies in real life surrounded by people who have similar interests.

Has anyone ever been to a Comic Convention before? Have you any cool experiences? I'd love to hear about them! 

Bimingham Adventure Day Two | City Centre

To finish of my Birmingham blog posts, which have taken me so long to write oops, today I'm going to be posting about day two of our trip. Day one can be read here and Slam Dunk festival day three can be found here for anyone who hasn't already checked them out. As day one was a more chilled and relaxed day we decided that for day two we were going to travel to Birmingham city centre and check out what the city life was like there. It was extremely opposite to how calm it was on the first day and we had a jam packed day of shopping, exploring and just being a general tourist. I really love writing these too.

   

   

We got the bus to the city centre, and thankfully did not get lost on the way by some miracle. We got off at the Bullring shopping centre where we spent most of the day. The place is absolutely huge, like four floors with two separate buildings packed full of shops, as well as endless amounts of roads with interconnecting malls, markets and shops it was crazy trying to find our way around. There were just too many places to visit. There was such a beautiful cathedral right across from the shopping centre and I really liked how the old merged with the new it was nice. I spent way too much time looking around in Superdrug as the Superdrug in the UK is much bigger and better. Plus there were shops such as Victoria Secret and Krispy Kreme that we don't have in Dublin and I was super excited to visit. We picked up four doughnuts to try and they were so delicious and aesthetically pleasing I must say. How pretty and tasty do they look?

After exploring and buying a few bits in the shopping mall we decided to explore the streets. The cute cacti are from Urban Outfitters. The place seemed never ending and we were so tired after visiting almost every shop the place had to offer that we didn't end up going too far. I had wanted to visit some more historic sights but we got slightly lost and ended heading back to shop and took a visit to shops such as Lush, which are always a good choice.

   

   

   

All our shopping had worn us down so we decided to grab Pizza Hut for dinner, We got a Margarita to share with fries and bottomless Pepsi, which came in about five different flavours like cherry and vanilla it was so interesting. Again look how good the food looks. It makes me so hungry looking at it. Pizza Hut do the best thick pizza bases I've ever tried. So good.

   

We just headed back to the hotel after food as it took about an hour on the bus. Who knew shopping could be so tiring? Although we have most of the same shops back in Dublin it's always interesting to see what they're like in other countries. I'd also never been to a shopping centre so big before it was so intimidating but so cool I really wish we had something like it over here it's a lot of fun, but bad for your bank I guess. 

With this post is the end of my little Birmingham travel posts I hope you've enjoyed reading them as I did writing them.

Has anyone ever been in Birmingham city centre before or the Bullring shopping centre before? 

Travel Essentials | Carry On Luggage

I recently went on my first trip abroad in over three years and even though it was only a four day trip it was super exciting. As it was such a short trip I only needed to bring carry on luggage which meant that I was limited in what I could bring in terms of the amount of stuff and with liquid restrictions. Before I write my travel diaries I thought I should start by writing my carry on travel essentials, as it's actually more difficult packing for carry on than I originally thought, unless you decide to buy certain things abroad.

I'm not sure what the minimal liquid size for carry on is everywhere but as far as I know it should be 100ml in most places, I was afraid some of my makeup would be over that but nothing was so that was perfect. (I brought the minis of most things I could find to save space though). Other than makeup the most essential thing is makeup wipes or remover. I found that all of my cleansers and toners were over the limit so the best thing for travel is makeup wipes. Even if you don't need to remove makeup, they're so essential to help your skin and face fresh and awake after a long time travelling. I find that the Boots Essentials cleansing wipes are so good for my skin as I am super fussy about makeup wipes, my skin is so sensitive to them but these ones pass with flying colours.
The next product is a mini toothpaste, as it it something I always easily forget but is super important.

The next essentials are shampoos and body washes, although you usually get some in a hotel I find you don't get enough or you just want to take the mini bottles home with you. I picked up the Aussie Miracle Moist shampoo and conditioner from the Boots mini travel section, which is so amazing for travel as they have so much and always have great deals. I'd never tried these before and they smelled so amazing, like bubblegum and so sweet. The last thing to throw in your travel bag is clearly a deodorant or small body spray to help freshen up after long days. Also don't forget to bring a good book for all the waiting around for trains and planes etc. My book of choice was All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven which I am still currently finishing, so far so good though. 

These are my travel essentials and what I brought with me on my most recent travel adventure which I will post about next week. What's everyone else's travel essentials? Is anyone travelling anywhere nice for the summer?