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?

Belfast Trip & Adventure

I have no idea why this has taken me so long to get around to writing, I've been meaning to do it for a week. Following my last post, as I went to a festival up in Belfast, which is 2 and a half hours from my house, I stayed up there for two days and decided to be as tourist as I could in those two days. Being the photographer I think I am, I took an abundance of photos because I think the city is really beautiful and wanted to try taking more photos to capture moments. This was also the first independent trip I've been on so it was so exciting and momentous for me. That being said, this post will most likely be super long but pretty colourful.

   

    

On the first day we traveled up we got lost and ended up just walking down streets for a while because I had read the map backwards. It didn't bother me though because I love it there.

We did the typical tourist thing by going to a new place but going somewhere that you've been to before, we got a Starbucks. We chilled there for a while until we got back to our hotel to get ready for the festival, as seen in my previous blog post. 

   

     

Again, we did the thing and didn't explore at all. We went for dinner in a Nando's that was conveniently attached to our hotel. It's probably the prettiest Nando's I've seen to date. It was delicious as always and we got to meet Josh from Twenty One Pilots outside our hotel after the meal, I'm still fangirling. I already blogged about the actual concert so I'll just move on to our second day.

Our second day was our exploring and shopping day. We explored most of the main streets and spent most of our time in Victoria Square, the main shopping centre. It's the prettiest shopping centre I've ever seen. It's indoors and outdoors at the same time. The roof is made out of glass and it goes up super high up to this platform that you can see a three hundred and sixty degree view of the city and the mountains you can see past it. It's such an amazing sight but the top of the building is kind of like a greenhouse and it gets super hot so you can't really stay up there for long without melting. 

They had some sort of Alice in Wonderland themed thing going on when we were there, which I got super excited about. They had scenes from the whole movie there, both the original and the Tim Burton version. They had a mini maze for children, which we still did that was actually fun even though it was tiny and nothing like a real maze. They also had a cute little reenactment of the Mad Hatter's tea party which was actually so real feeling. Everything was just really cute and it really brought back my love for Alice in Wonderland and a lot of the things in it. Why don't shopping malls/centres near me do this kind of stuff?

We shopped for most of the day and bought a few clothes items and other bits and just wandered really. The shops were basically the exact same to what we have back home too so it was nice to see the shops with different designs and layouts. We went to the Disney store, which is tiny compared to the Dublin one and I got a Winnie the Pooh teddy bear that I've wanted for a while because it was cheaper there. It's my favourite thing from the trip, thanks Jack. It rained for the second half of the day and we got too cold to explore half the places I'd wanted to visit.

The last thing we did was go out for a fancy meal to an Italian restaurant. We got dough balls, which are the best starter ever, just saying and pizza. My pizza is the plain one, what a surprise. It was so nice but I felt sick half way through the meal and we had to go back to the hotel earlier than we should've which was really disappointing, I blame the rain making me sick. Even though we stayed in the hotel for the rest of the trip it was really nice to go somewhere else for a change, I never go away at all anymore.

I never went away for like a really short trip before and it's actually so nice and not as expensive as a week holiday, obviously but still. I hope to come back really soon or go somewhere and do something like this again. This post was really odd but I hope you enjoyed the travel journal sort of thing.

Anyone go anywhere nice over the summer? 

Gaeltacht Blues

I went away for three weeks down to a gaeltacht and honestly it was one of the best times of my life. For those of you who don't know what a gaeltacht is, it's irish speaking parts of Ireland.

I'm not going to write about what gaeltacht I went to just going to write about it in general. I stayed in an amazing house with three other girls, two of which are my best friends and one whom I'd never met before but we became very close over the three weeks. We had classes every morning. Sports, dance and music in the afternoon or another activity, then a ceili or activity in the night. There was always something to do and the people were so welcoming and I made such good friends there. We did some other activites like trips shopping and to the beach. My favourite was kayaking, where I got to try a double kayak for the first time and I really enjoyed it.

I've been home less than a week now and I'm already missing it so much. There's such a difference living in the country and coming back to the city. I always thought I loved the city a lot but I've come to realise how much I love the countryside and how pretty and peaceful it is.

I'm writing this post because I want to say if you are still able to go to a gaeltacht you 100% should go, it's an amazing experience and I regret not going when I was younger. It was such a good way to spend my summer and I've made some great memories too. If you live in Ireland and you've got the money, definetly consider going, you won't regret it!