Caitlin Takes Copenhagen : Luck o' the Irish!

I had the amazing opportunity to be reunited with one of my best friends from Gustavus, Maggie, this weekend in Ireland! She has been studying in Galway for the semester and Annie, Claire and I agreed it was necessary that we make the trip out to visit her. I am so happy that we did! This weekend was one of my favorite trips of the semester because 1) Ireland is beautiful and 2) I got to share it with three of my best friends. We left Copenhagen Friday night and didn't get to Galway until around 2am Friday morning. I forgot about how tired, smelly and hungry I was when our bus pulled up to the station in Galway and saw Maggie and our other Gustavus friend, Jenni, there waiting for us. It was so good to see those two again! They left in December, so I hadn't seen them for over four months. Maggie and Jenni both finished their finals already so they had more than enough time to be our personal tour guides for the weekend. On Friday, they showed us around the city and then we had afternoon tea at the most charming little tearoom in "downtown" Galway. On Sunday we took a full-day bus tour to the Cliffs of Moher. We drove through the Irish countryside along the way. It was exactly as I pictured--rolling green hills, sheep, thatched-roof houses and lots of little pubs. The Cliffs were absolutely incredible! It was very humbling to be in front of such a beautiful natural landscape. I feel so blessed that I was able to share that amazing experience with three of my best friends. On Saturday night, we went to Maggie and Jenni's favorite pub to listen to traditional Irish music. I must say, I felt pretty immersed when the band played "Galway Girl" and the entire pub raised their pints of Guinness and sang along. We didn't have a whole lot of time to do anything Sunday because we had to take the three-hour bus ride back to Dublin to catch out 4:30pm flight. We went out for breakfast and then made a quick walk through the Sunday market (although not so quick that I didn't have time to buy some goodies). It wasn't hard to say goodbye because I knew that I would see Maggie and Jenni again in Minnesota in just two short weeks. It was the perfect ending to my weekend adventures. As always, it was nice to be back in wonderful Copenhagen. It's now starting to hit me how limited my time here is, and I am ready to make the most of these last 10 days!