On Friday morning, I took the bus at 9am with Sarah for her birthday weekend. We were going with a group of 7, and meeting up with two other girls from Quinnipiac who are studying abroad in Florence, Italy for the semester. The bus trip from Cork takes three hours to get to Dublin. We arrived in Dublin and went to drop our bags off at Pillar B&B where we would be staying. We then met up with the Florence girls and went to lunch at Flanagan's. We decided to walk around the streets of Dublin for a little and showed the other girls Penney's, a popular department store in Ireland. The rest of our big group all got to Dublin a little later than us, and we met up with them to walk over to see Trinity College. Apparently Trinity College is comparable to our Harvard. The campus was really pretty, although since we went later in the day, the museum on campus with the Book of Kells was closed, so we didn't get to see it. We then went to the River Bar for dinner, and I got a chicken teriyaki meal. On Saturday, Sarah's actual 20th birthday, she wanted to take a tour of the Guinness Factory, something everyone says you can't go to Dublin without doing. We planned to do that around 3pm so that we could see the sunset when we finally reached the top of the storehouse, called The Zero Gravity Bar, which overlooks the whole city of Dublin. We first went to breakfast for Sarah's birthday at La Pizza which sounds weird for a breakfast place, but I guess they served pizza for lunch. We then headed over to Grafton Street, a big shopping area, which is supposed to be like 5th Avenue in NYC. We walked around there for a while, and then started to walk over to the Guinness Storehouse when we were ready. It was a little colder this weekend than I expected it to be. Apparently January is Ireland's most rainy month, but February gets a lot colder, so I'm hoping it'll warm up very soon. At the Guinness Storehouse, there were five floors of different stations and exhibits you could look at that was actually pretty interesting. On the fourth floor, we got taught how to "pour the perfect pint" and we got certificates saying we passed. Sarah's birthday dinner was at the Porterhouse, which was so good. I got a steak salad with caramelized red onions and bleu cheese, and a death by chocolate cake for dessert. This was definitely my favorite meal on the trip. On Sunday, we had a bus to catch back to Cork later in the day, so we just low-keyed it for the day. We went to breakfast right next to our B&B and then walked to find St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was really pretty and the inside was actually shaped like a cross. It had pretty stain glass as well. The cathedrals here are definitely something to see. We then walked around to a few stores and had a late lunch at Bachelor's Wok, a thai place, on Bachelor's Walk before we headed over to catch our bus home. We then walked from the bus station back to our dorm, about 35 minutes, since the buses were running far apart since it was Sunday night. We were all happy to finally get back after a long bus ride. We walked 19.97 miles the whole weekend, which wasn't too bad compared to our usual. My next trip is to Brussels, Belgium and Amsterdam this weekend coming up. Also, Mom, Lianne, and Glenn will be here in 10 days!

**P.S. Since I've gotten to Ireland, I've walked 276.37 miles up to today