Day Twelve- St. Patricks Cathedral, Last Full Day in Dublin

I woke up this morning somewhat sad, knowing that today would be my last full day in Dublin. Tomorrow we are going to go hike the sea cliffs from Bray to Greystone so we will only be in Dublin part of the day. I am really going to miss Trinity...I really love it here.

We were originally going to go hike around Killarney, but after getting to the train station at 6:30 this morning and finding out it cost €65 with no student discount, we decide to go somewhere a bit closer. We also figured that the travel time would be about 8 hours total, so we would only get to spend about 6 hours exploring in Killarney. We took the tram back to Trinity and was back in time for 7:30am breakfast. I ate breakfast with Megan and then went to the computer lab to research where we could go tomorrow. I did a bunch of research and we first looked at hiking Wicklow Way, or at least a part of it. Wicklow Way is a trail that takes about 7 days to hike, but we were going to try and hike the Glendalough to Glenmalure trail. The problem with that is that there is no bus stop in Glenmalure so we would have to arrange for a cab (which is expensive...)

On my list of things to do when I come back to Ireland:
-Hike in Killarney National Park
-Hike the full Wicklow Way trail

So I did some research and found some other hiking trails in Wicklow. We decided to hike the sea cliffs trail from Bray to Greystone. We are going to take the DART out to Bray tomorrow morning. It should be a lot of fun! The travel time is significantly less than going to Killarney, so we'll have closer to 10 hours of exploring :)

I then went and took a nap...only to be awoken by the most awesome thunder I've ever heard! It was so loud I did not need an alarm clock!

After finalizing tomorrow's plans I decided I wanted to go explore Dublin a bit more on my last full day here. Of course it was pouring rain when I started my journey. I decided to go to St. Patricks Cathedral. I didn't mind the rain at all. No one else wanted to go out in the rain, but I traipsed the streets of Dublin, just enjoying the rain and experience.

I reached St. Patricks Cathedral and just the outside made my jaw drop. It was gigantic! They were doing restoration on the steeple part, but even with the scaffolding it was a sight to see. The inside was even more impressive. The ceilings were so high and ornate. There were people buried all around the church, including the famous Jonathon Swift. There was stained glass everywhere! I spent a good hour and a half admiring the beauty of this church. There was so much too see, so much history, and the architecture was breathtaking! I am so glad I went!

The sun was shining when I walked out of the cathedral and I headed back toward Trinity. Since my time in Dublin was almost over, I went to my coffee place to write and enjoy my final time here. As I write this, I am sipping coffee and eating a scone and I am amazed at how quickly my time in Dublin flew by. I am truly sad to leave the amazing Trinity University. It was only this past week that I could finally roam all around Dublin without a map. Dublin has so much to see and there is so much easily accessible from here that I want to go do/see still. I guess I'll just have to come back.

I am going to call it an early night tonight since I'm still a little under the weather. I want to be ready for hiking all day tomorrow! I am going to cook a little dinner, do some laundry, and read. I can't wait for tomorrow!