The day before Easter Sunday my mum and sister Jessie arrived in Dublin via Boston. I was so happy to see them! The next day the 3 of us and Brayden took the tiny flight over to London to celebrate Easter with a tour of Great Britain! We were so lucky that the sun was shining in London and didn’t stop the entire 10 days we were over there! We spent the first few days in London and it was really a pleasant surprise. Not that we weren’t expecting to enjoy it, but we all really loved London! We did lots of the touristy things including The Tower of London, The London Eye, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace, Westminster Abbey, and St Pauls Cathedral. All were awesome! And considering we were there the week of the royal wedding the city was so clean and decorated with extra British flare. The only underwhelming part of London was the Jack the Ripper street tour (think crazy old man with a limp telling insignificant info about London with very lose connections to JTR). Anyways all in all London was awesome!
Next we moved westward to Bath, England. It was a very cute town in the country with Georgian style buildings and a huge Italian influence, thus the Roman Baths. The baths were cool but otherwise there wasn’t too much to do there. From there we rented a car (I was actually allowed to drive this time!) and ventured up through the Cotswold countryside stopping in all of the cute little towns: Painswick, Sto-on-the-wold, Chipping Camden, and finally Stratford-upon-avon (birthplace of Shakespeare). Then we drove far up to lakes district (sort of reminded me of VT/NH area) and stayed over in Keswick at an old mansion hotel that reminded me of CLUE. The next day we had a lovely hike there surrounded by more sheep than I’ve even seen in Ireland!
Soon thereafter we got to Scotland (where everyone has accents like Sean Connery). We climbed the monument to William Wallace (Braveheart) and went to an old town called Stirling. Unfortunately our designated trip navigator, Brayden, had to leave us to fend for ourselves as he had to return to Dublin for his finals. We headed up to Glencoe in Scotland and it was just gorgeous- mountains and lakes everywhere! Then we spent 2 amazing nights on an island called Isle of Skye. This was by far my favourite part of the trip. It was so beautiful and literally everywhere was lakes/ocean/mountains/sheep/goats/horses etc. The ultimate highlight was the day we did a 50-mile bike ride around the Tratternish Peninsula and despite the non-stop hills it was filled with some of the most gorgeous views my eyes have ever seen! Definitely the best bike ride of my life (though my mum wasn’t the only one who was melting down around mile 45 lol, it was really really hilly).
From Skye we moved onto the Loch Ness area (didn’t see it) but did see the famous castle Eilien Donan, the most photographed thing is Scotland. That was cool and then we went further into the Highlands and did some hiking which was nice. Finally we ended our Great Brittan tour in Edinborough. We were also really surprised by how nice Edinborough was. Not a ton to do but very beautiful and we managed to get up early and climb up the Kings Seat (famous from Chariots of Fire) and then tour their big castle (which had a quite interesting take on the Scotland liberation attempts).
Overall it was a great trip! We headed back to Dublin where unfortunately work was waiting for me, but my mum and Jess went on a 10 day tour around Ireland, meeting up with her brother Frank and my cousins. They had a great time though were not as lucky with the weather (got their use out of the new raincoats I insisted they bring). In the end they spent a few days with me and Brayden to see Dublin and then sadly have to get back to reality. Miss them already
