For my last day in Ireland, I wanted to get out of the city and experience a bit…
Times visited: 1 (4 days in 2015/16)
Cities visited: Dublin
Villages visited: Howth
For New Year’s 2015/16, I flew to Dublin to celebrate it with my lovely Australian friend Bethann, who was travelling through Europe at the time. We’d met at a hostel in Poland three months earlier and she’d since visited me in Denmark. We chose Ireland to meet up again as we figured it would be a fun place to party and welcome the new year together.
But we didn’t quite get the New Year’s celebration that we’d hoped for. In Denmark and Australia, thousands of fireworks light up the sky at midnight, but as we were standing on a bridge in Dublin at midnight waiting for the spectacle, we realized two things; Ireland is one of the strictest countries in the world when it comes to consumer fireworks and there were only tourists on the bridge 😂 Although I’d never purchase, let alone light a firework myself (because child labour, unsafe working conditions, pollution, toxic chemicals, hell for animals and potential danger), I do usually head out at midnight to watch (although when I’m at home, I only watch a bit before rushing inside to comfort my cat). But at least Dublin was still a lot of fun and we made the most of the evening at Temple Bar.
We only had two more days together after New Year’s, one of which we spent in Northern Ireland. The next day was spent exploring Dublin and then we went our separate ways. I stayed in Ireland for one more day and went to the coastal village of Howth for a wonderful day of hiking and seal spotting!
