Our fifth day in Ireland was purely a travel day. We spent the morning packing and after a last lunch with the other Eckerd girls, my little group and I made our way back to the train station.
We were a little nervous about getting our tickets -- due to a problem with Irish Rail's website, we'd had to book over the phone, and all we had as proof was a reservation number. When we got there however and gave them the number, they produced a ticket for each of us without a problem. Whew!
Above is our last look at Dublin as we left the city.
As we chugged slowly through the outskirts of town, we passed some interesting places. Here you can see a cathedral in the background and an old graveyard on the left.
Once we got out of town, the train picked up speed and we powered through the gorgeous countryside. Although everything was still pretty brown and wintry looking, it was still all very "Irish." little farms and rock walls and big fields and sheep and horses dotted the landscape.
The ride was supposed to be about 2 hours, but it ended up being almost 3 for some reason. I didn't mind. It was absolutely wonderful! So relaxing and quiet, and a much smoother ride than I'd expected. Not long before we got into Belfast, we passed some really beautiful snow covered mountains.
Once in Belfast, we eventually found our accomodation (after getting lost in the city for a while), the Belfast International Youth Hostel. I had assumed that because it was part of a large chain company it would be at least as nice (if not nicer) than the little hostel we stayed at in Dublin, but I actually didn't like it as much. We didn't get free breakfast and the bathrooms were nasty, but hey, for £10 a night, it was a decent place to sleep at night.
And that's just what we did when we got in. After a cheap dinner of Chinese food (which tastes waaaay different in the UK) we crashed for the night, ready for a full day of hiking to follow.
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