Hi! :) So, we are nearing the last leg of our journey..! It will be sad to end. ..But alas, we have a few weeks to go! And we're trying to make the most of it! :) But lets back up a bit.. 

Beautiful Ireland!! :) The day after the Guinness and pub experience, :) we went for a day trip to the West Coast of Ireland, to Galway. And.. this is it! ..Just kidding, there was definately more to the city than this. :) But this was the best part. ..In my humble opinion. Grass and ocean. And a bench. :) What more do you need? 

Us by the coast. There was some cool huge rocks, that we just had to sit on. ..But the WIND... AH. :) Its hard to tell from this picture, it was one of the best. :) One of the downfalls about the coast, I suppose. The wind was so strong that day! :)

A cool tree that we saw. It looked so.. lonely. :) (A Brian Reagan reference, if anyone picked up on that..) Haha.. :) 

Some Irish countryside. Note: the SHEEP! :) There were so many sheep, and they were so cute. :) There were also many cows and horses, as well.  

So, after our day in Galway, we went home to Maynooth. We got in pretty late, as it was almost a three hour trip, so we went to bed right away. Later, Jemma told us that she would never even consider doing a day-trip to Galway.. thats all the way across the country!! But three hours for us is.. well, at home, its like to my nearest city and back.. :) "A piddly amount of time," as Anna put it. :) Its crazy.. I think 2 or 3 Ireland's could easily fit into Saskatchewan. Weird. :)

Anyways, the next morning, we decided to go on another day-trip, this time to a town called Kilkenny! Our big "Europe on a shoestring" book said that it was beautiful, and we thought the name was funny.. No, we never did kill Kenny.. :) But we spent a good day in the town! :) 

This is the castle of Kilkenny. So HUGE! And incredibly beautiful and ..epic.. :) This was the front..

And this was the back! It was so cool. Behind us, there was a HUGE area of open fields and forest.. I don't know how big it was, but it was massive. We could just picture really fancy people sitting down to have a cup of tea, or play a game of polo, or go on a royal hunt, or something. :) It was beautiful! 

We strolled around the town of Kilkenny for a while, and it was so cool. There were beautiful churches and abbey's and other such huge lovely buildings, but if we put pictures up of all of them, you'd get bored. :) After exploring for a bit, we had to go home. The last train out of there left at 17:31 and so we needed to catch it! Or we'd be stuck in Kilkenny.. :) We made it home, needless to say, and spent our last night at Jemma's house.. watching Boondock Saints! We had to. Anna had never seen it, and it is just something you need to watch while in Ireland. But then we found out that the actors (I apologize if you've never seen it, you might be a little lost..) are from America.. and either have a Scottish background, or niether. :) Darn. But they do a pretty good Irish accent, I suppose! According to Jemma, they slipped into a Scottish accent sometimes, and the accent they were using was, like, extreme West Coast accent, which she thinks is overrated. :) But.. it sounded awesome to us!!

The next morning, our plan was to catch a ferry to England! And we discovered that the one that ran from Dubln, Ireland to Holyhead, Wales was the ferry that worked best for us. So, we went into Dublin, saying goodbye to Jemma, :( and headed to the ferry port!

We took a train that got us from the main Conolly Train Station to the Dublin Port, and this is the name of the station where we got off. Any guesses as to how it is pronounced.? .. no? ..I'll tell you. :) 

"Don-Leery".. Huh. (Picture it said with an Irish accent.) :) ..Not what it looks like at all! And many of the names of towns and streets, etc, were very hard to pronounce, and didn't look like names at all. :) There are two languages in Ireland, the main one, in most areas, being English, but the other, Irish Gaelic, was used almost equally! So, many of the town names were in both English and Irish, and some of them just looked SO cool. :) So, the town where we were staying was Maynooth, right? But in Irish, it was "Maigh Nuad".. pronounced "My-new-id" .. When we first heard someone say the Irish name, we thought they were saying "I knew it". :)   

So, we took the ferry to Wales, and landed in a town called Holyhead. And this is about as much as we saw of it! If we had more time, etc, we would have gone to explore, it looked like a cute city! But alas, we didn't have the time. :)

We took a train to London, where we were planning on catching a night train to.. anywhere. :) We saw that one went to Glasgow, and so went to reserve a couple seats on it. But the reservations had closed earlier, and so we just had to show up and take our chances that two people wouldn't show up, and we could have their seats..! :) It was nerve-wracking. :) But one of the workers on the train, his name was Jamie, was very helpful, and looked like he genuinely wanted us to be able to get on the train. So, that was nice! :) We got on the train, after all, :) and we were in Glasgow, Scotland, by 7:00 the next morning, April 14. :) And that makes 4 countries in 24 hours. Haha.. I think thats a record! :) 

We really didn't know much about Glasgow, so we ended up just wandering around. :) But we saw some cool things! We just started walking from the train station when, lo and behold, we saw our first Scottish man in a kilt! :) He was just heading to the train station, pulling his suitcase behind him, just like anybody else.. except he was wearing a skirt. :) But it was awesome.

A sweet T-Shirt we saw in the window of some store.. :)

Kilts! Shoulda bought one.. :)

And so, to tell the next part of our tale, we need to give some background information. So, let me back up. Anna has a friend named Hannah, who has a work visa for the UK and has been travelling in the UK, trying to find a job and such. She found one in Oxford, England a couple weeks ago! It even came with accomodation.. but that turned out to be a disaster, so she quit her job when it landed her in the hospital with some really odd mix of illnesses. ..Anyways, she heard we were in the UK, and wanted to meet up with us, and maybe travel with us, because since her job provided her with accomodation as well, she now no longer had a place to stay.. So, our plan was to catch a night train back to London, and meet up with her in the morning, and we found an internet cafe in Glasgow to send her a FB message with this place. ..Unfortunately, we got back to the station to book a reservation and the night train from Glasgow AND Edinbough were completely full. So. We had to take a day train back to London, and found another internet cafe to tell her this new plan.. But now, WE didn't have a place to stay, either. We tried her phone number to see if we could stay with her, wherever she was staying, we didn't know.. But we could not get a hold of her. SO, we ended up calling a guy named David who is from Edmonton, and is living in Liverpool, UK. His mom goes to the same church as Anna's parents, and so when they heard that we were going to the UK, they gave us all his contact infomation and such..! So, Anna has met him once, and I have never met him. But we called him, and we was very welcoming, and told us we could stay with him. :) Yay! So, we caught the next train to Liverpool, which got in at about midnight..! On the train, we met this guy from Liverpool and he told us about the city and how wonderful it was.. :) And the accent is so cool! Apparently, it is a mix of Irish, Welsh and English. It was awesome. This guy was a very interesting character as well. If you want more on that story, you can just ask us about him. :) (It would take a long time to tell the whole story.. but it IS a good one.. :)) We got into the train station, Liverpool Lime Street, and David came to meet us at the train station. ..Sorry for keeping you up so late, David! :) Then we walked back to his house, where we sent a quick facebook message to Hannah, telling her where we were, and that she was welcome to come and stay here too if she wanted. And then, we went to bed, and we had a wonderful sleep. :) 

There are 4 people living in this house, David, from Canada, Erica from Canada, Tom (who is married to Erica) is from somewhere in the UK (We forget..) and another guy named Dave, who is from Canada. So, we felt very at home here.. :) We woke up this morning, and met two of his roomates, Erica and Tom. They are very nice people!! So fun. And everyone in this house is a musician.. Its AWESOME. :) We had breakfast, then checked our email to see if Hannah had replied. She had!! .. as it turns out, she had caught a train from Oxford at 7:00 this morning, and was waiting for us in the Liverpool Station! Ah! :) So, we finished breakfast as fast as we could, and got Tom to draw us a quick map, and we headed back to the train station to find her. And we did! Ah, it was so good to see her.. :) And she was very glad to see us! Some familiar faces after her ..unpleasant.. time in the UK so far. We hope to help improve her impression of the UK. :) 

After lunch, Tom and David took the three of us on a mini tour of Liverpool. :)

This is the Anglican Church here in Liverpool.. Its massive. Apparently, it is Europe's biggest Anglican church! Huh. :)

This is the main sanctuary of the church. :) So beautiful.

And tomorrow is Sunday. Guess where we're going to church..? :) Yup! I am pretty excited actually. :) It will definately be my first "cathedral" worship experience. It will be ..interesting. And quite different, maybe. I guess we'll have to see. :)

Tom and David led us down a little staircase, and it opened up into this! Apparently, its called the "Ladies Chapel" (we're not sure why..) But it was very beautiful, just a little smaller.. I still wouldn't call it "small", but, you know. :)

Uh-huh.. You just can't think of Liverpool without thinking of the BEATLES! :) So, yes, our mini tour of Liverpool included a trip to the Beatles museum, called "The Beatles Story". It was SO good.

In the museum, they had recreated a bunch of places that were iconic in the making of the band. :) So, they did a complete remake of the pub that they ALWAYS played in, and basically, it is the reason they are so famous. They played here a total of 292 times! Wow. :) This is the stage in the pub, which was called the "Cavern". :) It was SO cool. And there were pictures on the walls of the pub when the Beatles played there, and they did a fantastic job of re-creating it. It was incredible. 

The Beatles! :) Yes, they were actually there. :) No.. they weren't. But these ..replica's? mannequins? looked really real. They looked exactly like I pictured John, Paul, George and Ringo. :) So cool.

By the time we were done in the museum, it was about 5:00, and Tom had somewhere he needed to be, so he left. The rest of us went home, made a quick sandwich and then we were off to a concert at the school where David is going to school for music. (He's just finished 3 years in sound technology.) The school was putting on a two week festival, and each night, three different artists would get a 1-hour block of time to perform! It was great. 

This was the first artist of the night, and he was SO good. His guitar skills were "top-notch", :) and he was SO fun to watch. He was just.. ah, so good. :)  

This was the 2nd group to perform. David has been working as a producer for them for the past week, helping them record their first album together. And they were awesome!! They both played guitar and ukelele, and the one left played a banjo (obviously). The one on the right played a xylaphone, too!! :) SO cool. And they were just so cute, and fun to watch! :) 

SO, that has been our past couple days! :) We now have.. 13 days left in our trip..? Ah! :) And we have not many plans.. but we hope to do something awesome! :) We'll write more later. :)
Catch ya on the flip side.. :)