Irish Countryside

K, so I'll start with yesterday. We got up, left the hostel, and took a cab to the parcel depot. We had so much extra luggage from the cruise so we were planning on shipping it back home once we get to Southampton. As you can see we ended up doing it the morning we leave for Liverpool. Anyways, we got our luggage shipped at got on the train with a few minutes to spare! Thanks be to God :) Took a 2 hour train ride to Liverpool and arrived at 1:15!

The train was reeeeally nice. We stowed away our luggage at the station and walked to the docks where we got on board for the Magical Mystery Tour!! It's a bus tour that takes you around Liverpool and shows you a bunch of stuff relating to The Beatles. We saw Strawberry fields, Penny Lane (and all the things they talk about in the song, i.e. the barber shop), the birth place of Ringo, and Paul's and John's houses! It was really interesting actually, of course Madeline loved it :) At the end we went to the Cavern Club!!! That was soooo cool! If you don't know much about the Beatles, that's where they performed when they were first starting out (I think they played there 200+ times).

After that we went out to find a place for food and had dinner. Liverpool's actually quite large! I really like the accents here though, they're different than London... we couldn't always understand our tour guide!

We then grabbed our luggage and headed for the John Lennon airport. There were so few people there... our plain left 10 minutes early! And the ride was supposed to be 50 min. but it was only 35, so we arrived a half hour ahead of time!! So.... we are in IRELAND!!

It's so so beautiful here. We're staying with friends that we met in Saskatchewan (with two cute kids who have adorable Irish accents!). In the morning we went for a ride to Slemish Mountain where supposedly St. Patrick tended the herds when he was young! (the picture above is the view form the base of the mountain). And here's the mountain! It's hard to see because of the fog, but really neat!

After lunch we went to some ruins of and old Celtic church from the Middle Ages. It was SO beautiful!!

Then we went to the Irish Sea!!! So cool. I've never been to the north coast before!

Man, it's so gorgeous here. It rained and/or drizzled all day, but I think that made it even prettier.  It was a really nice day because we didn't really "do" anything... just kinda whatever we felt like. A little different than tomorrow... we'll be on a plain, bus, train, and ferry. But yes, Ireland is so beautiful and I hope we come back! Oh and are you surprised we did a post two days in a row?? I know crazy!! Ok talk you guys soon!