Sept 3 - Liverpool to Dublin

Well, we left Liverpool at 8am this morning. I had such a good night sleep. I felt refreshed and ready to head into Ireland! We stopped in a town called Chester were we had about and hour and half free time. Liz and I decided to go get some ice cream for some strange reason. It was freaking cold out and raining but we were determined to get some ice cream because neither of us wanted to go shopping. We ended up finding an ice cream parlor that said it specialized in Italian Ice cream. I was skeptical after the wonderful gelato I get here in Florence but we checked it out anyway. I was right, they called it ice cream because it was nothing close to gelato and the dude didn't even speak Italian. I was so disappointed.

We left Chester and headed for the town in Whales with the longest name in the whole UK (prob the world). It's name is LLANFAIRPWLLGW
YNGYLLGOGERYCHWYRNDROBWLLLLANTYSILIOGOGOGOCH and I was told it has 52 letters, though I didn't actually count. We stopped here for a quick lunch and to say farewell to the rest of the group that was leaving us and heading back to London. We were all really sad because we all became so close in the 8 days we were together.

There was only 15 of us that headed over on the ferry to Ireland. The ferry ride was over 3 hours long and was a little rough. It was very windy out that day and you could tell. We basically just sat inside most of the trip and played cards. I checked out the gift shop and just killed time. Once off the ferry it was only about 30min into the hotel where we met the new 24 people joining our group for the next 8 days.

We all had supper and then headed to the pub for a drink. I should take a moment here to say that I don't think I hate soup anymore. I know I know, shocking isn't it? Well, up to this point in the trip I had already eaten about 4 bowls of soup and all of them were actually pretty good. Tonight's was my favorite though which was asparagus and chicken. Mmmmm The hotel was a bit run down but honestly I can't complain about any of the hotel rooms along the way. They were all comfortable and warm and I was able to have my tea every morning. :)