My Weekend in Paris...Or not

I don't know if you have been keeping up with the news but most of the airports in Europe have been closed for 5 days now. Volcano erupting in Iceland? Ya, Dublin's airport closed too. I was supposed to fly to Paris on Thursday. That flight got canceled and I was moved to a flight on Friday which was, of course, canceled as well. Thankfully Aer Lingus let us move our flights back 2 weeks. Hopefully hopefully hopefully this whole volcano mess is over by then!

Me and my friends Ashley and Kaitlyn decided not to waste the weekend so we headed to Cork instead. It was a great girls weekend! Got into Cork Friday evening. Had a drink at a pub that was having a trad session. Then we ate dinner at a really great Asian restaurant called Wagamama's.On Saturday we walked around Cork and then headed to Blarney Castle. I know it is really touristy but the three of us loved Blarney. Of course I kissed the Blarney Stone at the top of the castle. Then we wandered around the grounds which were beautiful. After the walk we just napped in the grass with a view of the castle. No big deal.That night we had a few drinks at a local microbrewery we'd heard about. It was called the Franciscan Well Brewery. We loved that place. They had great beers!
And on Sunday we headed back to Dublin. It wasn't Paris but our weekend was still great!

Now back to that silly volcano. It was the airports closing that really made me realize that I have been living on an island for the past 3 months. An island. The only way for me to get anywhere outside of Ireland would have been by boat. How weird is that? (Also if you were wondering, the ash cloud is not something you can see. It's been sunny and clear almost every day since Friday! They are saying that if it rains here we could actually see the ash fall though.) We're hoping that the airports start opening up again in the next few days. Dublin says they're hoping to get some flights out tomorrow but we'll see what happens. They've said things like that before. I'm supposed to go to Amsterdam this weekend but am not at all sure that that will happen. If I don't make it, it probably won't be such a bad thing since I have finals coming up soon and in the Irish system they are all worth at least 60% of my final grade. Wow. I should stop blogging and get back to studying!