July 2nd- Limerick, Ireland

This is the end. You know when you wake up and you just know it is going to be a bad day? That is how I felt when I woke up. Subconsciously I must have known that today was my last day here. 45 days gone in a flash. More on this later, first I will tell you about Limerick.

Did you know it was called Stab city? Yeah me neither... Jelmer (my Netherlands friend) informed me this morning and it is not settling well. Dave showed us a great walking route to take around Limerick to see the sights here and o we set off to do that after I gave Katelyn another hairwap (Katelyn's hairwrapcount-3). We grabbed lunch at guess where?? Supermac's! And it wasn't even for tradition sake, it was because we honestly couldn't find anything else more than a scone. We walked to King's Island after that but not before stopping in Penney's just because we had to. We didn't get anything don't worry. Limerick is also more widely known as the City of Churches and so naturally our first stop was St. Mary's Cathedral. A beautiful cathedral with an impressive graveyard, holding a number of noteworthy people. We are too broke at this point to go in so we admired it from the outside. Continuing on our walk we made our way to King John's Castle. The tour starts with an expansive museum chock full of facts and history. So much that I can't keep it all straight. I do know that King John never visited the castle during his lifetime athough he was the one who ordered the building of it in the 12th century. It took many decades to finish the castle because of the economic fluctuation of the area. There is a great wealth of history that I am not sharing with you simply because I wasn't able to retain it all. The interactive museum was really cool and afterwards we got to see and visit some of the castle ruins and towers that were still standing. We got a great view of the city and then played dress up because once a 7 year old girls, always a 7 year old girl- or something like that. 

From here we continued walking to the boardwalk where we saw the treaty stone- no idea what it is but we didn't really stop to learn. There were some hoodrats nearby and we wanted to bypass them. We walked around Limerick a little more and felt sketched out so we ducked into a cupcake shop for a hot cocoa and some wifi. We were trying to burn some time before dinner because once we left the city, there was no food out there. We ended up deciding to see a movie but we couldn't find the theater that google insisted was there. A girl our age stopped to help us and said it was a little ways away and offered to drive us. I was all like ummm no we can walk but then she assured us she wasn't crazy (because that always works and is really reliable) but we trusted her and decided to grab a ride. We walked a ways and chatted until her boyfriend James picked us all up to transport us to the theater. James was Irish and the girl whose name was exotic and long had been dting for 4 years. She moved to Limerick from Italy a few months before to be with James and was now working for a financial firm locally. They were 23/24 and were really really sweet. They showed us where to catch the bus and all that, wished us well and went on their way. 

Katelyn and I were right on time for How to Train Your Dragon 2. It was perfect. As I said, I am already in an emotional state so it was perfectly normal for me to cry 3 different times during this touching movie. It is so hard for a sequel to be as good as the first movie, or even good at all for that matter, but this movie was fantastic! 

We ate and went to the bus stop and I cried again. I cried at dinner too. I don't want to leave. I want to talk about why but I think I am going to wait until the next post. It deserves a post of its own I think, plus I need more brain power to get out all that I want to share and right now I am running near empty. 

P.S. I got a new hairwrap (Jane hairwrap count-4). There is no such thing as too many.