It was our tenth day of the trip, and we were getting on a plane again and traveling up to Ireland to meet our mom. We woke up really early that morning and got ready for the day before saying goodbye to Chris. She had a class that morning, so Lorenzo drove us into Basel to the train station before going to work. We got to Basel pretty early, so we got a locker for our suitcases and went into the city. Marguerite and I weren’t that interested in the city of Basel (we had seen quite a few European cities by now), and we didn’t have a whole lot of time to explore. We stopped at a coffee shop, trying to get wifi (which we didn’t end up getting), and had the most spectacular hot chocolate I have ever had. We then walked around the city some more, not really caring if we got lost or not. We just needed to waste time until our flight left. It was nice to have some sister time since we had been together quite a bit but not really just the two of us by ourselves. It was also nice to just wander without a clear direction of where to go. When found a Starbucks (how American of us…), we glad were drawn in, as we just needed the wifi so that Marguerite could write back to our mom. Then we headed back to the train station to get our bags and catch the tram to the airport.
We got to the airport a bit early so we had a soft pretzel and some juice before checking in and going through baggage check. Everything went really smoothly and before I knew it, we had touched down in Dublin.
Once we got to Dublin everything went pretty fast, and it didn’t take us long to get our bags or find our way out of the airport. We got outside and met Conor (another former counselor) relatively quickly. We (more like he) packed our stuff into his car, and he drove us back towards his town. It was a quiet car ride (Conor and I are both pretty quiet people), but we all had things to say since it had been a year since we saw each other. He took us to a round tower in the Timahoe town center that was used in the early times to look for invaders. That was pretty much all there was in the town center. Afterwards we went back to his house, where his mother Gill welcomed us as soon as we got there. We had a cup of tea and spoke about camp (Conor was returning again this summer). His father came in and told us that a calf had been born the night before, and we went outside to go see it. It was so sweet; all brown with a pink nose, but the mom wouldn’t let us get close to it. Gill had prepared a HUGE dinner with steak on bread with paté, potatoes, green beans and onions. It was delicious, but there was so much food. There was Bailey’s cheesecake for dessert, which we were all too full to eat, but it was too good to resist. There wasn’t really much to do in Timahoe, therefore we watched Monument Men which I had never seen before. Marguerite fell asleep then started asking what was happening halfway through the movie, but she had missed too much to catch her up. Before we went to bed we chatted with Conor’s brother, Kieran who revealed many embarrassing stories of his brother and Conor told stories of his brother. It was a good, relaxing first day in Ireland.
*Didn’t have many pictures today, so enjoy these few snapshots and snapchats from throughout the day.
CHASING BIG DREAMS 