Last night was an adventure. I couldn't really fall asleep because I was kind of paranoid sleeping with a stranger. She became the least of my concerns when I heard people climbing the construction scaffolding right outside our window. I felt like they were being hooligans and trying to find open windows and I thought ours was open because the outside noise was very loud so I was freaking out. Turns out it was closed so that's good. But still creepy that there were people climbing outside our windows. Well I definitely couldn't sleep after that. I was thinking about people coming in our room still. Then another incident occurred. I'm about to fall asleep and I hear people trying to open our door and scanning their cards. They didn't figure out it wasn't their room for a good minute so they were just trying to break in practically. At this point, I wasn't sure if I'd ever get to sleep. It was probably about 2 am when I finally went into a deeper sleep. But at about 4 am the girl woke up and I instantly woke up when I heard her moving. I was obviously paranoid. She packed up and left within 5 minutes and was out the door. We had to wake up in like 20 minutes anyway so I got about 2 hours of sleep. We woke up and packed our bags and ate some bread and Nutella and bananas for breakfast (leftovers from the airbnb and sad supper the night before). We collected our sheets and bags and trekked to the lobby. We dropped off our sheets and keys and then made our way to the train station. There was a tram leaving at 5:30 and a train leaving at 5:50 and we thought we couldn't take the tram so we were aiming for the train even though it made us nervous about having enough time before our flight left at 7. We ended up getting to the station at like 5:25 and the tram was there so we just jumped on with about a minute to spare. It worked out because no one even checked tickets or anything. We got to the airport and checked in. We then went through security and had only small panics. Annah had too many bags of liquids, liquids in large containers, and liquids out of bags but she wasn't about to throw them away so she just went for it. Surprisingly, she made it. Lizzy wasn't as lucky as her toothpaste and face wash were tossed. Abby got chosen to be randomly checked which frazzled her and then she thought she lost her boarding pass but finally, we made it through successfully. We went through passport checks and finally to our gate. We had to do another passport check there and then we waited to board. We were worried about our bag size the night before too and were panicking about weight limits and all that but there was no reason to worry. The overhead compartments were huge and the plane wasn't full. We were all sitting in a row which was nice since thought we would be by a bunch of randos. We were flying with Swiss airlines and it was by the far the nicest plane I've ever been on. The seats were like leather and there was lots of room and it was clean and fresh. They served us cute little breakfast quiches and pies and drinks and chocolates! It was perf. The flight went smoothly and the views were phenomenal. We glimpsed the alps (all the heart eyes) and watched the sunrise and the coolest cloud layering ever. And just the clouds in general. When we were leaving the plane, we had passport checks and then when we left the airport we had passport checks. They were very thorough on this trip. We made it out of the airport and then we tried to find a bus and bus ticket to the train station. After lots of wandering and asking, we finally bought our tickets and boarded the bus. The bus ride was about 30 minutes. It had wifi though so we were able to catch up with the world. At the train station, we found a supermac fast food place and ordered some brunch/mainly lunch since we had been up for like 5 hours by this time. I bought a chicken sandwich and it was delish. I then went to get some coffee and a muffin for later. We ate for awhile and then waited to board our train. When the platform opened, we ran to get some seats because there were a whole ton of older people on a big ol tour group and we didn't want all the seats to fill up. There were actually a lot of reserved seats so we struggled a little to find seats but eventually found some. The train ride was about 2 hours and my phone was dying so I couldn't watch Netflix. I tried to sleep but I didn't feel very good. The scenery was a good distraction though. Lots of green countryside. We rode through a town where it was raining and then when we exited the town, there were blue skies and a huge full rainbow outside the window! What a perfect welcome to Ireland. we made it to Galway and then we tried to figure out how to get on a bus from there to salt hill, where our lodge was. We struggled with that a bit too, but Annah figured it out as always and led us to a bus stop. We decided to try and use our eurail pass to get out of paying. If not, it only cost 2.20, but hey, those add up. Lizzy took charge and convinced the man to let us get on for free! Go Lizzy! And go Eurail passes! We rode to salt hill and when we got off, we were on the edge of the ocean. It was quite the view. We were able to walk along the ocean on our walk to the lodge. It was a distance but we didn't mind with the view and the fact that we were in Ireland. Annah found our lodge and we struggled to get in but they figured that out too. I was pretty useless leading today. I was so dead tired. Thankfully, we are all capable travelers. Annah has like a 6th sense for all things direction and where we need to be next. The lady chatted with us for awhile and then we relaxed for a bit. We waited for church at home to begin so we could livestream it and participate. That was nice to partake in a normal worship service (as normal as it can be for us). We then searched for food and found a place only 10 minutes from us. We thought it was cheap, but that was their take out, so it was actually kind of pricey. I got pasta with chicken but it wasn't that good. Capones was disappointing. It was also Al Capone themed which is very eerie. After that, we walked back to the ocean to watch the sunset over it. We found a green grassy area and stopped to take some pictures and take in the scenery. The sunset did not disappoint and the weather wasn't cold or rainy. Just the right temperature with a little wind. We went back to the lodge, and got ready for bed. Annah and Lizzy straightened out the details for our big tour tomorrow and I found out our room has a cursed smoking smell. I may cry. I can't sleep with the smell of smoke. I can barely walk past cigarette smoke, let alone breathe it all night. I can grit my teeth and bear with a lot of annoying or uncomfortable things, but the smell of smoke is my breaking point. Smells in general really. I need clean air or I can't relax. I feel like I'm suffocating.

Fun facts: the owner of the lodge likes Swiss and Japanese people the best apparently. She says they are the nicest. There is a golf course near us and the view is the ocean. I would actually play golf with a view like that. Tomorrow we go on a 10 hour tour of the beauty of Ireland.

Shoutout: My cat, Melvin. He is my grumpy old man and doesn't really like me that much anymore since he is grown up. I still miss him anyway. I miss screaming "MELV" out the door for him to come get some pettings. Maybe when I get home he will actually come to me on his own. Probably not. But a girl can dream.