DeJong World Tour: Ireland, Scotland, and more!

Shepherd's Pie and Beef and Guinness Pie

Wow I can't believe it's been over a month since our last post! Well after the Canary Islands we spent a week in Dublin, Ireland! Wow what a cool city! We were supposed to be an hour south of Dublin at an AirBNB in Greystones but our host cancelled on us a few days before our booking so we were in a rush to find something else nearby. Luckily Gina is awesome and found a room in north Dublin at DCU (Dublin City University) where they rent out dorm rooms to travelers and tour groups during the summer. It was a pretty great accident because the University was located pretty close to downtown and many other sights. I think we can safely say that Ireland had some of the best food we've ever had! Maybe we were dying for some comfort food after Spain but the shepherd's pie with three different servings of potatoes and a Guinness to wash it all down was unreal! The campus provided breakfasts, had a coffee shop, grocery store, AND its own bar! I also finally got the opportunity to watch Avengers: Endgame (which was a big deal)! Even though it rained 80% of the time we were there we absolutely loved it and we can't wait to come back and explore more than just Dublin.

The dorms on the DCU campus

Our next stop was their neighbor to the northeast. We flew into Glasgow, Scotland and took the train west to the small coastal town of Largs. We had a nice AirBNB in a quiet neighborhood that was a 10 minute walk to everything. For a small town this place was crazy busy! We must have tried every restaurant in town too! We had everything from bangers and mash (sausages with mashed potatoes) with yorkshire pudding (a fancy breadbowl) to a full Scottish breakfast with black pudding, and more fish n chips than I thought I'd want.

Unfortunately we had to cut Scotland a bit short due to a family emergency back home. Within a couple hours of the news we had train tickets to London, plane tickets to Denver, and a bus back to Lincoln! We had planned to spend a bit more time in London but we'll have to try again some other time. We did manage to find platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross Station (Harry Potter fans know about this) but there was a line just to get a picture with the wall. After a 10 hour flight and a 10 hour bus ride we finally made it home to our families for a few weeks. In the meantime we did get to celebrate America's Independence day with some friends we surprised! It's nice to be back for a bit but we're getting restless and need to hit the road again soon. Our time in Europe was just about up anyway so instead of heading back east, we are going to fly west...to the far east! We're making plans to go to Hawaii for a while (maybe longer than a while) and eventually make our way over to the land of the rising sun! We're excited for this next chapter! Until next time...

Buen Camino!
Dan & Gina