Goodbye America - Hello Europe (and Canada for 6 hours)

(This post will be updated as I go along... This is a trend you'll probably see multiple times this summer)

The day has come folks! I'm currently sitting in St. Louis's Lambert Airport awaiting flight number one of the day! I'll fly up to Toronto where I'll have a SIX HOUR layover. Not the most ideal but it is what it is. After that massively long layover (that's a bit much... it could be worse) I board my international flight. Want to hear something awesome? When I checked in there was no one else in my row. I'm afraid to look to see if that's still the case. If it is, how cool is that!? Once I land in Dublin I'm off to my hostel. It's the same one I stayed at last year: Abbey Court. I'll actually be there a total of three times this summer. I'll land at 8:15am local time, which is 2:15am back home. I'll head straight to the hostel to drop off my stuff then I'll explore until I can check in. This is just a quick stop overnight, then I'll fly over to Edinburgh the next day. I could have done both at once but this way I get some time to acclimate to the time change so I can hit the ground running once I get to Scottland. 

Canada- this airport is HUGE! I swear I walked for 10 minutes before I even got to any concourse. But the process of going from the domestic side to the international? Flawless and fast. I exchanged some money. Grabbed some Udon, then I get to wait. I thought about getting a lounge pass but not for CA$82. Keep you posted if anything interesting comes up, if not see you in Dublin! 

The flight: We got delayed by about 30 minutes or so. There was a late connecting flight with some of our passengers. Other than that, typical flight. There was this cool phenomenon as we passed Iceland. Currently, the sun isn’t going down over Iceland. So when passed the sun was briefly out. Not in full force but clearly visible. But once we were far enough away it was pitch black again. Just thought it was kind of cool… or maybe the fancy electronic tinting windows were not working right. 

Dublin: Nothing too exciting. Just walked around the city waiting to check into my hostel— thankfully they bag storage. Learned a little history about the Great Famine— don’t ask me to recall it, I can’t. Bought a few things I needed. Lost my headphone eye mask, so I'll be rebuying that. Took a brief nap before some people woke up with the talking— see I need my headphones (and my earplugs which I lost. Oui). Then I hit the town again. Finally made it to Temple Bar. I walked by last year but didn’t feel like going in. This year I headed in— then subsequently spent €10 on a cider. A tasty cider though, so you win and you lose.

And that's a wrap on day #1! Technically this was TWO days, but I'm going to count it as one.... Bite me.