Sofia Somewhere

For our first day back in London, Bel and I went on a Muggle Tours ! (£12, book ahead) Our guide brought us around London to several filming locations of the Harry Potter films, as well as locations that were JK's inspirations for some places, and shared interesting trivia on the way.  The entrance to the Leaky Cauldron Our Gryffindor scarf toting guide...  ...who was also a Daniel Radcliffe lookalike!

The day before, our cab driver insisted that we visit Dublin while we were in Ireland. Despite technically needing a visa and not having one, he assured us that there would be no border control. Since we had already seen pretty much the whole of Belfast, we decided to go for it and go to Dublin for the day! Short side story: our bus was at 7am and we almost missed it. We woke up at 6:06, got ready in a rush, and were out by around 6:20. We ran (in the rain) the 30 minutes to the bus station, then had to wait in line to have our tickets confirmed and printed (even though we bought them the night before). We took the 2.5 hour bus to Dublin, and just like our cab driver said, there was no border control. We mostly slept through the whole bus ride, and the next thing we knew, we were in Dublin already. Since our flight to London was later on in the day (from Belfast), we took our bags with us and just decided to leave it in lockers at the Dublin bus station. We went to the lockers...

Before Cris had to leave, we visited the Botanical Gardens which was really near our hostel. Such pretty colors. Can only imagine how much prettier the park is during proper spring/summer. With Ange in the Palm House of the Botanical Gardens

We started off our day in Belfast with the famous Black Taxi Tours . Your driver picks you up in a black taxi and takes your around the city sharing Ireland's political history with you. He shared a lot about the Irish and the British, and the catholics and the protestants. Our cab driver was really interesting. He shared with us a lot of stuff, and the tour felt very personal. He made it a point to answer all our questions, and even took us to a beautiful monastery. The famous International Wall

We spent the morning exploring the Giant's Causeway, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was really nearby our hostel so we just walked over when we were ready. We paid the £7.50 entrance fee, but later on realized that the fee was just for the Visitor's Centre, and not for the Giant's Causeway, which you can technically enter for free. Oh well...

We started late today; we woke up just in time to take the free hot breakfast offered by our hostel. After breakfast we took the 11:30 bus to Carrick-a-Rede to cross the rope bride. Waiting for the bus on another cold morning The teaser

We started today really early. Cris and I took a cab at 5am to Heathrow Airport and we met Ange and Bel there. We were on our way to Northern Ireland! When we arrived at the airport we were a bit hungry so we decided to buy some sandwiches at the café. We sat down to eat them and had a conversation that went something like this… “Our gate closes in 10 minutes.” “Our gate is 20 minutes away.” “…what are we still doing sitting here??” We then started running to our gate (we had to pass another security point pa), but we made it on time. :P