Ireland has many spectacular sights and historical sites, however, one location exceptionally stood out to me. My favorite place I encountered in Ireland was a city called Howth. Howth is a small, peaceful fishing village located on the eastern coast, facing the Celtic Sea. The village is a beautiful place to say the least. Six of us made the voyage and in order to get there, we had to take a bus and train. I won’t go into detail, but the experience from Highlight apartments to Connolly Train Station was quite stressful, to say the least. However, when the train was arriving into the Howth station, all those emotions were instantly forgotten. We arrived to a sight that easily could have been printed on a postcard. The beach was glistening in the sun and a faint, but visible rainbow was high above the ocean. It was truly picturesque. The best part, this was just the beginning of wonders Howth would provide.
Once we were in the village, we started a brisk walk to find the opening to the ocean. On our walk, we passed many seafood restaurants, and although I’m not a huge fan of seafood, they seemed as if they would provide a tasty meal. After approximately fifteen minutes of walking and one wrong turn, we made it to an endpoint with a high brick wall you could climb. The climb was only five steep steps, but the view as you climbed the last step, was astonishing. Before my eyes, I could see the vast amount of sea covering the horizon and a green, vibrant, isolated island. It was as if a whole new world was opened before me. Keep in mind, up to this point in Ireland, we had only done in-city tours. They were valuable and educational, no doubt, but I was in great desire for an escape to nature. Howth, thankfully, satisfied these desires above and beyond.
If you turned back you could see the small village quietly resting in place and the harbor filled with sailboats. On the platform, an abundant amount of seagulls were flying above us, and would occasionally land nearby. I, being curious, wondered if they would accept food from a stranger. Therefore, I grabbed a pretzel and broke it into small fragments and held it out, hoping a seagull would be accepting of my offer. Believe it or not, minutes later a seagull got into arm’s reach of my foreign offering. Hesitant at first, it walked close to me and then would quickly lurch backwards. After getting comfortable with my presence, we came to negotiable terms of I would feed him and he would happily receive. A lady later on advised me not to feed the seagulls as sometimes they attack.
Taking her advice, we left the viewpoint and walked toward the beach. The tide was low, therefore we were able to walk pretty far out. The sand was wet and had a slight coverage of water, just enough water to unfortunately soak through my tennis shoes. The freeing feeling of being in a true sense of nature thankfully overpowered my squishy shoes. As you looked out at sea, a slight breeze would slightly pass over and I felt so refreshed. In the middle of the sand, a shipwreck was oddly laying in abandonment. Funny enough, it looked like the Loch Ness monster! We spent a substantial amount of time simply walking up and down the coast enjoying our time in a new place. The brave (three of us) waded into the water, about knee deep. If I thought my shoes were wet before, now my shoes were extremely wet. The smart (the other three) stayed back and observed our, in hindsight, obliviousness to the later consequences. Although that is another story, getting my shoes wet ended in me having to walk a mile through Dublin in my socks and bleeding through one of them. However, our time at Howth was incredible and I would go back in a heartbeat. The naturalistic feeling it provided was exactly what I needed to be able to return to the busy city of Dublin. Thank you, Howth, for everything you provided.