HT

Hello Carolina MF'ers:

So I hadn't thought about it, but Alan asked for some pictures of my semester here in Dublin, so I figured I'd make a new thread and throw up the best of the best I've taken. I have them divided into locations and days, so I'll sift through them and upload them here with a little description of each place.

First few days in Dublin. We got here before school started and stayed in City Center (Downtown) and I took some photos of our sightseeing:


The only remaining tower of the original Dublin Castle.


Lady's Chapel in St. Patrick's Cathedral.


St. Patrick's Cathedral.


St. Patrick's Cathedral.


Christchurch Cathedral. Dublin is unique in that it has two cathedrals of major prominence in the same city.


Christchurch Cathedral. The wall on the right is off-center, as it is one of the original walls that survived the collapse in the 1500s. The church was originally built in the 1000s.


Christchurch organ.

HT

Bray: Bray is a small seaside suburb of Dublin. We took the bus down one day for a bit of hiking and picture-taking.

HT

Golf Adventures: I'll have to cut these down significantly, as probably 60% of my photos are different golf courses.

Corballis Links: An awesome public course in Donabate outside of Dublin. 15 euros for a round so it was my first links experience.







Muirfield: Muirfield is a course east of Edinburgh, Scotland. Known for the oldest golfing organization in the world (older than the R&A at St. Andrews), the Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. The course is consistently ranked in the Top 10 in the World.








Fun stuff there.



Portmarnock Hotel & Links: A little brother to the world famous Portmarnock Golf Club, Portmarnock Links was designed by Bernhard Langer on Jameson Estate land (whiskey Jameson family).






The old Jameson Estate is now a bar (and a very cool one at that). I watched a rugby match, while drinking a Guinness in the Jameson Estate Home on a links golf course. I'm not sure you can get much more stereotypically Irish than that.

HT

Royal County Down: World famous course in Northern Ireland. Too many good pictures to post them all but I'll put up a sampling.











St. Andrews: Pretty self-explanatory place! The home of golf. I've played 3 rounds there, but most of these pictures (with the exception of 2 I believe) are from the Old Course.

















The European Club: A newer links course designed by Pat Ruddy. He owns and lives near the course, and is quite the guy. Came out and greeted me while I was playing and we had a short chat.














Once again...haha.

HT

Turnberry: An Open Championship course on the west coast (Ayrshire coast) of Scotland.











Galway and the Cliffs of Moher: Actually very few of these pictures are from Galway...but that was where we stayed for the trip. The first two pictures are from Clonmacnoise, an old monastic settlement. Then there is one from Galway I believe, and then the Cliffs.

HT

Glasgow and Celtic Game: I hardly spent any time in Glasgow as I was there for the soccer game, but here are a few pictures of both.







Edinburgh: I was only in Edinburgh for a day before I headed out to Muirfield and St. Andrews. It was clear (at the time) so I was told to go hiking as I would be back to do the touristy stuff (this coming weekend). So I went hiking up to King Arthur's Seat, and of course it started raining as soon as I got to the top. You can see the rain coming in in the panoramic photo.




Edinburgh Castle. The most picturesque castle you'll ever see (especially from the other side).


Photos of the Royal Mile, the main drag in Edinburgh.






The queen's palace in Scotland, and the beginning (end?) of the Royal Mile.

alan0614

Those are incredible pictures Hunter. Thanks for sharing, would love to make the trip someday. When do you return and what's the next step in your career path?

HT

Portugal: I went to Portugal for 5 days to work on a golf course in construction for my internship. I didn't get many pictures, but these are a couple of the sunset the first night. The sun doesn't usually set in Ireland (it just gradually gets dark) so I was overly mesmerized by this one.





Maynooth: Maynooth is another town outside of Dublin that we visited on a class trip. It is also home to the National Seminary of Ireland and, in turn, a very impressive prayer chapel.








These things blew my mind. Each one is hand-carved with a different pattern or them. And there are hundreds of them.




Another one of my favorites.

HT

I have an overwhelmingly large collection of photos from Italy (I was there for a week and visited Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, and Vatican City). I'll post a few here, but honestly I haven't had time to go through and select the best of the best, or merge my panoramas together. So, if you'd like more, let me know and I'll post them at a later date.


Milan Duomo.


Venice.






Ponte Vecchio in Florence.


Florence Duomo.












Boboli Gardens, Florence. One of my favorite places I've visited.


Coliseum, Rome.


Trevi Fountain, Rome.











I have a bunch from the Vatican too, but I'll have to sift through them to get a few good ones to post! Hope these are enough for now.

HT

I highly recommend Ireland, Scotland and Italy as bucket list locations. Just some incredible sights and history in all of these places.

I should get back on May 26th, but I'm not sure where I'll be this summer. I have an internship so I may be back in Asheville or I could be on a golf course somewhere, I'm not too sure. I'm looking into caddying somewhere over here for a month after that May 26th date though. That's still a major work in progress, but I think it would be good experience if I can get on a prestigious course. It would be a great chance to study a course in-depth.

I have another semester of school (possibly two) and then I'll hopefully begin working for a Golf Course Architecture firm. I have made a lot of contacts on this trip which should be really helpful and I have a favorite firm that I'll aim for, but even if things work out perfectly I have no idea where I'll end up living. It's really a toss-up at this point which is pretty exciting to me. Hopefully it will be an employed form of exciting rather than the alternative though, haha.