Transition Year Student, Aoife De Bhailís, describes the Gaelcholáiste Chiarraí Students visit to Netherlands, Germany and Belgium last month…
ON Friday, October 17, at the ungodly hour of 2am, the alarm clocks of Gaelcholáiste students and teachers alike began to ring.
After months of counting down, hastily packing and looking forward to, the day had finally arrived. Making sure nothing was left behind and passports were in hand, we met at our bus by school and began our first journey to Cork airport.
Attempts to sleep were first dismissed by the excitement levels, but by the time we boarded the Aer Lingus flight most of us were ready to crash and slept soundly to Schiphol Airport.
We arrived, albeit a little dazed, to a bright and buzzing Amsterdam. Complemented by the russet colours of autumn, the red brick buildings stunned us and we got the chance to enjoy a lot of the main sights of the city via canal on a boat trip.
After some food and souvenir shopping, we made our way to the Nemo Museum, a renowned science centre which had different interactive floors to cater to different ages and we spent a good while here ‘oohing and aahing’ at what was on offer.
Day two started with an interesting trip round the Valkenburg caves, made during WWII in case a nuclear bomb should drop, where afterwards we went to the local toboggan run which was great fun especially as the sun shone down on us in abundance.
After finishing, we headed to the beautiful city of Maastricht, where we relaxed and shopped before returning to Valkenburg where we did some laser tag in a new set of caves which everyone enjoyed.
On our third day we ventured into nearby Germany to Phantasialand, one of Europe’s biggest theme parks.
Here we braved rides like the ‘black mamba’, where its array of stomach churning loops and screws left us feeling nauseous but at the same time hungry for more!
After satisfying our roller coaster habit, we headed back to Holland and ended the evening bowling. On our final day we drove down to Brussels.
Here we finished up our shopping and got the chance to have a tour round the EU parliament which was a fantastic opportunity, then with time running out, we finished up with a tour round the nearby parlamentarium.
All in all we had a brilliant time filled with laughs and good memories and who knows some familiar faces might be seen on the next upcoming tour.
Scroll down for photos from the tour…
