Dublin.

Now that I'm back from spring break, I have a lot of catching up to do concerning this blog! The weekend before spring break (March 19-21), I ventured to Dublin, Ireland for a few days. My good friend Clint was nice enough to let me crash at his place, which was a short walk from the center of town, so that was great. I was looking forward to experiencing Ireland the weekend after St. Patrick's Day, even though people had told me that it wasn't a big deal there.

Once we got there, we dropped our stuff off at Clint's and then started walking toward Grafton Street, which is pretty centralized within the city. The street is known as a shopping area, and it's completely pedestrian, with a great atmosphere. There were street vendors selling beautiful flowers, and of course the usual street performers (a guy making huge bubbles, and some musicians). Right on the corner of Grafton Street is Trinity College, which is famous for housing the Book of Kells, a manuscript transcribed by Celtic monks around the year 800, containing the four gospels of the New Testament. It's printed on calfskin, and the calligraphy and illustrations are amazingly detailed. After seeing it, you are led into the Long Room of the Old Library, which was totally unexpected and cool! It's literally this really long hallway, completely lined with shelves housing ridiculously old books. They had to vault the ceiling to add another level of shelves, and it's really impressionable.

Trinity College

We then made our way over to St. Stephen's Green, a huge park on the other end of Grafton Street. We walked around and saw swans in this pond, which was really pretty. 

Friday night, we had a delicious dinner at a restaurant called Green 19. We also hit up a great pub called The Bleeding Horse.

Saturday, Beata and I had a lot we needed to see, so we bought one of those hop-on, hop-off bus passes that takes you to all the tourist hotspots in town. Best. idea. ever. First spot on our tour was St. Patrick's cathedral, which was really cool to see. St. Patrick's park was great as well, and we had a nice little photo shoot outside. We had heard it wasn't really worth it to go in, so we went ahead and passed on entering. 

Next stop: the Guinness Storehouse! I really enjoyed the tour, and we ended it on the 7th floor at the Gravity Bar, where they poured us a perfect pint of Guinness. After being taught how to properly drink it earlier in the tour, I actually enjoyed my pint a lot.

After Guinness, the bus took us to Kilmainham Gaol, which is an old jail that is most famous for housing political prisoners after the 1923 rebellions. Many of these rebellion leaders were imprisoned and executed in Kilmainham. The tour was really interesting, and the place is definitely a little eerie. 

The plan was to do some more stuff on Sunday morning before heading back to Barcelona, but after an unfortunate run-in with a bladder infection that caused me to spend 5 hours in the emergency waiting room from 4-9am, I decided that sleep was more of a priority haha. Despite that, I had an amazing time, and really enjoyed the atmosphere of Dublin. The people were SO friendly, and it was nice to have some American comforts (a.k.a Subway). I'd love to go back someday and maybe explore the Irish countryside, and I've heard great things about Scotland as well. 

Next post: Spring break updates! I had an AMAZING week, traveling to Athens, Santorini, Florence and Rome. It was a whirlwind, but I loved (almost) every minute of it... I'll fill you in when I get some more time! As for now, I'm off to watch the Barca game with my cousin Ricky!

Cheers!

Still need to do a Dublin post, buuut...

I'm in GREECE.

I will do it though, promise.

Excited to be here...

All in the next two weeks. 

♥

Amster-dam good weekend.

So, the weekend started bright and early with a 6:45am flight. Beata and I decided to just stay up all night and head straight to the airport--even after many wise folks told us not to do this. Adventure prevailed though, and Thursday night we met up with some friends at L'Ovella Negra, a favorite Barcelona bar with delicious sangria pitchers, and spent the evening with great conversation and of course, some of our favorite fruity beverage. We headed back to the Mar, an affectionate name for our dorm, Mestral Mar, and finished up some last minute packing before heading out to El Prat. We literally passed out on the flight, and woke up as the plane was landing in Amsterdam.

After a nice chat with our cab driver, who was originally from Suriname, we made it to our hostel, Hotel Orfeo. It was in a great location, close to lots of restaurants and a short walk from Leidseplein Square, which is the heart of Amsterdam's nightlife. I won't lie, after a delicious breakfast at a nearby restaurant (with the most delicious, and expensive, glass of fresh squeezed orange juice I have ever experienced) and getting all situated in our room, we slept for a good 3 hours. It was a refreshing nap, and since we got there so early in the morning, we still had all afternoon for sightseeing! It started with a walk down the street next to the canal, and even on this gloomy Friday afternoon, it was a charming sight.

We headed first to the Anne Frank house, which I was very excited to see. Besides the book being a virtual staple in the United States middle school English classroom, I have always been really interested in WWII/Holocaust history. The tour of the house was incredible, and seeing the bookshelf leading to the hiding place was surreal. At one point, while standing in what used to be Anne Frank's room, I just had a somber moment and thought about how she had stood in that exact spot at some point. Later that evening, we were able to see the Van Gogh museum. My mom insisted I splurge on the audio tour headset, so I ventured to the first floor, ready to get some good commentary. There was a lovely jazz band playing in the atrium of the museum; however, said jazz band was not conducive to me being able to hear anything being said on my headset. So after some frustration, I went ahead and returned the headphones and got a refund. However, I was still able to enjoy the artwork, but left wishing there had been more Van Gogh and not so much other artwork. I don't know if the name deceived me, but I loved all the Van Gogh stuff. We spent the evening literally wandering the city streets, with no real plan. We experienced the infamous red light district, which was something else.

Saturday, we explored the Rijksmuseum, which is dedicated to Dutch history and art. It's housed in a beautiful building that was unfortunately under construction, so didn't really take too many pictures. After searching for a place to eat lunch, we were corralled in to an Italian place by a very persistent waiter who promised to give us either a) 10% off our meal, or b) free garlic bread (we chose option b). It was a decent meal, but as we walked a little further down the street afterwards, we ran into two other Italian places with cheaper food! That guy was really effective in intercepting unknowing tourists... We made our way to the Heineken brewery after lunch, which turned out to be a lot of fun. Compared to the only other brewery I've been to (Coors in Golden, Colorado), I'd say this tour was better. They had a lot of interactive stuff inside, and the tour ended with two good-sized Heinekens.

I discovered my new favorite fast food this past weekend-- Wok to Walk. I mean, it's a pretty standard Chinese takeout, but I fell in love with it. Amsterdam had wayyy too many good restaurants, and we barely even made a dent.

I had a lot of fun on my first out-of-country trip, and I'm looking forward to the weekends ahead! I think Amsterdam would be gorgeous in the summer, and next time (who knows when that may be...), I would love to see the famous tulips in full bloom, and one of those iconic Holland windmills. Hopefully someday I'll get the chance to go back.

Snow? In Barcelona?

So, it's basically blizzarding outside. Normally, this wouldn't really surprise me-- it's not like I've never seen it snow (unlike Lourdes or Leo, or a good chunk of the other Spanish students!).

However...

This is BARCELONA. It doesn't snow here. EVER. In fact, I had high hopes that we were headed more in the direction of beach weather. Really. This is the opposite of beach weather.

                          

Anyway, instead of going to class, here I am, holed up in my room (otherwise known as "the cave"). I think it would be a treacherous journey to go anywhere right now, seeing as it's probably snowed a total of 3 times in the history of Barcelona, so they don't really know how to handle this situation. Crossing my fingers that next week, I will be laying by the beach, possibly sipping on a piña colada. Here's hoping.

Tarragona

This past Saturday, I took a day trip with a small group from my program to the city of Tarragona. It's a short train ride away, and boasts a rich Roman and medieval history. It used to be called Tarraco, and was the capital of the Roman province of Tarraconense, the largest province on the Iberian peninsula at the time. It even served as the capital of the entire Roman empire for a short time during Caesar Augustus' reign.

After a quick cafe con leche at the train station, we set off to go see the amphitheater ruins. It was built right off the sea, so from inside we had a beautiful view of the Mediterranean. We were treated to an impromptu showing of a group of castelleros (human tower), who were filming inside the amphitheater, so that was a nice surprise.

              Castelleros in the amphitheater

We then went to an old Roman government building that was also used as a prison during Franco's time. We climbed up a super small, narrow staircase to get to the roof, where we had a great view of the entire city. 

                        Tarragona

After that, we headed over to the Roman circus, which had a lot of the tunnels (that would have led to the track) preserved. It was impressionable to picture how big this thing was--our tour guide said it usually took 10 minutes per lap! Also, he said that the chariot races were actually more dangerous and had more fatalities than the gladiator fights in the amphitheater. We then made our way to see the medieval cathedral (it's almost a shame that no cathedral can compare, so far, to the one in Toledo). After that, we walked around the old Roman muralla (wall) that used to surround the city. There's a great little path going around there, and it was amazing to see a structure that has been around for thousands of years (it was built around the same time as the Great Wall of China!). 

                            Roman Muralla 

Overall, a good day trip with a lot of interesting history. Also cool because I had learned a lot of the information in my Barcelona: The City & its History class, so it was good to get a visual to go with the information I've been learning. 

Upcoming trips: AMSTERDAM this coming weekend, DUBLIN the weekend after that, and then ATHENS, SANTORINI, ROMA & either NAPLES or FLORENCE (any suggestions between going north or south of Roma?) for SB'10. Really looking forward to these trips :)

Ciao!

Lesson 1: Set more than one alarm when hopping an early flight.

So, if you hadn't heard, I missed my flight to Paris last weekend. Yes. My flight was at 10:05am, so I set my alarm for 6:30am in order to have time to shower, have some breakfast, etc. Wellllll, I woke up at 11am. This was clearly my fault, and if you don't know this about me, I am a chronic snooze presser. I often set my alarm one, even two hours earlier than I need to wake up and just continuously press snooze. I'm not really sure why I do this, or when I started doing this, but the fact is, I just do. Therein lied my problem: my watch alarm has no snooze option, so I can imagine 6:30am rolled around, I hit one button to turn it off, and that was the end of it. So after freaking out and calling my parents at 4am their time (Sorry, mom and dad) to see what I should do, I decided that I should just defer my Parisian adventure to May, when I have three weeks to travel. I think it will work out pretty well. My hope is that everyone gets a quota of one travel mess up, and then it can't happen again!

Other then that, I just finished up the week from hell: midterms. It really started the week before this one, with a paper due and a poetry exam. This week, I had a grammar quiz, a history exam, a culture/communication exam, and a literature exam. Oh, and three of those were on the same day. Generally speaking, I think they went well.

Tomorrow, I'm taking a day trip with my program to Tarragona. Fun fact: In Roman times, the city was named Tarraco, and at one point, was the capital of the entire Roman empire. Score one for Catalunya.

Also, I JUST booked a flight for Amsterdam for next weekend (March 12-14). I PROMISE that I will be able to post a successful weekend journey where I actually made it the country this time.

Rumination: WHY do the older Spanish women here think it's ok/attractive/flattering/appropriate to dye their hair bright, unnatural colors? I'm talking bubblegum pink, fire engine red, and Mardi Gras purple.

Funny story: Last night, I needed to borrow a hair straightener from the girls down the hall. I told my roommate Beata that I would be right back and that I had to go molest the girls for their hair straightener. Clearly I can't speak English anymore, and what I wanted to say was I was going to go bother them for their straightener. Molestar=to bother.

That's all folks, have a great weekend!