My body is being ripped into pieces. My torso is pulled backward by my backpacking backpack and my shoulders are wrenched forward by my school backpack. My right arm is pulled ceaselessly downward by the five pound bag of food I’m carrying. No, I’m not climbing Mount Everest or Hiking the Appalachian trail, I’m traveling home from Ireland. Only I’m not really going home. I’m headed for a whirlwind tour of New England before heading up to Kent Island in Canada for my internship this summer.
Anyway…I know it’s been forever since I updated my blog, but now I have a good eight hours on this relatively old 757 (without individual movie screens) to kill. Sooooooo let me take you back about two months.
It’s April 8th, a Friday, and I’m about to disembark on an epic journey through Europe. Ok that’s a lie, seeing as I was flying out of Dublin, I really had to leave on the last bus from Cork to spend the night in the airport. This was an adventure, but relatively unpleasant. They are constantly cleaning that place with mop segue machines that beep incessantly. I did find a comfortable booth to catch a few winks before my 6 am flight. At one point, I woke up and noticed another girl on the other side of my booth, at first I was offended that someone would take a booth that was obviously occupied, but after looking around, I noticed that every single booth space was filled with a sleeping body.
In any case…First stop: Italy. I flew into Venice-Treviso. Until two days before I left, my friend who I was visiting and I had assumed that I was flying into Venice proper, but it turns out that Venice-Treviso is actually in Treviso, therefore I had to find my way to the train station to actually get to Venice. At the train station, a guy asked me fore directions in Italian and I just stared at him blankly…poor guy. The train to Venice was uneventful, and then I stepped out into the glorious sunlight of a Venetian morning. The weather was perfect and warm, Mary was waiting for me on the steps of the Ferrovia (train station). She’s studying abroad in Padova, a tweny-five minute, two euro train ride from Venice, so she’d already been there a couple times and knew the sites. She showed me around.
It was interesting to go back to Venice, in fact it was interesting to go to most of the places I went because I’ve traveled to them before, only with a group of 300 on a band trip. Though there weren’t planned trips to see a glass blower or to the Tower of London or the Louvre, I definitely prefer traveling on my own or with a couple of friends, there’s so much more leeway for relaxing as well as just deciding what to do on a minute by minute basis.
So yeah, Venice was amazing. We just wandered for hours taking tons of pictures. We saw all the major sites, The Rialto Bridge, Saint Marc’s Cathedral – inside and out…so gorgeous. Venice isn’t very big so we’d covered a lot of it by the time our friend Danny, who’s studying in Paris, showed up. It just so happened that he and his friends were visiting Venice the same day I was there. So we did all the sites with them again, got gelato and then went for a drink before dinner. Apparently the drink of the youth in Italy is the spritz, it’s bright orange and kind of tart, but it comes with an olive and that’s always a win in my book! After drinks it took us a while to find somewhere we wanted to eat dinner. Most of the restaurants were super expensive and had two types of taxes, I don’t remember what they are. But we finally found a beautiful restaurant with seating in the courtyard. I got pasta…of course, there were red and white gingham tablecloths, candles, and we got a bottle of the house wine. It was a fabulous Italian meal. Then it was time to grab the train back to Padova for sleep. On the way back, we got kind of turned around. There are signs on most walls that point directions, but we went some weird way that led us through a neighborhood that Mary had never seen before, but we made it back safely. I was exhausted that night and immediately fell asleep.
The next morning we went to the center of Padova, a square called Prato della Valle. It’s a beautiful place, and on weekends they have an epic market. We met Mary’s friends there and then headed to the train station to go back to Venice to be able to catch a boat taxi to the islands. The first island we headed to was Murano. The boat there took a lot longer then expected so we only stayed for a little bit before heading to the next island. I honestly liked the next one a bit better. It was Burano and it’s a super cute place. All the houses are brightly painted and it’s just really picturesque. Mary and I could only stay like ten minutes though because we needed to get back to Venice to catch the train in order to make it to a ballet of Othello in time. So we grabbed some gelato – I got Rhum and cream (the best I’ve had) – and then caught the boat taxi. It was stressful, but we ended up only getting to the ballet about ten minutes into the performance. It was good, more like modern dance then ballet, but still really interesting. When it was over, because neither of us had eaten dinner, one of her language partners, who was also at the ballet, took us to one of the best pizza places in Padova. It was a whole in the wall place, but they were delicious. After food it was another home to bed night…we were having long days!
The next day (Sunday) we headed to Verona…as in Romeo and Juliet Verona yes. Verona is a gorgeous city! Mary is planning on moving there some time in her future. It’s got tons of history, including its own coliseum. We started the day by getting some Italian coffee. The coffee culture there is a lot different then anywhere else I’ve been. You go up to the bar/counter and order what you want, possibly a macchiato or a cappuccino, maybe with some type of pastry, and then you stand there and drink/eat what you’ve ordered. If you want to sit down you have to pay more. I liked it, and the coffee was delicious!
We basically just spent the day wandering around. We saw Juliet’s balcony, but there were tons of people there and you had to pay to go up to it. The best thing I think we did was climb up a huge flight of stairs to the top of a hill to see a view of the whole city…so beautiful. We ended up deciding that we were tired and headed back to the train station. We got there an hour early so went to the platform to wait for our train. In Italy there are no electronic signs on the platforms that show what trains are coming and going, they’re only inside, so right when our train was supposed to be leaving we realized that we had waited too long and the platform had changed. So we got there an hour early only to miss our train and have to wait another hour for the next one. This time we stood inside and watched the sign until ten minutes before it was supposed to leave and we made it fine. When we got back to Padova, we wend to Mary’s favorite pizza place for dinner. It turned out that a lot of people from her program were also there, so we sat outside on some steps and ate our pizza. In Italy you each individually get and eat your own pizza. I got a delicious potato pizza.
On Monday we stayed in Padova and saw more of the city. We wandered around to a lot of different plazas, got fresh strawberries (fragolas) and gelato. Then we just rested and people watched in Plato della valle, and got tan! After our rest we went to Saint Anthony’s cathedral, which was huge and gorgeous. Near the cathedral there is a botanical garden that we got into for free because we’re university students. It was a beautiful place (everything seems to be beautiful or gorgeous in Italy doesn’t it?!?!).
That night we had dinner with Mary’s host family. They are a really nice coupe and have a really cute two year old daughter. It’s the cutest when she speaks with her little voice in Italian! We didn’t really have a stereotypical Italian meal, but it was in Italy with an Italian family and I think that counts. Her mom made: potato salad, lettuce salad, peppers with garlic, and home baked bread, it was really good.
Tuesday I was leaving. So I packed up my stuff and we took it to Mary’s center in the morning. She had to take a test so I walked to Galileo’s tower. The night before we’d told Mary’s host father our plans and he said that it wasn’t Galileo’s observatory, he just used it for a little while, apparently the Padovians aren’t particularly taken with the man. It was a beautiful day and a great walk, the tower was also really cool. I ended up just sitting in a little park outside of it reading for a while. Then I met back up with Mary and we walked to the train station where she saw me off. I had to go to the Milan Bergamo airport, which was a bit of a trek. First a train to Milan and then a bus – which was hard to navigate to in dark, night time Italy – to Bergamo. I spent the night in the airport again. This time there were no booths with cushioned seats, only hard metal airport chairs.
In the morning I took a flight to Granada, Spain. Hannah and Malachi met me at the bus stop. It was really crazy to see them together in Spain, but also really cool!! We headed back to Hannah’s apartment and she had comida with her family. Then we headed up to the Albaicine (I’m not sure of the spelling) for her architecture class. It seemed really interesting, we went to a convent and then an old palace. I didn’t really understand a word of what was going on though, everything was really pretty. After class we walked to a plaza and had a great view of the city and the Alhambra. There were some gypsies playing flamenco…pretty cool.
We headed back to the apartment, and then by 8 it was time to get dinner, they eat huge lunches so aren’t ready for dinner until late, and then they only eat maybe a couple plates of tapas or go get churros. We got tapas and beer. In Granada when you order a drink you get free tapas with it. The beer we got was pretty horrible, seeing as I’m used to Irish beer, but it was still a cool experience. It was again a relatively early night…sleeping in airports really doesn’t boost your stamina too much.
The next day…Thursday…April 14th…happened to be my 21st birthday!!! Hannah had planned a lot of cool things to do for the day, some of which she tried to keep as a surprise. It was amazing to have my 21st in Spain! Even though turning 21 in Europe isn’t as exciting as it may be in the states, it was still pretty epic. Hannah had class in the morning, so I hung out in a beautiful café across the street. I had café con leche, delicious. After class was over, Hannah, her friend, Elizabeth and I wandered the city a little. We went to some markets, there’s a really cool outdoor tea market that we saw and smelled and then we people watched in Plaza Trinidad (Hannah’s favorite plaza) until Malachi got out of class. At that time, we met up with her at their center. We played guitar on the terrace, what a view! You look up from their location and the Alhambra is just right there, it’s pretty epic!
We left in time to get to the hair dresser for my life changing appointment. At one point I’d offhandedly mentioned that maybe I should pierce my ear and chop off all my hair and get a tattoo for my 21st birthday. I’d already gotten the ear pierced and Hannah took it into her own hands to make sure that I also got the haircut. Anyway, the appointment was at 1:30, which is when we arrived, but apparently they’d written it down wrong, and thought we were at two. Mali had to be somewhere so we really needed it at 1:30, Hannah’s host brother’s girlfriend’s father owned the place, so she talked to him and he said he could do it right then. He apparently had been doing hair and makeup at a fashion show the week before so he was the real deal. I showed him the picture of what I thought I wanted, it was really short and I thought it would be a good idea for him to do a little at a time so I could decide as we go…he didn’t allow this to happen, immediately after putting the bib on me, he sneak attacked from behind and chopped all of it off!!! I suppose it made sense because they washed it and it was easier to wash less hair. Anyway….I suppose it turned out all right, I do really like it now, even if it does flop into my face more then before. Also, in case you’re wondering, I have yet to get that tattoo!!
After the hair cut, it was back to apartments for comida. Hannah’s host mom, Maca, a very very nice woman, had invited me to join them. It was a delicious Spanish meal and though I couldn’t really understand everything they said around the table, their family discussions were great to watch. Hannah has a host sister in her teens who’s a riot. During siesta, Hannah and I went to the Lorca park – the Granadinos love Lorca – and played scopa (an Italian card game) and ate birthday cake. Then we met up with Malachi again and went to “Little Morocco” for milkshakes. Then it was time for tapas…a friend of theirs recommended a place that turned out to be fabulous, they had great falafel, and I drank my first glass of legal (stateside) wine.
Hannah had bought us tickets to see the Alhambra that night, so we headed up the huge hill to the castles/fort. We got there early so we sat and looked at the lights of the city and Hannah told me stories of the Alhambra. It was a gorgeous night to be outside. We went through the Alhambra and Hannah told me a lot of what she had learned in her architecture class about the history of the palace. Outside of the Alhambra is the Palacio de Carlos V, who was a Christian – the rest of the palaces were built by Sultans. Anyway, this palace wasn’t completely finished, but it’s round and has perfect acoustics …so amazing!
There was one more thing left on the list to do, and this one was the actual secret. Hannah wasn’t 100% sure where it was, but it made it. It was a salsa bar…perfect. She was under the impression that it really got started at 2am, but it turned out that people were dribbling out – not that there were that many to begin with – so not that many people were there. We got real mojitos and then we took turns dancing with each other. It was a lot of fun!
Friday we spent wandering Granada, got gelato, watched weird street performers, printed travel stuff and generally explored. We ended the night getting churros at Café Futbol…they were delicious, Hannah ordered two servings, which was a ton of churros, but they were so good…props to Spain!
Saturday was our last day before leaving. We wandered the Albaicine, took pictures, relatively relaxed and packed until our flight to Barcelona. The Granada airport is tiny, there’s literally one flight that leaves at a time so security doesn’t even open until half an hour before the flight leaves. We got to Barcelona super late and after asking some nice police men for directions, found our way to the hostel. There…we crashed.
The next day we explored Barcelona. We walked everywhere, Barcelona is a large city with a lot of interesting architecture. We found a cool flea market, most of the stalls were selling stamps and old coins. It also happened to be Pal Sunday, so there were a lot of religious ceremonies going on. I hadn’t realized before that Palm Sunday actually meant real palm fronds, but there were tons of people carrying large pieces of palm trees and waving them…it was really interesting. Other then wandering, Hannah went to the Picasso museum, which I skipped having museumed myself out in London.
The next day, Monday, our goal was to get to the Sagrada Familia. It was huge and had weird architecture. There was also a line literally two miles long to get in, so we just walked around the outside before making the long long walk to the Gaudi park. He’s the guy that did a lot of the architecture there. It was cool and there were a lot of really good musicians around, but there were also those guys with their blankets selling trinkets all over the place which was not nearly as pleasant. We ended the night playing a game that was in the hostel called Roma, it was horribly complicated, but I won…twice!
Tuesda, we went to the market to get travel food – very important when you don’t want to buy airport food – and then walked to Barcelona’s Arc de Triumph. We also found a park, something which we had been looking for the whole time we were there. But we had to head back to catch our bus to the airport to head to Paris. When we arrived we navigated our way to our hostel, it was kind of confusing to get through their subway system, but we figured it out. We ditched our stuff at the hostel and then got ourselves to Danny’s house. He was actually just arriving back in Paris with his siblings, they had been visiting Ireland of all places. When they arrived we grabbed a bottle of wine from the store by his house then walked…WALKED to the Eiffel Tower to meet his friends. The Eiffel Tower sparkles every hour on the hour for five to ten minutes. We arrived at midnight and it was sparkling like mad, so beautiful (again with the beauty of Europe…I tell you what, wow!). We stayed talking and sipping on French wine (yes out of the bottle) until one when the lights sparkled again, only at one, right before they turn it off, they turn off the main lights and only the sparkly ones go…so pretty.
In Paris for the next couple of days we took a boat tour, and saw most of the sites we could get in. On one day, Danny found all the sites from the movie Amelie and we went around to all of them. This included going to her café, eating lunch on the canal, climbing Sacre Cour. It was a really great visit! In addition to seeing all sorts of cool historical things, the weather continued to be fabulous, as in 80 degrees and sunny…I even got tan. Probably the best trip of my life.
From Paris it was a return trip to Dublin and then a five hour bus ride before I could return to the place that I considered home. When I arrived, my roommates and friends had made a delicious meal of chicken parmesan. It felt so good to return to a place that held my own bed and bathroom.
My roommate, Kasey, and I had been planning on going on an epic camping trip in Connemara a couple days after I arrived home. We were going to bus and then the camp ground director was going to pick us up and at some point we were going to have to hitch hike, it was going to be a grand adventure. However, we were both feeling the money drain, and had to write papers and study for our upcoming exams.
At this point I would really like to go into a rant about how crazy different and weird the Ireland school system, I promise I’ll try to keep it short. First of all, the Irish students take all their classes, fall and spring and then sit the exams for all of them at the end of the year. This comes out to about 8 to 10 exams in about a month. Every time we would walk to campus we were astounded by the number of people in the library studying because we didn’t feel like we needed to prepare that much, but it was definitely because they had a whole years worth of material to study.
So anyway, I’m pretty sure exams went well, I felt good about the two I had to take, and the papers I wrote, as far as I can tell, were pretty solid. Another interesting thing about school in Ireland is the 40% is passing and 70% is high honors. In cases such as multiple choice tests, this allows someone to do really really well if they study, but it also means that they grade papers on a different scale. However, according to the grades that I did get back, I am definitely in the honors to high honors category!
Other then studying for tests, most of our time was spent hanging out and cooking. The weekend after everyone returned from travels was Easter. We really wanted to paint eggs, but the only chicken eggs in Ireland are brown, so we had to buy duck eggs. In the morning, we blew out the yolks, really Kasey blew them, Jq and I were not nearly as good at it as she was. Then they went to church and I baked the eggs to harden them and scrambled the insides and made banana pancakes for an epic easter brunch. The only other thing that happened that day was an epic easter dinner (you get the idea of our lives). Kasey made a delicious easter ham and the rest of us went crazy with mashed potatoes, casserole and onions. Actually, I lied, the Fransiscan Well was having an Easter beer festival so we went to that during the day in between meals. They had a bunch of local breweries come and set up in the heated beer garden outside and we all got a bunch of half pints to try a lot of different beers, it was a lot of fun, I'm definitely going to miss this culture part of Ireland where you go to a pub for four hours and drink maybe two pints but just sit or stand around and talk, it's great.
I did manage to take one more small trip in Ireland. Another friend, Alyssa, and I took a two night trip to Galway and Inis Mor, one of the Aran Islands. We left really early on the 18th to get to Galway as soon as we could, thinking we would need a lot of time to see the city. It turns out that though super cute, Galway is also pretty tiny, and if you don’t want to pay to go to pubs or do anything, after you walk the whole city in an hour there’s not much else to do. So we ended up going to the local library and reading for three hours, I finished a whole book!
I did manage to take one more small trip in Ireland. Another friend, Alyssa, and I took a two night trip to Galway and Inis Mor, one of the Aran Islands. We left really early on the 18th to get to Galway as soon as we could, thinking we would need a lot of time to see the city. It turns out that though super cute, Galway is also pretty tiny, and if you don’t want to pay to go to pubs or do anything, after you walk the whole city in an hour there’s not much else to do. So we ended up going to the local library and reading for three hours, I finished a whole book!
That evening we caught a ferry to Inis Mor. We were trying to be economical so we just bought a pack of spaghetti and sauce for our two night trip, it was fabulous. We made dinner in the hostel. This hostel, it’s called Kilronan, and is the only one on the island, is probably my favorite hostel of the whole semester. It’s basically just a refurbished house and it’s super cute. We went on a walk down the water and watched the sunset and then headed to bed. The next morning the hostel provided breakfast, win!, and then we rented bikes for the day and biked the whole island. There are a lot of cool ancient things on the Aran islands. The coolest on Inis Mor is Dun Aenghusa, an Iron or Bronze Age hill fort right on the edge of some cliffs. There were also seals (probably selkies) and some other really amazing and beautiful houses and countryside. Also, there were lots and lots of cows.
That night we took the ferry back to Galway. We were worried that we’d gotten on the wrong one when it left at 4:30 – we were supposed to be on a five o’clock ferry. But it was fine, it took us back to where we were supposed to be! We spent the night in Galway because there were no more buses to Cork that day. The hostel in Galway was also pretty nice. We thought about going out to a pub for some music, but ended up crashing early, spending a whole day biking an island can be pretty tiring.
We had planned on going to the Cliffs of Moher on the 20th because I hadn’t been there yet. But the cliffs on the island, especially at Dun Aenghusa were epic enough for me, I didn’t find it necessary to spend a whole day and twenty more euro seeing something I’d basically already seen. So we caught the first bus back to Cork.
The last thing we had to do that was on our list - yes we made a list of things we needed to do in May - was to get a bunch of good food from the English Market and have a fancy meal. We also took this opportunity to dress up. We bought a bunch of olives and cheese and bread and opened the bottles of wine I'd brought from France, it was a really great night, all seven of us from our two rooms were there, it was the last time we were all together.
The last thing we had to do that was on our list - yes we made a list of things we needed to do in May - was to get a bunch of good food from the English Market and have a fancy meal. We also took this opportunity to dress up. We bought a bunch of olives and cheese and bread and opened the bottles of wine I'd brought from France, it was a really great night, all seven of us from our two rooms were there, it was the last time we were all together.
After that it was basically just a waiting game until we all left. Christine had already gone home on the 19th so we were missing a piece of our puzzle. We spent one whole day practice packing. Also, Kasey and I made a stop motion video using the 16 bottles of Frank’s hot sauce that we consumed in basically two and a half months, it was really surprising and rewarding to actually finish, we did sound effects and music to it too, really cool!
Now I’ve been back in the states for a day. In that time I traveled from Cork to London and then to Boston. From Boston I took a bus to Portland Maine where a friend picked me up. I spent the night with him and then we went to Brunswick so I could move stuff around in my storage locker. We then spent the day there and I visited with friends from school and seniors who are graduating in a couple of days. It was surreal to go from Ireland one day and be at Bowdoin the next. Now I’m back in Boston heading to the Logan airport to meet my parents. We’re driving to New Hampshire to be able to be in Vermont for Marissa’s graduation from the Mountain School on Saturday the 28th. On the 29th we drive back to Bowdoin and I leave the 30th for two months doing my internship on Kent island – a tiny island in the Bay of Fundy. There I’ll be doing some sort of research. Right now it looks like I’m going to be doing an insect census which will entail catching/killing hundreds of insects and determining what insects are prevalent on the island. I may also may be working with the Savannah Sparrow project, but I don’t really know what that would mean doing. It’s going to be a great summer though, I’m really excited!
On the island I will not have internet or cell phones, or a shower or really running water, it’s going to be rustic and great. My address will be:
Bowdoin Scientific Station, Kent Island
PO Box 742
Seal Cove
Grand Manan NB E56 3H2
If you want to mail me. I will happily respond to any letters I get.
Soooo I think that about sums up my semester abroad. I may continue this blog after Kent Island, we’ll see. I'll also try to post some pictures from the last month or so, but there are a bunch on my facebook. It’s crazy that this semester is over, for years we’ve been talking about our semesters abroad, and now I’ve done it twice, New Zealand and Australia and now Ireland, I’ve been gone for five months and I had one of the best experiences of my life so far. It’s made me realize how much traveling I want to do in the future. I’ve really appreciated living in a different country, not just visiting for a couple of days. We got to know some really cool locals, for instance, the crepe man, who we saw after each of our finals, or Fergal, the barkeep at one of our favorite pubs, The Corner House.
It really has been a life changing five months and I can’t be grateful enough for all of the amazing people I’ve met and friends I’ve made. They are at the root of why this experience was so wonderful.
So this is goodbye to Ireland, I will miss you dearly, but it’s also hello to the rest of my life and all the unknowns and new adventures it’s going to bring.
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