Florence

Florence was beautiful. Lots of old churches and art and wonderful food. The most recognizable landmark is the Duomo. It is on top of one of the churches in Florence. It is in all the post cards. It is hard to tell in the picture, but the Duomo is absolutely huge, an architectural masterpiece apparently. I thought it was pretty impressive. I like all the colors in the Italian architecture. All of the churches were made of the same materials. This white marble, with blue and pink details. They all used it differently, but it had a nice uniformity to it. We went inside one of the churches. It was large and beautiful, no pews. But it did not inspire the awe that Notre Dame or some of the Irish churches have. I am not sure why. Anyway, here is the front of one of the churches. There was lots of beautiful art there. And unfortunately, most of it you cannot take pictures of. No cameras allowed in the Uffizi at all. They have a Bottecelli room in there that was fabulous. We also saw Michaelangelo's David at the Academia. Now you are not supposed to take pictures in there either, but I snuck one. Shh....Don't tell.We also did a lot of shopping. It is the home of wonderful leather and gorgeous cashmere and all kinds of other tempting things. We shopped in the stores a bit, but our favorite places to shop were in the huge amounts of outdoor markets that they had there. Not as claustophobic or dirty as the ones down in the Carribbean, but the same idea. Haggling and stuff. It was really fun, despite the slightly cold weather. The lady kind of got in the way, but this gives you an idea.The views were beautiful, especially off the river Arno. Here is one of my favorite shots from the bridge we crossed from our hostel to city center every day.But perhaps our favorite pastime in Florence was eating the gelato. Now you may think that gelato is just ice cream in Italian, but you would be very wrong. It is much better than regular old ice cream. I guess it is made differently. But it is soooo good, rich and smooth and like flavors that explode in your mouth. It was worth a trip to Italy just to eat it. It was cold enough that we needed scarves and gloves, especially at night, but the gelato was so good we had to eat it even in this weather. So here we are enjoying our lovely gelatos! From left to right- me, Alexis and Hayden, Janet is taking the picture.We had a lovely time. Four days in Florence is definitely an experience I would repeat. Now I don't have any pictures of them, but they had these cute little wine bars all over. Different than the wine bars in the states, they only served wine to drink and had different ones every day. It was €4 for most wines, a big glass too and some of the rare vintages went up to €12 a glass. They were very posh and I really liked them. Anyway, that was my trip in a nutshell. Will post more soon now that I am back in Dublin. Love you all.

Party, Party

First things first, I promised Will I would send him a shout out on here so he would feel special. So hello and welcome back to land to my favorite sailor. (Happy now, hon?) So I actually spent a weekend in Dublin, seems like forever since that happens. Right when we got back from Paris the Arcadia crew had a Halloween party. They have their own apartment so they have become the de facto party hosts. Halloween is not too big here so we had to make our own big deal. So we dressed to the nines, of course. We had party games and everything, this is Klaudia playing pin the tail on the....um...donkey...or whatever that picture Brett drew ended up being.
Casey, Missy and Jess dressed in coordinating costumes. They were Santa's Little Hoes. Combination of Halloween and Christmas I guess. Totally cute and slightly slutty. I particularly like Casey's tights which you cannot see in this picture.

Gotta love the lack of inhibitions in college. Next pic we have Jenny and I mugging for the camera. I was a vampire obviously, fangs are easy and small to pack and make a costume out of just about anything. Jenny is Cleopatra. Her eyes were totally fabulous. You have to cut us some slack we did come up with these costumes pretty quickly and on very small budgets. Awww...aren't we cute?

Next up is Beth and Brett. Beth was a gansta chick. She made a gun out tinfoil and like a hairbrush or something. It was pretty impressive. Brett decided he was the only Irish philosopher. We think he just wanted to not have to wear a shirt all night.

And of course, no Halloween party would be complete without an Austrailian fairy.The ironic part is Matt isn't even gay. (Sorry boys) He is just a goofball. The picture is priceless though so had to put it up. My friend Jessica turned 26 a few nights later so of course we had to go out for that as well. We went to a noodle bar and then to a bar called Zanzibar, kinda that Victorian ideal of the Middle East sort of bar. Exotic and all that. It was a lot of fun. I would post pics, but it seems to not be working today so I must end here. I will put up Florence pics soon. Love you all.

Paris - The Big Sites and a Sad Farewell

The last full day in Paris was dedicated to hitting all the big tourist sites. After all, you cannot got to Paris without seeing these. First we started the morning with a visit to Notre Dame. There was some work being done on the church while we were there as you can see on the left side. It was big and dark and gothic inside, very nice. They held a mass while we were there and I watched part of it, which was cool. However, it was in French of course, so I did not understand that much of it. Still it was really cool. Then we decided to hop into a cafe nearby to have coffees while we waited for some of the other girls to get there who were meeting up with us. Totally cute as you can see, but big mistake. It was right next to Notre Dame, so it was extremely expensive. €6 for those itty bitty coffees. Ah well, such is how we learn, at least the coffee was good. Then we were off to the catacombs, which might very well have been my favorite thing on the trip. See in the 1800s the cemetaries of Paris were overflowing and there was no more land left to make more of them. So they did the logical thing, they dug up all the old bones and made them into a creepy-cool tourist attraction. Ok, so it was not originally a tourist attraction. Still, very cool. This is the entranceway here. You had to walk down these steep winding stairs to get there and just before you enter the place with all the bones, it said this above the door. It says "Stop! Here is the land of the dead". Nifty, eh? Gotta love the flair for the dramatic. So it is literally several hundred feet under the Paris streets, under the subway even. You walk in and this greets you:Thousands and thousands of bones and skulls line the corridors, you have to walk the whole thing. There is no way out once you decide to go in. It was really cool. There were lots of plaques with quotes about death and life throughout. This was one of my favorites:It is a quote by Homer in Greek, Latin and French. It means "It is impiety that is the insult to the dead." There were all kinds of things like that. And you can see the bones stacked around it. It was insane. There were just so many. I really liked it though. One it is just cool and slightly creepy and two it is a lot less touristy than many of the places I went in Paris. After the catacombs we were off to the Eiffel Tower. I mean you have to go, it is Paris after all. While we were there, it was the best weather of our whole trip. Beautiful, sunny, blue sky. This only lasted for like the 30 minutes we were at the Eiffel Tower, but it made for some great pictures!After that we were off once again to the Arc de Triomphe. We used the Metro (subway) to get everywhere, it is way efficient there and has cute art deco signs in most areas of the city. Anyway, here is me at the Arc.The Arc is at the end of the Champs D'Elysess, one of the more famous and expensive streets in the world. It is really wide and pretty, and as we were walking I saw this. Deidre, this is for you.There was literally a line to get in the door. Anyway, great photo op. I just had to do it, are you jealous Dei? Feel special, I thought of you. So then we swung by the patisserie to get a little treat. I must say the patisseries were my favorite part of Paris. But if I lived there, I would gain 50 pounds. Here is Jenny and I with our treats that we ate in the Tuilleries park (in front of the Louvre) at sunset.It was soooooo good. Then it was off to meet a bunch of the girls for dinner. We decided to do it up right our last night in Paris. We ate in the Latin Quarter at this cute little bistro. Our waitor's English was not so good, but he reminded us all of Chris Kattan, he was hillarious. This is us at dinner. The food was good, the waitor was entertaining, then we were off to the bar. Of course, it would happen to me that we managed to end up in a gay bar. But we had fun. We danced with the French gay boys to Madonna and Michael Jackson and the bartender gave the crazy straight American girls a round of free shots of chocolate or caramel liquer. Yummy! Then it was back to the hotel to crash. The next morning we did a little shopping at the stores near our hotel before heading out to the airport at noon. Every morning we had croissants and pain au chocolate and brie and laughing cow cheese and coffee and hot chocolate and eggs at our hotel. French food makes me a very happy girl. All in all a trip of a lifetime. So who wants to go back with me?

Paris - Versailles Palace

This is Versailles. Well most of it anyway. It is so bloody huge that I really could not come up with a good way to photograph it. It is even bigger than the Louvre I think. Way up there in the middle you can see the central gates. It is in a little town now. Back when Louis XIV lived there it was in the countryside, twelve miles south of Paris. Now it is basically like a suburb - urban sprawl and all. The day we were there was on and off cloudy and rather cold. We spent most of the day inside the palace so that was not too big a deal. The gardens are supposed to be so spectacular. But as it was November, there were no flowers, the trees were losing their leaves, and all the statues were covered to protect them from winter. You can kind of get an idea of it from this though. All those areas that are trees to the left and right of the main concourse are part of the gardens too. It was absolutely huge. My digital camera died before we got there, but back in the wooded area to the right, there is a constructed imitation of a peasant village. Marie Antionette used to dress up and go play peasant when she was bored, while the real peasants were starving in the streets. No wonder they chopped off their heads! The opulence was incredible. This is a shot of Louis XIV (later used by Louis XVI as well)'s bedroom. The entire room was gold. I cannot fathom how much money it would cost today to do something like that. The rail was to give the king a small amount of privacy. There was at least a dozen people in his room every morning for his waking up process, but they could not go behind the rail. Still kinda creepy if you ask me. Unfortunately the Hall of Mirrors (supposedly the most impressive room in the palace) was under construction while we were there. This is one of the chandeliers though. You have to do upkeep at some point, right? Anyway, for those of you who are historically challenged, this is a bust of Louis XIV, not bad for all the inbreeding!
Also see the painting from the Louvre that I put in the last post. So Versailles was opulent and filled with ridiculous amounts of history and overdoneness. All in all a good day. That night we went to this totally fabulous restaurant in Montmartre. I got a few pictures of the Moulin Rouge, but on my film camera, not the digital (the battery died at Versailles). And once again we crashed fairly early because it was a really long day. Traipsing all over the French countryside can really take it out of you. I will post on the rest of the trip soon. Love to you all.

Paris - The Louvre and Musee D'Orsay

We got in to Paris in the evening and headed downtown for dinner immediately. We had been on the plane all day, we were starving. We ended up eating in St. Germain (an area of Paris south of the Seine). It was this French-Italian fusion place. Soooo good. I had a salad that was like half tomatoes with this really good dressing and hot goat cheese cakes on top. Thanx to Kyle and Alex for teaching me to appreciate goat cheese. Then I had lemon chicken and chocolate mousse for dessert and French wine of course. The food is so fantastic in Paris. Here is a picture of us out front of that restaurant. The next day I went to the Musee D'Orsay and the Louvre. I spent about 3 hours at the D'Orsay and 5 at the Louvre. This is the interior of the D'Orsay, it used to be a train station before it was a museum. It is much smaller than the Louvre of course, but it is a really cool museum. I may actually prefer it to the Louvre, the Louvre being almost too big. The D'Orsay has an amazing collection of Impressionists and scultpure as well. I really enjoyed my vistit there. I saw lots of Van Goghs, Whistler's Mother, The Birth of Venus, and lots of other famous paintings. I really liked this statue of a polar bear. It was like 8 or 9 feet high and not by a artist I recognized, but I really like the lines on it. Then I headed over to the Louvre. It is virtually impossible to take a picture of the whole thing, it is just too big. But here is Amanda and I in front of the famous glass pyramid that you enter through. They won't let you take pictures of the Mona Lisa, but I got some good shots of some other famous things. Here is a picture of the Venus de Milo.It was real crowded around the more famous paintings and sculptures. So I saw the Mona Lisa, not that impressed. Venus de Milo, Cupid and Psyche which was really cool. There were so many really cool things there. I got a shot of this really famous picture of Louis XIV, cause if anything is quintessential France, it was the Sun King.I also the crown jewels which were some of the more fabulous things I have ever seen. But they would not let you take pictures in that room. Guess they are worried people would case the joint. But I gotta say, it is good to be the Queen. This it the stairway in the entranceway of the Louvre. I just thought it was a really cool piece of architecture. It is right underneath the glass pyramid.
By then it was late so we went and got dinner in the Latin Quarter and then crashed. I had a really good first day in Paris. It rained so it was the perfect day to do the museums. I took a lot more pictures than are posted here, but it is just too many, so when I get home you can all look at the full set. The next day was Versailles, I will post it soon. Love you all. Bon soir!

Killarney

For the first part of my week off Matt and I decided to go to Killarney. That is in County Kerry, on the southwest part of the island. There is a national park there and it is supposed to be one of the more beautiful places in the country. It was spectacular, however most of the trip it rained on us, so I am not sure if it would be even better in the sunshine. We stayed in the cutest little B&B. It was pink. Totally cute, the proprieters, Pat and Mary were really nice. The town of Killarney is real cute and pretty small. We visited a bog village while we were there. Lots of cute little thatched huts. for reference look at Galway or Limerick - they all look the same. The best part were the absolutely stunning vistas. I took about 30 shots of them and even after I deleted the doubles and ones that did not turn out, I have like 15 left. I will only put one up here. There was also this really cool waterfall that we saw. It was actually the second waterfall we saw, this one is always here though. The first was a waterfall that was created soley by the rain coming down the mountain. Now the real one was no angel falls or anything but it had to be at least forty feet high. It was really beautiful. One of the nights we were there we went to a session (live traditional Irish music). It was lots of fun. Tried a new Irish whiskey. All in all a good night out. I was excited when I knew some of the songs that the band sang, I got to sing along with everyone else.
They were called the Black Rose I think. It is hard to remember that kind of thing by the end of the night ya know. Anyway, had a great time in Killarney. Next edition of the blog: Paris (part one anyway).

Dublin Zoo

First of all I want to apologize to everyone for my long silence. I am a bad friend and I apologize. But I have been way busy. I have a zillion pictures to post and it will take a bunch of posts so bear with me as this will come in installments. First off I went to the Dublin Zoo which was really fun. These are the gorillas obviously, they were really cool. I think the dad was in a bad mood though, but can you blame him?
I took a whole bunch of pictures at the zoo. I won't bore you with putting all of them up. Just a few of the cutest. These are red pandas. Now I am sure that they are not really as tame as they look, but don't you just want to take one home to be a live teddy bear?

And of course I have to put up the picture of the otter for Andrea. I spent a good twenty minutes or so trying to get decent pictures of these guys. They are really fast when they want to be.

We saw some wolves as well but they were definitely not up for having their pictures taken. They were hiding where you could see them kind of but not get a decent picture, though to their credit they did have a fantastic vantage point to keep an eye on us. On the other hand, the tiger seemed just fine with being photographed, as long as we did not disturb his nap.

All in all a pretty cool day at the zoo. It is in Phoenix Park, which is this totally huge park here in Dublin, like thousands of acres huge and the Dublin Zoo is one of the oldest in the world. You could definitely tell it was an older zoo. Especially the central park with it's old school tiny buildings named after people who donated them and not the animals inside. Had a good day. More will be posted soon - Kilarney and Paris are on the way.

Limerick and Bunratty Castle

So this past weekend I visited my friend Deirdre's family in Limerick. Are you guys noticing a trend that all my posts are about the weekends? Up above there is a rainbow I caught out the window of our room. Deirdre's dad was born and raised in Limerick so she has about 50 (I am not hyperbolizing for effect here guys) relations: aunts, uncles, cousins there. We stayed with her Aunt Ruth who was so sweet to us. Now Limerick has a castle right in town, I think it is called King John's castle, I got a picture of it over the Shannon there up above. But Deirdre's cousin Gary, who was nice enough to go sightseeing with us on Saturday, informed us that King John's castle is much too touristy and therefore annoying. So we were off to visit Bunratty castle and folk village in County Clare.
Probably the coolest thing about the castle was the dungeon. It was down this tiny winding stair. The passageway was like 4.5 ft high and 2.5 ft across. You had to brace yourself because it was steep. Then you got to this doorway which they have gated now so you don't fall in. And through the doorway is the dungeon.
There it is. It is taken from above because it is probably a 20ft drop down to the bottom there. It was pretty dark but my flash lit it up. The black dots on the ledge are fake rats for effect. Cute, huh? It was really cool. Once you put someone in there, they are not getting out unless you drop a ladder down. I totally wish I had my own castle.

There were some really beautiful stained glass windows in the place, like you can see above and lots of restored period pieces. Some of them are from Bunratty and others are just period. The castle was restored in the 1950s. It was kinda cool because they had a little village set up around it so you could see what it was like to be the peasants as well as the royalty.

Real thatched roofs and turf fires burning in all the grates. All the cottages were real from somewhere but many of them had been dissassembled, brought to the site and put back together. It was really cool.

Then at night we went out with some of Deirdre's cousins who were our age and went to the bars in Limerick. The first night was really fun, the second I was rather tired and we ended up making it a shorter night. You can't party all the time. Then on Sunday we had a nice leisurely day, slept in, had tea and then a lovely dinner with Aunt Ruth before we headed back to Dublin. Just in time for me to catch the Red Wings game streamed live over the internet. All in all a lovely weekend. And shocker, I am actually staying home this coming weekend, but I am sure I will have lots to tell you anyway. We caught the World Cup qualifying match against Cypress on Saturday, Ireland played not so well but won anyway, so we are going to go to the pub to watch the next World Cup qualifying match on Wednesday against...um...well someone else. So that should be fun too.

Until next time, a yellow rose means friendship, I love you all.

Glendalough

On Sunday I went to Glendalough with Matt. It is pronounced Glen-due-lock. It means the valley of two lakes. Which it quite literally is. There is a big lake and a little lake in the middle of the Wicklow Mountain National Park. There are some really cool old monastic ruins in the area. It is the monastery that was founded by St. Kevin. He was the monk who, the story goes, was praying one Lent with his hands outstretched, palm up to the sky. A blackbird landed in his hand and laid an egg there. St. Kevin stood there with arms outstretched until the baby bird hatched and flew away.

In that picture you can see part of the ruins of the monastery in the background. It was soooo beautiful. It is almost reminiscient of up north in Michigan except the hills are bigger and the leaves have barely started to change at all and it is already October! I was actually walking along and it hit me, wow I am totally in Ireland right now. It was like I forgot for a bit or something. I guess that means I am at home here which is a good thing. There are all these trails that go up around the lakes and to the monastic sites and up into the mountains. We did not end up having time to take the really long trails cause we kept getting sidetracked and going to explore all the side trails and climb things.

Like this big rock. You can't see it so well in the picture, but it was quite large, taller than me. So I used the tree on the right edge to climb up on it. See what happens when other people take your pictures, they don't accurately communicate the large size of the impressive rock in your picture. Ah well, such is life. I guess everyone can't be quite as perfect as me. And you know me, I could not be content to walk along the path and just look at the pretty landscapes, I had to go traipsing all over anywhere that wasn't fenced off. It is so much more fun that way. It was only a day trip so I may go back with more friends at a later date.

It is a bit hard to see but that blackness just left of center is actually a cave at the top of a rather treacherous incline that I just had to climb to look and see what was in the cave. It was apples. It actually looked like it was the home of some animal, either that or the messiest person in the world crawled in there to eat apples. But my favorite place was probably the really old cemeteries that circled the monastic site.

You can see some of the really old gravestones in the fore and the big round tower in the back. The monks used to hide in there and pull up the ladder so the Vikings could not get them or the relics when they came raiding. I loved walking among all of the gravestones and trying to read the really old weathered ones. They still use it to this day for people who live in the area which is fabulous. So much better than our icky new-fangled flat cemetaries in the states. And of course they had the beautiful Celtic High Crosses over many of the graves.

Now that is the kind of headstone I want. It was so peaceful there. I can totally see why someone would think it was a good place to settle to contemplate God. And that is now even with all the tourists and paths, just imagine what it was like in the 11th century. Ok guys, almost done, just putting in one more pic, for my mom, who likes pictures with people in them.

That is my friend Matt who went with me and I. I wonder if that is a real sentence structure I just used. See now I have internet access at my house so these entries are gonna be so long and frequent that you will all just want me to shut up. Anyway, that is all for now.