Ireland: The Land of Green and Guiness

So... last weekend Emily, Elise, Anna, Amry, and I finally went on our trip to Ireland that we planned a while ago and were so excited about! Overall, Ireland will always have a special place in my heart because of this weekend. The beautiful scenery and cozy warm welcome in every pub, oh and huge food portion sizes, made Ireland feel like a very comfortable place to be. Now, here is how it all went down...

Friday afternoon we had a flight in the late afternoon and got to Dublin at about 4:30. Once we finally got to our hostel to check in (which took FOREVER because the Irish are so chatty) and drop off our bags, we were ready to explore our only real time in Dublin that evening. We were starving and really wanted a good beer so thanks to a recommendation from Leanne's boyfriend Evan (who is studying in Dublin this semester) we went to O'Neill's pub and had excellent lamb stew, mashed potatoes, cabbage, stuffing, beef stew, you name it, along with our first big pints of Guiness! After we went wandering around the Temble Bar area to check out some other pubs and see the night life in Dublin! We found a bar with live music, and some Irish dancers, but didn't stay out too late because we had to get up early the next morning. Great first introduction to Ireland!

Saturday we had to be at our pick-up location at 7 am for a tour out into the Western Ireland countryside, so we grabbed a muffin and hopped on the 3 hour bus out to Galway, where the tour actually started. We were just in time to see the sun rising over the green fields for a large portion of the drive, which was stunning! Then, we switched buses in Galway, picked up a few more people, and were on our way! The first day tour was the "Cliffs of Moher & Burren" tour, during which we saw a lot of cool places! This tour included, the Dunguaire Castle, Ballyalban Fairy Fort, driving through the rocky planes of the Burren, Poulnabrone Dolmen, the small town of Doolin for lunch (Bangers and Mash for me!), Lisdoonvarna, and 2 hours at the Cliffs of Moher (and many more stops too). I loved the rocky burren landscape, but the Cliffs of Moher blew me away (almost literally) and stuck out as my, and I think everyone's favorite part of the day. Yes, it was bitter cold and the ocean spray was being blown up the Cliffs, but as the sun shone down on the Cliffs we could not have been more ecstatic to be in Ireland. Standing on top of those cliffs felt like standing on the top of the world. It was seriously one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen, and probably will ever see. Breathing in the fresh air and hearing the sounds of the ocean made me realize how much I miss being in nature after being cramped in a busy city for so long! I was in a unbelievable state of bliss as I gazed in wonder over the Atlantic.

We drove along the shore, taking the more scenic route, to get back to Galway after that and arrived at about 6:00 pm, enough time to see a little bit of another of Ireland's best known towns. Luckily for us there was an awesome Christmas market happening there with all kinds of sweets, lots of knit items (in excess, because there are sheep EVERYWHERE in Ireland), little decorative ornaments and such, and of course, beer. After wandering around for a little while and ruling out sitting and waiting for dinner in a pub, I ended up eating a Kangaroo meat burger, which was surprisingly good! After our long day, with bodies tired from lack of sleep and the damp cold, we went back to our hostel to settle in. We intended on renting a movie from the front desk and watching it in the main lounge, but a girl in the hostel tried to guilt us into going out. She, and really a lot of people, claimed Galway was the best city in Ireland for going out to pubs and clubs and getting drinks because there are a few colleges there, but we were so exhausted that we kindly brushed her suggestion off and settled into the couches to watch Miss Potter, with the cupcakes and brownies we bought at the Christmas market... haha

We didn't have to get up so early the next morning because the tour didn't start until 10 am. There was a bus full of people coming from Dublin that morning for the tour too, and we were happy not to have to be on it. Sunday's tour was called the "Connemara & Cong Tour," and it included a lot more countryside and mountains... fine by me! We went to Ross Errily Frairy, a beautiful 14th century monestary near the cozy little town of Cong, where the movie The Quite Man was filmed (never heard of it... is that bad? haha). We followed the Lough Nafooey Valley Route into the hidden valleys of the Connemara, with it's mountains and waterfalls and, you guessed it, lots of sheep! It almost felt like driving through Colorado or when I was in the South of France with my Aunt and we went to the Pyrenees (clearly, not nearly as big, maybe just the areas getting close to the Pyrenees). It was incredible driving along the fresh mountain streams and I was, as usual, entranced by the mountains because Lord knows I don't see them in Chicago and the ones in Pittsburgh barely count as hills! We worked our way through the Connemara and drove along the Atlantic for a while before coming to Kylemore Abbey, a castle in the country that is nestled in the mountains right on the shore of a lake that reflects its beautiful architecture, and functioned as a boarding school up until last year! We had a great lunch there, took TONS of pictures, hit up the awesome gift shop, and then sleepily hopped back on the bus to head to Galway. Once we got back there we knew we still had the 3 hour ride back to Dublin, and there was a lot of napping on these rides to say the least. Once we arrived back in Dublin we checked into the same hostel as the first night, and headed right for O'Neills again because we knew there would surely be great food there, and were lucky to find a live band of fairly attractive young guys... bonus! Then to bed early because we had to get up very early...

The next morning we had to be out of the hostel by 4:45 to catch a shuttle for the airport (see, I wasn't kidding when I said early!). Yes, we were dumb enough to book a 6:50 am return flight to Paris because it was cheap and went into a good airport... but we made it safe, had a surprisingly awesome full Irish breakfast at the airport, and made our flight. Upon arriving in Paris some girls had to go straight to class, seeing how it was Monday, but luckily I was able to go back to my dorm and crash for a little while before going to the photography lab for roughly 5 hours.

Long, busy days that definitely wore us out, but Ireland quickly became one of my favorite places ever. The whole weekend was filled with sighs of contentment, feeling so cozy and welcomed into this beautiful, hospitable country and bewildered by the inspiring landscape. I hope I can go back one day, until then I will continue to frequent Irish-style pubs and listen to "Galway Girl" on repeat. :)

Crazy Girls in Paris: Photos

Eiffel Tower! First stop, first day.

Notre Dame

Window Shopping... and shopping... on Champs Elysses!

Duh...

Thanksgiving with Wells College

Versailles

Amy's yellow room in Versailles

The Louvre

Quand des amis viennent à Paris: When friends come to Paris...

This week was a little crazy because one of my dearest friends, AMY, came to visit me in Paris from Tuesday to Sunday (today). It was wonderful to have her here. I am so terribly lucky to be here in Europe for this time, but I do miss my friends and family a lot. Having her come was the breath of fresh air that I needed to help get through the last 3 weeks I have here until I can see everyone!

I didn't want to create a strenuous itinerary for the first few days, so we started her visit out in the true spirit of Paris on Tuesday by going to see the Eiffel Tower in all its glory. As we made our way to that part of town she kept commenting on how quaint the architecture was and we agreed that Paris looks just the way you expect it to, just the way you want it to. She was also surprised at how incredibly massive the Eiffel Tower is and how unbelievable it feels to stand right in front of it. After many, many pictures we headed over to see the Notre Dame along the Seine River. We were able to tour the inside for free and gawked at the beautiful arches and columns and stained glass windows. We walked along the river for a little while, across one of the many beautiful bridges of the city (which happened to have many locks of love on it <3) and wandered the backstreets of the Saint Michel-Notre Dame area. Then we found our way to Shakespeare & Company, a well-known english bookstore in Paris right across the river from Notre Dame. With all its nooks and crooked bookshelves, we adored it. We stopped at a cafe for a quick dinner and then headed home to get poor Amy to bed after a long, jet-lagged day.

Wednesday we woke up late, allowing ourselves to catch up on some sleep, and headed right for the Avenue de les Champs Elysses. This giant road is Paris's equivalent of New York City's 5th Ave. or Chicago's Michigan Avenue. We window shopped in awe of all the extravagant designer clothes, and almost died when we saw the Abercrombie and Fitch. It has a huge iron gate to a gravel pathway lined with trimmed hedges that curves around to a small, french garden outside the grand entrance, with a shirtless guy in a thick, fur-hooded coat of course. Inside the poor employees were dressed head to toe in Abercrombie and forced to continually bop along to the music, while having annoyed conversations under their breath. The cologne being piped in through the air vents was suffocating and the lights were so low they were pretty much off... we were trying so hard not to laugh at how epic this Abercrombie tried to be. We were like, "It's not like this is some special brand in the states, there is an Abercrombie in every, crappy outlet mall all over the country haha." Anyway, after we caught out breath from laughing we kept walking and found the famous Laduree Maracoon shop! Of course we had to get 8 in various flavors, if only for the adorable box they came in. Luckily they tasted amazing, too. When we got to the end we took lots of pictures of the Arc de Triomphe, headed back down the other side, stopped for a quick, necessary Starbucks run, and caught the Metro stop home for a little rest. Later that night we headed toward Montmartre, in the northern part of the city, to do some sightseeing before a fancy French dinner I had planned for us... part of Amy's Christmas present from me. We found the Moulin Rouge, went up the hill to Sacre Coeur, another big church with a beautiful view out over all of Paris, found where all the artists usually set up to sell their paintings and artwork, and peeked our heads into a few touristy shops. Finally, we found the restaurant for dinner and Amy tried my escargot!!! Another great day.

Thursday was obviously Thanksgiving Day! We decided to meet up with our friends Elise (also studying in Paris) and her friend Taylor (visiting Elise same time Amy was in town, we know her from Pittsburgh). The agenda included the Chatelet les Halles mall and some vintage shops in the Marais area. Needless to say we all left with a vintage sweater or dress or handbag. Then we had to go back to the dorms to cook our contributions for the Thanksgiving feast later that night (mine was my mom's Corn Pudding). We cooked, spruced ourselves up, and headed to Belleville for the Thanksgiving dinner! We were all excited to see that we had quite the spread: Turkey, garlic mashed potatoes, corn bread, corn pudding, homemade noodles, roasted vegetables, mac & cheese, celery knobs, cranberry sauce, green beans, spaghetti squash... and all amazing! Of course there was also a plentiful supply of baguettes and wine. We talked and laughed and bonded over our incredible meal and although we couldn't spend Thanksgiving with our families, we almost created a family of our own. After dinner we orchestrated a quick clean up and I ran home to video chat with my own family, all cheerfully preparing our traditional Thanksgiving meal in our little log cabin in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

On Friday we set out to see Versailles! We took the train out and were amazed by the splendor of the Chateau (even though I had seen it once before). We decided to walk through the expansive gardens to Marie Antoinette's private mini-mansions on the property while we were fresh with energy before tackling the main Chateau. We were a little early, but never fear, there was a cafe near there with Angelina's famous hot chocolate, the thickest, richest hot chocolate you will ever have in your life. Naturally we couldn't pass it up and shared a cup. In the Grand Trianon (the largest of the mini-mansions) I was disappointed to see that the exhibit of gowns designed by world famous designers inspired by the style of Marie Antoinette was no longer on display for Amy to see, but it was beautiful either way. We walked back through the precisely manicured gardens to the main Chateau and went from room to room, necks craned and eyes wide open, historical commentary in our ears from our Audioguides. Every pressed velvet wallpaper and over-the-top chandelier provoked a gasp and look between us, just incredible. We made it through Versailles quicker than we thought we would, and decided we would try to do the Musee D'Orsay, too. This is a smaller museum that houses, among many things, some of the most famous paintings from the Impressionism Era. We were in shock at the Monet's, blown away by the Renoir's, and literally brought to sentimental tears by Degas's extremely famous dancer paintings. It was at that moment that I realized how incredibly proud I am of my art and blessed to be part of the tradition of dance. Once we saw what we wanted to see, we went home to rest and change, because Amy had not yet experienced the night life of Paris. We met up with Elise and Taylor, as well as our friend Leanne, and hit up a few bars on our favorite street, Rue de Lappe, in the Bastille area, where our dance studio is. Just a fun girl's night out, meeting people and having a few drinks.

Saturday I had a reservation to take Amy to the top of the Eiffel Tower at noon, so we slept in again and made our way, butterflies in our stomach, to the Eiffel tower. We headed up the elevators and once we reached the platform (really it was about half way up, that thing was just too tall for us to go all the way to the top!) and had the most beautiful panorama of Paris before us. Again, many, many pictures were taken between sighs of contentment and disbelief. After the tower, there was one major thing left to do in Paris, and that was the Louvre museum. We knew that we had quite the feat ahead of us, with how HUGE, famous, and crowded it would be, but we just couldn't pass up the Mona Lisa and the bust of Aphrodite, or the "Venus de Milo." We also saw the Code of Hammurabi, the giant tablet that unlocked all understanding of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, sculptures by Michelangelo, lots of mummies and Egyptian tombs, the apartments of Napoleon III, and many other incredible works of art. Once we were too pooped to continue we headed back to my place to change to go out for drinks again, this time in honor of Taylor's birthday on Sunday! We tried to go to a club near the Champs Elysses, but it wasn't open yet, so wouldn't you know, we just ended up back in Bastille where we knew a good time was pretty much guaranteed. We hit up a few bars, Taylor got some free drinks, and we went home satisfied with a great evening!

Today Amy and I woke up early to get her safely to the airport. It was sad to say goodbye, because we had had so much fun running around this beautiful city like some ridiculous American girls. It also just made us excited to live back in the same house again when I return to Pittsburgh in the fall. All in all we covered a lot and Amy was able to see everything she and I wanted!

Places: Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Shakespeare & Company, Champs Elysses, Laduree Macarons, the Arc de Triomphe, Montmartre with the Moulin Rouge and Sacre Coeur, the Marais, Versailles, Musee D'Orsay, Bastille, the Louvre

French food: Crepes (especially with Nutella, favorite), quiche, escargot, fancy french dinner, Croque Madame (like Croque Monsieur with a fried egg on top... yummm), macarons, pain au chocolat, baguettes, strong french Rochefort cheese, french wine, of course

Mission: Give Amy the full Parisian experience, Complete!

London Photos

Double decker buses!

Trafalgar Square

London Cab

Big Ben

Anna and I in front of the London Eye

Big Ben from the London Eye

I love the tube signs :)

Steak & Ale pie with chips and hot cider... yummmmm

Harrods with it's Christmas lights :)

Anna and I with the Buckingham Palace

Tower Bridge

Covent Garden

Phonebooth :)

Circus at the Winter Wonderland

A Jolly Good Time in London Town!

So I think the theme of this entry is pretty clear... I went to London this weekend!!! But first let's back up and fill in the blanks a little...
Between my fall break and this weekend it was nice to have some time in Paris to see some more museums, work on my photography projects, and just live in Paris. My friends and I got to go to the USA verses France football (soccer) game on Friday Nov. 11th too! That was so fun to see a different side of the French, in a big, drunk, rowdy crowd cheering for their team! It is not something we see often so it was very interesting to see a different side of the Parisians.

And, now... London!!! I went with Anna, a girl in my Arts in Wells program who also is a dance major at Point Park! Luckily she has friends who live near London who worked with her at an arts summer camp in the states, so they were able to give us some guidance during our trip. We flew into London, landing at about 7:30 on Friday night, and although we figured we could drop our stuff off at our hostel and take the tube into town to grab dinner at a pub, it took us way longer to get to our hostel than we thought. We were exhausted by the time we got there, so we ended up wandering down the street to find a falafel and kabob place... yummm!

Saturday we got up, had free continental breakfast at the hostel (thankfully!) and took the tube into downtown London where we were meeting Anna's friend Natalie in Trafalgar Square! We woke up earlier than we thought we would and got into town early, so we stopped by a Costa, which is England's version of Starbucks, and had some great minty hot chocolate and praline lattes! Finally we found Natti in the square and decided to head over to the London Eye first! (for those of you who are not familiar, the London Eye is a giant ferris wheel in London right along the river Thames which has incredible views over London). We took a hop on/ hop off bus tour because Anna had come a few weeks earlier and still had the tickets, so it allowed us to drive past a lot of the sights, including Big Ben on our way to the London Eye! Once we got there, it took about 40 glorious minutes to go around, and by the time we were done we were hungry and started searching for a good authentic pub with authentic fish and chips. We succeeded, finding a great pub called Hole in the Wall and I was happy to check fish & chips off of my list. Next we took the tube to stop quickly by Picadilly Circus, a shopping area which was a buzz with lights and activity, on our way to Madame Tussauds wax museum of the stars! After the museum, we were itching to do a little shopping, so Natti took us to TopShop, a famous clothing store that was 3 or 4 stories tall and full of fabulous clothes! After, Natti had to catch the train home, but Anna and I weren't quite ready to be done for the day, so once she headed home we decided to stop by Harrod's before it closed. It was a long day, and once we were kicked out of Harrod's at closing time we found a pub around the corner and I had a great little steak and ale pie and hot cider... yummmm!

Saturday Anna's other friend, Emma was able to meet us at our hostel in the morning and we got on the tube together to head into town. We decided to start by getting off at Green Park and walking over to Buckingham Palace. It is still so strange and magical to me to imagine living in a country that was still ruled by kings and queens, and it also amazed me that Buckingham Palace was right in town. I guess I imagined it being a little further away, a little more private, but there it was, right in the middle of London! From there we walked past a bunch of other homes of royals to Trafalgar Square to catch the hop on/ hop off bus again, this time to the Tower Bridge. Right next to the bridge was the London Tower (which just looked more like a castle than a tower) which now houses the crown jewels. We weren't able to go inside, but it was cool to see and hear about. After, Emma really wanted us to experience one of her favorite restaurants, Nando's, which is a Portuguese chicken restaurant. It was as great as she explained and we felt refueled. As the day was growing later we made the decision to go to Covent Garden, an area with lots of cute little shops, and it happened to be all decked out with incredible   Christmas decorations and a giant Christmas tree! Finally we headed over to Hyde Park to the Winter Wonderland that we were so excited to see! There was a huge Christmas market selling little goods, and then there was the carnival side with lots of county-fair sorts of rides, but all christmas themed. Finally it was time to see the Circus at the Winter Wonderland that we got tickets for (with fire jugglers, break dancers, trapeze asian guy, motorcycles in the ball, you know, the works). Once it was over, we were tired, but Primark, another huge clothing department store, much cheaper than TopShop, was right around the corner, so we decided to stop in and have a little look around. By the end of the night, we were exhausted and we wandered drowsily back on the tube to the hostel, where we bid Emma farewell and packed our bags to rise early in the morning for the airport!

I have sooo many pictures, so it may take longer before a few end up on here. Plus AMY VAN NORSTRAND, my roommate and one of my dearest friends, will be arriving in Paris to visit me on Tuesday (in 2 days!!!!!!!) and stay through Sunday! Sooo.... pictures of London and the adventures of Leah and Amy in Paris to be added in due time!
Bisous ;*

Photos de la Sud de la France

The view from Aunt Kristi's upstairs window :)

Rugby Party feast!

Seix, small mountain town in the Pyrenees, one of my new favorite places on Earth

Me, Max, and Leanne on top of a mountain!

Ugh so pretty!

Beach

Carcassonne, Medieval Castle town

Kristi and Max <3

Ma Semaine Dans le Sud de France: My Week in Southern France

Again, I am a little behind as far as the updates go...

I had a nice break in my semester from Saturday, October 22nd to Sunday, October 30th, week 8 of my 15 week stint here in Paris. I decided it would be best spent with my Aunt Kristi in her home in Lavaur in the South of France, seeing as she so graciously offered to not only to let me stay with her and show me cool stuff, but she also said I could bring a friend! So on a Friday evening, the 21st, I made my way down to Toulouse (a larger town in the South of France) where Kristi amazingly picked me up at approximately 1:00 in the morning! It was so nice to see an American, and family at that! It was definitely time for some R&R for me, and I had been missing my family a lot. We had a pretty easy Saturday, just waking up late, watching French cartoons with my 4 -year-old cousin Maxim, and buying groceries and such. Seeing her home in the daylight blew me away: it is an adorable farm house surrounded by beautiful rolling hills on all sides and a hazy view of Mountains on the horizon on a clearer day. Watching the sun rise over the hills that first morning was incredible!

Sunday was the big Rugby match (the World Cup or something like that... lol) between France and New Zealand. Kristi and her husband Theiry, had a few friends over and we drank wine and ate cheese and sausages and pates. There were 2 other little boys around this day, too, so they were very cute to play with. Then, later that day Aunt Kristi and I went in Lavaur to pick-up my friend Leanne from the train station and we just went home to relax. Monday we used as another lazy day (I really got used to the schedule of waking up late and slowly waking up with the help of French cartoons and chocolate-filled pastries). We just hung around the house, went to the grocery store, and we contemplated our plan of attack for the rest of the week.

We woke up early Tuesday morning so we could go to the Pyrenees Mountains and we started the day with the 2-hour drive to get to Seix, an adorable mountain town on the way to the peaks where we wanted to walk around. We stopped to see the gite that my grandparents had rented one year when they visited France and made it up to Col de la Core, a nice picnic-y area with some small walking trails. It had the most incredible view of mountains in every direction and all the fall color of the trees and cows and sheep wandering on distant mountains... breathtaking! We climbed around for a little while and took a TON of pictures, but we decided that we just had to come back to the mountains another day, so we would gear up a little better for a hike that day. Once we were thoroughly exhausted we piled back into the car to go home.

Wednesday, we decided, was a good day to go to the shore and see the beach and stop in the medieval town of Carcassone on the way back. The beach was also roughly a 2-hour drive from Lavaur, but in a different direction. The beach was a little chilly and windy, like we expected it would be, but it was beautiful just to see the Mediterranean Sea. When we stopped in Carcassone on the way back it was like walking through a little medieval town within castle walls filled with tons of shops and little restaurants. Many of them touristy, as expected, but they had some cool ones with candy, soaps and candles, crystals (I got a few crystal pendants there) and tons with little toy chevaliers (knights) and swords and such.

Thursday was decided to be our second day in the mountains, so we headed out early for the drive (which didn't feel as long anymore) and stopped in Seix again. We went up a different direction into the mountains this time because we heard of a ski resort that we wanted to check out and see if they had any walking paths, or at least any for cross-country skiing that we could just walk. Leanne goes to school in Vermont, so being in the mountains and at a ski resort, even without the snow and all the people, totally made her feel at home! We drove around for a little while, wandering until we found some kind of path, and we found one up where some of the rent-able cabins were at the resort. It turned out to be a beautiful walk... it felt as though we were really right on the peak of the mountains, again mountains sprawled in every direction as far as the eye could see, which just blew me away. We even had a little picnic on top of a mountain. Imagine us plopped down on top of a mountain eating little peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, juice boxes, and ham & cheese flavored chips haha. (France has different flavors of everything, chips, yogurt, etc, and I am convinced that some of these NEED to be sold in the States, ex: Coconut Activia yogurt= out of this world). Once we got enough walking and fresh air, and hundreds of pictures, we had one more stop before we went home. We thought it would be cool to find a yarn shop in the mountians, because Leanne and I are both into knitting on a hobby-level, so we got a little lost finding it but once we did Max pet some goats and we checked out the little shop with every color yarn you could imagine! After the quick stop, we had had enough walking and fresh air, and hundreds of pictures, and we climbed sleepily back into the car to return to Lavaur. Once we got home, however, Kristi made some amazing Boeuf Bourguignon, Thiery made pasta from scratch, and we had a little French feast :)

Leanne and I thought we would have to get up early on Friday morning to take the 6 hour train back to Paris at 9:00 something, but luckily we were bumped back to one at 4:00 pm so we had enough lazy time to wake up slowly in the morning, relax, pack, and bring ourselves back to the busy city. Amazing week overall, I will always be soo grateful that I had the opportunity to see where and how Kristi gets to live, hike in the Pyrenees, picnic by the Mediterranean, and wander though a medieval town.