Muy atrasado

So it's been a couple weeks since I got on here and talked about London and promised that Dublin was coming soon! Between then and now, I have gone on two more weekend excursions and have another planned for this weekend. For now, though, I have a free hour before class, so I will try to get caught up as best I can.

Dublin
We arrived in Dublin late on Friday night and as soon as we stepped off the bus from the airport, we were greeted by a couple of friendly Irish folks about our age that showed us to our hostel and invited us out for a pint. We never ended up finding them for that beer but the fact that they walked with us for a couple of blocks for no reason other than the fact that we looked like tourists and they wanted to give us a warm welcome was really cool, and was pretty typical of the entire weekend; the Irish were extremely nice and the three of us -- Alberto, Kelly, and I -- had a great time.

The next morning we took a free walking tour of Centre Dublin led by a jovial, knowledgable dude named GAR (which was short for something but he said to call him GARRRRRRRRRRRRRR). The tour was really cool, and we learned a ton about the city of Dublin and the history of Ireland. Really interesting was the story of the church/pub in one, which, although it just sounds like a typical Irish joke, actually served a purpose when the British outlawed Catholicism; the Irish would dress up on Sunday morning and tell the policemen they weren't going to Mass but to the bar. They would hold Mass in the basement, and, to make their story hold water on the way home, get drunk. (Some crazy dude also came up to us and starting mouthing off about how he was molested as a child because of the priests. Fun day!) I told Gar the story of Tipperary Hill and the stone throwers in Syracuse, which he thought was really cool. That is about the only thing about me that is Irish.

The Guinness Storehouse was an extremely fun museum, dedicated of course to everyone's favorite Stout. It was laid out more or less vertically, with about nine different levels culminating with a free pint at the top of the factory, which was a large circular glass room that overlooked the whole city. I loved eating the malted barley they had out -- the essence of Guinness -- because it tasted, well, just like Guinness. I was EATING Guinness! Even Kelly gave into her coeliac Kryptonite temptation and had to try a couple sips at the "Testing Lab." (She likes it.)

Going out to the Pub Crawl in Temple Bar was pretty fun. We got one of our big goals done in that we saw live music at one of the pubs... not exactly Flogging Molly but rather one guy with a guitar singing folk music. Nevertheless, great times and great beer. We were in this one bar when the Irish national team tied up a key match against Italy. The place went absolutely bonkers. One of the coolest sports bar moments I've ever had... and then as wild as it was, it was equally somber when the Italians scored a cheap goal in the 89th minute and it ended in a tie.


Rome
I got home from Dublin on Sunday night and on Thursday night, got to the airport and headed off to Rome to see Kelly, and her parents who were visiting from America. The Ciampino airport is a modern marvel. It's literally about three rooms! (I love it. Its size is what allowed me to make my plane Monday morning, too.) The Snavelys had a rented apartment for the weekend, so there was no cramming into a mixed hostel dorm -- we had tons of space to chill out and drink some wine. We had a packed itinerary the three days I was there, and we saw just about all the really big tourist sites in Rome: the Borghese Gallery, the Spanish Steps, TONS of cool churches that over there are probably nothing special, the famous fountains, the Vatican Museum (including the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica), the Coloseum, Palantine Hill, and the ruins of the Imperial Forum. I don't have the time to go into each and every thing that we did, but it was all absolutely gorgeous.

Italy is just a very different place than America, the British Isles, or even Spain. The quality and style of life is extremely different. I can't even describe it. It's a modern country, but at points it seems a bit backward or antiquated, too. I don't know what exactly it is or how to describe it, but in many ways Rome was very much what I expected. Long, winding streets, great food and coffee, and people who know what's important to them in life and what isn't.

We ate extremely well. Cheese plates with honey, mixed salamis, and of course, great pizza and pasta -- not to mention wine. The food was a lot closer to what we have in America, just in that the food was rich and made with lots of cheese. My stomach was hating me, though, for breaking my strictly Spanish Mediterranean diet, consisting mostly of fish, fruits, and vegetables. I got somewhat sick Saturday night and had to sit out while the Snavelys went out and got a drink or two. But the next morning I felt just fine. One of the more striking things was how good the olive oil was. WOW was it good -- as much as Spanish olive oil is better than American, Italian was that much better than Spanish. Really delicious.

Brussels and Paris
Last week was an extremely quick turnaround. I got back from Rome, as I mentioned, Monday morning, almost missing my plane. I was home all day Tuesday, and first thing Wednesday morning -- like, 05:00 first thing -- I was up and showering and heading to the Madrid airport that I know oh so well to head off to Brussels with Alberto and my friend Zach! We didn't have a ton of time in Brussels and there really isn't a ton to see, but sometime soon I will copy pictures from ALL of these trips and you can see the Great Square in Brussels, which was something else. Just to put the city in perspective: their biggest tourist attraction is Mannekin Pis, a three-foot statue of a young boy peeing into a fountain. (He apparently sometimes dresses up à la the bear on Woodchuck Hill Road but it's a bit cooler than that. Though I wouldn't know because he wasn't dressed.)

We took great care to sample the local flavors -- we consumed a, let's say, healthy amout of the local wheat beers. Hoegaarden and Blue Moon are the Belgian whites of choice in the States, but there are of course tons of great craft beers over there, too. One is called Delirium Tremens, and we went to the bar the company owns. That beer costs about $60 per case back home, but in Brussels a normal-sized glass was only €3.20 or so. We also, of course, needed to hit the absynthe bar across the street (yuck) and we also had great waffles and fries (the two local specialties). We also had great, spicy Vietnamese and Thai food, which was fantastic.

We took a train to Paris the next day and took a walking tour from the same (free) company that we used in Ireland and while the tour wasn't as good (as evidenced by the fact that I didn't quickly remember her name but I just rememebered it's Anne Marie, she was Irish too). It was still a good tour, though. It was interesting being back in Paris, as I'd been there once before with American Music Abroad. I remembered a lot but I think then we were moving too quickly and frantically to really take very much of it in. I loved walking along the Seine and crossing the footbridges. After the tour, Kelly and Sapir and Kelsey and Robin met us at the Louvre for FREE ADMISSION on Friday night. Kelly and I lost the rest of the group but we were into other stuff anyway; we got to see many of the sculptures that were pilfered by Napoleon from the Borghese Gallery in Rome. There was so much stuff in there I couldn't possibly hope to get to it all, but Kelly took lots of pictures and those will be up soon, hopefully next week.

The next day we saw the Notre Dame cathedral (and climbed to the top of the belltower! Woo!). It was pretty awe-inspiring but there were just so many tourists it was sort of difficult to enjoy. We then headed up to the Sacre Coeur church on top of Montmarte, which is one thing I specifically remembered from Paris the first time. That night, we climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower at dusk and saw the most incredible view of the city in a light rain. Kelly and I enjoyed a romantic bottle of water at the top! She and I then went and bought some stuff for a picnic dinner. We went out and sat on what many call "the most romantic bridge in the world" and had our picnic dinner -- it's where the finale of Sex in the City was filmed, apparently, but the Seine was all lit up and it was fantastic. One of the best nights of my life.



Tonight, Kelly's here and Salamanca this weekend! ¡Hasta luego!