Fall Break

Alright. So after getting back over a week ago, I'm finally attempting to blog about our magnificent fall break! Well, it all started Thursday night. We left Florence around 11:30 on the last train to Pisa. Unfortunately our plane didn't leave Pisa until 5:30. So yet again we spent another sleepless night in Pisa. We don't really have... any good memories of Pisa.

Tessa taught me card games. For four hours. In Pisa.

BUT we finally got on to our RyanAir flight, and arrived in Dublin the next morning! After taking a nice bus ride around town, we decided that the first thing we needed was an actual breakfast. No more Italian brioche and jam. Oh no. We got french toast and sausage and mushrooms and eggs and ham and biscuits and blood pudding (which I liked, even after learning what it actually was).

Friday we mostly wandered around, saw the sights, did a little souvenir shopping. It was great.

Dublin Castle

We read for a while in Phoenix Park

Sorry for the tiny picture, but I guess it's not that important - Trinity College students dumped suds into the fountain :)

Soup and Stew! And really good soda bread! Yum! That night we headed to the infamous Temple Bar. Great decision. We sipped on Guinness, Smithwicks, and Murphy's, and met some locals. We ended up talking to these guys for hours on end. That's what I like about the Irish. They just invite you right in, and it feels like you've known them forever. The other great thing about the Irish of course is their accents. Dreamy! Although then you get to the point of our new friend John, who honestly we understood about one out of ever eight words his accent was so thick. Good thing he just sat and smiled a lot. All in all it was one of my favorite nights on our trip.

The next morning we met up with our fellow Villain (that's what we call those of us that live at the Villa) Andy, and went on the Guinness factory tour.

We wandered around some more after the tour, and when we went in to a small shop to buy some meat for our sandwiches, they gave us these tickets to go see the Book of Kells! Tessa and I had really wanted to go see this, but didn't want to pay the €12. So this was great! It was so neat to see some of the oldest written words in history. That night we went out to a few more local pubs. The next morning Tessa and I hopped on a train to Dun Laoghaire, where we would take the ferry over to the UK. The ferry didn't leave until around 1:30, so we wandered the beautiful town of Dun Laoghaire, sat at a cafe for a while, and found a local market.

After a cruise ship-type ferry ride, we got to Hollyhead, in Wales. We had an hour to kill before our train to London, so we decided to get a drink. On the ferry ride we had watched the beginning of the West Ham vs Liverpool game. Crazy popular in the UK. So we get to Wales and the town is pretty dead. Everyone's watching the game. So we wander around, find a relatively empty bar, and head in. The game doesn't happen to be on here. The bar owner and what looks like her sister, friend, and daughter are all watching some soap opera. So Tessa asks for what is our new favorite drink, Baileys and coffee. The woman looks at us, says sure, and looks to her daughter. This 13 year old girl looks at her mom and says "Mom, it's Baileys, and coffee". The woman nods and leaves the bar. She comes back with her son and his friend, who look to be our age, maybe a little older, who asks us again, "So this is just Baileys, and coffee?" These guys live right across from Ireland! How have then not heard of Baileys and coffee?!? So anyway, he whips this up for us. Then he didn't know what to charge us, so he just charged us for two coffees. Sweet! We're then joking with him, telling him that he really does have to try this. So he makes one for himself, and loves it. To quote him in his welsh accent, "This is actually quite good. Mark, I think you've got to try this!" So not only does he get his friend to try this, he goes outside to all his friends standing smoking, and makes them try this. I'm pretty sure we started a Baileys and coffee trend in Hollyhead. It was great. We finished watching Eastenders with the guys, then wandered back to the train station. The train ride from Hollyhead to London was interesting as well. Like I said, the West Ham vs. Liverpool game was that day, and we just happened to be on the train full of Londoners who were at the game. One group of singing Liverpool fans (raunchy songs!!! Whoa!!) got kicked off the train because they were too rowdy, almost beating up some West Ham fans (who had lost). Then we got to know the people around us, and had a great time talking with them. Unfortunately we didn't get in to our Hostel until around 2am, because the train that took us to Greenwich was shut down for the weekend. So we showed up, got some kebabs, and crashed. The next morning we had to take our backpacks with us all around the city. We tried to leave them at a locker in the train station, but apparently they don't really have those anymore. So we tramped around London with our heavy backpacks all day...fun...

St. Paul's Cathedral

Big Ben

Buckingham Palace

I loved these signs telling you which way to look before crossing the street

It was milk. and bananas. in the same carton. My favorites have united!!!

So the one thing I wanted to do was find Platform 9 3/4 from Harry Potter and take a picture. So as we're waiting for our train to Paris, I went in search of it at King's Cross. Well, the Potter mania must be encouraging them to revamp the station, because it was all under construction. I jumped some turnstyles (I figured I wasn't actually riding the trains, and I didn't want to pay to track down the platform) and found the area between platforms 9 and 10. It looks nothing like the movie. So I took a quick picture of Platform 9b. When I got back to the villa they told me that there's actually a sign for platform 9 3/4, they just moved it. I should have searched harder. I do apologize. BUT we eventually got in to Paris. Turns out that was the easy part. Navigating the Paris subway at 2am, not so fun. Not knowing where you're going, even better. Let me tell you, there are some interesting people late night in Paris. Daaaaang. Well, around 1:30 we manage to find our hostel. Aaaand they don't have room for us. Shoot. So he calls his friend at a hotel and gets us a room there for pretty much the same price. So at 2am Tessa and I are wandering around downtown Paris, now trying to find this hotel. We are beat. And crabby. And tired. Good times. Well, we wake up the next morning still pretty crabby. We manage to drop off our bags at the hostel, and head out to check out Paris. I have to admit, I wasn't so happy that day. We wandered around, saw the sights, then our lunch started to mess with my stomach, so I went back to the hostel. And slept. And that solved soooo much. The next day Tessa headed out to get a primo spot in line for the Louvre while I grabbed breakfast and joined her. And it was soooo worth it. We raced up to the Mona Lisa, and pretty much had the room to ourselves. She's tiny!

After over 7 hours at the Louvre we headed back to the hostel to relax for a bit, then grabbed some cheese, bread, wine, and fruit and headed up to Sacre Cour, the highest part of Paris. It was neat to see Paris by night. So pretty! We then headed to Pigalle, or the Red Light district, and saw Moulin Rouge! According to some people at our hostel, the show there is actually really good. Sadly we did not experience that.

The next morning I got up early and waited in line for the Museo d'Orsay. It was soooooo amazing! I am a huge fan of impressionism, romanticism, etc, so this was an amazing day for me. Amazing! I spent 4 hours on the top floor alone. I mean it was neat to see the things in the Louvre, but seeing entire rooms full of Monet, Manet, Picasso, and my personal favorite, Renoir. The paintings just kept coming! I was literally in shock. I saw the picture that I have on the back of my computer, Renoir's Le Moulin de la Galette, one of my favorite paintings, in person, with the room to myself for a good ten minutes. Fantastic!!

Arc de Triomphe - I utilized my French skills to ask some woman to take this picture for me

Cool clouds while waiting to meet some other Villains 'beneath the Eiffel Tower'. Perhaps it would have been more wise to clarify where we were going to meet, but we all found each other!!!

Villains in Paris - Kristine, Ashley, Ashley, Gina, Tessa

Tessa and I headed back to the Villa the next afternoon. We managed to get the the airport on time, get back to the villa, (shower) and crash. And I mean crash. This weekend we're headed to Rome with our program. Yay!! And I promise, a post about everyday life is coming! I promise!!

Norway!!!!

Alright. So tonight Tessa and I leave for fall break. Dublin, London, and Paris. BUT before I do this, I figure I reeally should blog about this past weekend in Norway, or else it will not get done. However as with everything, Alfred is not cooperating with my pictures, so this will be boring for a few weeks most likely until I can figure this out. So here's Norway in a nutshell :)

First of all, I thought I remembered that Norway was a gorgeous country, but really, it had diminished in my mind. It's amazing! Like I said last post, Italy doesn't really get a fall, and I had been missing that. I thought Marradi had fulfilled my need. Norway just went above and beyond. According to the woman at our campground we ended up talking to for a while, this was the best fall Norway's had in about 20 years. She also kept mentioning that they were just waiting for the snow. Not winter, but The Snow. Different mindset in Norway. It was also great because it was so clean, and fresh, and welcoming. Norwegians love to talk to Americans! And there was no garbage on the street, and it always smelled fresh and clean, and it was pretty!! And the trees! Well, as soon as pictures get up, you'll see.

----------EDIT------- this did not get published before my break. I'm sorry. But I'll finish it now, then start a new post for my break. Also, I've gone through and deleted a lot of pictures from past posts because my free memory space for this blog was running out, so in order to publish new pictures, I had to get rid of the old. So, sorry. If you want to see more pictures, just leave me a comment or something and I'll email you or give you the link :)

But back to Norway. Actually there's not much of a story here. Norway's kind of expensive, so we did a lot of walking around. Walking around and looking at things. And playing in the leaves :) We could have been an add for Norway tourism by how much fun we had in those leaves.

Yunha, Kelsey, Diana, Jane, Laura, Me, above Oslo - you can see the fjords in the background!

View from the plane

Studying our Art History flashcards while waiting for the plane

Our cozy little cabin in Norway!

Roomies in the leaves

Jane and I rolling down hills

Cartwheels in the Statue Garden

We watched Law and Order SVU - in Norwegian!!!

More Ashley cartwheels

Sculpture garden

Tell the truth - you didn't even see me the first time you looked at this!

Cooking in our cabin :)

Early morning sunrise

Breakfast of Champions

Norwegian cabins!!

We weren't sure exactly what Roosevelt was doing in Norway, but we had to take a picture with him

The Norway gang - Me, Jane, Laura, Diana, Yunha, Ashley, Kelsey

The castle we stumbled upon

I forgot to put in that the Wednesday before we left for Oslo, we went to the Opera - La Traviotta. It was great! Well to be honest, I may not see another opera for some time, but the experience was great. And the Soprano was fabulous. And it was definitely neat to go to an Italian Opera. In Italy. This is a roomie picture at the opera.

True Italians

So I've just figured out that I am taking a really long and roundabout way to put pictures on this blog. Because Alfred and the internet are both not so dependable (for those of you who don't know, Alfred is my computer) I've been uploading pictures in 2s and 3s, and for some reason it loads them backwards, so I've been uploading them backwards (chronologically that is). Today I found out that Picasa (my picture software) AND Blogger are part of Google. So basically I can select the pictures I want on Picasa, say BlogThis, and they magically appear in a new entry. In under 15 seconds. I'm in shock. But that's not what I set out to blog about.

This weekend we stayed around Florence again after a great weekend last week. I probably didn't get done as much as I thought I would for just hanging around the villa, but what can you do? Not work harder, that's for sure ;) Hanging out with Laura and her friends (my new authentic Italians) was super fun! I grabbed 4 of my friends, and Laura and her friend picked us up and took us out to Florence. We got to see the actual Florence that Italians see. It was neat to be almost 'behind the scenes' I guess. I felt more legitimate. We sat in a bar, and after her friend Mauro joined us, had a big communal chat. Mixed English and Italian, with everyone speaking a little of everything. It was great! We managed to communicate pretty darn efficiently. Great. But, of course the night gets even better :) They took us up to the Piazza di Michelangelo to see the city at night - they said this a must. It was during this car ride that Laura told me that she'd never been to the Uffizi nor the Academia. I mean geez! I guess it's not as special when you grow up with Michelangelo's David in your backyard. Whatever. I told her we'd go before I leave. Alright, now the city was gorgeous all lit up. But I'm still not at the good part. Mauro had given Laura a ride up to the Piazza on his motorini. And of course riding a motorini in Italy is definitely on my To-Do list while I'm here. So when he turns and asks me if I not only want a ride, but would I like to drive it, I nearly screamed. Of COURSE I want to try driving it!! I was sooooo excited!! So he goes over the basics, I put on his super cool helmet, and zoom off! I was weaving around cars in no time. As Diana reminded me later, not only was I driving a motorini around Florence, but I was driving around a copy of the David. Sooo cool!! She's got pictures of it that I'll definitely be getting from her soon. Don't worry, you know I'll share them as soon as I get them. Possibly blow them up and put them on my wall :) Kidding about that, really I promise.

So that was Thursday. Sunday we did end up going to the Chestnut Festival in Marradi. Yet another great decision in Italy. It's been pretty warm here in Florence still, like 80s. I don't mean to rub this in your face, really truly. It's just that Fall is my favorite season, and they don't really have one here in the valley of Florence. But Marradi is about an hour and a half away in the mountains, and it finally felt like Fall. The air was crisp, the sun was out, the sky was clear, and it was gorgeous! We ate chestnut... everything! The pastries, cakes, nuts themselves, both roasted and not, wine, beer, salsa, everything. Most of it was great (the wine was waaaaaay too sweet for me). The best part of the festival, was that we were the only Americans there. We heard a British couple and a group of Spaniards, but other than that, we were the only foreigners. Yet another truly Italian experience. GREAT!!!!