Life's Blessings

Well hey there! I know it's been WAY too long since I've updated and I'm sorry about that, but at least I'm updating now! 

I've been a little busy since I last updated :) This past week I had the extreme blessing of traveling throughout Ireland with my beautiful friend Sarah.  I can't tell you how wonderful it was to have her all to myself for a WHOLE week! 

It all started last Thursday when we met up in Dublin at Isaac's Hostel (and yes, we freaked out everyone there with our WAY too enthusiastic greeting and squealing).  Exhausted from traveling, it takes me about 6 hours to get to Dublin, we decided to pretend that we were not effected by the lack of sleep and go out on the town.  We enthusiastically walked down Grafton street, feeling very European and catching up.  Then, two museums later, we conceited that we probably were not appreciating the artwork (I still can't remember what we saw) we should stop and have coffee.  Which was a wonderful idea :) We then strolled through Grafton street on our way to St. Stephen's Green- all of the Christmas lights were on and it was so beautiful! Having another hour to kill before dinner time and not really feeling up to any more tourism, we randomly decided to stop in a salon and cut off my hair.  Yes! I walked in and told the hairdresser to do whatever she wanted, as long as it was shorter.  I think I freaked her out and she constantly tried to get my opinion, but it was fun.  During this time, Sarah passed out on the couch in the reception room :) That done, we went to dinner.  After an intimate candle-lit dinner (once again, romantic dates with girls is my forte), we headed over to Duke's pub for a literary pub crawl.  With a group of mostly middle-aged tourists, we bounced throughout the streets of Dublin following two actors reinacting scenes from Dublin's most famous writers (Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift, James Joyce, etc.) and stopping in famous historic pubs along the way.  Needless to say, being the nerds that we are, we loved the whole experience.  I don't know how we had any energy at this point, but because it was our only night in Dublin, we made ourselves walk through the Temple Bar area, stopping in to listen to a little bit of Irish music along the way before crashing into deep sleep that night.  

Friday we let ourselves sleep in a little bit and ended up having to "speed walk" (which looked a little bit more like a jog) to make our historical walking tour of Dublin.  Although I had been warned by someone- cough Courtney- that this tour was lame, we loved getting the 3 hour history lesson.  I guess we are just more nerdy than the average person...We walked through Trinity College, Dublin castle, the Old Parliament building, City Hall, Christ church, and so much more.  Our tour guide was probably one of my favorites- picture the typical disheveled historian who gets really excited when talking about anything to do with the past.  Not gonna lie, I had a little bit of a crush on him :)  Once our tour was over, we stopped in at the Queen Tart for lunch (if you realize that this is the same place that I ate with my parents, then you are a seriously dedicated blogger and I love you for it), it was just as incredible the second time!!! I then took Sarah to my favorite thing in Dublin- the long room and the Book of Kells.  We sat in the long room for awhile and decided that if Sarah ever got more money than she could handle she would invest it in creating me a library just like that one.  The only condition is that I have all of the chairs branded with her crest (which I swear we didn't make....). After walking through the streets of Dublin for a little while longer, we jumped on the bus to Galway.  About 4 or so hours later we arrived in Galway- woot!  Exhausted from the bus ride, we ambled up to our hostel- the Kinsley House.  It was such a nice hostel, seriously the nicest one I've ever been in (way to go Sarah!).  So everything was going swimmingly... until we got to our room.  For some reason, unbeknownst to us, our key didn't work.  Slightly embarrassed, I went back to reception and requested another one.  But, this one didn't work either.  Confused and a little exasperated, we were about to go back to reception when all of the sudden the door swung open and we met our Australian hostel roomie- ALL of her.  That's right, she was completely naked and hadn't been answering the door because she was drying her hair... naked. ya.  So she sat and talked to us for a little while (still naked) then got dressed and left.  After recovering from the shock, Sarah and I made a beeline for the center of town to get, you guessed it, food!  We randomly ended up in an Italian restaurant that was incredible and talked for hours :) 

Saturday was a BIG day! We woke up early for our bus/ walking tour through the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher.  To start our tour off right, we got dropped off in a farm in the Burren for a personalized walking/ hiking tour by John- who is probably one of the most attractive guys I've ever seen in real life, with an Irish accent :) LOVED IT!  He took us through the mountains that his family has owned for generations and talked about his farm and the history of the burren- it was wonderful.  I loved hearing about all of the unique qualities of the burren and seeing the history of the land through the eyes of someone who's family has been there forever.  We also made a lot of random one-serving friends in our tour group (including some crazy Spanish guy.... who almost got left).  At the end of our hike, we all went back into a little room for tea and his mom's homemade apple pie.  We then ambled back onto the bus to go to our next destination.  Our next stop was Poulnabrone Dolmen, this ancient gravestone that was considered by people back in the day to be a place where they could communicate with the dead.  Although a little creepy sounding, the actual site was very interesting and, once again, I liked seeing parts of history that are so seemingly untouched since then.  Getting back on the bus, we drove through Lisdoonvana, which has the largest matchmaking festival in the world (too bad I missed that!), on our way to the Cliffs of Moher.  For some reason, Sarah and I found that Ireland loved us and completely held off rain while we were there.  It was breathtaking, I don't think I'll ever get used to how beautiful the landscape is around here... and I really hope that I never do.  Jumping back on the bus just in time (the driver was super anal about leaving on time- he actually left 4 people there!) we stopped at a pub for lunch and then went to Galway bay for pictures where Sarah and I put all our effort into trying to take jumping pictures... we eventually got one :) Our last stop was at Dunguaire Castle, which was a little difficult to see at night but still very cool.  Once we got back to our hostel, we were more than a little bit tired, but after taking showers we felt ready to take on the world, let alone Galway.  We went to the Quay's for some pub grub before going to the King's Head where we were hit on by some extremely drunk biochemists on a stag night (who asked us to be their entertainment- gross!!!).  Peacing out of the pub scene we stopped for a chocolate crepe and some other forms of chocolate and made a picnic on our hostel beds and had incredible girl talk time (love you Sarah).  However, this little pow-wow was regrettably cut short on account of our really really really rude new hostel roomie who told us off at 12 o'clock on a Saturday night for talking in the room- seriously, seriously?  

Sunday we woke up and hit the streets of Galway for some serious shopping... our plans were slightly dampened by Ireland's famous horizontal rain, but we still got some wonderful things! We then jumped on another 5 hour long bus ride to Derry, Northern Ireland (yes they are different countries) where we spent an hour in trying to eat rice with our hands (rice why do you tease Sarah so) and sooth my throbbing throat before jumping on another hour long bus to Coleraine! Monday we slept in and then went to lunch/ breakfast with some of my friends, I went to class, and then showed Sarah around campus and around the wonderful town of Coleraine.  Because Coleraine is so adorably little, we were done in a few hours and ended up eating at Wetherspoon's pub at 5:30 :) I really liked showing Sarah pieces of my everyday life here- it was really special.  Tuesday we hit Giant's Causeway, Dunluce, and Bushmills (don't you love my attack strategy?) and still had time to spare to meet my friends for dinner at the Anchor before Sarah had to go... not gonna lie, it was a pretty difficult putting her on that train- love you girl.  

I just want to be lonely tonight.

Sorry it's been awhile ya'll, but I've had a crazy few weeks!  I think I'm just going to skip two weeks ago and talk about this past week... but don't worry it will still be obnoxiously long. :) This past week my two wonderful parents came to visit me!  I can't begin to describe how great it was to see them, especially since the homesickness has been kicking in a lot lately.  I think I almost severely injured my mom in my classic run-and-tackle-hug move.  

So they came on Sunday and we spent a grand 2 hours in Belfast (ya, the biggest city in Northern Ireland is THAT exciting) were we ate in the Crown Liquor Saloon (my dad wanted to order something "irish" and ended up getting fried shrimp "is that what prawns are?") before jumping on a train to Dublin.  Although I am ridiculously close to the Republic of Ireland (maybe a 2 hour train will get me into County Donnogal) I had never been there before, needless to say I was pretty stoked.  The most exciting thing that happened on that train ride was watching my parents in their sleep-deprived/ jet lagged state :) Jk, parents- you know I love you! We miraculously made it into Dublin and found our B & B, the Leeson Bridge House safely.  It was so nice to be able to stay in nicer places than hostels, and hearing my dad (who had never been to Europe) talk about how ridiculously small the bathroom was that night was probably one of the highlights of my day :)

We started the next day ambitious and ready to take the city by storm.... slight snag in that plan was that I was put in charge :) And handed the map.  Ya, needless to say, it took us awhile to get on our attack plan, but we got there!  We started in Dublin castle, which was beautiful but looked way more British than Irish, which I found really interesting especially because of the horrible history there.  After the castle tour and spending about 30 minutes wandering the streets trying to convert dollars to Euros, we settled down in this cafe recommended to me by my Irish friend, Ashley.  The name of the cafe was gruel, mmmm appetizing, but it was actually a lot better than it sounded.  We then tried to find out hop-on-hop-off bus for a while (funny story, I spent the whole day telling my parents that we weren't on a certain bus that we kept seeing, only to find out at the end of the day that we were...smooth britt).  So we ended up walking to the Guiness Brewery, which was actually really interesting and we got to sit up at the cafe on the top floor, which is completely glass and has incredible views of the city.  After that, we went to Kilmainham Goal jail and took the tour, which was my parent's favorite part of Dublin.  The history there was so rich you could almost taste it.   That night we wanted to go on a literary pub crawl (ok, let's be honest, I wanted to go, my parents weren't super into it), only to go to Duke pub and find out that it stopped running the day before :( But, we actually ended up having a great night just on our own.  We stayed in Duke pub and me and my mom had martini's (my first one!) and then went to a really nice dessert place and just sat around and talked!  

Tuesday we were a little tired from conquering the city the day before, but we still were ambitious :) We started the day at the National Museum of Ireland, which was awesome but I'm really glad we did it before I had a chance to compare it to Parisian museums.  We then went to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells and the Long Hall.  The Book of Kells is this celtic copy of the Bible which dates back to the 6th century.  It never ceases to amaze me how God has reached out to so many people throughout history and how many people Christ's sacrifice enfolds.  Wow.  The Long Hall is probably the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life, it was definitely my favorite part of Dublin.  It is the most ancient and magnificent library ever (Jill, you would have loved it).  Think of the library in Beauty and the Beast, this one blows it away completely.  Please look it up online, I wasn't allowed to take pictures... We then ate at this amazing little cafe called The Queen Tart- it was SO good!!!  After that we did what any mother-daughter combination would do, drag my dad to shopping! We spent a few hours on Grafton street trying on things we could never even imagine affording and driving my dad crazy :) Although we were still pretty tired, we still managed to fit in going to the Moore St. Market and the Garden of Remembrance, ending with going to the Brazen Head Pub (the oldest pub in Dublin) and then a ghost tour, which was so not as cool as the Edinburgh one- we spent most of the time laughing at how ridiculous our guide was.  

Wednesday morning we waved goodbye to Dublin and got on a train going to Waterford.  I don't know if ya'll know what Waterford crystal is, but if you do, then you will understand that we went to see the crystal factory there.  We spent most of the day on the train, trying to teach my dad how to play hearts :)  When we got to the factory it was actually really cool, my mom was in heaven and we got to watch them go through all of the steps of making their crystal- including "glass" blowing!  After oogling crystal, we got back on the train to go to Cork, where we were staying that night.  Getting in a little late, we just had a nice dinner, watched a movie, and passed out.  This slower paced day was really nice after all of our conquering the previous days! 

Thursday was probably the most touristy day of my life.  I have never felt like a more cliche tourist- it was awesome.  We went into the town of Blarney (right next to Cork), and shopped for a few hours in their wool factory before touring Blarney castle, and yes, you guessed it, kissing the Blarney stone.  I'm not going to lie, my favorite part of kissing it was probably watching my parents uncomfortably lean backwards off of the ledge and try to reach this stone... it was hilarious! After fulfilling our roles as tourists in every way possible, we caught a cab to the Cork airport (and got laughed at the whole time by the driver for actually kissing the stone).  We got on our plane and before we knew it, we were in Paris! Not gonna lie, that first night there made me completely respect anyone who is studying abroad in a country where English isn't the native language- I can't imagine how difficult that is and my hat is off to you.  Regardless of difficulties we had because of language barriers, we found our hotel and had a nice dinner!

Friday we shifted back into domination/ conquering mode with an extremely ambitious itinerary.  After having a lovely croissant and eclair for breakfast (yup, I'm still ridiculously unhealthy, isn't it nice to know that some things never change?), we went to the Musee de Orsee (no I don't know how to do accent marks on my computer, so sorry!) and saw confusing works of Picasso, beautiful paintings by Van-Goh and Deegal, and much more.  We then went to another museum, the Louvre.  Can I just say, "wow." I LOVED it- we spent hours there just walking around in amazement.  It was also really nice because there weren't that many people there because it wasn't tourist season, so I got to get really close to the Mona Lisa with only like 20 other people in the room.  Although the Mona Lisa was the most "famous" thing we saw, my favorite work was probably Venus de Milo, which I also got close enough to touch!  Still processing all that we had seen, we ate lunch before trekking across the Seine to Sainte-Chapelle and Notre Dame.  Words will not be able to describe how beautiful these two churches were, so I'm not going to even try.  We then fit in, you guessed it, another museum (my dad was pretty pumped about that)- the Centre Pompidou, which was filled with modern art.  We actually  enjoyed the escalator all the way to the top of the building (it is a lot cooler than it sounds) and the views from there more than the art (sorry Linds)! Exhausted, we went back to the hotel, ordered room service, and passed out. 

Saturday we were a little less ambitious and spent most of the day walking around amazing street markets filled with everything from fish to shoes.  It was really nice to get more of a real/ less touristy feel of Paris.  I loved counting the number of people I saw walking by with a buret :) We also walked along the Seine looking at the street artwork shops before heading to the Eiffel Tower, which I found more impressive from a distance... after taking naps, we got all dressed up and went out to a nice dinner, then a night cruise on the Seine (beautiful!), and a show at Moulin Rouge!!! WOO HOO! It was great.  I should really give more details, but I'm getting tired of writing and I'm sure your getting tired of reading... so I'll cut it short.

Sunday we went back to Belfast and then drove (ya my dad drove in the UK, talk about terrifying) to my campus and I showed my parents around the lovely Coleraine.  

Alright kiddies, I'm going to go try and catch up on all my work, but, as always, I'm thinking about ya'll and miss ya'll more than you know.  Let me know what is going on on that side of the sea. Love and lot's of it, 

Me

But I won't be lonely tonight.  

Because my Maker's holding me. (matt wertz)