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)