Week Eight & Week Nine

Cheers everyone!


These two weeks have been quite hectic and I apologize for not updating this. Last we left off, I was in Ireland and had a few days left. Now I can tell you how it went! I know there's thousands of you hanging on my every word... I'm sure the suspense was just killing you! ;)


Well on Friday we walked around during the day. The weather was just unheard of for Ireland. It was in the high 50s with endless sunshine... Absolutely amazing. So we walked around all of the touristy sites again but only went into Trinity College to se the Book of Kells. I was initially told wrong information on what the Book of Kells actually was, but a super brief summary of it is that it is the Gospel written in Latin by monks in about the year 800. It was set up to be like a museum in a way, where they had different rooms with different magnified images  of it and other writings form the time, and then the actual Book in a separate room. I had never heard of it before I had been to Ireland so it was interesting, yet not what I would consider a huge part of the trip. Everything else we did in Dublin wasn't the most exciting thing either, but we had fun through the whole trip. We mostly walked around the other sites like I said, which were Christ Church Cathedral,  Dublin Castle, Temple Bar (the hotspot area for bars), and O'Connell Street. After all of the walking around on Friday, we went to a concert for a band called Mumford & Sons. We saw them back home at Lollapalooza last year, but since they're from London they had a lot of UK shows and we got to go to one! That was really exciting because they are one of my favorite bands and it was just really cool to go to a concert in another country. It really was no different than back home though, haha.


Saturday is tied (with Sunday) for my favorite day in Dublin and it does not consist of much, which I think is the beauty of it. While the rest of the group went to Cork, Dave and I stayed back in Dublin. We, again, walked around the city to all of the major sites and didn't do much. We went to a cafe where Dave had a really terrible panini and I ordered soda bread that was NOTHING like the Irish soda bread I know. Oh well. It was the only place that offered soda bread, so I'm going to go ahead and guess that we Americans make it a bigger deal than the Irish do. I don't care. I like my Irish soda bread on St. Patrick's Day and I don't care if it's not authentic! It's delicious! Anyways, after all of that walking around, Dave and I were made aware of a huge rugby game that was going on that night at 5 pm. It was the national teams playing, and who do you think Ireland was playing? England. Not only are the two huge rivals, but I was torn! Do I root for the country that has treated me well for the past two months of my life, the country I chose to stay in and can now call my temporary home? Or do I just conform to what the locals around me do in order to avoid any sort of trouble? The latter won by a long shot. I love England, but when in Rome, you do as the Romans, not your other favorite country. I was in Ireland, so I cheered for the Irish... which paid off since they won big time. The final score was 24-8, but they were ahead by about 15 for most of the game. But what Dave and I did for the game was sat and watched it at one really crowded and rugby intense pub, and then just did a bit of a pub crawl down Temple Bar. We would have a drink at a pub and move onto the next. I think we visited about 5 pubs that night. The most popular bar, Temple Bar (it's a bar, a street, and an area,... I don't come up with these things) was a popular one for a reason. When first entering we though it's only one small room that has way too many people in it to be considered even slightly safe, but then after walking a bit, we learned that there were about 4 or 5 rooms within it, each very different. One had TVs on playing sports, one had a live musician playing on a stage, and another was kind of outside. Despite drinks costing an arm and a leg at each pub, I'm so glad that's how we spent the night because I feel like I can say I truly experienced Dublin pubs. Isn't that what Dublin's all about? Oh, and the culture, right. :)


The next day, Sunday, was another amazing day. This was mostly due to my friend from freshman year at Marquette meeting up with us. Sam goes to Marquette but is studying in Galway this semester, so she was kind enough to meet up with us for a day in Dublin. We went to the Guinness Storehouse together and then... walked around the city and went to pubs. I really enjoyed Dublin, but honestly walking around - if you are blessed with nice weather - and pubs are about it. Again, despite what sounds like a bland and plain night, was actually an amazing end to Dublin. Dave, Sam and I went to a pub while everyone else went back to the hotel (which I know I did not say originally, was a 40 minute bus ride. It was worth it though because it was a super nice hotel and since it was far, it was cheap). We spent the night at Farrington's, where there was a man playing music with his guitar and singing. The pub was pretty empty but the musician was playing a great selection of songs. I hadn't seen Sam in a several months, I hadn't seen Dave in two months and the two of them had never met. It sounds like a recipe for a super awkward night but it felt like I was just sitting with my two best friends having a few drinks. It was such a great and relaxing night. 


As all great things, our trip to Dublin came to an end Monday morning, when we flew back to England. Dave stayed in Leicester, where there isn't too much to do, but we walked around the city centre and through the city market a few times. We did go out to a bar with a bunch of the guys one night, which ended up being a great time. Dave and all the guys really got along and enjoyed his time in Leicester. 


Friday night Dave and I went to London for the weekend. His flight home was Sunday morning, so we figured we could go early to see a bit of London. And when I say "a bit", I mean it. London is not the kind of city you can do in a day. Friday we got to London and headed straight to the hotel (which was a 45 minute tube ride to central London) and did no sight seeing. The only sights we saw were the insides of buses, trains and subways. Saturday, however, I made a route for us to tackle London in one day. It was quite ambitious, yet I can proudly say that all things on the list were seen. London, when done correctly (aka, when you have ME as a guide), can be done in one day! Honestly I think some one who wants to see London properly needs at least 4 days. We were a bit rushed and didn't go inside to many museum or take tours but we saw the main and mostly touristy places. 


I have to finish this later... Maybe tomorrow? Sorry!

Week Seven

Dia dhuit! (Gaelic for hello)

Right now I am in Dublin, Ireland and what a wonderful place to be! I will write more about it momentarily, but maybe I should discuss what lead up to this trip.

This week has been quite boring. I had a presentation due Monday, another due Tuesday and an essay due in two weeks. I did not go out at all this week, but simply did homework and wrote papers. Until…

Wednesday we left for Ireland! We all got up around 1 AM (meaning I got about an hour of sleep because I couldn’t get to sleep early and was too excited), got a cab at 2 AM, the cab took us to the bus station where we got on a bus at 3, the bus got us to the airport at 4, and our flight to Dublin left at 6:30. It was quite in adventure just getting to Dublin! The flight was only an hour long though, and once we landed we were able to check into our hotel straight away. That day, despite being so exhausted, we actually got to see a lot of Dublin. We went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin Castle and Trinity College. I didn’t go inside any of them (most of them had no room in the tours) but plan to possibly tomorrow. We got some souvenirs and everyone got some green stuff to wear for the following day, St. Patrick’s Day!

St. Patrick’s Day was absolutely wonderful. My day began with picking my boyfriend, Dave, up at the airport. After bringing him back to the hotel, we went right back out for the parade down O’Connell Street. O’Connell street is what I like to think of as Dublin’s Michigan Ave. It has everything you could want and it’s right in the heart of the city. There’s also this very large (and if you ask me, pointless) statue thing called the Spire right on O’Connell… again, just like Michigan Ave and the Bean. It’s a huge pin shaped statue that, as it says online, is 398 feet tall. I guess it was helpful with directions since we can see it from so far away. It was usually our meeting point because it was usually impossible to miss. But as I was saying, Dave and I went to the parade, unfortunately we got there right as it ended and never did see it. But we met up with the rest of the group (9 people) right away and just walked around the streets of Dublin. It was such an exciting thing to see and be a part of. We walked through a sea of green and people so proud to be Irish. Flags waved on every street and from almost every store, and we saw the occasional face in its entirety painted as the flag. Now I know that St. Patrick’s Day has always been a big deal back on the Southside, but this was so very different. The thing I will walk away remembering about that day was the atmosphere. Walking around on the streets of downtown Dublin is a blast on any normal day, but the feeling in the air and the obvious excitement from everyone around was unforgettable on St. Patrick’s Day.

The day after St. Patrick’s Day – today – Dave and I met up with Stephanie, Dawn, Morgan and Kelsey at the Old Jameson Distillery. “Old” because it is no longer is use and it is now made in Cork. I had honestly never had whisky before and was unsure how this tour would go, but we all had a great time. We first watched a 10 minutes video about John Jameson and how he was so dedicated to his work. The tour guide chose 8 people to volunteer to be taste testers later in the tour and Kelsey was one of the chosen few. Then we walked around and saw what each step of the process entails. After that, we went to the bar of course! We were each given one drink, with the option of a Jameson straight, with Coke, with Ginger Ale, or with Cranberry juice. I got the Cranberry and Jameson which was actually pretty good. This was also the time for the taste testers to taste test! They were each given three shots of whisky; Jameson (Irish whisky), Jack Daniels (American whisky) and Johnnie Walker (Scottish whisky). Kelsey said the Jameson honestly was much better than the other two and all of the other taste testers agreed. Our tour guide explained that American whisky is only distilled once, as opposed to Jameson which is distilled three times. Scottish whisky is cooked in an outdoor oven giving it a smoky flavor, as opposed to Jameson which is cooked indoors. Jameson also reuses barrels from other alcohols (ex: Sherry and Bourbon) to give it a certain flavor. I found the whole tour really interesting.

After the tour, Dave and I walked around to some of the things I had seen the other day. It was such a nice day out and we felt like we could just not waste it. We stuck to walking around and will maybe do inside things tomorrow. The only other thing left that I really want to do (other than Guinness which we are doing Sunday) is go to the Leprechaun Museum! It’s a brand new museum dedicated to Irish folklore and mythology. I think I convinced Dave to want to go tomorrow, so hopefully that works out.

Tonight we plan to stop by a pub for a bit, and then go see a band we both love – Mumford & Sons. The venue is right by Temple Bar, which is the hot spot for bars and pubs. The most well known bar is Temple Bar on Temple Bar (very original, I know) and it’s a three minute walk from where the concert is, so hopefully we can go there either before or after the concert.

We stay in Ireland until Monday morning, so next time I blog I will hopefully have some more wonderful things to say about Ireland.

- Lauren

Week Six

Hallo! (Dutch for "Hello")

This week was definitely a good one! Thursday night we left for Amsterdam and stayed until Sunday, although I could have stayed longer. It took 13 hours to get there - we took a bus to Dover, then the bus got on a ferry to Calle (France) and then drove on the bus again. We got to Amsterdam at about noon, but didn't get checked into our hostel until 2:30 or so. For a moment we thought we would need to go to another hostel, which would not have been good because most of our group got into the first hostel and only 8 of us were left. Yet in the end it all worked out and we were in the same hostel. I was in a room of 8 people; 4 sets of bunk beds and one bathroom. It could have been worse. The hostel was clean and fine by me. The only thing that made me uncomfortable with the hostel was their advertising strategy. They had posters around the hostel of people "before" and "after" a stay at their hostel. The "after" picture featured a person that had just gotten beaten up with black eyes and cuts on their face. Their website has the same idea: http://www.hans-brinker.com/  For some reason they think this is attractive? Sarcasm, I suppose? Not sure. I guess Dutch humor is wasted on me. They also filled every inch of the lobby area, elevators and bar with graffiti. Again, not my taste, but what can you do. I didn't get any pictures of the hostel but I looked some up online and posted them on my album so you can see what it looked like for the most part.

On to the good stuff! Our first day in Amsterdam was more of a half day (do to the unorganized check in process) but we made the most of it. We split into a few groups and in my group was Dawn, Morgan, Stephanie and myself. We ate lunch at a super cute corner sandwich shop where we were happy to find out that the menus are in English and most people generally know very good English. When leaving the restaurant (which feels weird calling it that since it had about 3 tables), we were saying bye and thank you to the waitress/bartender and a couple of older women did the same back to us. It was adorable! It was two women about 60-65 drinking glasses of wine (at 2 pm) saying "Goodbye! Goodbye!" as we walked out. Immediately I loved Amsterdam.

The next thing we did after eating was we went to the Heineken Brewery. It was in walking distance - everything is in Amsterdam. Everything is a 15 minute walk away, which is so unlike the other places we've been (ex: London, where a 15 minute tube ride is standard). The Brewery was a lot of fun. I had never been through a tour of a brewery before so I really didn't know what to expect. It was fun, informative and interesting. We learned about the "smiling E's" on the label: how they are strategically tilted for a bit of an extra appeal. We did a taste test halfway through the tour, which was probably a half of a pint, maybe less. Then at the end we traded in the buttons on our wristband for pints. The whole tour lasted about 3 hours, which didn't leave us with much time left in the day.

We decided it was just enough time to stop by the Vincent Van Gogh Museum. It was three floors but didn't hold as much as I expected. Starry Night is in NYC (which is a total bummer) but his self portrait, Almond Blossom and the Sunflowers were all there. I had never seen the Sunflowers before but loved them. The Almond Blossom painting is actually the background on my iPod and has been for about a year so it was very neat to see the authentic painting in front of me. There was also some other artwork from various artists, who I didn't recognize. There was one poster that is really famous that was there and I'll post that to my album, and I know you'll all recognize it. I remember my friend's mom had it hanging in their house when we were younger, so when I saw it I was just overwhelmed with feelings of home and childhood. Again, a very neat experience to be standing in front of something that means a lot to you.

The next day we got up bright and early to go to the Anne Frank House/Museum, which was a wonderful decision because we didn't have to wait in line, but when we walked out the line was wrapped around the block. It was the house they stayed in while hiding during the war, and is now a museum. Surprisingly, I have never read The Diary of Anne Frank so I knew very minimal about her specific situation. Yet that made no difference to my experience, because there was information everywhere. I was, along with everyone else, so emotional during the tour but so glad I went. I think the museum was done very nicely, respectfully and wasn't overly depressing. We were all nervous that we would be in a terrible mood afterwards, but we were fine. We weren't allowed to take pictures in it, but Stephanie shot a few and I put them in my album. At the end of the tour, I bought the book and plan on reading it very soon. That purchase was honestly one that I am most excited about.

After the Anne Frank House, we went through a market nearby. It was so cute and I got a few pictures of some of the different stands and vendors. The market was on Lindengracht, which is a good representation of some of the street names in Amsterdam. We walked down Lijbaansgracht, Prinsengracht, Damrak and Stoudhouderskade... Yet usually referring to each of them as "that one" while pointing to the map. Interestingly enough, I had a map that my mom sent me a few days before we left. It was given to her at a family party from a family member, my cousin Jennie, who moved to The Netherlands about 7 years ago. She cam home for a party and gave everyone maps of Amsterdam - little did she know I would get such use out of it! The next thing we did was actually meet up with my cousin, Jennie and her family. I met her, her husband and two kids at a restaurant and we went out to eat, while my friends went somewhere else to eat close by. I believe the place we went to was called De Beli and it was a nice sandwich place in the area of Leidseplein. The menu was in Dutch so Jennie read the menu to me, and we sat, ate and talked for about 2 hours. It had been 3 years since I had seen them, and her second son hadn't even been born then. I wasn't sure if meeting up was going to actually work out (due to my weird phone that only chooses to receive certain calls) but I'm so happy it did work out. It was really great seeing them, and nice to see family for the first time in a while.

Once I met back up with my friends, we went on a canal ride from the Southern part of Amsterdam to the Northern part. It took about 30 minutes and was a really great way to see the city. We got one picture of us on the ride, but it wasn't on my camera so when they put it up, I'll upload it.

After the canal ride, we walked around the city for a bit more. We stopped to get french fries and mayo, which is very popular in The Netherlands. The place we stopped at was run by one older man, who was so nice and let us try several of the different sauces and dips (they had about 30 to choose from). He gave us the fries in a wax paper cone and poured the sauce all over the top. Sooo delicious. We walked around enjoying our fries for a while and eventually ran into the city centre, that has a huge statue in the middle. Its nickname is the "Phallic City Centre" and you'll see why when you see the pictures! While we were there, some people asked us for directions - I guess we fit in and appeared as locals! Or at least tourists who knew what they were doing.

Once we realized we were running out of time, we hopped onto the nearest tram to take us back to our hostel. We were told it was about €2.60 ($3.60) for a ride on the tram but we needed to get back to the hostel, so we hopped on. We assumed it would be like the bus back home (or even in Leicester) where we get on and can buy a ticket from the bus driver, but when we got on, the doors didn't open by the driver. They opened more toward the middle of the bus so we just sat down. We looked around for what other people were doing and saw that no one noticed us and no one was going up to the driver. It looked like you needed to swipe your card to exit the tram, so we had a mini panic attack, until we realized we were totally wrong and just hopped out behind some other people. Free tram ride success! I have no idea what we were supposed to do, but it doesn't matter now and we each saved €2.60 :)

Our plan was to attend a barcrawl in the Red Light District once we got back to the hostel, but we were way too exhausted from the day that a few of us decided to skip out on it. So, unfortunately I am reporting that I went to Amsterdam but never went into the Red Light District. Yet after hearing about it, I think I'm okay with that. The thing that's "special" about the Red Light District is that prostitution is legal: along with peep shows, strip shows, and sex shows. None of those things appeal to me, so no harm done. Everyone said the barcrawl was terrible, too. I guess about 150 people started it, and only about 30 people went through the whole thing. The bars were empty, played strange music and expensive (so I'm told). Another reason I was happy I didn't go to the Red Light District was I know the whole set-up of everything would make me seriously uncomfortable. I guess how it's set up is that the prostitutes are in buildings, dancing or what have you, behind glass. There is a red light on them (hence the name "Red Light District") designating that this woman is a prostitute (rumor has it that there are blues lights on some women, which mean that the "woman" isn't actually a woman...) It's considered EXTREMELY offensive to take pictures of any of these women, but if you do, they will open some sort of window and throw a cup of urine at you. Where ever there is any sort of realistic possibility of urine being thrown at me - I no longer have a desire to be there. What if the idiot next to you takes a picture?!? Oh no. Not for me. Nooo sir. I think I made a wise decision. A few friends and I just stayed in the hostel and hung out. We got pizza at some place down the road, where the waiter was really rude but the pizza was delicious.

The next morning, Dawn, Stephanie and I got up early to take pictures next to the I AMsterdam statue (if you could even call it that). I was really happy we got to get that in at the last minute. We got a ton of pictures with it - I got a picture with every letter and a few with the whole thing. I took two panoramic pictures of it and I messed one up quite terribly, but I find it funny so hopefully you can laugh at it as well. Right from there we went to the bus, which took us back to Leicester the same way we got to Amsterdam: 13 hours split between bus, ferry, bus. All in all, I had a wonderful time in Amsterdam and would definitely go back again (and I know you've been wondering this whole time... YES pot is legal. People do NOT smoke it on the street contrary to popular belief. Only in coffee shops.)

Pictures: MobileMe

- Lauren

Week Five

Hey everyone!

This week has been a slower week. A good week nonetheless. We had a birthday within the group which was exciting! Chase turned 20 on Saturday so we decorated right outside his room and went out to dinner in the city centre. We went to a burger place (quite unexpected since Chase does not eat meat) but it was delicious. I never really saw that part of the city centre before; I've just been by the shopping mall. But there is a whole other section filled with cafes and restaurants, which is good to know for other birthdays (we have two more next week!) and when we have visitors. After dinner, we just hung out at one of the houses right in the Oadby student village. We did pretty much the same thing a few night before that, and again the other night. It has been a relaxing, yet still fun, week and I'm enjoying it completely. We don't have much down time after this weekend so it was nice to have some now and enjoy it. 

Tomorrow we leave for Amsterdam with an organized trip through the school. We will be taking a bus, ferry, and then bus to get there. It will take 13 hours. One way. Sigh. We leave Thursday night and arrive there Friday morning; leave Sunday morning arrive back in Leicester Sunday night. So we have two full days to go around and explore Amsterdam. There is actually a lot to see there... not just drugs! There is a Van Gogh Museum, Anne Frank's House (now a museum), Rembrandt's house, and the Heineken Brewery. There are a ton of other museums that I would like to see as well, but museums are really time consuming so I'm not sure how many we'll get to do. I also have a cousin who lives in the Netherlands, close to Amsterdam, so there is a chance I might meet up with her. That would be nice because I can't remember the last time I saw her. 

I don't have a whole lot of time at the moment, so later in the week I will put more pictures on my MobileMe Account but as of right now there's nothing on there. The only pictures I took this week were of us out at the bars and hanging out, so nothing too thrilling anyways. Oh actually I did take one good one! It was this morning while me and Ashley were waiting for the bus. we were just standing around and we saw a chicken across the street. It was kind of just hanging around by the sidewalk and everyone on our side of the street (about 20-25 people) just stopped to see what it was going to do next. You will never guess what it did do next... IT CROSSED THE ROAD! I could not, and still cannot, believe that I saw it. I saw a chicken cross the road. A busy road, if I add. I tried to snap a picture of it as it was crossing (how much of a tourist am I?!?) but I didn't get one until it had already crossed. I took it on my iPod so I'll put it up another time. It was truly a great experience. As Ashley put it, "My childhood makes sense now!"

- Lauren