Belfast

Hey! Sorry this is late but on the 24th of May until the 26th I went to Belfast with my friends Katie and Jacki. It was a lot of fun. We traveled by train since it is just North of Dublin. The day that we got there we weren't really sure what to do so we found that they had Botanic Gardens, so we walked down there. We got some really cool pictures of flowers in the greenhouses (all the photos are up). After that we just kind of roamed. It was kinda cool because there was a festival going on in the main part of town, so we were able to eat for cheap. That evening we found a fountain and hung out there for a while. The next day we went on a bus tour of the area including Giant's Causeway which is a buildup of lava that makes a cool rocky area.

There is legend that there was a giant that lived in Ireland and one that lived in Scotland, well the one from Ireland wanted to fight the one from Scotland so he walked across the sea on these rocks. When he got to Scotland he found out how large the Scottish giant was, much larger than himself, so he got scared and ran back to Ireland. Once home he asked his wife what to do because he knew that the Scottish giant had seen him. His wife said that when the Scottish giant comes that the Irish giant should dress up like a baby so that the Scottish giant thinks he is the baby. Sure enough the Scottish giant did come over. He took one look at the Irish giant dressed as a baby and thought, "If that is the baby the dad must be enormous!" This freaked him out and he ran back to Scotland so fast that he ripped up the path leaving what we see today at the Causeway.

Not only did we see the Causeway that day we also saw a rope bridge where it was raining. We also stopped at the Bushmills Distillery, but I didn't want to take a tour since I had just taken a whiskey tour in Edinburgh and actually I don't like whiskey. The bus tour was really nice because we were able to see the country side as well as the coast. The last day we were there we really just went shopping. Belfast is a city of shopping centres and in one we found a Build-A-Bear. They had a cute Ireland bear so my friend Katie and I each made one. I named mine Aoife (EEE-fa) and she named hers Eoin (owen). That afternoon we had a nice train ride back home to Maynooth.

There are pictures of both Edinburgh and Belfast now in the Abroad Pictures Section.

Love everyone!! See you all soon!

Edinburgh

Hello!! On the 18th my friend Katie and I took a flight over to Edinburgh, Scotland. We thought it would be a cool trip and we found really cheap plane tickets. Once we got there we realized what a pretty city it actually is, and it is fairly cheap as well. Our first day we wandered around the city and happened upon the National Gallery which is an art museum. It was free so Katie and I wandered around that. We then got some lunch and took a free walking tour of the city. We learned a lot about the city, but it rained on us a lot. At one point we were near the castle and it was absolutely pouring sideways. Luckily Katie and I had both brought umbrellas so those really came in handy. We learned about this dog named Bobby that was a police man's dog. When the man died the dog sat by his grave everyday for 14 years until he died. That is one loyal dog. We also got to see the cafe that J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. The next day Katie and I got up early and we went to the Museum of Scotland, which is also free. That was a really cool museum because it wasn't just stuff to look at, you could actually interact with a lot of the stuff. We also went to Edinburgh Castle, which is enormous and sits on top of a mountain. I thought that was incredibly smart on the Scottish part, that is the best way to defend the castle. We also went somewhere called The Scotch Whisky Experience where we learned how whisky is made and we got to taste test some. I found out that I really do not like whisky. It burns way too much. We did get to walk away with a cool whisky glass though. While in Edinburgh my dad told me that I should try Haggis. Do you know what haggis is? It is the parts of the lamb that you don't normally want to eat like the liver chopped up and cooking inside the stomach of the sheep. Needless to say I didn't try haggis. Lastly we walked up this hill called Calton Hill and saw beautiful views of the city. We also got lost, well kinda lost, trying to make our way back to our hostel to get our bags, but we found it ok. I would reccommend Edinburgh to anyone looking for a city to spend a couple days in.

Hey everyone! I recently found out that one of my pictures from Berlin was chosen to be on a tour map website about Berlin. They found my picture on Flickr and asked me a few weeks ago if I would approve them putting the picture on their short list of possible pictures, I approved, and a couple days ago they sent me another email telling me that my picture was chosen! Here is the link they sent me, the picture is on the right hand side of the screen. http://www.schmap.com/berlin/introduction_history/p=26506/i=26506_23.jpg

Hello Everyone! This past weekend the SMC girls and I went on an overnight trip to the Aran Islands, off the western coast of Ireland. It was absolutely beautiful and the pictures are up but they don't do the views justice. We started out on Friday and took the long 3 hour drive to the town of Doolin. This is a cute little town on the Western coast of Ireland. We were really just there to spend the night. We took the time to go to this pub in town that was supposed to have the best traditional Irish music in the country. It was really fun to just sit and listen to the music and have a pint. The next morning we got up early and drove to the Cliffs of Moher, which we found out is in the running to be part of the new 7 Wonders of the World. They are absolutely beautiful, just to see the waves crash against the cliffs. After taking some time at the Cliffs we had to drive all the way to Galway. We almost thought we were going to miss our ferry in Galway because we were already cutting it close and we were missing one girl on the bus, and she forgot her phone on the bus. Fortunately we did make our ferry and oh my goodness it was a choppy ride. I don't get sea sick but I was starting to feel nauseous on that ferry. Once we got there we settled into our hostel and we took a bus tour around the island. We stopped at a ring fort called Dun Aengus and took lots of pictures hanging over the edge of cliffs, sorry if I worry anyone. Luckily you can't see how I am actually taking the pictures. It was gorgeous up there, I guess they think that it used to be a little community, but they thought that they were going to be attacked. We finished our tour around the island and went back to our hostel. I went with a few of my friends to this pub called The American Bar and watched a rugby match. For dinners while we were on the island we cooked family style and Saturday night we had tacos. As a group we hung out and watched movies in the tv lounge. Sunday we had all to ourselves. My friend Katie and I got up early and started our day by hiking up a huge hill on the other side of the island looking for another ring fort, we didn't find the fort but we did find a beautiful view on a cliff. As we were up there it started raining on us. We saw a rainbow, but it was too faint for a picture. The view was breathtaking. When we made our way back down we got some lunch and then went sweater shopping. I found a great cardigan for myself and sweaters for both my parents. Katie and I then rented bikes and biked around the island. We were on the island of Inis Mor, which is the biggest of the three islands, Inis Mor, Inis Meain, and Inis Oir. We took a route that was right along the coast and it was beautiful, sorry to keep using the same word but I can't think of anything else to say about it. There were quite a lot of hills and I am not good at biking on hills. It was a lot of fun to ride a bike around the small island. We went back to Dun Aengus, but instead of making the trek back up to the fort we just looked around at the shops and stopped at the cafe for tea and cake. We then rode back into town. We helped with dinner, curry (which I am not a fan of), and then spent the night watching movies with the girls. We took a 7 am ferry and pretty much slept the whole 3 hours back to Maynooth. It was really a great weekend and I would really love to go back to the Islands.

Day Seven (April 18, 2009)

I have decided that Brussels, while an important city as it houses the EU and the European Parliament, is not the city for me. I haven't found much in this city that interests me. This morning Molly and I set out to find the famous Mannekin Pis, a statue fountain of a little boy peeing. When we found it it was slightly disappointing and really quite small, it couldn't have been more than a foot and a half tall on its perch. We found our Belgian waffles and set out people watching. We have tried to have the local drink and famous food of every place we have gone. In Berlin we had beer, got chocolate, and had a bratwurst. In Paris we drank wine, got crepes, and had drinks at a cafe. In Brussels we got chocolate, beer, waffles, and fries. I found out that french fries were actually invented in Belgium but popularized by the French. We got pretty bored pretty quickly today and ended up doing a lot of people watching and wandering around Brussels. In our wanders we came upon an English bookshop. We spent a considerable amount of time poking around there. I ended up buying a copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle because I found a section of classics for between 4 and 5 euro. I chose between that, Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, and Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I knew that I needed something to read to keep me busy at the airport tonight seeing as Molly and I are spending the night here. Getting to the airport was a trick though. We caught the metro to the train station and then couldn't figure out where the shuttle was going to pick up to go the hour drive to the airport. We thought we had missed the last one and didn't know what to do so we asked information at the train station and he directed us straight to the bus, which was in the opposite direction we had been looking and even though it was supposed to leave at 8:30 it was 8:45 and it was still there, we actually waited until 9:00 to leave and Molly and I ended up being the only ones on the shuttle. We are now in the airport with many other travelers spending the night. It is 2:15 am and right before I wrote this I woke up from my nap since Molly and I are only sleeping one at a time for an hour at a time. I can't wait to be back in Maynooth!

Day Six (April 17, 2009)

Brussels has absolutely nothing to do in it. Well it does, but not a while lot of interesting things. This morning we walked out of our hostel in the rain and made our way to the Comic Strip Center which is a museum about comic strips. This year is the year of the comic for some reason, I'm not terribly sure why. The museum was kinda cool but there were like two comics I recognized, Tintin and the Smurfs. It was a great place for pictures though because there were a lot of sets like comic backgrounds. One of the greatest things is that since Brussels is the capitol of the European Union the descriptions either had the English translation on them or the receptionist gave me a binder with the English and it was in there. In that case I was actually able to understand everything but most of the actual comics because they were either in Dutch or French. For some reason there was a collection of Czech comics and all of those were actually in English, I don't know why they weren't in Czech but whatever, I was able to understand those. After we finished at the Comic Strip Center we went on a search to find the office of the map company we were using. There we were able to use free internet and figure out where the Chocolate Museum was in Brussels because we couldn't find anything on it. I was right though, there is one in Brussels. I also figured out why it wasn't advertised much, it wasn't that great. We went to it and it didn't take much time. Once we finished that we just took a walk and ended up at Grand Place, which is the most famous square in Brussels. It is lined with some pretty buildings. After the Chocolate Museum we really wanted some chocolate so we went on a search for a chocolatier. We found a cute one and got ourselves some chocolates. I got a raspberry praline, an orange praline, a couple mint pralines, a caramel one, and then I wanted to try something random so I tried a chili pepper one, it was actually pretty good. We also found a store that only sold Belgian beer so we each got one of their fruit beers. I got strawberry and Molly got passionfruit. Unfortunately we didn't think about the fact that we needed a bottle opener so that became a mission later that night. We also went to the supermarket to get other chocolate because we got a tip it was cheapest there. Lastly for dinner we had a Belgian original, Fries! Tomorrow we are going to find Mennekin Pis and walk around.

Day Five (April 16, 2009)

Not a whole lot happened today. Molly and I started out our day by going to the Grand Palais and going to that Andy Warhol exhibit. It was amazing. I didn't really realize the number of famous people he portrayed. I also didn't realize that he was a commissioned portrait artist. I really do love modern art like that, bright colors and no necessarily clean lines. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures in the exhibit, It would have been great to take pictures of Marilyn Monroe, or Jackie, or Judy Garland. Those were my favorite portraits he did. Once we finished the exhibit we ended up at McDonald's for a cheap meal. After our meal we got McFlurries and walked down and people watched at the Arc de Triomphe again. Molly and I started to wonder how many people's pictures we ended up in. I decided that my favorite was when we were eating crepes at the cafe by Notre Dame an Asian woman stopped and blatantly just took a picture of us and then continued walking. It was pretty funny. Now back to today. It started to rain so we made our way back to the hostel to get our luggage and go to the train station. The train ride was very relaxing and I even took a nap on the way to Brussels. Once we got to Brussels we grabbed our Metro and then had to search for our hostel, which took us a while to find. Once we got there it was like a hotel, I actually think that we may be staying in the hotel portion. We have a private room and it is exactly like a hotel room. Even if we were in the hostel portion it still would have been the nicest hostel I had ever been in. Tomorrow we are going to go to the Comic Museum because Belgium and Brussels is where the comic was born. We are also going to look up information on the Chocolate Museum because for some reason none of the maps or brochures we grabbed even mentioned it. We can get free internet at the tourist office so we are going there tomorrow (we paid for it at the hostel to email home).