London, or should I say, FUNdon!

For the second week of spring break, my friends and I traveled across the universe (well, across the pond) to London. The four days we spent there were full of excitement; there's so much to see and do there, and I don't think we could have fit it all in even if there were eight days a week. 

We arrived on Wednesday and wasted no time in seeing the city. The bus from the airport dropped us off in the city center (not in the middle of the freeway this time!), and we decided to walk the two and a half miles from the bus stop to our hostel. Along the way, we passed Trafalgar Square, which is focal point of London for celebrations, protests, and maps. Anytime directions are given to "London," or any distance is measured from London's city center, they're from Trafalgar Square. Trafalgar Square contains the National Gallery, the smallest police station in London, and, of course, some pretty cool statues of lions.

Fun fact: the person who built the lion statues in Trafalgar Square had never seen a lion before, and he modeled them after pictures of lions and his pet dog. So, the statues are said to have the heads of lions and the bodies of cocker spaniels. 

Our walk also took us past the Tower of London, the Tower Bridge, St. Paul's Cathedral, the Bank of London, London Bridge, and Leadenhall Market, which is the street that inspired Diagon Alley in Harry Potter. The London Bridge was very anti-climactic; it looked much like any other bridge, and I wouldn't have thought it was special if there wasn't a nursery rhyme about it. The Tower Bridge, on the other hand, was beautiful, and I loved the greenish-blue color it was painted and how it almost looks like a castle. 

After we checked into our hostel, we bought a ticket to ride the Tube and headed into the theater district. Although the Tube can seem overwhelming, I thought it was pretty easy to use. We never got lost and I never needed anybody's help in any way when trying to navigate the city. In the theater district, we met up with some friends who go to BC and are studying in London. Every time I get to see someone I know from home when I'm abroad, I get so excited because these friends know their way around the cities they're studying in and can show me the best things to do; it's definitely nice having a little help from my friends when I travel. 

The Tube stops at midnight, so after dinner and more walking around the theatre district we had to get back to our hostel. We stayed in a hostel right across from King's Cross Station, and while the location was convenient, the experience was kind of weird. For the first time, we were in a room with strangers. When we got back to the hostel after dinner, no one else was in the room except for my friend and me. The next morning though, there was a woman in her sixties and a girl who didn't speak English in the bunks across from us. They seemed really nice, but it was kind of scary seeing them in the morning. We were asleep when they came in and didn't hear the door at all, so it was like they came in through the bathroom window or something in the dead of night. 

Thursday morning we woke up bright and early and did yet another walking tour. For anyone who's planning any trips abroad, there's a company called Sandeman's that gives great free walking tours for a lot of major European cities. We did a tour with them in Berlin too, and both were awesome! The tour guides are really dynamic and informative, and you get to see a lot of the city you're visiting. Our tour of London lasted for about 3 hours, and I'll do my best to recreate it here with pictures and interesting things we learned. 

The tour began at Hyde Park Corner near the Duke of Wellington statue. Arthur Wellesley, a native of Ireland, was the first and only duke of Wellington. "Wellies," aka rain boots, are named after him. 

We then walked past the Commonwealth Gates are a memorial to countries that sent 5 million or more volunteers to fight for England during the two World Wars. This pillar honors the volunteers from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. The Commonwealth Gates are at the beginning of Constitution Hill, which is the long and winding road along which multiple assassination attempts on Queen Victoria occurred. 

At the other end of Constitution Hill lies Buckingham Palace, one of the parts of London I was most excited to see. Our tour was during the changing of the guards ceremony, and we got to stop and see part of it! 

Her Majesty was here when I was! When this flag, the Royal Standard, is flying, it signals that the Queen is in town. The Royal Standard is divided into four parts: two for England, one for Scotland, and one for Ireland. 

This is Clarence House, which is where Charles and Camilla live. 

Attached to Clarence House is St. James' Palace, which was built by King Henry VIII and is the Queen's official residence. St. James' Palace is guarded by Welsh guards. We got to take pictures with them, but unfortunately couldn't make them laugh. 

The Crimean War Memorial has a statue of Florence Nightingale, who is famous for recognizing the importance of sanitation in hospitals. Our tour guide pointed out how ironic this is because even today many people in England don't refrigerate their milk, eggs, and butter, which, of course, causes them to get sick. 

We passed through Trafalgar Square again...

... and then walked through the Admiralty Arch, which contains the smallest statue in Britain, a nose. The nose was put there by an artist who wanted to protest the use of CCTVs in London; the average Briton is caught on tape over 70 times a day. 

Next up was the Horse Guard's Parade, which is where the Queen's birthday parade is held every year and where the beach volleyball matches in the 2012 Olympics took place. 

Behind the Horse Guard's Parade is 10 Downing Street, which is where the Prime Minister lives. 

Westminster Abbey, the Palace of Westminster, and Big Ben are all right next to each other and were the last stop on the tour. 

The Palace at Westminster is where both houses of Parliament, (the House of Lords and the House of Commons) are held. 

Most people think the clock tower is named Big Ben, but it's actually the bell inside the tower that has this nickname. So, no one can technically see Big Ben, you can only hear it. 

After the walking tour we wandered through Kensington Gardens to see Kensington Palace, which is where Prince William and Kate Middleton are supposed to move into this summer! We got a little lost getting there though, and walked down the street that runs parallel to the gardens before we actually found them. The street we were on, Palace Avenue, is where a lot of foreign ambassadors live. When we walked past the Greek house, there were two guards in front of it and a well-dressed woman wearing sunglasses quickly walked from the house into a fancy car. I'm not sure who she was, but it seemed like she was important! Kensington Gardens are adjacent to Hyde Park, so after we found the gardens and walked through them, we went back to Hyde Park and saw the parts of it that we didn't see on the tour, like the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain and the Peter Pan Statue. For some reason, seeing the Peter Pan statue was one of my favorite things in London. I think it's really cool that a city that's so busy and professional has a statue commemorating a story that epitomizes childhood innocence. 

By the time we finished walking around the parks, it was getting dark, so we decided to go to Harrod's, which is a famous department store. Harrod's is huge and has everything from designer handbags to children's toys, but I bet it attracts more tourists than actual customers. I didn't buy anything (obviously), but it was fun to look around and spray some of the 400 pound (pounds as in the British currency, not the weight measurement) perfume that they had in the bathroom on my wrists. 

When Harrod's is lit up at night, it looks like there's a sky of diamonds. 

On Friday morning, we got up early and took the Tube to Abbey Road to walk across it and try to emulate The Beatles album cover. It was a little hard to do because there was a lot of traffic, but we finally got a semi-cool picture. If only I had gone with three other friends...

Friday afternoon we took the train from King's Cross Station (where the Hogwarts Express departs from Platform 9 3/4) to Harry Potter Studios, where we got to tour the sets that were used in the Harry Potter films. I had never been on a movie set before, and it was so cool to see the costumes and the sets and to learn about different special effects. We even got to sit on a broomstick that had a green screen in the background and be filmed like we were playing quidditch.

The Great Hall at Hogwarts

Hagrid's motorcycle, the Knight bus, and the Dursley's house

Diagon Alley...

... and Ledenhall Market, the real street that inspired it

We left London on Saturday afternoon, but we still had time to see a few more things in the morning! Our hostel was right across the street from the British Libraries, which house the Magna Carta, a Gutenberg Bible, handwritten Beatles song lyrics, and diaries from William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and other paperback writers. I could have spent hours here looking at all of the books and exploring the special reading rooms. After leaving the coolest library in the world, we bought a one-way ticket to Westminster, and we walked around there again and across the London Bridge to the south side of London. As we usually do on weekend trips, we walked around with no agenda and went anywhere that seemed interesting. We passed by the Globe Theatre, where all of Shakespeare's plays were originally performed, and went into an art gallery across the street. There was a special exhibit going on in the gallery called Shifting Perspectives, which was a photography exhibit about Downs syndrome. Most of the photos were of children with Downs doing "normal" things that people often think that people with special needs can't, or shouldn't be allowed, to do. A lot of the photos were taken by their parents, or by people with Down syndrome themselves. As many of you who are reading this probably know, special education and equal treatment of people with disabilities is really important to me, and I loved that people with Down syndrome were being represented in such a positive way. 

Like the British Libraries, I could have spent much more time at the Shifting Perspectives exhibit than I did, but I had a plane to catch. For the first time though, I didn't feel ready to leave the place I was visiting!  London is definitely my favorite city that I've traveled to so far, and I hope it won't be long until I get to go again. 

Italy Part 2: Rome

Mass outside the Vatican

 My friends and I planned our spring break trip at the end of January, and we could not have chosen a better time to Italy; we  left Florence Rome on Monday night and the conclave began on Tuesday! So, of course the first thing we did on Tuesday morning was make our way over to the Vatican. When we got there, mass was being held in St. Peter's Basilica and was projected onto big screens into the courtyard outside. The mass was in Italian, and I could understand some of it since I took Italian in high school. When the mass ended, we went inside St. Peter's, and I couldn't believe that I was in a building where so many important people had been literally minutes before and that was the center of worldwide news. The inside of St. Peter's was incredible, and I was blown away by how intricate all of the architecture, paintings, and windows were.

Altar at St. Peter's

Dome of St. Peter's

Colosseum

As much as I would have loved to see smoke that signaled the results of a vote for pope, we were only in Rome for three days, and it wouldn't have made sense for us to spend hours waiting for the smoke. Understandably, Rome was very crowded while we were there, but since most people stayed near the Vatican awaiting the selection of a new pope, a lot of other major Roman landmarks weren't crowded at all. We waited for less than ten minutes to see the Colosseum, and next to St. Peter's, this was my favorite thing that I saw in Rome. I never realized how massive the Colosseum actually is, and it took much longer to walk through it than I expected. Seeing the Colosseum made me want to go back to my World Civilizations class I took freshman year of high school; I definitely have a new appreciation for ancient history that I never did before seeing the remnants of ancient Rome.

The Colosseum is right across from the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill, and we got tickets that allowed us to go to all three. The Forum was the center of Ancient Rome, and it served as the site of political speeches, elections, gladiator matches, and criminal trials. Palatine Hill is integral in Roman mythology because it's where the wolf that found Romulus and Remus is said to have found the boys, and it's also known as the site where Hercules defeated Cacus. Like the Colosseum, I had no idea how big Palatine Hill was, and my friends and I almost got lost wandering through it.

We didn't let the rain "ruin" our spring break in Rome! 

A stadium on Palatine Hill

During the rest of the trip, we went to all of the "must-see" tourist attractions that we could think of, like...

The Spanish Steps

The Pantheon

The Trevi Fountain

The Mouth of Truth: I had never heard of this before coming to Rome, but according to legend, if you put your hand in the mouth of this statue and it bites your hand off, it means you're a liar. Fortunately, my hand came out in one piece! 

Della Palma: not exactly a famous landmark, but as a gelato place with 150 flavors, I thought it was pretty blog - worthy. The dark chocolate raspberry gelato I had here was probably my favorite gelato that I had the entire time I was in Italy! 

The most exciting part of the trip was on Wednesday night when my friends and I were cooking dinner in our hostel. At around 7:40 pm we heard church bells ringing, and as soon as we realized that it wasn't a normal interval for church bells to ring, we knew that the bells were signaling that a new pope had been chosen! We didn't get to see the smoke, but I loved that we got news of the new pope in the same way that people in Rome found out about a pope before the advent of technology. It was really nice to learn about such a significant event from a source other than the news, a smartphone, or a newspaper. I soon found out from a friend that Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a Jesuit from Argentina, would take the name Francis and be the new pope. Since BC is a Jesuit school, I was so excited that a Jesuit pope was chosen, and I still cannot believe that I was with BC friends in Rome when this happened! I know I would have loved Italy no matter what, but being in Rome when the pope was chosen is something I will always remember.

Italy Part 1: Florence

Spring break at UCD is two weeks long, and I spent the first half of it in Italy. Italy was the number one place I wanted to make sure to visit while abroad, and I'm so glad I got to go. I went with most of the same people that I've been traveling with this whole time, and words cannot even describe how much I loved going here. 

We started our journey in Milan, where we stayed for less than a day. The small bits of the city that I saw were not as exciting as I was expecting them to be, and I probably would have liked Milan a lot more if I spent more time there. We got to see the Duomo, which was beautiful and only a hint of what beautiful architecture would follow in the other places we went.

The Duomo in Milan

That night we took a bus to Florence, and the trip there was quite difficult (and that's an understatement). The bus ride was about two hours long, and our tickets said that we would be dropped off at a train station in the center of Florence. Instead, the bus driver dropped us off on the side of the highway about 100 yards from a tollbooth, said to us in broken English, "walk 10 minutes that way and you'll be in Florence. Good luck!", and drove off. For a while we all just stood there wondering what to do. It was 11:00 at night, pouring rain, and we had no idea where we were. Fortunately, a couple in their early 30s who just happened to pull over near us called us a taxi, which came shortly thereafter and took us to the apartment we stayed in. Even though this was pretty scary, we were all okay and now find it hilarious. If there's one thing that I learned though, unless you feel like walking half a mile along the side of a highway, never ever ever ever take a bus from Milan to Florence. 

We stayed in an apartment in Florence for three days, and I absolutely loved it there! While we were in there, we walked everywhere and explored the city by foot. We walked from one side of the city to the other by crossing the Ponte Vecchio, which is a bridge that spans the Arno River. There were lots of outdoor vendors and shops on the way to the bridge and lining the bridge itself, and when we weren't busy looking at the views or taking pictures, we were trying to convince the vendors that we did not want to buy leather jackets, umbrellas, bracelets, or bird seed.

Sitting on the ledge of the Ponte Vecchio

The apartment we stayed in was less than a 10 minute walk from the Duomo, and I thought this Duomo was even more beautiful than the one in Milan. We climbed up 463 steps to the top, and the view from up there was spectacular. I know that sounds so cliche, but I can't think of any other words to describe it. The sun came up for just a little while when we were up there, which made the hike up completely worthwhile.

View from the top of the Duomo in Florence

More of the view from the top of the Duomo in Florence

 

Piazza di Michelangelo

We got to see more amazing views of Florence when we walked to the Piazza di Michelangelo. You can see the Duomo from the Piazza di Michelangelo, and it was really cool to get such a great view of the city from two different spots. Unfortunately the sun was not shining while we were here. but walking to the top of the Piazza di Michelangelo was still one of my favorite things we did in Florence.

Florence is in Tuscany, and no trip to Tuscany would be complete without a wine tasting! On Sunday we ventured out of the city and into Chianti, where we got a private tour of the Montefioralle vineyard. Montefioralle is one of the smallest vineyards in Chianti and produces only 10,000 bottles of wine a year. On the tour we learned about how wine is made and got to try seven different types; my favorite was their Chianti Classico from 2009. I didn't really know anything about wine before the tour, so it was cool to learn more about it and meet the owners of this small, family-run vineyard.

The owner of the Montefioralle vineyard made all of us appetizers to go with our wine

Montefioralle vineyard

Montefioralle vineyard, about 5 minutes before a thunderstorm

Although we got to do a lot of awesome things in Florence, some of our plans were foiled because of the rain. We couldn't go hiking or on a bike tour like we wanted to, and a botanical garden we wanted to visit was closed. We also didn't get to see the David statue because the museum it's in was closed for renovations. However, the food there more than made up for all of the struggles we had with the bus and the rain. Everything I ate in Florence was delicious, and I think I said "This is literally the best thing I've ever eaten!!!!!!!" after every meal. The pasta, pizza, bread, prosciutto (which I normally don't like but for some reason loved in Italy), and of course, gelato, was all so good! We got gelato at least once a day, and I tried eleven flavors in total (vanilla with Nutella swirl, espresso, dark chocolate, stracciatella, cheesecake, hazelnut, lemon cream, vanilla and cookies, Nutella, dark chocolate raspberry, and white chocolate chip, in case you were wondering!) between Milan, Florence, and Rome. I am not joking when I say would fly back to Florence just to eat the spinach ricotta ravioli at Dante's or the prosciutto, mozzarella, and sundried tomato sandwich at All'antico Vinaio. 

Florence was a nice, relaxing vacation, and on Monday night we took a train to Rome. Like Florence, Rome was absolutely amazing, and I'll write about it in another post. 

On another note, I would like to wish a very very happy birthday to my mom!! Mom, I love you so much and hope your birthday is as wonderful as you are! 

BC in Ireland

These past two weeks have been so hectic (in a good way)! Between having friends come visit, going on more trips around Ireland, starting spring break in Italy, and all of the St. Patrick's Day festivities that went on in Dublin, I've been too busy having new adventures to write about them! I'll try to get caught up in the next 2 days before I leave for London for the second half of my spring break, and I'll divide my posts up based on where I traveled.

For the first weekend in March, I on a trip to Kilkenny with the BC class I'm taking. Kilkenny is about an hour and a half away from Dublin, and it reminded me a lot of Kinsale, which I went to on my way back from Cork. We stayed in Kilkenny for one night, and it was a great chance to get to know the other people from BC who are here a little better. Like most of the other trips I've been on, we started the weekend with a walking tour of the city. We learned about the history of Kilkenny, and my favorite part was learning about the Alice Kyteler witch trials that occurred in 1324. Kyteler was accused of sorcery, blasphemy, and animal torture. After she was condemned, she fled the country and there are no records of her life after this stage. Today, there are still legends of her haunting parts of town.

In addition to the walking tour of the city, we got to tour Kilkenny Castle, which was one of the coolest castles I've seen since coming to Ireland. It was built in 1195 and owned by the powerful Butler family from 1391 until 1967 when it was sold to the Castle Restoration Committee for 50 euro. The outside of the castle looks much like it did during medieval times, but the inside still looks the way it did in the 1930s when the Butlers still lived there (they moved out about 30 years before selling the castle).


On Saturday morning, we got to tour the Smithwick's Brewery (pronounced "Smittick's"). Our teacher told us that we got to go on the tour because of the brewery's "historical significance," but I still couldn't believe that BC would actually pay for us to do this! The history of the brewery was interesting though; it was originally and abbey and the monks who brewed the beer drank it instead of water because it was more sanitary.

An "historical" education at the Smithwick's brewery

We had some free time before leaving Kilkenny on Saturday, so we stopped at a bakery near our hostel. The owner of the bakery was really excited that a group of 12 American girls came to her bakery, so she took our picture and used it as an advertisement on the bakery's Facebook page, where it got 66 likes!

We're basically celebrities now

My first pint of Guinness!

After returning from Kilkenny, two of my closest friends from BC came to visit me in Dublin. It was great to see them again, and a good excuse for me to explore Dublin more! I got to do some touristy thinks here that I had been wanting to do, like go to Whelan's, which is the pub where the movie "P.S. I Love You" was filmed, visit the Museum of Archeology, and tour the Guinness Storehouse. I tried my first pint of Guinness while I was there, and although I found it repulsive and could barely drink half of it, I thought the storehouse was awesome and I had a lot of fun touring it. The Guinness Storehouse is seven stories tall, and each floor has something different on it, from information about ingredients and the brewing process to televisions where you can watch old tv advertisements. On one of the floors you can pour your own pint, and I had no idea how specific it is! To start, you hold the pint glass at a 45 degree angle, and pour the lever forward until the foam reaches the top of the "Guinness" label on the glass. Then, you tilt the glass so that it's upright, and let it continue filling until the foam goes to the middle of the harp logo, which is just above the "Guinness" label. After this, you stop the tap and let the glass sit for 119.5 seconds to let all of the gases settle. Finally, you start pouring again, but this time pushing the lever on the pump backwards. When the foam is just over the top of the glass (but not spilling over), you're done! Aside from learning how to pour the perfect pint, my favorite part of the Guinness Storehouse was the Gravity Bar on the seventh floor. The Gravity Bar is a circular room with windows instead of walls that gives you a 360 degree view of Dublin. It was so cool to see Dublin from so high up, and this made touring the factory completely worth it. 

My favorite thing that I did while my friends were here was go hiking in Howth, which is a harbor town about 30 minutes from Dublin. Like all of the other parts of the Irish coastline that I've seen, Howth was absolutely beautiful, and so easy to get to. Hiking is one of my favorite things to do at home, and it was so great to be outside in the fresh air. I definitely want to come back to Howth when (or if) the weather gets nicer in the spring! 

Howth reminded me a lot of Mizen head, except smaller and closer to Dublin

The time I got to spend with friends from BC in Ireland was so much fun, and I feel so lucky that they got to come and that I got the chance to know more people from BC better on the Kilkenny trip. Immediately after one of my friends left, I went to Italy for the first part of UCD's spring break. I've always wanted to go to Italy, and the week I spent there far surpassed my expectations of how awesome Italy would be. I just got back from Italy on Friday morning, and I'll post about the trip as soon as I can!