Ibiza Trip with Ryan

Finally back from the most relaxing of my trips this semester :) However the trip didn't exactly get off the best foot, for both of us lol. Ryan had an extremely early flight on Thursday morning, and there were no early morning trains to Milan Airport. (one fact about Europe that I've learned, "early morning" is around 7am lol nothing is open in Dublin until about 9am, even on weekdays...compared to 24hr Starbucks in the states, ours opens at 10am) So, Ryan had to take a train to the airport the night before, and spent the night like a homeless person, with about 40 other people, outside the terminal lol 

I, on the other hand, simply slept through my alarm. I woke up at 7am, when my plane left at 9:20am, lookng forward to an hour long bus ride to the airport. Needless to say, I made it on time. Barely. I usually pass out on airplanes, but i was so worked up i couldn't sleep, so I took some pretty sweet pics from the plane, the first is of Ireland, the second of some spanish mountains, and the third of the island of Ibiza (pronounced "Ibitha" in Catalan).

Once I landed in Ibiza, I immediately shed my Ireland attire, welcoming the upper 70's weather. Was definitely not used to that lol Met up with Ryan pretty easily and made our way into Ibiza Town, where our hostel was. Our hostel was actually really nice compared to everywhere else I have stayed. We had our own room, and a rooftop balcony. Woot woot.

After getting settled, we immediately made our way to the beach. Since it was a Thursday, it wasnt too crowded at all, but definitely gorgeous. 

After the beach, we found this small restaurant, and tried a native dish suggested by the waitor, not really sure how to describe it except that it was literally a pizza piled on top of a huge chicken breast? Delicious. 

The next day, we slept in a little bit, mostly due to Ryan's bit of a hangover from a bit of wine the night before lol However, we made it out, and did a LOT of exploring. All we had to go off of was a very vague map and the Mediterranean Ocean lol We stopped at Platya D'en Bossa for a while to catch some sun and then continued on.

Can you see me on the rocks? :)

Along the way on our little adventure, we stumbled across the most beautiful places ive ever seen, including marinas, caves, and huge hills that we had no choice but to hike up haha

We finally made it to the next beach over, Salinas Beach, known for its salt mining. It was really cool to see, but we were just so exhausted, had literally trekked miles to this place lol In the end, we were happy that it took us so long to get here, because the sunset was amazingggg :) There was a rock in this secluded cove, that had been carved into so many different animals, and people, and objects it was pretty interesting. 

After our long day of hiking, we grabbed some beers at the beach bar, took a taxi back to Ibiza Town, grabbed some food and passed out lol

The next day, we decided that we wanted to take it easy, lay on the beach for a while. However, after a couple of hours at the beach, we realized that I lost the keys....oops. Luckily our hostel owner was really chill about it and just gave us the spares. We headed back to the beach, and followed a boardwalk past some live spanish music and ended up on some cliffs overlooking all of Ibiza Town.

The next morning we grabbed some wholesome breakfast at McDonald's,  over here they serve beer with french fries lol and headed to a medieval fort for some day drinking before jumping on our planes back to Ireland and Italy.

Day Hike in Glendalough

After a full week of relaxing, catching up on sleep, and working on an epic amount of homework, we took a day hike trip to Glendalough, located in the middle of the Wicklow Mountains. This place was absolutely gorgeous, and I was really glad that we waited until the warmer months to visit. 

We began our day with a pretty intense uphill hike to the top of a mountain. Luckily it was a nice trail, with steps and whatnot, but still gave me quite a big workout. Getting to the top was really rewarding, especially with the views. haha Definitely wished Ive been working out over here, this day was quite the slap in the face.

We hiked back down to a lake in Glendalough, and spent a while just relaxing and cooling down by the water. Attempted to skip some stones, but ended up looking like an idiot, so watched Pat and Don do it instead.

Glendalough is also very well known for having a quite impressive monastic village. All that remains of the village is some headstones, I particularly like the celtic cross ones, they are literally everywhere in Irish cemeteries. After the village, we all had a picnic lunch provided by our program (we love free food) and went back to another lake to sit by the water, skip some stones, and just enjoy the rare rare rare sunny Irish weather.

Haha our ride back in our coach bus may have been one of the scariest in my life. Our bus broke down in the middle of the mountains, and at times, rolled backwards (eeeeek). So adding about two hours onto our way home, we got back alright.

Spring Break: BARCELONA

Thursday was departure day, layed around Ryan's apartment for a majority of the day, packing and getting ready for a busy weekend in Barcelona! We to Porta Nova, Verona's main train station, and from there took a train to Bergamo and a bus to the airport in Milan. The kids studying in Verona have to go through so much effort just to get to the airport, makes me appreciate living in a large city like Dublin, where I can just jump on a bus that goes straight to the airport every half hour. We had some mishaps along the way, there was an accident on the train tracks ahead of our train, so we had to get off at a random station and Trenitalia had coach buses there to take us to yet another train station. While they were very organized, it was pretty confusing for us, since we dont speak a word of Italian.

We landed in Barcelona around 11pm and made our way to our hostel, just in time to head out for the night. We went to a bar in the city that was known for allowing its customers to pour their own drinks. It was a great time at first, celebrating a girl we were traveling with's 21st birthday. However, we began to realize that we could make our drinks very very strong, and our night took a turn towards interesting, as we made our way to a club that was outerspace themed and may or may not have been a gay bar. Oh well.

The next morning, Friday, we woke up pretty early and spent the morning travelling to our new hostel and meeting up with more people from U of I. A handful of girls had come over from Champaign for their spring break, but there were also people from Paris, Verona, and Rome. Our hostel had the best location ever, literally on the beach along Port Vell, filled with restaurants and the marina.

We headed over to La Rambla, which is a huge pedestrian street in the heart of the city, and made our way to this amazing market, St. Josep Boqueria. This place was HUGE and put any other market I had been to to shame. Filled with chocolates, fruits, fish, candy, this place had it all. We all got freshly squeezed juice.

After the market and come more casual sightseeing, we all headed back to the hostel for a much needed nap and shower, to get ready for a night out at Chupitos. The bar only serves shots and they are all 2€. But these are not ordinary shots. There is a lot of fire, even more creativity. They have a big board of 200 different shots and they don’t tell you what is in any of them so there is a big sense of mystery in each one that you get. It was a lot of fun. Most shots came on fire, one of which involved inhaling the gas of a shot after it was lit. All interesting stuff in Barcelona, definitely was not in Guinness territory anymore!

My Favorites:

Finding Nemo: a blue shot with an orange m&m in the bottom, topped off with whipped cream

Willy Wonka: chocolate shot with sprinkles, m&m's and whipped cream on top

The Torch: a vodka shot in a shot glass, with an orange resting on top filled with a tequila shot. The bartender then proceeds to cover the entire bar in alcohol and lights it all on fire :) She then gave us straws to take the tequila shot, and instructed us to squeeze the orange into the vodka shot and take it.

The next day, Ryan and I decided to go off on our own and explore some sights. First we started off with La Sagrada Familia. Gaudi’s insane cathedral is still being built even though work started before 1900. It is not expected to be completed for another 20-30 years. Imagine the level of detail for a modern construction project taking that long.

After that, we headed over to Parc Guell. Parc Guell is an extremely cool park located on a hill overlooking the city of Barcelona. It is another work of Antoni Gaudi and is full of random sculptures, buildings, and other various structures. The views were great and the setting was awesome, a must see if you come to Barca.

After a LOT of walking, we decided to just jump on the Metro to our hostel, and take yet another much needed nap. We met up with everyone else, and decided to get Bo de B again for dinner lol That night we decided to meet up with a guy from Ryan's fraternity that graduated a couple of years ago and now lives in Barcelona. 

He took us out to a small absinthe bar where Ernest Hemingway himself would frequent. The place looks like it was picked up in those days and simply placed into the 21st century. The ceiling was peeling from smoke, and bottles sitting on shelves covered in dust and cobwebs, not having been moved since before the Civil War. 

Absinthe was definitely a once in a lifetime experience for me. I hate black licorice, but still tried it. Preparing your drink takes about as long as actually drinking it. When you order, the bartender hands you a tray with a glass of alcohol, a small fork, a sugar cube, and a bottle of water. We had to rest our forks on the rims of our glasses, place the sugar cube on the fork, and squeeze water onto the sugar until it melted into the drink.

Due to my 7am flight, I had to catch a 4:30am bus to the airport, so I bid everyone goodbye as they left to go to a club that night. Getting to the airport that early in the morning was definitely a struggle having had no sleep and quite a bit of absinthe, definitely something that Ive only done here in Europe. Somehow, everything went smoothly, and I came home to Ireland in one piece with a very warm welcome.