Finals Week

My last two weeks in Dublin have gone by WAY too fast, Finals here are much much easier than those at U of I, but the average still falls to about a 50%, which is a C here. As of now, I have taken four out of my five finals at UCD. In Ireland, they take their finals in the absolute strangest way. 

Instead of utilizing the countless auditoriums and lecture halls on the UCD campus, they have scheduled our final exams in RDS, basically a giant fieldhouse. In RDS, there are usually about 3000 kids taking an exam at a time, obviously taking different ones, and there is absolutely NO HEATING. Taking a test while its less than 50 degrees is quite the challenge.

My finals are spread out perfectly for studying, I have one every other day for two straight weeks :( This worked out really well for studying, but it did not allow for much last minute travels or exploring around Ireland. In the past four months, Ive tried to see as much as I can, but honestly, as Im about to head home, there is still so much I would have loved to see. 

After my last final tomorrow, I have to face the daunting task of packing my suitcases. While I usually love packing, I think Id rather sit in a pub all day with my friends :( Our plan is to do just that all Saturday night and soak up as much live Irish music as possible, definitely something Im going to miss...

Prague Trip

Back from Prague!! This trip was so much fun, definitely much different that others. I went with my friends Kristi and Alissa from Illinois, and eventually met up with Mk and Bridget the second day of the trip. Our hostel in prague was AMAZING. Literally the nicest hostel I have ever been in. You walk in, and it was just a restaurant and bar, which bragged of its all-day happy hour specials. When you walked into our dorm room, the blinds automatically open for you with motion sensors, our private bathroom was much nicer than most hotels ive been in.

Our first day in Prague it was dreadful and rainy, so we hibernated in a bar down the street from our hostel. After Munich, food and drinks here were so wonderfully inexpensive, a meal costing around 5 euro and a whole liter of beer running at 3 euro. After a good nights sleep, we woke up to an absolutely gorgeous morning, loving the 70 degrees weather, a nice break from the cold rainy weather we're used to in Dublin.

We set off for the day, heading towards the center of the city, called Historic Prague. After seeing the town square, we found it really strange how Dublin really doesnt have a square, and how basically every other city we have travelled to this semester hast at least one or two. Dublin and other cities like Galway are set up kind of like cities in Chicago, where the highlights are streets and parks, not huge plazas. 

We made our way over to the Charles Bridge, St. Nicholas Cathedral, Prague Castle (which is not a castle per se, but a giant complex of palaces, cathedrals, and other cool buildings), and the John Lennon wall. The Lennon wall was pretty sweet, it was just crazy how much it changes in such a short period of time. I'd seen pictures of in it March, and since then things have been painted over countless times.

We had worked up an appetite, so on our way back to the hostel we stopped in a restaurant that the guy at the front desk had recommended for some authentic Czech food. Czech food is very rich, i had potatoes and a rotisserie chicken, but we tried beer cheese and goulash as well. Mom this goulash was nothing like yours, very different, almost a stew. 

After a quick nap, we headed out for the night on an organized Pub Crawl, which honestly was the best way you can go out in Prague when you know nothing about where anything is :) The Pub Crawl took us to several bars and clubs, but we had to make a pit stop at the Ice Pub in between stops, before heading to the largest club in Europe.

For those of you wondering, the Czech Republic does not use the Euro. They use the crown which has a conversion rate of about 18 crown to 1 US dollar. This was semi-confusing for a few different reasons. First, we had all gotten accustomed to the euro by now, and secondly, the conversion math always takes a little while, even for us accounting majors...

For those of you who don’t know, in the Czech Republic, beer is cheaper than water. We had heard rumors of this before we arrived, but now I can tell you with certainty that this is true. While a drink out anywhere else in Europe at a club will run about 7 euro, I got a beer for 20 crown, a little more than 1 euro. The Czech Republic is one of the most beautiful places i have been. Many scenes in James Bond: Casino Royale were shot in various towns and cities in the Czech Republic. 

I can tell however, that while the Czechs revolted against communism during the Velvet Revolution, they still do not fully embrace the capitalist culture. They hold onto their roots in some regards. The city itself is surrounded by hills with the Vltava River running right through the middle of it. Atop the hills one can see the famous red roofed houses that Prague postcards are famous for. I also noted that the city would be very cool to visit in the winter, although it would be pretty cold. Additionally, it is very easy to see that everyone has the same features. For such a small region, I found it unique that everyone looked so similar.

After three days in Prague, it was time to go home and begin studying for our finals at UCD, so we headed back and caught our flight to Dublin.

Springfest in Munich

Munich was undoubtedly my favorite trip this whole semester. It was one of our first that I had planned, and soon enough, there were upwards of 50 people from U of I, flying from everywhere all over Europe for one weekend of Springfest, the spring equivalent of Octoberfest. Scottie and I had gone to a dogtrack the night before, and were quite sleepy on the plane ride, but we hit the ground running and was ready for our weekend to begin, celebrating Scottie's 21st birthday the next day.

In line for customs, we glanced back for an instant, and honestly we just about had a heart attack. Scottie's dad and older brother Danny had flown in for the weekend to surprise him! It was absolutely the cutest thing Id ever seen, and he was super excited. His family had flown in to Dublin earlier this semester, and I had also spent time with his dad on dad's weekend, his dad is one of those dad's that just wants to be one of the guys, he had a blast with us in Munich.

We made our way over to their hotel, since Ryan and everyone else didnt get in for a couple hours to check into our hostel. My first meal in Germany, Im proud to say, was a pretzel, sausage, and a house brew. No regrets.

That night, after reuniting with everyone, we made our way over to the festival, which honestly was a giant carnival with a beer tent on every corner. These tents arent camping tents. Oh no. they are HUGE.

We literally spent the whole night in the beer tent, kept on running into more and more Illinois students :) Munich is famous for serving beer by the Liter, and even the tiniest waitress has been trained to carry at least 12 liters at a time.

The next day we spent exploring the city. During WWII, the city was heavily damaged by 71 Allied air raids. After US occupation in 1945, Munich was meticulously rebuilt, the only thing they kept was the original street grids and the churches. Thats why walking around, everything has an old town charm, but looks relatively new. The city is very clean and kept up very well. 

We found Hofbrauhaus, Munich's largest and most famous beer hall. Its basically a restaurant who's main dish is a liter of beer. The place was MASSIVE, and i couldve easily gotten lost in it. The food was absolutely amazing, and are known for their own brew. 

That night, we headed back to the festival to celebrate scotties birthday. We had a blast, went on some bumper cars and quite a few other carnival rides before settling down in the festival's beer garden for the night and headed to a bar after. This night was easily one of my favorite nights abroad.

Belfast

We made our way up to Belfast a little while ago, the capital of Northern Ireland. Honestly when we got off the bus after the 3 hour ride, it felt like we drove to England. Northern Ireland is part of the UK, completely detatched from the Republic of Ireland, and it definitely looks that way as well. The city is organized in blocks instead of rambling roads, and the buildings looks straight out of london, complete with those adorable telephone booths :)

We had a personal tour of the parliament buildings, the main one being Storemont, essentially Northern Ireland's House of Parliament. This building was HUGE, and sat on top of an enormous hill looking over the city. During World War II, it was essentially the largest target for bombing, being a giant white government building easily seen from the skies at night, so, for the duration of the war, the entire building was covered in manure. I would not have liked to work there then.

It was really interesting, we toured the chambers where the two sides of parliament meet, and even got to sit in their seats.

After the tour, we had a delicious catered lunch upstairs on the top floor overlooking the grounds. I was in the bathroom when everyone left, so when me and my friends went back to the dining room, it was empty except for a waitor, who allowed us to climb out a window onto a windowsill. What a guy.

After Stormont, we headed over to the Titanic Quarter, home of the shipyard belonging to Harland and Wolfe, the company that built the Titanic. This was really cool, since they were celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the departure/sinking of the Titanic. MTV had a concert on the slipway that led up to the Titanic, mostly European pop stars, pretty sure the only American was Sean Paul. The museum dedicated to the Titanic was so cool, from the outside it is designed to look like an iceberg, and each of its top corners is the exact height of the ship.

Belfast used to be an extremely important industrial city but for obvious reasons that has waned in the past 50 years, due to some pretty dramatic social turmoil. There are two main neighborhoods in Belfast, the Catholic one (The Falls) and the Protestant one (The Shankhill). It is very blatant that there is still quite a bit of tension in the city as well as Northern Ireland itself. And for that reason, the giant peace walls that separate the two sides of the city are still up and will be for some time to come.

All over both sides of the city, there are wall murals, constantly being put up and taken down, depicting everything from the troubles to debates over Cuba. There are too many murals to count and too many stories to be told about this city but I got a much better sense of what daily life was like for people living among violence for several decades.

The group was decently exhausted by this point and it was time to sit down to a wonderful 3 course meal, and hit the road back home.

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.