KT Says

Well!

Needless to say, I love Dublin and I will be moving there in the very near future . I went with Kelly, Cara and Bailey and we left on Friday. Our flight was at 5:30 pm so we thought we would stop in Pisa to see the Leaning Tower, but that didn’t work out. Cara and Bailey had trouble printing out flight information, so we ended up just taking the train to the Pisa Airport and hanging around talking. The plane was late getting off the ground and it was crowded, so Kelly and I found seats in the emergency exit aisle, which was an adventure. One flight attendant came and wanted to stow my scarf in the overhead compartment because it would impede people’s exit of the plane in case of an emergency? That was strange, but anyway, the flight was great! It was a little turbulent at times, but I was lost in music and half asleep most of the time. For the last half hour I got into a conversation with the woman sitting next to me–she was from Ireland, about 50 miles from Dublin (I probably couldn’t spell the name of the town anyway) and the friendliest woman in the world. She asked about my study abroad experience and said how wonderful it is that young people have a chance to travel these days, and she told me her daughter is going to Dublin City University. She’s studying abroad in Texas next semester! I thought that was pretty neat, and I told her that I hoped her daughter would have a great time in America.

When we landed it was close to 8 pm, so we made our way out of the busy airport to find the bus that would take us near our hostel. We asked the bus driver and he was joking and laughing with us the whole trip! Then he drew out directions for us to walk and slowed the bus down a bit to point out where we were supposed to walk when he let us off. It was unbelievable! If you asked a bus driver in Florence for directions, he might deign to take his earphones out but then he’d just sneer at you…. We got a bit lost on the way to the hostel and while we were looking lost and forlorn on a corner, two women approached us and asked if we needed any help. Amazing again! That’s only ever happened to me in Ireland! We found our hostel alright, and we stayed at The Avalon House which was great. They really catered to students and backpackers, and we even got a free breakfast in the morning! (bread and butter…but breakfast all the same!) We went out to eat the first night and had really good food for not a lot of money, and just went back to the hostel and passed out. We saw a lot of people dressed up and there were some fireworks outside of the city, but we had gotten there late enough that most people were probably at parties or home already.

The next morning we went to Trinity College and paid for the tour and for our ticket to see the Book of Kells. Trinity College is beautiful!

It definitely looks the way a college campus should, much like Ursinus. It’s pretty big though, with about 15,000 students, but I think a lot of them live at home and commute to the college. A student there, Keiran (spelling?), gave the tour and all of us were pretty much in love with him by the end. He was a sweetheart and very funny, and I paid attention to what he had to say. After we saw the Book of Kells and took lots of pictures, we went to Nassau Street, which is right next to Trinity College, to do some shopping. Cara bought a Trinity College hoodie and I bought a few nice things for myself and for other people. Then, we went to buy tickets for the Hop On, Hop Off bus tour of Dublin.

This bus tour is great, they have them in all big cities here, even in Florence, and you get a continuous commentary about the city as you drive around. The bus will stop at specific places and you can get off if you want, look around a bit, and get back on. It’s great! Our first stop was St. Stephen’s Green.

This park is amazing. I was dying to see some greenery since Florence is all stone and pavement, and I really enjoyed this park. We walked around for close to an hour just taking pictures and joking around and having a really nice day. The duck ponds were really cute, and the grass was beautiful–everything looked really put together. This was definitely one of my favorite places in all of Dublin!

After that we stopped at Dublin Castle to look around. We were going to go in, but we would have had to pay for a guided tour and we didn’t really want to do that, so we just took pictures on the outside.

It was a beautiful building, and the tour guide on the bus said it was the seat of Parliament for 700 years. Also, it had been built (I think) when the Vikings came to Dublin, so that’s a pretty old building! After that, we grabbed lunch at a nice hotel nearby. That was also cheap and very good! It was so nice to be able to sit down to a meal and not worry about a sitting fee and if we were going to spend an arm and a leg for our food. I love Ireland .

After this, we looked in some more shops and hopped back on the bus. Kelly and I got off at the Guinness Storehouse to take the tour while Cara and Bailey went and did their own thing. The Guinness tour is in a building, and the tour itself goes up these stairs in a section of the building that’s shaped like a giant pint glass. At the top there is the Gravity Bar where you get your free pint of Guinness and 360 degree views of Dublin. It was so neat. I learned a lot about how to make a good beer, at least what I don’t already know from my dad, haha.

We walked back to Trinity College to meet Cara and Bailey at 6, and we decided it would be a great time to go back to the hostel, take our showers, and head out for dinner. We went to a place called The Porterhouse right next to Trinity, and it was delicious! Kelly and I both got "steak sandwiches," which were just small steaks on top of really good bread with fries and tomato salad on the side. The steak wasn’t that great, but everything else was. It was a bar, so it started to get loud by the end of our meal and we were all exhausted from the walking we did all day, so we went back to the hostel and went to sleep.

The next morning we had to get out early because our flight left at 12:20, and Bailey and Cara wanted to see St. Patrick’s Cathedral because it was closed for a ceremony on Saturday. We took the bus there, found out we had to pay to get in, and decided to just take pictures outside. If we had more time we would have paid and really taken in the church, but by this point it was close to 10:15 and we still had to catch the bus. We walked around in a small park right next to the cathedral for a few minutes, then we booked it to the bus stop. We got to the airport at 11:45 and RAN through security and check in, and made it to the gate just as they were boarding. We got pretty lucky.

This is where the not so great stuff starts. We arrived in Rome at about 4:45pm and we had tickets for a bus to take us from Rome Ciampino airport to Rome Termini train station, because it’s about a 40 minute right. Well, Kelly and I got on the bus with no problem, but Cara and Bailey didn’t. They just disappeared. As the bus pulled away without them, we saw them walking out of the airport…and we were confused. Apparently they were just making sure about their tickets or something so they went to the bus kiosk inside to clarify everything. Well, they called us and another bus was coming in 20 minutes, and we were only about 10 minutes into our own bus ride. We arrived at the train station and looked up times for the train to Florence and tried to buy our own, but it said we couldn’t for some reason and we had to go to a ticket window. Alright, that’s fine. We get in line and finally go to a woman and we say, in Italian "Four tickets to Florence, please." Well, she gave us a nasty look and looked it up for us and said there were no second class seats available, only first. Then she said the price, which was 216 euro. So I asked, again in Italian, "For 4 people?" And she repeated 216 euro in a short way, so by this point I was fed up with Italians and how rude they are, and I said louder "No, is that for four people?" in Italian. I’m not a mean person and I’m very shy, but this woman was making me so angry!! Finally, she told us a train was leaving at 8:30 and we could get on that one, which would get us into Florence by 10:30. Wonderful. So we just bought the tickets and she kept making faces at us and I kept having to refrain from yelling at her. Cara and Bailey finally arrived, and we spent two hours in McDonald’s in the train station talking about how much better Ireland is than Italy. We were just angry and tired from travelling, and not all Italians are rude, but a lot are. Especially to tourists. We were just fed up. We made it home fine and finally walked into Maria’s at 11:30pm, because of course the train was late. She had made pasta for us and it was delicious and Kelly and I just passed out as early as we could.

Despite the travel troubles at the end, I really had a great time. I think Ireland is one of the greatest places in the world! I’ve never met nicer or more helpful people, and I think everyone should go there one day. This weekend we are going to Rome with the school and we’ll be doing ALL the tours, so that’ll be another great blog entry with hopefully lots of pictures. I’m loving it here, but I can’t wait to come home–only 22 days! I can’t believe it’s so soon already. Well, I’ll let everyone go, and enjoy my pictures: Dublin Pictures. Ciao!

~Katie

PS-I’ll find out who our new president is tomorrow morning…I’m nervous!

I had a wonderful time in Ireland! I am so happy that I’ll be going back there Halloween weekend with friends to see Dublin. The people were so nice and they actually spoke English (and Gaelic too, of course), but staying with family was the best part of it all. On Saturday the 4th, I took a Terravision bus from the train station in Florence to the Pisa airport, which was wonderful because I paid less than if I had taken a train and it took less time than a train would have. I waited about an hour before I was able to check in and go through security, but once I was on the plane I started to get very excited about Ireland! The flight left at about 3:30pm from Pisa and arrived in Dublin at 7:30pm (Dublin is an hour behind Italy, so only 5 hours ahead of the U.S.), so it was already dark outside. I could still see through the drizzling rain that the grass was a brilliant green–I could hardly believe it. It was such a change from Florence which is a city with barely any green, even across the Arno where Kelly and I live. Angela was waiting right outside the terminal for me with a sign that said MK Sullivan on it, and as soon as I saw her my face lit up. It had been an exhausting day and I was happy to see someone there for me . Angela is Pop Pop Darcy’s cousin, so somehow she’s my cousin 32 times removed or something like that. She brought one of her daughters with her, Cliona, who is 27 and also a sweetheart. Oh, and another thing, they drive on the wrong side of the road in Ireland! I got a kick out of that, and Angela and Cliona thought it was funny that I had never been in a car with the steering wheel on the right side before.

Back at the house, I met Herb (Angela’s husband) who is the nicest man. He had finished making dinner while Angela and Cliona were picking me up at the airport, and let me tell you, it was the best meal I’ve had in a long time (not to say Maria’s cooking isn’t fabulous, but it was just something DIFFERENT!). We had stuffed pork wrapped in bacon, rice, and vegetables with soy sauce. It was so good!! They offered me wine and we sat and talked about my study abroad experience and it was just nice to be around family. On Sunday, Angela and Cliona and I took a walk on the beach by their house (they live north of Dublin airport) and I loved it! It was a beautiful (but windy) day, and Angela said I brought the good weather with me, which was fine with me! We headed home for an early dinner after that. Young Imelda (Pop Pop’s father’s sister Imelda’s daughter…is that confusing enough?), her husband Tom, and their two children Dervla and Cahill (spelling?) came over to eat and it was a great dinner. It felt like Sunday dinners at home with the family and I really enjoyed that. We had corned beef and cabbage and it was AMAZING! We also had carrot cake for dessert and I ate entirely too much, but I told myself that I was on vacation and it was okay .

Herb and Angela are so knowledgeable about Ireland and I’m very thankful for that, because the next day they took me to Glenndalough in County Wicklow, which is a national park with the ruins of an old monastic community that St. Kevin started in the 800s. I was absolutely amazed that these old stone churches, gravestones, and buildings are still standing. The landscape was beautiful too, and it reminded me of Pennsylvania with all the trees and mountains and greenery.

We walked around for awhile and I took in all the scenery and history before we headed to Dublin so Angela could show me around (we drove down Hollywood Road, which runs next to the place where Braveheart was filmed..that was pretty cool to see!). Herb dropped me and Angela off, and we headed to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells first. Wow, is all I can say. It was amazing to see that book, and I think when we come back for Halloween I’ll suggest getting a guided tour. I think we would all get so much more out of the experience with a guide who knows more than we do. After that we went to the National Gallery to look at some art and it was really nice to see some Irish artists as well as some others I already knew. Also, art museums are free to get into in Dublin and I think that’s a great idea. Then we walked around Dublin for awhile and I got a picture with Molly Malone off of Grafton Street. I told Angela I knew that song about Molly, and she seemed thrilled. I told her Pop Pop got me into Irish music .

After that, we went home and had a nice dinner, and Angela and Herb’s son Nile stopped by with his fiancée whose name I can’t even begin to spell because she’s Belgian. They brought Belgian chocolate over and it was delicious–I think word spread pretty fast that I like chocolate. That was fine with me! We talked about Florence and traveling and how much I’m enjoying my time here. They are wonderful people.

I woke up on Tuesday and Angela and I took a bus to the airport and had a coffee together before I got on the plane. I got a little choked up when I left! Herb and Angela and Cliona were wonderful to me. I really enjoyed every second of my stay in Ireland; every day was nice and I actually learned so much about my family and the history of Ireland that I wouldn’t have heard normally. Tomorrow I plan on going to the post office and getting some stamps so I can send them a postcard to thank them for taking such great care of me while I was there.

This past weekend, to finish up my fall break, a bunch of us went to Nice, Cannes, Antibes, and Monaco. I’ll save that for another entry tomorrow because I’m very tired of typing right now! I hope everyone enjoys the pictures, and I miss you all!

Ciao!
Katie

   So here I sit, writing this when I should be packing (what else is new?), and contemplating just how soon I’ll be getting on that plane headed for another continent. This blows my mind! I’ve never been out of the United States and here I’m going off to live in a different country. I’m definitely not as prepared as I should be, either. Have I packed most of my stuff? No. Have I bought my host mom a present? Nope. Have I learned the language? Of course not. Typical MK behavior–procrastination at its finest.

   Well, tonight was really fun anyway, even though I should have probably concentrated on buying more essentials for Florence. I went shopping with Colleen and Ana and we went to Cosi for dinner. I swear, in just a few hours the three of us can talk and laugh ourselves hoarse, but that’s what working at Holiday Markets will do to you. This entry was bound to get a little mushy at some point, so I might as well start the tear-fest now: I’m really going to miss them. And Cait, of course, who I’ve been friends with for about forever now. And everyone who I’ve gotten close to at work this summer. And anyone and everyone else that I’ve shared my time with. I can’t say I’ll miss Kelly because we’re living together, haha. I was sitting in my living room tonight watching Bizarre Foods with my parents and I realized how much I’m going to miss those nights. I did that practically all summer and became increasingly familiar with Andrew Zimmern’s odd ability to choke down both delicious and horrendous food, as well as with Anthony Bourdain’s honest attitude toward almost everyone on the planet. But of course I’ll miss the conversations I’ve been having with the rents–I get closer to them the older I get.

   Alright, well, this entry isn’t very entertaining because I haven’t actually gone anywhere yet. That’ll be in about a day and a half, and I can’t even think about that right now. There’s hours of packing and nervousness and tears in between now and then. I promise everyone that my entries will be much more interesting!

~Katie