Rome is Where the Heart is: Fall Break: Ireland

Hooray I am home!! Rome is such a comforting and wonderful place to return to after a weeks worth of traveling. I've had unforgettable adventures this past week but the most predominant feeling was longing for home. Being away from Rome helped to reopen my eyes to how incredible it is as well as how adjusted I have become compared to that exhausted nervous girl who climbed our stairs with Nico unable to think well enough to form a sentence in Italian. I also have realized how little time I have left and how lost I will feel without my friends and this city surrounding me. I am eager to be reunited with my family and of course my IC friends (I've missed both homes) but this is quite a group of people here and nothing will ever fit quite right like this group in this place.

Enough of that, there is so much to catch up on! I think I did very very well on my last two midterms, I forget sometimes how nice it is to NOT be taking science courses. Thursday Rome had a downpour starting early in the morning that left streets flooded and everyone damp. Our teacher was 30 minutes late to our exam, thankfully Gianni started us off with the multiple choice and such until she arrived with the slide identifications. After I finished her exam I worried myself sick for 20 minutes trying to memorize dates for Forma Urbis, Hope and Peppers helped me out. Peppers and I had made the genius choice to study together again, but like last time we ended up goofing off for a bit first. We visited Kat at work on Wednesday night at Le Fate a cute little restaurant in Trastevere that has a well priced student menu and if you have connections the occasional free lemoncello shot. So studying lasted late into the night before we gave up and decided to cram right before the exam instead. Thankfully Gianni had us much more worried than we needed to be and I studied all the right material. If that isn't a 95% or higher then I'll be shocked. Fun fact: Gianni Ponti and I are related! be jealous. While shooting the breeze after class we were talking about my plans to visit Ireland and Scotland and how I am Scotch-Irish, and he is too! When he asked about our tartan all I could remember is my mom telling me our hunting one is yellow and similar to the Wooster plaid. Correct me if I'm wrong here Mom. Gianni thinks it's the MacLeod tartan and his mother claims they are MacLeods thus Gianni and I are very very distantly related. Super cool.

After midterms ended on Thursday I ran around to get a new phone (success!) and started cooking becuase we had another potluck, ma certo. It was a little smaller than usual due to flooding in Rome and some people's flights were that night. Still we had good company and good food! Julie even tried her hand at the ricotta pancetta pasta we made on Monday in our cooking class. Silly Julie is lactose in-tolerate and made RICOTTA pasta, so she didn't even eat her own dish, but it was yummy and we all helped her out with that. Friday morning Kat and I woke up a little on the early side and caught our buses/trains to the airport after a quick breakfast of left over ricotta. After a nap on our three hour delightful plane ride (thanks AerLingus) we caught the airlink bus to O'Connell street and wandered around until we stumbled upon The Bunkhouse Hostel, home away from home. We wanted to get started with Dublin as quickly as we could so we walked across the river to Trinity College then down High/Dame/Lord Street (Occupy Dame St. was going on) and found a tourist information store to pick up a map, some postcards for Kat, and I tried to get a gift for a friend but I left it in Ireland. We stopped by Christchurch for a quick hello however we had just missed visiting hours. It was nice to stretch our legs in the crisp fall weather, Dublin is so very clean but we struggled with concept of driving on the wrong side of the road! We never knew where the traffic was coming from!! It was comforting but really strange to hear and see English everywhere (Gaelic was less welcome). Kat and I found Dublin to be much more like the US than Rome. The fashion is similar, we stick out like tourists no matter how hard we try, and the food is similar and the language obviously is the same but spoken with a pretty lilt. When it started getting dark we popped into a shop for some hot cocoa with marshmallows but we were tired from late nights of studying and early mornings of tests or travel so we called it a night and went back to the hostel.

First full day (Saturday) in Ireland Kat and I woke up early and after a stop for a scone and tea we hit the DART station to go to Howth for some hiking!! The path we chose took us directly along the cliffs edge (no handrail!) and it was a VERY breezy day. We were being pushed over and our hair was going wild in the wind! Between our excitement for hiking, the ocean, the wind, the start of our adventures we were in high spirits and there were more smiles that day than either of us could handle!!! Our path took us along the coast, then down the road in suburbia Dublin, then between two horse rings, then into a jungle, then a fern meadow, and finally through a wooded area to rocky crested hill then back down to the lighthouse area where we started the trip! What a perfect morning. It only took about two hours and we were hoping for more like four hours but when we found a cute little market to get some food and tea we were ok with cutting it short. The Doghouse was a tea place open to the outdoors so we kept our coats on but they had little space heaters and big blankets and armchairs so it was cozy!

Our second attempt at hiking was a twenty minute train ride away in Bray, try GRAY. It was rainy and windy and cold and overcast when we got there. We tried not to let that dampen our spirits but it's hard to remain cheerful in sideways rain! When Kat and I went to touch the other side of the Irish Sea a big wave came up and drenched Kat from the knees down!! She was a trooper and tried to keep hiking but after a few more steps we were both ready to call it quits. Thus started the rain in Ireland. No complaints because this is Ireland in the fall so of course it will rain but it rained everyday we were there; on our last day they got a months worth of rain in 24hours. The headline read "Floody Hell!". We bought some tea and went to the hostel to shower and warm up with hot tea and chat with our roommates (8 girls to a room at this place). This was also the day I tried cider for the first time, thinking I was ordering hot apple cider I actually ordered something similar to beer but lighter and less alcoholic. Not bad! We tried going to The Grand Central Cafe but apparently you have to be 21 to get in and well dressed.... whaa??? that's not how things are done anywhere else in Dublin, Rome, or Europe. We didn't care for their mentality so we went across the street and had a much nicer dinner followed by a truly Irish night in a pub. There was one man who had the attention of the whole bar when he sang along to the Frank Sinatra and Billy Joel playing in the background. Everyone was smiling and happy and Kat and I loved the people watching. That's amore!

On the next day (Saturday) Kat and I fell in love with brown bread mmm. We walked towards Christchurch where right next door there is a medieval/viking/archaeology museum called Dublina, named after the old viking town where central Dublin is today. There is a floor dedicated to each of the three aspects to this museum and the medieval floor talked a lot about Henry VIII and his court which made me happy since I'm a history buff for the Tudor family. We had a lot of fun and we like being intellectual sometimes. We crossed the bridge that connects Dublina with Christchurch and there were pretty stained glass windows. We went into Christchurch and looked around this amazing Gothic cathedral. It was a stunning change from the older or Baroque temples and churches in Rome. I liked all the gothic architecture we saw this weekend! After the church and crypt we stopped in a gastropub for some potpie and coffee to warm up. We tried ice cream for the first time in a couple months and it is so strange!! I can't put it into words well but anyone who knows gelato knows it's NOT ice cream! After Christchurch we went back to St. Patrick's but missed visiting hours and managed to get very very lost in Dublin. We were by the Southern river then wandered through Marrion Square Park to see a statue of Oscar Wilde! After our delicious lunch we couldn't stand the idea of a real dinner on Irish time (aka early evening rather than 9:30) so we just bought some yogurt at the Spar (not Despar!!) and salad and ate at the hostel.

Final full day in Dublin might be my favorite (besides Howth!). First stop was St. Patrick's to go inside during visiting hours and I am so glad we did!! There aren't many words or photos to describe these churches but spending probably an hour or so in each one was marvelous. It was peaceful and inspirational. Lectures from high school just came washing back over in my mind. After our cultural side's were satisfied we had to walk over to our appointment at the Jameson Distillery!! It's the site of the first Jameson distillery and is used as a storehouse today for the production that takes place in Cork. We had a wonderful tour given by a guide in an Irish accent of course (love that lilt!) and Kat volunteered to be a whiskey taster! so at the end she was walked through a sampling of three kinds of whiskey and found her new love Johnnie Walker Black Label! We stayed there for lunch and had some delicious soups!!! and more brown bread! mmm we certainly ate well this break. After Jameson we walked in the pouring rain down the street to the Guinness storehouse! We were a little disappointed because we thought it was going to be another tour but it ended up being more like a museum/attempt to sell us food and knickknacks. We walked up the giant pint glass building to the gravity bar for our pints of Guinness but Kat is not a beer drinker, nor a fan of Guinness so she took her time finishing up, cause you just gotta finish when you're in Dublin (yes Julie I "ho bisogno"ed her).

That night we met up with Kat's friend Dennis who is studying in Dublin at Temple Bar and our friends Aven, Mattly, and Dr. Tom showed up!! It was a night filled with overpriced beer, rowdy pub songs, and international friends singing to songs that have no real words!! It was a really really nice time. I loved seeing our friends and meeting new people. This was the night our original plans were cancelled due to a huge rainstorm. Thankfully it didn't affect our bus the next morning and we made it to the airport with plenty of time before our flight to Edinburgh, Scotland.

PICTURES!!!!