Dublin

After a few exhausting days in Paris I was ecstatic to get out of there. The language barrier was overwhelming by the third day and I was looking forward to getting someplace where I could at least communicate my desires.

Tuesday, October 7th
We made it to Dublin early afternoon, around 12. Our luck struck immediately as we walked out of the terminal and a gentleman approached us and asked if we were headed to Dublin. He and his wife handed us their bus passes and told us they had to leave a day early unexpectedly. Not only did the passes get us from the airport to Dublin city center but also the rest of the day we could take any public bus for free and also the Dublin city tour bus for free. It was a major score. We got dropped off in the center on O'Connell Street and after a bit of confusing orientation we quickly discovered our hostel was in primo location just a block over! We dropped our things off and grabbed some lunch. Our first meal was incredible... chicken breasts stuffed with broccoli and wrapped in bacon, mashed potatoes, carrots, chopped potatoes with the whole plate smothered in gravy. To wash it down we ordered each a pint of cold frosty Guinness. We left refueled and energized. The rest of the day we spent on the hop on/hop off city tour bus. It travels around the city and has 26 planned stops at famous sights. You can get on and get off whenever you'd like and there is always another bus within 10 minutes. We got really familiar with the city and made note of the things we wanted to check out in the next few days. We hopped off and checked out Trinity College and a few other sights, but saved most for the upcoming days. That night we went to a movie and saw The Boy In The Striped Pajamas. One of the most powerful movies I've seen in a long time... at the end when the credits began rolling not a single person moved for a solid few minutes. I'd never experienced that before because usually when the credits come on people gather their jackets and leave.

Wednesday, October 8
We woke happy to know we'd be joined by some friends today. My roommate, Kyel, and his travel companion, Eric, were flying in and would be staying at our hostel. We toured around the churches and cathedrals that we didn't think they'd want to see and waited for them to get there. Around 3pm they arrived and we met at the hostel. We decided to spend the rest of the afternoon at the Jameson Distillery, where the famous Jameson whiskey is made. This was one of the highlights of the trip. The tour was very lively and informative not to mention very interesting. We finished the tour with a whiskey tasting, which Kate and Kyel were selected to participate in. They had small portions of Jameson standard whiskey, and also a premium 12-year scotch whiskey (later to find it was Jonnie Walker Black Label) and a premium American whiskey (later to find it was Jack Daniels). I must admit I'll never buy Jonnie Walker because when compared to the other two it tasted awful. I became sold on Jameson whiskey after this tour. On our way back to the hostel we grabbed some fast dinner of burger and fries and went out to the pub for a Guinness.

Thursday, October 9
Eric and I let Kate be the tour guide today and she proved to be a major taskmaster. She had the map and we saw almost everything the map had to labeled. In the afternoon we picked up Kyel from his morning of sleep at the hostel and we all headed to the Guinness factory. It was a pretty long walk but well worth it. I didn't think it was quite the quality of the Jameson factory but we still learned a lot about the brewing process. They had a bit of roasted barely to eat and it blew my mind how after drinking Guinness I can distinctly taste that same flavor from the roasted barely. We split up after the Guinness factory because Kate and I wanted to go to a comedy club and Eric and Kyel wanted to hit the pubs. Kate and I stopped in an Irish pub/restaurant for our last good meal. I had Guinness beef stew. After we spent the final night in Dublin at a comedy club that was a few blocks down from the hostel. It was an excellent way to spend the night. We got there a bit early and were given a free cocktail and got primo seats with a table. The comedians were absolutely hilarious, albeit the accent was sometimes very tough to understand. Plus there was a fair mixture of Irish comedy that you wouldn't get unless you were Irish... like relations between England and such. But we got a majority of it and laughed a lot.

Friday, October 10
We checked out of our hostel at 10am. We did some last minute souvenir shopping and headed to the airport. We got there pretty early but found our gate and sat at a pub next to it for a few drinks. It was great because we were both pretty stressed from the travel and tired, so the last Guinness's definitely eased some tension and provided an excellent end to our Dublin experience. We flew to Madrid and got there pretty late, checked into our hostel and met up with a good friend of mine from Lake Geneva, Megan Gaddi, who is studying in Madrid. We enjoyed a few beers while catching up and then called it a night.

Saturday, October 10
Final day of transit. After a very stressful morning of making it to Madrid Barajas airport on time to pick Kate's mom up we made it to the train station by 11:20 to catch a 3-hour train to Valencia.

Paris

The Valencian holiday called El Puente allowed us a week off school. The program I am in planned a trip to Morocco however I took the time instead to travel about Europe a bit, consisting of an 8-day adventure to Paris and then to Dublin.

Paris was an interesting site to see. I was joined by my travel companion extraordinaire, Kate.


Saturday, October 4
6:20pm Depart Valencia by plane
8:00pm Landed at Paris-Beauvais Airport

We flew RyanAir, a discount airline, and for the discount in price they don't always fly you right to the city of your destination. In this case we landed in Beauvais, which was 1hour 20minute, 13 euro bus ride to the Port Maillot in Paris. Once there we grabbed a cab to our hostel and checked in. It was getting pretty late so we found a little restaurant by our hostel and grabbed some dinner and called it a night.

Sunday, October 5
Awoke to find that overnight I had gained a year in age... from 21 to 22. What an exciting way to ring in the new year. Paris is quite large and so we decided it'd be best for us to utilize the metro for transportation around the city. We stood in line for tickets and quickly realized it was going to be a nightmare because we didn't speak French. As we got closer to the window we noticed a paper that advertised all-inclusive public transport passes, and so we were able to buy a 2-day pass. Cost us 7 euros a day, and it was well worth it. Saved us all kinds of time waiting in line to purchase single-trip passes and ultimately saved us money as well. Also, because we paid for them we felt compelled to see as much as we could to get our investment's worth. We first went to the Notre Dame. Walked around there for a bit and toured inside. The Louvre was a short walk away so we checked that out as well. The place was packed with tourists so we opt'ed to wait until the next day to go inside, but got a healthy dose of photos taken outside. As accustomed to the afternoon siesta in Spain we decided to go have one and gather some strength for the evening. When we woke we dressed up fancy and went out for a very enjoyable evening together over dinner and a bottle of wine. The perfect birthday gift.

Monday, October 6
Our last day in Paris and so we got going around 10am. We decided to take the metro to the other side of the city and work our way back towards the hostel. We went to the Arc de Triomphe first and got some quality photos. Paid to climb the thing and got an excellent panorama of Paris. Then we took the metro to the Eiffel Tower. What shocked me the most is how gargantuan in size the thing is. Pictures in magazines or on TV don't do it justice... it is truly a massive structure. Next we walked to the Louvre and although it was still rather packed with tourists we paid and went inside. We quickly realized this museum is very spacious. It would take someone a few weeks to give all the art it's adequate attention. We did a whirlwind tour of all the stuff we wanted to see in about 1.5 hours. This included the Mona Lisa, the section of Spanish paintings, and what interested us most was the Egyptian section. Once it was time to leave it took us a little over an hour to find the exit. The place is massive and the signs to the exit lead to dead ends. It was literally a maze trying to get out. We were both very frusterated because we were tired and hungry. When we finally made it out we stopped and got some lunch. We had to wake up very early to make it to the bus back to Beauvais in the morning so we had an early night.

Tuesday, October 7
Woke up at 5am because we had to get to the other side of the city by 6:15am for our bus to Beauvais. We had become professional metro riders at this time so we decided to use that because it'd be way cheaper than a taxi across town. We paid for the metro and waited but it never came. It was 5:30am and the metro had just opened for operation. In a scramble we grabbed a taxi and let Paris rape our pocketbooks once more before we happily said, "au revoir!" We made it with about 3 minutes to spare before the bus left and snagged the last 2 open seats. We had to hang out around the airport for a few hours, which literally had only 4 gates at it, but finally made it on the plane and looked forward to the next part of our adventure in Dublin.

Chaos: The Good Stuff

This past month in Valencia has been a trip. Foreign travel is always a chaotic experience, although a good chaos. Varying cultural norms, food, time zones, and the language barrier all contribute to pure chaos... but like I said it's chaos that is exciting.. the thrill of adventure. Without chaos is comfort and ultimately boredom. I've been moving around to keep things fresh and new... exciting. So this is the latest attempt at chaotic excitement.