Thursday, March 29, 2012

dublin.

Friday, March 23rd - Sunday, March 25th

Friday
My Dublin weekend started with a slow Friday night. Having seen The Hunger Games at 11pm on Thursday night,  Sydney, Steph, and I decided that a round of fish & chips and a pint would be all we could take for the night!

I should state, some of our Dublin tour was based on the 'Dublin Flexi-pack' that the University offered international students for €5. The pack included our bus ticket, entrance to the Book of Kells, lunch at a popular pub, and tickets for a Viking Splash tour.  It was a great deal!

Saturday
Ok... so we got up early on Saturday to start our packed day of tourist events.  Our first stop was Trinity College and the Book of Kells. Although I couldn't take pictures at the Book of Kells museum or in the amazing old Library, I was able to get lots of pictures of the blooming campus.



Considering the beautiful weather we couldn't bring ourselves to head indoors quite yet, so walked toward the Temple Bar area to wander the streets and enjoy the sun!





After a quick lunch at O'Neills Pub we ventured over to the National Archeology Museum, as recommended by Rick Steves, where once again I couldn't take pictures.  However one of the main exhibits in the museum is about the Irish bogs.  As the bogs have been harvested for peat, 'things' have been found centuries deep in the peat.  We were able to see 'bog butter' and 'bog people'... the people had been preserved and still had hair, nails, and skin despite their age.  It was totally disgusting and amazing at the same time!

Leaving the museum we arrive at the most 'touristy' part of our day... the Viking Splash Tour!  The tour was a historic overview or Dublin on a world war II DUKW (or duck... like in the dells!).  We drove through town and learned about a lot of the sites and then dove into a levy of the River Liffey.  It was totally ridiculous, but really fun... we even gave a great 'Viking Rawr' to passing 'celts' on the street!



After sadly returning our Viking hats we walked home via Graffton Street.  We window shopped and dreamed of stopping into the many jewelry, shoe, and clothes stores that were well out of our price range!

We finished the day up with dinner at the hostel, a few Irish ciders, and friendly conversation with some of the other hostel residents!

Sunday
Despite the brutal affects of daylight savings, we were up at 8 on Sunday to eat breakfast, pack up, and catch the LUAS tram to the Guinness Storehouse on the edge of town.  We Spent close to 2 hours walking through the museum and enjoying a morning pint of Guinness in the 360 degree bar on top of the storehouse.




From the storehouse we walked back to town and made a stop at St. Patrick's Cathedral and garden.







The beautiful weather made it near impossible to go inside for the rest of the day.  We grabbed lunch at a  small Italian restaurant and headed for St. Stephen's Green to picnic in the sun.... with about 1000 other people!





We ended our weekend in Dublin with a quick visit to the Irish National Gallery to see a few Monet,  Picasso, and Caravaggio paintings.

It was a totally packed weekend and there is still more I'd love to see in Dublin!  I had a wonderful time and wonderful weather!

I've been told that Ireland had its Summer this week... It was in the 70s, way higher than it usually gets here.  I even got an Irish sunburn, I'm more proud of that than upset!  I didn't have too many classes and got to enjoy the sun with friends!

I'm off the Germany and Austria tomorrow morning for a 9 day adventure of a life time!  I'm sure I'll have more than enough to talk about when I get back!

I hope everyone has a happy and blessed Easter... eat some ham and jelly beans for me!
Miss you all!

st. paddy's day!

Saturday, March 17th

The holiday event of the season has come and gone... and it was awesome!!  St. Paddy's day here in Ireland is a full weekend event followed by a day off of school and work to recover... they sure know how to celebrate here!

As my other posts have outlined, I spent my Paddy's day weekend in Cork with Kristi, Sydney, and Steph. We got up early in the morning to toast the day with a mimosa and head out to the city center to see what the streets were like. Even at 10am, there were tons of people out decked in green! I already had a green shirt and slightly tacky, yet festive, headband... I completed the outfit with a green shamrock painted on my cheek by a woman on the street.



The big event of the morning was the city parade, which started at noon.  We staked out seats around 11am so we could beat all the children to the good ones, and ended up with a great view near the end of the parade.  Here are a few of the highlights of the parade:

The theme of the parade was 'Going for Gold, Cork Games 2012' in honor 
of the olympics, so there were a lot of sports related floats and puppets.

I have no idea what this float was for, but it was for sure the 
most intricate and interesting one I saw

Children from a Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA)- 
little hurlers and Gaelic footballers!

Of course... what parade is complete without Obama!?

The man himself... St. Patrick!

We watched about an hour and a half of the parade before it started to rain and we decided it was time for a warm pub and a pint!  We went to on of Kristi's favorite pubs, Old Oak, and got a great big booth with a good view of a TV.  Convenient since the Ireland vs. England Rugby match was on that afternoon.  

We collected our obligatory (touristy) green pints or Carlsberg and settled in to watch Ireland get annihilated.  Despite the loss, the atmosphere in the pub was great and I had a ton of fun!





After the game we headed back to Kristi's for some food and a nap before a night on the town.  It was an amazing day, not one that I am likely to forget any time soon, and I'm glad I got to spend it with my ISU girls!


Monday, March 26, 2012

cork.

Thursday, March 15th & Friday, March 16th & Sunday, March 18th
(Don't worry... I'll get back to the great Irish holiday of March 17th!)

I took a day and a half off of school in order to head to Cork for an educational and very festive weekend with my friend Kristi.

Thursday:
I arrived in Cork in the afternoon and was met at the bus station by my friend Kristi from ISU who is studying at the University of College Cork (UCC) this semester.  We walked to her apartment, which unlike mine, is conveniently right in town rather than on campus.  We got back in time for me to meet 3 of her 4 Irish roommates before they headed home for the weekend.

We kicked off our weekend by attending a party put on by Kristi's apartment with her roommates and friends.  The party was very casual, but had a pretty high attendance due to the complexes marketing tactics!  We were informed that if we came down to the courtyard at 9:00 we'd get beer, pizza, sausage, chicken fingers and more... free!  So clearly we all went and had a great time!


Friday:
When we woke up on Friday morning to get an early start on our busy way we were surprised to find that Kristi's apartment had been pillaged! Yes, pillaged... the apartment door had been left ajar over night and the guys that live below, who Kristi and her roommates don't know, had apparently let themselves in with a trolley (shopping cart) and helped themselves to whatever they could find.  Unsurprisingly, the alcohol we had in the fridge was gone, but strangely items such as milk, cheese, tomatoes, frozen food, cereal, and rice were gone as well! The ambitious thieves had then pushed the trolley down a flight of stairs, as there is no lift, to their home!  The event made for an frustrating start to the day... but is a great story now!  This is a picture of the freezer... looked like the Grinch had stolen Christmas and only left a  single frozen pea!


After the confusion of the missing food and stopping at a shop for a scone, we come to the true reason that I skipped class to start my Cork weekend early. I had planned a visit with the Boston Scientific plant in town.  As many of you know, I will be working for Boston Scientific as an Industrial Engineering co-op in Maple Grove, MN from May to December when I return to the States.  When I visited my home site in December to meet my future co-workers I was informed that the plant in Cork was the 'sister' plant to my future work place, meaning that they make many of the same products. I worked with Maple Grove and the Cork plants to set up a tour for Kristi and I on Friday morning.

We made the unwise choice to walk to the plant on Friday in the mist and rain.  The 3 miles from Kristi's apartment to the plant was much longer in actuality than it looked on the map!  But we made it, more than a little wet, and enjoyed a great 2 hour tour of a few clean rooms and met some of the IE team at the plant. and needless to say, we took a bus back to town!



That afternoon Sydney and Steph caught a bus from Limerick and joined us in Cork.  After collecting them from the bus station we made our way to the English Market in the center of town.  The market is open from Monday-Saturday and sells fresh fish, cheese, veggies, fruit, and all sorts of treats!  We walked through and looked at all the vendors and I couldn't resist buying a macaroon (pistachio).  We also got lots of fresh veggies for omelets on Sunday!





After the market we had Kristi bring us on a tour of some of the sights close to her apartment.  We started with St. Finne Barre's Church which you can see, and hear, out Kristi's window.




 We then took a walk through UCC and learned a bit about the campus and its history from our very knowledgeable tour guide!






After seeing the campus, we walked home along the river...


We finished the night off with a pint at An Spailpin Fanac pub and enjoyed some live trad music!

Sydney, Steph, me, Kristi, and Meghan... ISU represent!

Kind of a long video, but for those of you who have seen it, 
the movie P.S. I Love You made this song popular!

Sunday:
The Limerick girls got an early start on the day to head out to Blarney Castle.  We took the bus out to the the castle and walked the grounds, had a picnic, kissed the stone, and enjoyed the sun!

For those of you that don't know, here is the tradition behind kissing the Blarney Stone: The stone was set into the castle in 1446 and kissing it is said to give the kisser the gift of gab (great eloquence or skill of flattery)!  Despite tails of the filth of the stone, I climbed the tower, hung over the side of the castle and kissed the stone!






In addition the stone, the castle had beautiful grounds and gardens to enjoy... One of the gardens was purely filled with poisonous plants and flowers, some recognizable from appearances in Harry Potter (Wolfsbane and European Mandrake (I had to resist the urge to pull this out))!





We finally headed back to Cork to say our good-byes to Kristi and grab an ice-cream cone at the St. Paddy's day festival still in full swing... cause who can resist a chocolate and Bailey's on a sunny day!?


I had a great weekend, even skipping over the craziest day of my visit until later!  We headed back to Limerick in the afternoon to get started on out mountains of neglected homework and catch up on some much needed sleep!