Pictures from Dublin

All of us in this really cute park next to St. Patrick's Cathedral (Christine, me, Nick, Danny)


Cupola of the City Hall.
Dublin castle
Today was a rainy day in Dublin (Christine, Nick, Danny)
Really cool park next to St. Patrick's Cathedral
Excuse me, St. Patrick's, but I question your scholarship. This plaque reads something along the lines of, "Somewhere around here is where St. Patrick baptized a lot of people."
Inside the cathedral

Luck of the Irish? Dublin!

(Yesterday)

Hey all,

Well, I'm officially in Dublin, Ireland for the weekend. ASE gave us a weekend for free travel and I, along with 8 other ASE-ers, chose to come to Ireland. Our flight got into Dublin last night around 11:30. After going through passport-check, attempting to find a cash-machine or a bureau de change, and grabbing a bus we made it to a street somewhere, but not exactly, near our hostel. So, we wandered around Dublin at 12:30AM trying to find this place. We eventually stumbled upon it and made ourselves at home.

We're staying in Citi Hostel in Dublin (www.citihostels.com, for those that want to check it out more). I'm staying in a room with two girls from ASE (Kristen from W&M and Christine from Denison) and there's a woman from I think Australia (just a guess) as well. It was tough trying to sleep last night - our window was open and a group of REALLY LOUD Irish drunks were outside yelling about how excited they were that "McDonalds breakfast opens soon!!!"

This is definitely one of the weirder hostels that I've stayed in - similar to the one from UCC NY service trip. The sinks and shower have faucets that you have to continuously keep pushing down in order for water to flow... I guess they're trying to conserve? And "continental breakfast" consisted of toast, jam, butter, milk, and moldy bananas (Yum...). It's really confusing to get around and everything is a 5Euro refundable deposit. My towel = 5Euros that I get back when I return it, my locker = 5Euros that I get back when I return it, NUTS!

So far I haven't seen too much of the city - except for what we saw on the bus and it was dark. It's a lot bigger than I imagined, but there was a lot of cool old buildings when we were driving around, so I'm sure I'll find some place fun to explore. We don't have a set itinerary, which of course you know is kind of bugging me. But I'm sure it'll turn out okay as soon as I get my hands on a map!! No more of this blind leading the blind. *sigh*

All right, well that's all for now :) I'll be sure to keep you posted on what's going on.

(Later:)

I hate traveling in huge groups. Today was exhausting. Once we finally made it into the city center (we got lost for a while ...) Dublin is pretty neat. It’s a lot bigger than I thought it would be and a lot more urban. We walked in a huge loop around the entire tourist section, across the River Liffey, and back towards the Guinness Storehouse.

It was frustrating because we all wanted to do different things - most of the girls wanted to shop, but me and the guys wanted to walk around and see stuff. After finally getting everyone to stop shopping and actually figure out what we wanted to do we decided on the Guinness Storehouse.

The Storehouse is probably one of the coolest museums I’ve ever been in. (Is it sad that it’s dedicated to beer???) It’s 7 floors high and the inside is shaped like a pint glass. On the top floor they have what’s called the “Sky Bar” where you can get a free pint of Guinness and look at a 360’ view of Dublin. My group finally made its way up to the top floor and hung out there for a while. Afterwards, we headed back to the hostel I was so tired I could hardly move when we got back. I realized later that I had only eaten a bagel at about 10:00. We didn’t eat dinner till after 7:00!! That was not cool.

Later we all went pub hopping around the Temple Bar area. We went into Temple Bar, spent way too much money on cider, and then headed elsewhere. The pub scene here is pretty crazy, there were people everywhere!! We made our way through about 4 different pubs before we headed home for the night.

I was pretty stressed out and homesick this afternoon after an exhausting day of hauling ass around the city. Things got better later, though.

All right, I’m off to bed.
Good night!

Today:

Today was SO MUCH BETTER than yesterday. Nick, Danny, Christine and I broke away from the group that wanted to shop all day and did our own thing instead. We got to sleep in (The first time I’ve done that since I’ve gotten to the UK!) and take our time getting ready to go and sightsee.

It was raining pretty heavily when we first set out, and poor Christine forgot to bring an umbrella or a raincoat. We stopped inside St. Stephen’s Shopping Center and bought her and Danny umbrellas. We poked around in the mall for a while waiting for the rain to let up and then we finally set out.

Our first stop was St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It was so cool inside, lots of stained glass, gothic architecture everywhere. I’m really glad I got to see it. Then we made our way back towards the City Center and stopped in a pub for lunch. The food here is nothing to rave about.

Walking back towards the hostel we found our way into Dublin Castle, St. Werburgh’s, and City Hall. Basically what they’ve done is taken the Medieval castle and built up inside the castle walls. There is medieval, gothic, and neoclassical architecture all mixed together into this crazy group of buildings. Everyone was awesome and humored me while I ran around all excited about the really cool buildings. I wanted to go inside and tour around but I’m not sure if it was worth spending the Euros.

Now we’re back in the hostel waiting for the other group to get here. People wanted to go on an organized pub crawl tonight but it costs 10 Euros and I’d rather we just went around on our own and not spend the extra money, but we’ll see.

We head back to Bath tomorrow morning bright and early. We have to be up and ready to go at 6:45AM. Ugh!!!

It’ll be nice to get back to Prior Park.

Cornwall weekend

Oh my goodness! I just got home from the longest weekend of my life!! We’ve spent the last three days in Cornwall, the Southern coastal section of England. We stayed in a youth hostel in Coverack and then traveled all around Cornwall seeing the sites They split up our houses so we could supposedly mingle and meet new people but my housemates and I spent most of the weekend missing Prior Park. I am so exhausted... but in the end, as usual, it was worth it.

On Thursday night before we left, my house (31 Prior Park) and the house around the corner (5 Clarendon Villas) got together at Clarendon for a pot-luck. We wanted to get rid of all the food we had that was going to go bad over the weekend. It turned out to be the best meal I’ve had since I’ve gotten to England (I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing...). We baked chicken, made pasta, had vegetables, pizza, lots of random mixtures of food... it was awesome.

We left for Cornwall Friday morning at 7:45 (ugh!) and drove for 3-ish hours to Tintagel Castle - the supposed birthplace of King Arthur and the home of the wizard Merlin’s cave. We hiked up the cliff leading to the castle and walked all around up above the coast. We had amazing views all around the ocean and the fields. The ocean water here looks like the Caribbean - there’s white sand and it’s bright blue.

From there, we made it to Coverack, a teeny tiny little town on the Western coast of Cornwall. The town has one main road about half a mile long with a few windy side streets leading away from it. There’s one church, one post office, one store, and one hotel/pub for probably about 5 miles in either direction. We spent the night at the youth hostel. That night for dinner we had Cornish pasties (past-ees, not pay-stee), this fairly disgusting pot-pie like thing with meat and vegetables. I don’t really recommend it.

Saturday morning we were up bright and early for a trip to The Lizard, the southern-most town in England. We hiked around the Lizard’s cliffs led by this geologist/botanist (aka Morgan and Rachel’s favorite old man) old guy named Pat Sargeant. He told us what plants were edible/not, where orange carrots came from (made especially for William of Orange ... go tribe!), and took us around on our hike. He made some strange presentation where attempted to demonstrate the geological history of the world through a role of toilet paper??? We were all a little bit lost on that one.

After our hike on the Lizard, we drove another 2 hours to St. Ives, probably the most touristy beach in Cornwall. My friends and I braved the FREEZING cold waters and swam in the English side of the Atlantic ocean! It was fantastic! (Morgan, you would have totally loved it!) We walked around St. Ives and went to the Tate modern art museum and the Barbara Hepworth museum. It’s a really cool little town. I wish we could have spent more time there. That night we headed back to Coverack for a traditional English BBQ consisting of chicken, steak, and bacon (Blaakman, you would have been in food-heaven lol :) ) and french fries, followed by Cornish ice cream made from clotted cream, SO GOOD.

That night my friends and I headed to Coverack beach and sat out on the rocks watching the sunset - really cool. (Emily, we found this one beach that to get to it it was seriously like walking into the Secret Garden, I was expecting Dickon to pop out of the woods with a sheep or something any second, lol, I wished you were there to see it!)

Today we all woke up and felt so sick because we’re all exhausted from the traveling. Luckily, the staff caught on that we were not happy campers and shortened the day’s itinerary - instead of going on another hike in the town Widecombe on the Moore, we left early and headed back to Bath. THANK GOD.

Now we’re back in 31 Prior Park - and I never thought I’d say it but it’s good to be home.

PS HAPPY FATHER’S DAY DAD :)

Tintagel Castle (Birthplace of King Arthur)

Beginning the hike, we had to cross this really narrow bridge (left) over the ocean to get up to the castle ruins
Merlin's cave, two of my friends swam in there and looked around - you can get in when the tide goes down, but they obviously could not wait :)
View backwards of our hike
Me at Tintagel
Tintagel ruins

Coverack (where we stayed)

Main road through coverack
the Paris Hotel
Coverack boats

Hike at The Lizard
Our guide, check out the bandana. Haha
Me at the Lizard

Me and Kristen at the Lizard
The end of the hike - the water was so blue!

St. Ives
We totally swam in that water :)
Awesome doorway and lintels with sea shells and glass
Main beach area in St. Ives

Pictures from Bath

Pictures from Bath ... because the little ones just don't do it justice.

View of Widcombe
Hot air balloons are everywhere here
Me and Kristen at Stonehenge... go tribe!
View of Glastonbury
Part of Glastonbury
My flat
My house at stonehenge
Pulteney Bridge
Glastonbury Tor
Stonehenge
At the pub
Spotlight Show Choir when we're 80
Bath Abbey
View of Widcombe

First few days in Bath

Hey all,

Since the time change is seriously throwing me for a loop and my busy schedule makes it really hard to get in touch with people, I figured I'd make this blog so you'd know what I was up to even if I can't, as they say, "give you a ring." :)

I got to Bath this past Saturday (June 7) and moved into my house. I'm living in a flat on 31 Prior Park Road in Widcombe, a small village on the south side of Bath, across the River Avon. Supposedly it's in the "less posh" side of town, but it still has a lot of charm. Right around the corner from my house is a pub, convenience store, church, and a few small shops so we don't have to go too far to get what we need. The other houses are scattered throughout the city so it makes for really fun walks when you want to go visit people.

The city is beautiful, everywhere you look is something interesting to see. I took a walk around the block the other day and saw some of the coolest views of the city.

My flat-mates are really cool. My room mate is Monica, from Hampton University (Emily McCarty: No worries, you'll always be my favorite :) ). Across the hall are the boys Nick and Danny, from Skidmore and downstairs are Tori and Michelle, and Erin "the intern." Erin just graduated from Mary Wash this past spring ... she's my favorite in the house.

I guess the Brits have a fetish for strange bathroom arrangements. In our house we have a shower in the middle of a bedroom, and one of the other houses has a bathtub in a bedroom. They definitely do not go for luxury - our shower water comes out of a little hot water box and you never exactly know how hot or cold your shower is going to be.

We started class on Monday and unfortunately so far things have been less than impressive. My Georgian Bath architectural history class only meets for an hour and a half in the mornings and the people in the class are only there because they didn’t want to get stuck reading Jane Austen. We did take a cool walking tour around the Medieval layout of the city - even going behind the Guild Hall to see the original North Entrance to the city. In the afternoon I have my Oscar Wilde Seminar, an overly intense english-lit class made up of entirely Skidmore students and the professor, except for me, the one kid from W&M. They have a tendency to go off on tangents about how awesome Skidmore is, and then start discussing adjectives and obscure writers. I’m a little lost, but hey, I’m not an English major.

But! Aside from class I’m having a pretty decent time so far. The pub scene is fascinating and completely different from American bars. The Brits love to bring their kids with them to the pub and let them run around while they sit drinking pints, watching football, or reading the paper. The pubs open around 11AM and last-call is around 11:30PM-12:00AM. They’re not open late like American bars and their more social and cultural than anything else.

Monday night we had a reception for the students and professors in the Victoria Art Gallery across from the Pulteney Bridge. After all the students and professors had loosened up and gotten to know each other over a few (or in some cases many) glasses of wine, we all headed over to the pub The Pig and Fiddle to hang out more.

Today was our trip to Stonehenge and Glastonbury (Abbey and the Tor). It was SO. COOL. Stonehenge was a bit of a letdown, definitely too much hype and not much to see. But Glastonbury was amazing! I wish we could have spent more time. It’s supposedly the site of King Arthur and Gwenevere (sp?) remains and also the location of the Holy Grail. We also hiked to the top of the Glastonbury Tor (yep! All the way up!) and saw the most amazing views of the area.

This weekend we’re headed to Cornwall. Hopefully it stays sunny.

All right, I suppose that’s it for now. I miss everyone at home. Keep me posted on what you’re up to!

View of 31 Prior Park Road, Bath (my room is that very top window)

My side of the room

Random shower in the middle of the room, well more like side but still.

Me and some of my flat-mates on the first night at the pub (L-R Nick, Tori, Danny, Me, Michelle)

31 Prior Park does Stonehenge (L-R Danny, Erin, Me, Tori, Nick, Michelle, Monica)

On our way to the Tor (the stone tower in the distance. Yep, we hiked all the way up there.)

This picture just does not do justice to the steepness of that hill.

Me, at the top. (Sorry the exposure is all off, my flash didn't want to work today.)

Images of Bath:

 Bath Abbey

View of Widcombe

  The spires of the local church and the church next to the Nelson House (where we have class)

Pulteney Bridge (from on the bridge)