Dublin Part 2: Blue Skies and Sunshine

If you couldn't tell by the title of this post, the weather has changed significantly here in Dublin... for the better! Beautiful some might say!! I will now fill you in on what I did here since my last post/ during the past two day. [pictures will come in 2 maybe 3 days time. PLEASE BE PATIENT! (random and unnecessary overreaction but at least Josh will appreciate the parenthetical abundance)] Today I visited Malahide Castle which is about 30 min outside the city center by train. It was very cool and because the weather was so nice, the gardens and parks were also very pleasant. Not to mention the beach! I was able to walk to the coast from the train station. It was gorgeous and I imagine that for about two months out of the year (when the weather is warm) it must be even nicer. The castle was really cool as well. On the same grounds, there was a model train exhibit that I couldn't resit visiting. At first it brought back good childhood memories. Everyone remember the pretty remarkable train set my dad set up? Then it brought back horrible childhood memories. Everyone remember when my mom destroyed years of hard work in a single afternoon? But the exhibit was really cool anyway. Now I'm writing this post, will try to do some schoolwork/ leisure reading, go eat dinner, and then get ready to leave really early tomorrow morning. But I also have to tell you about yesterday!! It was definitely the best day here. First thing I did was visit the National Gallery. What an awesome museum! And they had a great restaurant with great food and great prices. Great. They had quite a collection of art from all over the world, including the Venetian School, and of course a lot of great Irish art. For those who would like more information, I bought some postcards and we can discuss it when I get back. I also went to the Guinness Storehouse. The history of that is sorta interesting, especially the fact that Mr. Guinness #1 signed a 9000 year lease on the property, but overall it was lame and stupid compared to the Jameson Distillery. I also went the the Kilmainham Gaol (Jail). This is an old prison that was used for a few hundred years up until the 1920's or 30's... I don't remember. But it's history is amazing! The tour guide was unbelievably informative about the architectural significance (pan-opticon... KK shout out), as well as the social and political significance of the prison from its creation through the Potato Famine and the Irish struggles for independence. Amazing tour! I then saw my third movie, The Other Boleyn Girl. As I'm sure you can tell, I am taking full advantage of the fact that I am in an English speaking country. It was pretty good.

That's it I guess. Tomorrow I return home to Venice to a packed schedule and lots of work.

Wish me luck with my papers :(

Dublin Part 1/ Maybe the Only Dublin Post

So I'm currently in Dublin... have been for two days. I still have tomorrow and the following day to tour about before my 6:15 am flight back to Venice Wednesday morning! It was a bad decision I know. Anyway... the weather here is shit. Worse than Binghamton and Venice combined! If you can even imagine. Yesterday I went on a tour of Trinity College and the guide, who was a student, would say "in the winter.. and April" every time he explained the time of year that has bad weather. Nonetheless it is an interesting city!!! Pictures will have to wait I guess until i get back in Venice but I will at least describe what I have been up to so far. I arrived on Friday afternoon and spent the rest of the day walking around the city trying to get to know the layout a bit and find my way from the city center back to the hostel... First of all it took over an hour and a half to get from the airport to the hostel. The first city I have visited (other than cities in Italy because that country is... unique) where the public transportation sucks. I always write about it every time i go to a new city because it is important. Here, it is terrible. I think it is because they drive on the left side of the road. I know it's normal for them but I can't help but feel that it's really stupid. Also, the tourist office gives out this map that is almost worthless. I usually have decent map reading and navigational abilities but here the maps are terrible. Not just the free one but even the ones that cost 5 or 6 euros! They don't include all the streets!! I don't care how big a city is (which Dublin is not), or how complex the street layout is (which in Dublin it is not) a city should still be able to produce a decent map!!! I mean Venice is a city with a way more complex street system AND waterway system yet the maps are still readable, not to mention I have a pocket sized map of NYC that I can keep in my wallet that is more accurate than the maps here. They should just call some cartographer from the civilized world to come to the Isle and map it out!!!! Also food is way overpriced here. Other things like clothes and furniture and whatever are cheap but yesterday I payed almost 20 bucks for a bagel and a water. Okay, enough complaining... Trinity College was very interesting and took up most of my day on Saturday. I toured part of the campus and went to the library which is super impressive and houses the Book of Kells, and ancient copy of four gospels that is really cool because of the beautiful and precise artwork that adorns the pages. From there I did a little church hopping. I saw St. Patrick's Cathedral and the Christ Church. They were both shmeh. Nothing too impressive but pretty enough I guess. OH! I've also taken advantage of the fact that I am in an English speaking country and have seen two movies. Shine a Light, the Scorsese/ Stones collaboration, and Lars and the Real Girl, the Ryan Gosling indi. Both were great! The Rolling Stones documentary was visually stunning! See this movie! And they sounded pretty good too. Way better than they did at the Super Bowl x number of years ago. The other film was pretty good. The story was funny and uplifting yet really sad and sorta sappy. It was also poorly made with multiple goofs visible on screen. I recommend it anyway. Today I started out by visiting the Dublin Castle. It was interesting but not extraordinarily beautiful or even worthwhile. I may sound like I am bad talking the city but I'm not. In terms of architecture though, everything is boring and grey. From there, I went to the one cool church i have found, the church of St. Michan. It supposedly inspired Bran Stoker to write Dracula. He is one of the many famous authors from Dublin (also a graduate from Trinity College). I learned about him and the many others when I visited the Writers Museum. That was surprisingly interesting. I wanted to purchase every book mentioned that I haven't read yet but... I didn't. Interesting fact is that the museum is in the old home of George Jameson, of Jameson's Irish Whiskey. Especially interesting because just before I went to the museum, I visited the Old Jameson Distillery. That was a very fun and interesting attraction that I highly recommend. I learned a lot about the process as well as the qualities and differences of the world's many kinds of whiskey. I also have been visiting a few beautiful gardens in the city. Somehow there are many flowers in bloom despite the terrible weather. I'm also very pleased that there is a wide variety of ethnic food available in this city :). Another post soon about the rest of my time in Dublin.

Upcoming Events

Tomorrow morning I'm leaving for Dublin. I'm sad to leave Venice even for a second!!! Then after that I will have visitors in Venice. 

Prague

I should be having my art history class right now but my teacher is late so I figured I would write some stuff about the last few days while I wait. But first a little complaining about today. The internet at the school is being repaired so I can go online unless I go to an internet café which I might do because I have important things to do online today and tomorrow!! So Prague, or Praha in Czech, was quite a wonderful city. Meg and I stayed at the Boathouse Hostel, which was outside the city center but not hard to access because the public transportation is good, even at night. It was a very cool place but I had the same problem with it that I did with the whole country. You can still smoke indoors in the Czech Republic so not only is that always strange to see but fucks me all up especially when my allergies are bothering me, which they were. So basically there was no “fresh air” not even outside because half the places that I went to see were gardens. As “Lets Go: Europe on a Budget 2008” says, most things of interest to a tourist are conveniently located in a compact area. So to summarize the sights I saw… the Prague Castle, which has an AMAZING cathedral, other churches: Tyn Church, St. Nicholas, Old Town Square and clock tower, National Theatre, blah blah blah lists are boring. One evening Meg and I saw The Taming of the Shrew at the Estates Theatre, which is where Mozart played Don Giovanni when he was in Prague. We also ate at very nice restaurants each night. This cost both of us a lot of money. I also spent a lot of money on clothes, which was incredibly stupid of me but whatever. I’m still not 100% sure how much everything cost… From now on I plan to get ripped off only in my own currency. I have just completed my lesson with my teacher, ten hours after I began writing this. In other words I am exhausted. You can use your imagination to fill in the rest with the following visual aides which include a few pictures from Italy as well.

*** very sorry that the pictures had to be in a link. i will try to get it on the same page asap but my internet availability is becoming limited so in the coming weeks posts may be infrequent :(... also without photos because they are a pain to upload***

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2118902&l=c89ed&id=8115847

During the week before I went to Prague I went to the Armenian monastery here in Venice, which is on Isola di San Lazzero. It was very interesting. The monk/guide meets the visitors at the vaporetto stop. He gives one tour a day. The day I went there were Italians, Argentineans, French, Germans, English and Armenians. He gave the six languages! This sect of the Catholic Church is renowned for its intellectual practices. Therefore there were many cool and interesting artifacts on their libraries including what is said to be the best preserved mummy in Europe. Side note- Lord Byron stayed on this island with the monks for an extended period of time while he was visiting Venice. 

 

Rain Rain Rain

Last night after class, my teacher and I went to a gallery where a show was opening in which some of her friends are being featured. It was cool the only bad thing is that i had to leave early because I didn't have an umbrella or a jacket and it got cold and rainy. Because of the rain I slipped on the wet dock trying to catch the vap. I was warned not to run to catch the boat in the rain because you will fall... I didn't listen and I didn't catch the boat.

I did a lot of cool stuff today but I did it all in the rain so I'm not in the mood to talk about it. I took the Secret Tour of the Ducal Palace which was really cool. I got to see all the cool Casanova stuff... like where he was imprisoned, how he escaped... and so forth. I also did one and half of these cool itineraries from a guide book that I bought. Way to much information to discuss. I will finish the second one later today. I guess that's it. I leave for Prague in the morning. Tell you about it soon.

Update

So much has happened since my last post that I don’t think I can remember it all so post may be very scattered in terms of a timeline. It is currently Friday but I don’t think I will be able to upload this until Monday.

I have completed my studies in Italian. ☹ BIG SAD FACE!!!! I now have class only twice a week. These two classes are my independent study/ one-on-one with the professor classes. They are very amazing classes. It is like having personal guides to the entire city… except I have to write a paper for them. My History of Venice teacher just informed me that she and her fiancé will be getting married in St. Mark’s Basilica. If you have seen it, you know how remarkable such a wedding ceremony would be. If you haven’t seen it, COME TO VENICE (the most beautiful city in the world). Other than the fact that I don’t have to wake up at 7 every morning, finishing my Italian class is a big downer. Most of the friends I have made also finished therefore I basically have already had to say goodbye. I only have 5 weeks left in Venice and I’m already getting sad that I have to leave. Not only have I fallen slightly behind on my super-list of things to do, I love the city so much that I don’t want to leave. These five weeks will be cut a little bit short because I am going on two major long weekend trips. Next weekend I am going to Prague and the following weekend I am going to Ireland (Dublin and Belfast, hopefully with enough time to skip over to Liverpool and take a Beatles tour). Plus this weekend (tomorrow) Alli is coming to Venice with some of her family and the last weekend in April, I am expecting more visitors. Then it will be jut about time to start my European Grand Tour.

This past weekend, I spent Friday, Saturday, and part of Sunday in Milan with la famiglia. I was great as usual. They are so welcoming and wonderful. Before I left they gave me to take home 5 bags of pasta, 2 cakes, 2 jars of tomato sauce, apx 3 feet of sausage, and 1 bottle of olive oil. I don’t know what more to say about that. Hopefully I will find time to go back before I return to the states. After Milan, I went directly to Florence to arrive on Sunday night/ Betty’s birthday. **Everyone remember who Betty is?? If not you can look it up in an earlier post** She treated us to an amazing dinner. It was about 10 people I think. She’s too generous (I shake my head as I write this) but thanks again! Monday I did some touristy things including a visit to the synagogue. It’s really quite a magnificent building. I would say a must see during a visit to Florence. On Tuesday Meg and I had an adventure. We woke up pretty early and spent the day outside of Florence. We started in Assisi (apx 2.5 hrs from Florence). The city was nice but I wasn’t terribly impressed. Beautiful views of the mountains and some nice churches but nothing in the city had much of an effect on me, or Megan really. Sometimes you go to a church or an old city center or a castle and are just moved by it, but in Assisi we practically had to struggle to come up with any sort of reaction even to the church that has the tomb of and is dedicated to St. Francis (of Assisi). We did however see a lot of whacko Christian pilgrims. From there, on our way back to Florence, we stopped in Perugia. Unfortunately our time here was cut short by the fact that the city is geographically unique. Instead of taking a bus to the city center, we attempted to walk. After about 30-40 minutes of treacherous hiking up winding mountain roads and asking for directions, we were alerted to the fact that the city is on the top of a very high and steep mountain. We actually had to take escalators up the side of the mountain, through underground passages that passed ancient ruins, in order to reach the top. Once there, we visited the disappointing Perugina chocolate store. The company is from Perugia and the candy is incredible but I sort of expected a Charlie Bucket experience when really it was just a tiny candy store. We saw some pretty cool stuff but were unfortunately in a hurry. Unlike Assisi, I would give this city a positive rating and suggest checking it out to anyone interested in seeing one of Italy’s many truly unique cities… there’s more to Italy than Tuscany and beaches. We were so rushed that in order to catch our train we took a cab back to the station instead of waiting for the bus. It was definitely worth it because otherwise we wouldn’t have been back in Florence until around 8pm. But we got back with enough time to shower and change before dinner. We (me, Alli, Megan, Betty, Kelly, and one other girl) went out to dinner at Aquacotta. At this restaurant Rich (Freedman) did some culinary studies. The food was great, the wine was too, and the chef and his wife were very nice. After we almost instantaneously devoured the tiramisu, I was assured that Richard received the adequate instruction and is quite capable of preparing said dessert. So brush up Richard because I expect it to be just as good in New York as it was in Florence. After dinner we went out to a bar called Be Bop where the have a Beatles cover band every Tuesday night. I thought they were pretty darn good and that means a lot coming from a die hard Beatles fan, especially one as critical as me. I left for home the next morning. I arrived in Venice at around 1:30. Just enough time to drop off my bags and meet my teacher for my art history lesson that started at 2 and lasted over 5 hours. We visited one museum and didn’t even have enough time to finish so we are returning. I guess that’s all for now. Wish me luck in finishing my list of things to do because I will be very upset if I have to return to the US with unfinished business.

More soon on my upcoming excursions...