Update Seven: Home!!!

So, I have been home for five days now, and haven't done too much! I am sitting in my room, surrounded by piles of clothes and various items, and am not looking forward to cleaning it up. After ten months with a rather limited wardrobe, and then seven weeks with a very tiny one, I was completely horrified at how much clothing I have at home! I didn't even remember owning half of it, so I'm donating a whole bunch of stuff. In trying to get organized, I am having trouble figuring out what on earth I was thinking a year ago, like why I decided to hide extra prescriptions in an obscure drawer. There are a lot of things I don't even remember having, and many things I remember that I have yet to locate. It's going to be interesting getting settled back in...

But the biggest things on my agenda right now are getting caught up with everyone, and finding a job! So far I have only seen Joe briefly, then Nana last night, and have emailed some people. As far as the job hunt goes, I've been searching online but I think I need to work my resume a bit more before actually sending it someone important. Any ideas for jobs that don't totally suck would be appreciated. In the meantime I have been procrastinating by reading, making more of a mess of my room, and playing Guitar Hero with Adam. And over-analyzing everything as usual, such as coming up with "official data" from my trip with Kelly:

*THE NUMBERS*
Days on the road: 51
Cities visited: 19
Additional day-trips: 8
Bird incidents: 2
Thefts: 1
Languages: 7
Books read: 12
Pounds lost: 5 (hurrah!)
Pictures taken: ~2100
---------------------------------
Total weeks away from home: 44
Total European cities visited: 30

So yes, I definitely have too much free time on my hands. But I am actually going on another trip to NYC next weekend... so that's "something to do", right? I'm really excited-- I'm meeting Ryan, and his friend from Ottawa will be there for the beginning. Then Sabine, my Munich-friend from Nancy, will be there for the end! And she is also coming to Boston the next week, so we may have a mini-reunion of Nancy assistants on our hands. My roommate, Brady, is planning to come if he isn't accepted to grad school, and two other assistants, Courtney and Angela, are from MA and will hopefully both be around before leaving for grad school themselves. I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone! I met so many great people this year, and it's sad we're so spread out all over the world. At least there is the internet!

Anyways, I should really see to this impending disaster that is my room. I haven't decided what to do about the blog yet-- I don't really need to keep everyone posted on my less-exciting, back-to-normal life. But who knows, maybe I will start writing to complain about the weather or whatever new job I get? We'll have to see what happens next!

A la prochaine,
Stephanie

Update Six: Galway, Dublin

This one is coming to you from the sky, somewhere above the Atlantic! We are currently en route to Philadelphia, which is a seven and a half hour flight. I fell asleep before we even took off, but haven't been able to doze off at all since then. I can't even believe that I am on a plane home! Ireland was an incredible ending to the trip, though. Galway was very small and charming-- the first full day there, we really just walked all over the place and shopped all day. We walked along the bay, and cut back to town through "Claddagh Village", which was once a big fishing neighborhood. I had an Irish brunch of scrambled eggs, toast, baked beans, tomatoes, and filtered coffee. The traditional version also comes with sausages and black and white "pudding" (some kind of scary-looking meat thing). Afterwards, we got a lot of souvenirs, and I bought another skirt. Since the first one wasn't really a skirt to begin with, it hasn't been working out to well. We'll see how it goes once it meets the sewing machine.

That night, we tried to do laundry, which didn't work out so well for Kelly. Apparently the dryer decided to stop working right after I finished using it (not my fault, I swear!). Problem was, we found Kelly's wet laundry on top, and thus thought some jerk just took it out. So by the time we realized, it was like 2 am. And we couldn't sleep in, because we had booked a tour for the next day! Somehow we managed to stay awake for it, although I almost dozed a bit on the bus. We had an amazing guide/driver, Desmond, an older Irishman who said everything at least twice. ("There's a road that leads to it, and I'm gonna take it. Ladies and gentlemen, I am taking it...") The main stop was at the Cliffs of Moher, which were really striking. Along the way, though, we also saw an ancient tomb, a "fairy ring", the ruins of abbeys and castles, and the distinct landscape of the Burren area (LOTS of rocks). It was quite a full day, so we just packed and finished drying Kelly's laundry that night.

Thursday we started at the Museum of Galway City, which had an exhibit on JFK, and a lot about the city's history of fishing and war. Then we were off to Dublin, where our very nice hotel turned out to be quite outside the city. We decided to stay at the hotel for dinner, which had really terrible service and food, and then watched "Just Friends" on TV. Friday we headed into Dublin, and bought tickets for a hop-on hop-off bus tour. We did the whole hour and a half circuit, and then went to the Writer's Museum. There is a lot of literary tradition there, with statues of James Joyce and Oscar Wilde in the parks, and so many famous authors. The museum wasn't too great though, I just kept yawning and getting that over-heated nausea feeling. So we spent the rest of the day outside, visiting the Trinity College campus, and a bunch of parks and squares. Saturday was a really full day, which started early at the Museum of Archeology, then onto St. Patrick's Cathedral. Next, we took a tour of the Jameson Distillery, where they told us all about how their whiskey is made, and of course, we had a free sample. We then rushed over to Dublin Castle for the last tour of the day. It isn't so much a castle as a modest government palace, and it's where foreign diplomats used to stay (including Bill Clinton and Margaret Thatcher, not together though!). Some of the rooms were like a smaller-scale Versailles, which was surprising since the outside wasn't very elaborate.

That night, we had dinner in the Temple Bar neighborhood, which was very, um... lively. Lots of crazy street performers, many drunk people, and a whole bunch of bachelorette parties. Some groups wore cocktail dresses, but one group was dressed as chickens, and another like cowgirls (with a bride in a cow costume). So it was very entertaining night out! The next morning we went back downtown to visit the Kilmainham Jail, where many people were imprisoned in the fight for Irish independence. So we were happy that we got to learn a lot more about the country's history there, too. The rest of the day was spent in our hotel, packing up for our flight! The hotel did have an indoor pool and spa area, so I made good use of that for a few hours. For dinner, we got Domino's pizza (yes, I know), and watched the Travolta film, "The General's Daughter", and fell asleep.

Monday morning, we left around 11 am for Dublin Airport, and the whole day went relatively well. Airport layouts are just terrible, though! Dublin had a bunch of flights leaving from the same few gates, with everyone crammed in a small area. And we had a layover in Philadelphia, where we had to collect our baggage, walk down a hallway, and wait in line to give it back to them. Plus, we were no longer in a secure area, so we had to go through the security again. But at least the flights went smoothly. My parents came to get us at Logan, and then on the way home, we accidentally entered the Ted Williams Tunnel, for some added fun. It is so nice to be home, but a bit strange, as well. After 10 months away, I feel like I am looking at everything from a fresh perspective, though I am sure that will wear off quickly. Looking forward to seeing you all very soon!

Update Five: Barcelona, London, Manchester

Last I left off, we were at the fourth of July! Kelly and I were too exhausted after the train ride to make the 30 minute trek to the city, so we ate at the university restaurant that night. The next day, it was straight to the tourist office for information, and straight to a bench in the square to get organized. And THAT is when my purse got stolen!

I hate having the map out constantly like a tourist, so we try to study it hard at the very beginning. We were doing this when some guy came up to our left, next to Kelly, and asked us if we spoke Spanish, then Catalan, French (I lied), or English. We finally said yes, but he just kept asking about Spanish again, pointing at some sheet of paper, and then awkwardly left. We just thought he was an idiot, until maybe 3 minutes later when I had a sudden thought and looked around me. So, we THINK someone else came up on my right while he was distracting us. I couldn't believe it! The police station is right underneath the square, so we went and filled out a police report and cancelled all my cards. The woman from Visa actually went off her little script and was very sweet, as was Kelly who stayed with me and bought me a Kit Kat. You just don't realize how much you carry in one stupid bag until you have to write it all out and add up the cost. I had my camera, phone, mp3 player, wallet, and prescription sunglasses, not to mention my passport! (I didn't want to leave anything in our room, in case someone took it. Ha!) So, next we tried the U.S. Embassy which is only open M-F 9am-1pm, and not if it's an American OR Spanish holiday. So I had to wait until Monday, and after a "calming" and cheap lunch at McDonald's, we just kept going with the day.

I actually really enjoyed the whole feel of Barcelona except for, you know, the bastards I cursed all weekend. There are lots of shops near Place Catalunya, the plaza we were in when everything went down. Kelly insisted I get a new purse, and then I decided to replace my digital camera since we still had five cities left. After all that was settled, we walked down La Rambla, a busy street filled with street performers and vendors (there had chipmunks for sale!). At the end you reach the water and a giant pole with Christopher Columbus on top. We again dunked our feet, only this time in the ocean where we could actually see fish! We took the metro to La Sagrada Familia, a giant crazy unfinished church. It is designed by Antoni Gaudi, who has a bunch of buildings in Barcelona that are all very curvy and abnormal and nature-inspired. We tried to walk to another of his buildings, but couldn't find it. I blame the map and/or stress.

The next day was much better! We went straight to the National Museum of Catalunyan Art, and the Catalunya History Museum (both free!). The second one had tons of interactive exhibits an cool displays, and also an exhibit on women's rights. Lunch was across the street in a rather nice restaurant for paella, a classic Spanish rice dish. After we went to see the also crazily-designed Music Hall and Casa Batllo. Lastly, we sprung for a tour of Gaudi's La Pedrera, an apartment complex with no straight lines at all. The colors and curves were incredible, and the roof was absolute madness. You will all have to see the pictures later. Monday morning, we headed straight for the Embassy. I was fifth or sixth in line at 8:50 am, so I was not alone. Many people had missed their cruises and planes, so I felt much better about my situation. It was like group therapy! We all swapped stories, and there was one guy whose man-bag was stolen in the same place about 30 minutes before me. He said they had searched some dumpsters and found a whole bunch of slashed bags, it is just unbelievable. It only took about an hour to get my temporary replacement passport, and the rest of the day was spent relaxing and emailing and preparing for our flight the next day.

Tuesday our plane arrived in London around noon, and it was instantly back to the cool drizzly weather. We stayed in the "Clink Hostel" converted from a former courthouse. The first day we sifted through all the tourist info, and went to Covent Garden for dinner after watching some crazy magician guy. The next day we took a tour of Shakespeare's Globe, and the Tate Modern where we had a really artsy unsatisfying lunch. We shopped a bit, and I looked for a new notebook in two stores that turned out to be a radical communist shop and a sex shop (I stuck with the first one). Thursday we started out at Westminster Abbey, then walked over to Buckingham Palace and saw bits of the changing of the guard. From there, we walked to Trafalgar Square and had lunch at Friday's. Due to rain, we decided to go to Kensington Palace. They had exhibits on the debutantes of the fifties, the royal apartments, and some of Diana's dresses. We walked to some of the other famous squares and then ate at the hostel. Our last day, we went to the Tower of London where I relearned everything I supposedly took in the first time, before grabbing our train.

Next stop was Manchester, being as it was en route to Ireland. That's also where all Pamela and my old drinking buddies in Nancy were from, and Charlie graciously offered to let us stay in his spare bedroom, which was a nice incentive. The first night we had salad with potatoes and three English cheeses at Charlie's and just watched TV. The next day he showed us around Manchester, where there was a festival where people decided to act crazy in the streets. We also went to the Museum of Science and Industry with the exhibit Body Worlds. There is a new technique for preserving human cadavers by "plastination" so you can see all the different parts of actual bodies. Kind of strange, but really fascinating. After another dinner in, we went to two pubs and met Charlie's brother and two other friends. They had a classic rock cover band playing, and it was a really good time.

Sunday we had a very lazy morning due to aforementioned pubs, and then drove out to the Lake District. We got scones with real clotted cream for lunch, and then drove on Kirkstone Pass, a small road up a mountain. Then at Lake Windermere we climbed a trail up a big hill for a nice view of the area. It was a lot of driving, so we just had a simple dinner and watched Pulp Fiction. The next morning we were heading all the way to western Ireland, so there wasn't time for much else. Charlie drove us two and a half hours to the ferry, which was really nice but 20 minutes late, making us miss our train. We finally got to Galway at 7:30 pm, and hung around the hostel where I finished my eleventh book of the trip! We are actually on to Dublin tomorrow, but I will save all the fun from Galway for my next update. Can't believe we fly home on Monday! I'll have to write my last vacation update on the plane. See you all very soon....

Update Four: Cinque Terre, Nice, Avignon

Hello! There just two and a half weeks left until I'm back home! I can't believe how fast it has been going. Only three countries left... after Rome, we made one last stop in Italy, in Cinque Terre. It's really five villages along the Italian coast, and we stayed in the smallest one, Riomaggiore. The houses in the village are all built into the hills, so it's tough walking. The "rooms" of our hostel actually had their own addresses, and we had to walk up so many steps to get there, it was unbelievable! It was the best hostel in terms of the five other people staying with us, but the place itself was pretty terrible. We met a girl from New York who said she went to school "near Boston", and it turned out she went to Harvard. Then the one guy in the room was from Quebec, and it was really hard to understand him and his friends in French! I couldn't believe how different it sounded. That first night, we kind of panicked at the smallness of the village, so we took the train 15 minutes back to the bigger city of La Spezia. We needed to buy beach towels, so we shopped a bit and I ended up buying a flowy white skirt (well, it was a dress, but I cut it in half. The top was horrible!). Kelly bought two skirts, so really it's all her fault.

So the next day, wore my skirt to the beach in the largest village, Monterrosso. The beaches here are all rocks, so it kind of hurts your feet. It was scorching hot again, but so beautiful. We didn't get back to the room until about 1 pm, and we freshened up for the rest of the day. There are "walking trails" between each of the villages, and the one from our village to Manarola is called the "Via d'Amore". It is supposedly the most beautiful, with a tunnel that has love scenes painted along it. While it did have gorgeous views of the ocean and village, it was just a paved cliff-side path, more of a covered hallway with comic book like paintings covered in graffiti. We also did the next trail to Corniglia, which was the same distance but pretty intense. It was just a dirt path filled with rocks and holes and roots, all along the rock cliff. There was even a small bridge, and I had flashbacks of being paralyzed in hysterical, nervous laughter in Quebec on the bridge high above the gorge. I kept it together this time, though. After that, we were disgusting again, so we got ice cream and took the train back. We made gnocchi in tomato sauce with fried onions and red pepper, making all our roommates jealous. The next morning, we left for France again, and were on a terrible train with no air-conditioning! I can't even tell you how happy I was to be done with Italian trains. They were always late, usually by 20 minutes, and rarely comfortable.

Our next stop was Nice, along the Cote d'Azur (AKA the French Riviera!). We actually didn't spend much time in Nice, though, as we really wanted to go to Antibes. We just did laundry the first night, and tried in vain to connect to the WIFI at both our hotel and McDonald's. The next morning we went straight to the beach in Antibes, which had sand where you sat, but definitely all rocks otherwise. Kelly actually burned quite a bit, even though it was less hot than Italy, and my back stung a little. After the beach, we walked all along the wall that follows the shoreline above the beach. Then we got quiche and guzzled water from a café that had a resident cat. We made sure to stroll through the downtown area on our way back to the train station. I tried to discreetly take a picture of a guy hand-writing the day's menu in chalk, but he saw me and it was very awkward. He still posed for the picture, though! Back in Nice that evening, we had dinner at "Woody's Diner and Tex-Mex Burger". They brought us a pitcher of water before we asked, and the guy came over apologizing because he forgot to bring us a cup filled to the top with ice cubes. I think that was Kelly's happiest moment so far! She had mostly-normal BBQ chicken, and I got enchiladas that were delicious, despite the unusual addition of goat cheese! We both had very weak wine, and a dessert, and at the end they brought us two shot glasses with a sample of their margaritas (I think they wanted us to order more alcohol!). We went to bed very satisfied, and woke up early the next morning for a walk around Nice. We went down to the beach, and walked along the main market street selling fresh foods, regional specialties, and flowers. We took pictures at Place Messina, which is basically a giant fountain in a rotary, and then had to catch our next train.

We left that day at 10:30 to go to Avignon, in the region of Provence. It was wonderful to ride the TGV again! We got a taxi to the hotel since Kelly's sunburn was killing her shoulders, and then it took us an hour and a half to get downtown from there. It's not that far, but we got on the bus in the wrong direction and didn't notice for a while. We had some fruit and snacks in a cute little park for lunch, but then a bird pooped on Kelly! We were kind of stunned for a minute, and she had to rinse off her shirt, but thankfully that's really all it hit. We got some pamphlets at the tourist office, and then went straight back to the hotel. After changing, we got crepes at a restaurant nearby, because the buses in Avignon stop running at 7:30 pm! It's ridiculous! There isn't much near us, either. We actually bought the "Man on Fire" DVD at a market and watched it to kill time.

Wednesday we strolled around the downtown area of Avignon a bit, past lots of shops and restaurants, to St. Benezet Bridge. This is also known as the "Pont d'Avignon" and there is a nursery rhyme type song about dancing on the bridge that has made it famous. It was built in the 13^th century, but damaged by the river and battles, so they stopped repairing a few hundred years ago. So it just ends partway across the river! That afternoon we had booked a five and a half hour tour out into the countryside. I think this is one of the best things we've done so far, and definitely worth the 30 euros. The tour was sixteen people, and we had a nice air-conditioned bus with a tour guide from New Jersey, and a French bus driver named Michel who was hysterical. We saw two "perched" villages, which were on hilltops to better defend the city. The first was Roussillon, where the houses are all red, orange, and yellow after the colors of the ochre soil. Next they drove us up in the mountains to a beautiful lavender field for pictures. Everything smelled wonderful, but there were millions of bees everywhere which freaked me out a little. Afterwards we saw the second village, Gordes, built entirely from dry stone, which they explained uses no mortar or anything, just stacked rocks. These villages have requirements that people build in the traditional style, in order to keep their official titles as "most charming villages in France." Last we went to the Lavender Museum, which explained the differences between pure lavender and lavandine, the distillation process, and its many uses. The shop was too expensive, so we just smelled everything until it became overwhelming.

Our last day in Avignon was spent wrapping things up. I spent a long time being annoyed at the post office, and then again at the pharmacy. I forgot about how much I love this aspect of France. We did do some shopping and got postcards, and then spent a bunch of time trying to get back to the hotel, since the buses seemed to be having issues. We bought food at the grocery store for dinner (I had bread and 6 types of cheese, and Kelly basically ate a whole chicken), and we watched more House while we wrote out postcards. Then Friday, our big Fourth of July plans were to travel to Spain! It took around eight hours from Avignon to Barcelona, and then almost an hour to navigate to our room. We will be staying in a dorm apartment at one of the universities here, where there is a kitchenette, 2 restaurants, laundry, internet, and a pool! We will be here for four nights before our flight to London. Update soon!