Ireland Photos

Ireland

This past weekend, two other friend and I took a short trip to Ireland. After the eruption of the volcano, our flight left the day they started letting flights leave. It was kind of frightening to be flying in the sky after all these particles had been floating around in the air.

We spent the first two nights in Dublin. Dublin was such a beautiful city with a lot of old and new mixed in together. One thing we definitely noticed was the nightlife in Dublin. At 6 p.m., people were already in the pubs singing along to live bands and yelling out of windows.

On the second day in Dublin, we took a tour to the country side in a very small tour bus with 3 other girls. We visited all the typical fields of Ireland, the part of land where Mel Gibson died in "Braveheart", the bridge where Gerard Butler and Hillary Swank meet in P.S. "I Love You" and a lot of other beautiful places.

We also visited the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin. There, we learned a lot about the process of making beer and how to pour your own pint. The museum did an amazing job showing the whole process in a creative way without getting too pouring. Seeing all of that definitely makes you appreciate beer more and the people brewing it.

The next day, we took a bus to Belfast. On the bus, we met a lady who was originally from Germany but had been living and being a tour guide in Ireland for 26 years. While Megan and I slept on the bus, Erin talked to her and got a lot of useful information about Belfast. She also did a conversion from Euros into Pounds for us since we didn't have any British Pounds.

In Belfast, we took a long day tour to the north coast and Londonderry because our hostel offered the free tour if you booked two nights in a row. The tour was very VERY well worth it and other than being poured on by rain for 5 minutes in the middle of the cliffs, it was the most beautiful scenery I have seen in a long time.

Londonderry was a very sad town because they're divided between the Ireland side and the British side. There are still bombings and conflict to this day, so being there was very eery and sad.

Coming back to Spain after this short vacation was definitely bitter sweet. Every place I've travelled to that hasn't been on my plans to visit (Ireland, Germany) has become one of my favorite places. I guess it's all about taking a leap and going, even if you don't know much about the place you're going to. It's so easy to fall in love with everything you see around you, the people, the food...all of it!

As of yesterday, the SOS 4.8 Music Festival has started in Murcia and we went last night and are going tonight too. At midnight yesterday, right before Franz Ferdinand started playing, my group of friends started singing happy birthday in Spanish to me and overall, it was an amazing way to ring in another birthday.

The next post will be Ireland photos.

Photos

If you are on my Facebook friends list, there are a lot more photos from each place. Sadly, uploading photos takes a long time, so these are only a few.

The photos above are from Berlin, Germany. The top right photo is at the part of the Berlin wall that's decorated with murals. The photo under it is of the falafel. The group photo is in front of the parliament building. We had heard going to the top of the glass dome in the parliament building was worth it, but the line said it would take more than an hour to get in, so we opted to sit outside for awhile instead. The bottom two photos are of the Berlin wall and the holocaust memorial.


The photos above are all from Bamber, Germany. The two people on the far right of the first picture were our hosts Roswitha and Christian. If you are ever traveling anywhere, consider couchsurfing. It was an amazing way to meet locals and save a little while traveling through a place for a short time. Also, the plate of food on top photo is what currywurst looks like.

The writing on the gate to Dachau read "Work will set you free"

The photos above are all from Munich, Germany. Except for the train bunk bed shot, that was in Paris waiting to leave for Munich. Under those two beds, there is one more.


The photos above are from Monaco, France. Monaco was definitely what Monaco is known to be. There were a lot of fancy cars, fancy people, fancy stores and although we didn't gamble at the Monte Carlo Casino, we did use their bathrooms and they were also fancy. It was off season, so that might explain why it felt kind of slow still.



The photos above are from Nice, France. The photo on the top right is of our hostel room. The pizza on the bottom right was possibly the best and cheapest lunch I had on the whole trip. One of the stands at the market had a lot of fresh baked goods and this cold pizza was only ,50 euros and so fresh!


The photos above are all from Marseille, France. The water was very chilly, but there were some brave souls swimming by the rocks.

Spring time in Murcia

It's finally spring and it feels like spring! On Thursday morning, I got back from a 14 day backpacking trip through France and Germany.

First stop of the trip was Marseille, France. On the France part of the trip, my friend Chris and I took a 11 hour train ride from Murcia to Marseille. Marseille was one of the most beautiful cities I have been to and the water was absolutely gorgeous to be around. Not only that, but it was amazing to see the prison where Monte Cristo was "technically" at. After spending a beautiful day in Marseille, we took at train to Nice. In Nice, we stayed two nights in a hostel sharing bunk beds with a brother and sister from Michigan. It was definitely nice to see some American faces. I had always wanted to visit Nice and overall, it was really pretty. I can't imagine what these cities would look like in the summer. Being able to smell the salt water and just being around an ocean felt so nice. After Nice, we took a day trip to Monaco. Monaco is definitely fancy. Although it was off season, there were a lot of tourists and Mercedes Benz being driven around.

Overall, of all the cities we visited in the French Riviera, the nicest one was Marseille. It had a good balance between a city and a beach town.

On our way back from Nice, we had to stop in Marseille to take our respective trains to our next place. I ended up taking a high speed train to Paris and a night train from Paris to Munich. Sleeping on the night train was probably the best sleep I've had in a long time. In the compartment, there was two German mother's with their two daughters and an old German woman. All six of us were crammed into a small room with 3 stacked beds on each side. I was assigned to one of the way top bunks, but the old woman tried to communicate to me that one of the young girls wanted to sleep on the top with her friend. In the best sign language and head shaking I could do, I gave up my bunk. Once in Munich, I had to wait from 7 am until about noon for the other three girls to arrive from Murcia.

Munich was a beautiful city. It had a lot of old buildings because according to our tour guide, when Munich was completely destroyed, they wanted to recreate the old buildings and not build modern looking ones.

Our hostel in Munich was a 12 bed mixed room and that night, Manchester was playing against Munich in soccer. Manchester lost and there were 4 people from Manchester, a father and his son and two friends, staying in our room. At 4 am, they came stumbling in drunk and upset from their loss. At about 4:30 am, one of the guys sleeping on the top bunk fell off of the bed and ran out into the hall way. Later that morning, they started having a snoring contest and the dad would continuously get up and hit each one across the head. Later that day, they apologized for all the noise and snoring. After that long night, we went on the walking tour of Munich and learned all about the hidden Holocaust memorials. On another day trip, Megan and I went to visit the Dachau Memorial Camp. It was very unreal to visit a place that has always been talked about in books.

After spending two beautiful days in Munich, we headed out to the small town of Bamberg on our way to Berlin. In Bamberg, we participated in couchsurfing for the first time. We were set up with an older lady who lived in a small town outside of Bamberg with her boyfriend. Not only were Roswitha and Christian two of the nicest German people I've ever met, but spending time in their town and having them show us around felt like being back in the States. Christian is also a large dolphin activist and showed us the documentary "The Cove" which was amazing. In Bamberg, we also tried a variety of typical German food which definitely got the best of our digestive systems. The first night, they took us to a typical community restaurant where we were served beer brewed in the back shed and currywurst. At the time it was delicious, but after awhile got to be too much to handle. On our last night, we ate at a restaurant next to the chapel on the hill. Because it was Good Friday, the restaurant was offering a lot of vegetable dishes, cheeses and fish sticks. The best part about spending time in Bamberg was being able to ride Roswitha's horse Lily. The horse is a horse trained to work with special needs kids.

Once our two amazing days in Bamberg were over, we headed out to Berlin and had to take 7 different trains. In Berlin, it was very obvious that the city was a lot different than Munich. Berlin was more modern and city like. It took us awhile to find the hostel (Hostel Aloha) because it was on the 3rd floor of a rundown building that had graffiti all outside of the door. In the end, the hostel turned out to be well worth the money and very hospitable.

In Berlin, we visited the typical tourist attractions like the Berlin wall, checkpoint Charlie, the memorial to the murdered Jews, Sachsenhausen Memorial Camp, Hitler's bunker, etc. Sachsenhausen was a lot more impacting than Dachau because of the number of people that were actually there and the size of the place. It was also very strange to think that not too long ago a country was actually divided by a wall. One of the highlights of the trip to Berlin was taking the alternative walking tour. On the tour, the tour guide showed us around the different neighborhoods of Berlin and graffiti art throughout the area. It was great to be able to see where locals live and the international communities. For lunch on our tour, we went to a Lebanese place and all got Falafel (the wikipedia photo and description don't do it justice.)

By the end of Berlin, we were all to the point of running out of clean clothes and missing the Spanish language. So after having travelled for 14 days out of a backpack, we headed off to Frankfurt, where we spent a good 11 hours at the airport and then to Alicante, where we spent the night at the airport because the next bus to Murcia was at 7 am.

Overall, Germany proved to be much more than I expected. Before leaving for Europe, I had a set plan of places I wanted to visit and Germany was never on the list. After spending 9 days in this beautiful country, I would not be surprised if I went back later in life. Everyone has this image of German people being cold, but not once did we feel uncomfortable around them. On the contrary, we had about 5 people ask us everyday if we needed help finding anything and even got a map handed to us on the subway by and old man. Whenever you're in Europe, make sure to check out this beautiful country full of history, amazing food, even more amazing people and a lot of artisan beer.

The next post will have a few of the hundreds of pictures taken on the trip. Until then, classes have resumed here in Murcia after a beautiful Semana Santa and with only 27 days left of classes, teachers have decided to actually start handing out work.

Las Fallas, Valencia

This is the large Falla in the city hall plaza burning down. The pictures are out of order, but it's easy to get the general idea.

It may have felt like a world war, but it definitely didn't look like one.

This is a photo of a small Falla burning. They literally burned them in between buildings and there were always firefighters spraying water on the buildings surrounding the burning art.

A lot of people were dressed up for the event.

Churros and more delicious food was everywhere.

Bella, Sam and I by the tourist Falla. Very fitting.

We saw a very homemade carousel ride.

Isabella, Sam and I in front of one of the Fallas. Around the city, there are hundreds of large Fallas and smaller ones. On the last day (Friday) of Las Fallas, they always burn all of them down but one. It was pretty sad to see such beautiful pieces of art burn down.

This Falla was in the city hall plaza. They burned this one down at 1am after all the others had been burning since 10PM and had a fireworks show. MILLIONS of people were in this plaza to watch the show.

Chris, Bella and I after the Mesclata in the city hall plaza.

This picture is during the mesclata. Very intense. It almost felt like being in a world war, except no one was running, people were drinking, laughing and clapping.

This is another one of the large Fallas.