Flight is delayed

I'm in Shannon Airport and my flight is delayed two hours. I should be going through customs in half an hour and instead I have to wait until 10:00. Highly unfortunate. I'm going to go find breakfast since I left my hard boiled egg on the kitchen counter...go me.

Ready?

I'm packed. I've got most of the loose ends tied up. And I've said good bye. I'm ready to go back to America. But is the Newark airport ready? That's the million dollar question of the night.

Blog Crack Strikes Again

I can't not blog. I tried, but I can't not make a post today even though I said it wouldn't be until after Christmas. So, this is just a quick study break.

Today we had our Christmas party complete with Secret Santa Gift Exchange. It was lovely, I got to wrap (and unwrap) my first gifts of the season. I think everyone had a good time. We sort of said our final goodbyes because Molly is leaving in a matter of hours and Annie and I are leaving tomorrow night. Kirsten, Laura, and Heather fly out on Monday so they still have some Galway part-ay time. But for me (the only one with an exam left...boo-hoo) the next 30 hours will be spent studying and packing. I'm actually almost 100% packed which is impressive for me. But there are still those troublesome things that are bulky and not conducive to being shoved in an overpacked suitcase at the last minute such as my toiletry case and my box full of phone equipment for some lucky new study abroad student who wants to purchase my Ireland phone.

Back to biogeography. Island equilibrium theory, here I come.

My last 30 hours in Galway. That's weird.

How to exit the study abroad program with as little insanity as possible (3 easy steps)

Step 1: Desperately cram for biogeography exam so as not to fail the best course of the semester.

Step 2: Begin packing in an orderly fashion, then panic and throw everything together at the last minute. Things will be lost for years in the depths of the suitcase, this is expected. It will be a happy moment when they are found next summer.

Step 3: Put blog posts on hold until a less busy time.




Sadly, I'm too busy trying not go insane in the next three days to write about Italy. Interested parties should check back after Christmas.

Chapter Thirteen: The End

I'm sorry to have to do this, but I'm going to breeze through the rest of our trip in one post. It has to be done...I'm leaving for Italy in literally two hours and I need the blog to be caught up on this trip for my own peace of mind.

So, here goes nothing...

On Friday night we went on a pub crawl Barcelona style. We got free food, free drinks, and a free show. The picture is Laura, Kirsten, and Molly with our crazy tour guide Martin.

Our free show was flamenco dancing! It was so cool, they moved their feet really fast. And the music was awesome too!

On Saturday morning, we decided to give ourselves a tour of the city. We found a Starbucks which doesn't sound important, but there are NONE in Galway, so it was awesome. I didn't actually get anything at the Starbucks (I'm saving my first Starbucks sip in 4 months for US soil) but it was nice to see it nonetheless.

Next, we ran into this weirdo building. I don't actually remember the name of it, but there was a line a mile long to get in and admission was not free, so we gave it a miss, deciding to take pictures from the outside.

Moving right along...next we came to Sagrada Familia, a church that has been in construction for many years and it's still not finished! I think the projected date of completion is 2025 or something. It's a sight to see though, very artsy.

Molly and I had been dying to try one of these magnificent-lookig Magnum ice cream bars. We got Mayan Mystery flavor and it was delicious. Exotic spices in ice cream...try it.

Finally we made it to the place we had been waiting for all day. Parc Guell is a design park with hills to climb, sights to see, and photo ops to take advantage of. Best of all: completely free. That alone makes it my favorite place in Barcelona.

There is a bench that surrounds one of the main points of the park and the bench is made like a mosaic. Different sections of the bench are different colors...it was so neat!

As you can tell, Tourist Kristin came out again in Parc Guell and had plenty of photos taken of herself. This is just another, larger view of the bench. (I chose the blue and white for IND.)

We walked a mile (literally a mile...there were signs) to the Metro station and hopped on it to go back to our area of town. We found a restaurant near the water and ate paella. It was delicious. I want some right now, in fact.

And we made it to the beach! We ended our stay in Barcelona with a trip to the beach to feel the Mediterranean Sea. It was freezing cold, but we all took our shoes and socks off and waded in the water. So worth it.

My last photo of Spain! The lights looked really cool on the water. I loved the beach!

So, that was our big trip. It was tiring but exhilarating and stressful and amazing all at once. Tomorrow marks another day and another adventure!

Chatper Twelve: Feliz Navidad Numero Dos

Barcelona (like every other city I've visited) is all decked out for Christmas. I can't let the opportunity to post Christmas photos pass, so I've chosen the best for your yuletide pleasure.

Barcelona's concept is the same as every other city, but each place uses a different light formation. This street was holly, candles, and trees.

Beam me up, Santa.

And then we stumbled upon the life-sized Bethlehem. The Three Kings were there.

A shepherd was there too, with his flock.

And obviously, the holy family made an appearance.

But the coolest part was the camel. Enough said.

Chapter Eleven: Palm Trees

Barcelona is different from any other European city I've visited--and yet it's the same. It's different because it is coastal and warm and there are palm trees growing everywhere. Amidst the palm trees, however, the architecture and streets look like those of Paris and Madrid. Barcelona exists as both a tropical locale and a thriving metropolitan destination.

This building is two-tone...no idea why. Notice the palm trees growing ten feet from the building. Lovely.

Barcelona has a biking service, so there are bikers everywhere and they're usually riding the red and white Barcelona bikes. The crosswalks indicate both pedestrians and bikers on the lights...I thought that was pretty cool.

Speaking of the bikes...here they are. It's called bicing...assuming you'd abbreviate "Barcelona" as "BCN" (not sure that's how I'd do it but I'm not the expert) it makes sense to spell it that way.

We found the palm trees! We made it to Port Olimpic and were greeted by these shining symbols of light and warmth. We actually have palm trees in Ireland (biogeography teaches us that it's because Ireland is an island and coconuts can make it to the shore) but they don't compare to these. These are actual honest-to-goodness palm trees that are more fun to experience when it's warm and sunny instead of chilly and rainy.

Another welcoming sign of Port Olimpic is this smiling lobster.

There is a long walkway that leads to the harbor where all the fishing boats are docked. The path is lined with palm trees, and it makes for a very beautiful walk.

This shows how Barcelona can be both a beach town and a bustling city. On the right side, the cars would not stop long enough for me to take a decent picture...no doubt Barcelonans returning home from work. The left side, however, (the side closer to the coast) was clear.

We had more to discover in Barcelona, so we couldn't hang around the palm trees in summer bliss forever. We head off into the sunset to find another part to explore.

Chapter Ten: Night falls and the tour continues

After our break, which involved small sandwiches in a little Spanish restaurant, we moved on to the final hour of our tour.

We stopped at the World's Oldest Restaurant. It's legit because it has a certificate from the Guinness Book of World Records and everything. It has supposedly been a working restaurant since the 1700s. That's crazy.

On the rest of our tour, the buildings in Madrid were all lit up and it looked awesome! I tried to take a lot of photos, but mostly they came out blurry.

This is a cool one because the lights were purple! It reminded me of Baltimore when the Ravens go far in the playoffs. Very cool.

This is a statue of Federico Garcia Lorca, a playwright who remains very important to Spanish people. People often put roses in his hands along with the bird that he holds.

After the tour, we went out for tapas y sangria. The food and sangria were both delicious! The atmosphere of the bar/restaurant we ate in was awesome...very authentic.

The next day, we boarded a plane and flew to Barcelona which is where I'll pick up later!

Chapter Nine: New Europe Tour of Madrid

When we ate lunch (we ordered in Spanish and all that...very exciting) we also decided to get dessert. We got churros with chocolate sauce to dip them in! The churros were absolutely delicious!

After lunch, we wanted to go on a New Europe tour. This is the same tour company we had used in Paris and we had quite enjoyed our tour there. The best thing about New Europe is that their tours are free! The tour guides work on a tips-only basis, so we do pay something, but it's completely up to us how much we want to give them.

We found the Free Tour signs at the starting point and met our tour guide, Eddie. Eddie is from England and while he is very smart, he has a very strange sense of humor. I had a lot of fun on the Madrid tour, but some found it boring and too long. It was a bit long for my taste (supposed to be 3.5 hours and it ended up being 4.5...but we stopped and had food at one point) but I still really enjoyed hearing Madrid's story.
Eddie showed us the place where the Barefoot Nuns live. They never see anyone and no one ever sees them. Once they enter, they lose their contact with everyone. Tours do run through the convent daily, but only after the nuns retire to their rooms. When the bell rings, it means that all visitors must vacate the premises because the sisters will be reemerging from their chambers.

We also visited Madrid's opera house. The opera house was located very close to the hostel we were staying in. The Metro station we used was Opera, so we knew where we were, a rarity, especially for my terrible sense of direction.

Eddie also took us to the Royal Palace. We could not go in due to time restrictions, but it was beautiful to look at from the outside.

At one of our last stops in the first half of the tour, we went to Almudena Cathedral, which is adjacent to the palace. Construction on the cathedral was started in 1879 and not completed until 1993. The idea for the cathedral had been in the works since the 16th century, so this cathedral took a very long time to be finished.

Chapter Eight: Feliz Navidad

One of the great things about doing all of our big traveling during the last few weeks of the semester is that we get to see how Europe celebrates the Christmas season. Madrid had a lot of Christmas things going on, so I wanted to put them in their own section.

The Christmas trees in Madrid are very cool. They look modern, like maybe each was done by a designer. There were several throughout the city.

This is another Madrid tree. The design on it is not Christmas-y at all, only the shape is.

Lastly, this is a photo of me with a Navidad flag in a park in Madrid. These were all over the city as well. I love Christmas!

Chapter Seven: First Impressions of Spain

When we got back from our tour of Obidos and Fatima, we had only a few hours left in Portugal. Since our tour dropped us off at the Hard Rock Cafe and we were in no mood to go hunt down food, we decided to eat at Hard Rock. The food was excellent, though it wasn't traditional Portuguese cuisine. After dinner, we trekked back to Lisbon Lounge to pick up our luggage and from there we went to the main station in Lisbon: Oriente.

We had tickets for an overnight bus from Lisbon to Madrid. It left at 9:00 at night and did not get to Madrid until 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning. I was tired enough from the all day tour that I was pretty confident I'd sleep. As we were boarding the bus, however, the bus driver (who was not very nice) would not let us bring our backpacks on the bus. It's not that I really needed anything in there, but it would have been a comfort to have access to my things. For example, I rescued my mp3 player from the bag before I tossed it in the luggage compartment but I did not get any batteries. If my music had died, it would have been a very loooonnnnggg night. But luckily, I did not require any items from my bag.


We got to Madrid around 6:30 in the morning. We checked into our hostel and waited around for them to serve breakfast so we could reap the benefits of free food. With restored energy, we set out to explore Madrid. We were impressed, as we always are, with the architechture of the buildings. It reminded me more of Paris than of Lisbon, which was surprising. I thought there would be more similarities between Portugal and Spain, but the two are very different.

We continued to walk through Madrid, with no real plan in mind. We had to meet Kirsten, who was flying in from Dublin, around lunchtime, but we had several hours to kill in Madrid first.

The street signs in European cities are so pretty! I noticed them in Paris as well...they're almost like pieces of art in themselves.

As we walked through one of Madrid's parks, I saw lots of advertisements for the movie Twilight. The Spanish title is even creepier than the English one. Crepusculo. Pretty scary.


We found Palacio de Cristal, which means Crystal Palace. It was a small castle made out of glass! We went inside, but to walk on the floors (which are not made of glass) we had to take our shoes off and as it was all wet inside, we decided against it. It was still really cool though.

Chapter Six: Pilgrimage to Fatima

Our last stop on the tour with Gonzalo was the shrine at Fatima. The place is HUGE or at least it felt that way to me because I was comparing it to Ireland's Knock.

Unfortunately, it rained really hard the entire time we were there. We still managed to have a good time, even if our photos didn't turn out bright and sunny.

This is a view of Fatima from the Chapel of Apparitions. The crucifix is very modern artish; Jesus is made up of a zig-zag line. Everything was very interesting to look at...not traditional like I would expect, but more modernized.

We wanted to go into the main church but there was a mass on inside and we were not allowed in. We stayed under the church's roof for a few minutes to see if the rain would pass and when it didn't we went off to find more things to look at.

Just as we were leaving, Laura and I saw this statue of John Paul II so we had to get our photo with him. Yeah JPII!

Chapter Five: The Fishing Village of Nazare and an Unfinished Monastery

The next stop on our tour was a small fishing village called Nazare. We looked out onto the coast with our tour guide Gonzalo. The beach looked clean and inviting and if the weather had been nicer I think we would have ended our tour immediately and had a day on the beach.


Some of the houses are pretty close to the water. I'd hate to see what happens when the water level gets too high.

Gonzalo kindly took a photo of Molly, Laura, and me. I have a pretty sweet hair thing going on, but that's the danger of a windy beach town, right?

This is the church in the village. It reminds me of something out of Monkey Island. It would be cool to have a palm tree growing right outside of our church back home. Or maybe just to have a palm tree anywhere close to my house.


After we ate lunch in Nazare (lunch featured shrimp with the heads still attached...the nightmares continue) we went on our merry way to an ancient monastery. By the time we got there, it was raining in earnest and we had bundled up more tightly.

The monastery was never finished, so parts of it are without a roof. Even when we were inside we were getting rained on. There is a whole section that is not completed, so it was basically just a cylinder that was open at the top.

The inside of the church (one of the finished parts...no risk of getting rained on in here) does not disappoint. The ceilings are high, the columns are wide, all is right with the world.