Today we went to Binche for Mardi Gras, or Carnival as they call it here. It was another ISA excursion but a few of the Bentley kids were there as well, Angela, Christine and Mike, plus Jackson who's just on his own (he's from Alabama). Regina, Rachel and Kreesta also tagged along and Becky's mom and sister who are visiting her. We found a novelty store right away and a few people bought plastic tiaras and those tinfoil-y wigs. Then we went to the bar. It was strange to be in a bar at 2 in the afternoon, but it was Carnival. I had no desire to spend my dwindling funds on beer so Christine gave me one of her alcohol supplies from Brussles, a water bottle filled with wine, a smaller one folks, not a nalgene or anything like that. Normally, this would be a sign that someone has a problem, but when it's Carnival, it's all good. The ground was covered in confetti when we started waiting outside for the parade. The parade was supposed to start at 3 but didn't get to us until maybe 4:30. They where these traditional costumes with these giant feather hats (for reference, check my manneken pis photos for the traditional small-town Belgium costume). The big thing in Binche is throwing oranges into the crowd. I didn't catch any but I picked up 5. The pattern was fairly repetetive, costumed folk throwing oranges closely followed by a band playing flugel horns, valve trombones, e-flat clarinets (I think, they looked smaller than normal ones), snare drums with huge sticks and a two-person bass drum operation (one person carried the drum on their back, another hit it). We had separated very early so it was Allison, Jackson, Mike, Christine, Angela, Maren and me. After a while, Jackson and Mike had to leave and the rest of us were ready to eat. We had pizza, I've had a lot of Italian, I don't think I need much more. Anyways, after that we headed home. A fairly uneventful Carnival, but more than I've ever done to celebrate, and it was fun. However, I've accomplished no homework tonight...ooohhh well, c'est la vie.
-Lauren :)
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Long Awaited Update
Well, there's been demand for a new post (and I have been slacking) so I shall deliver!
First of all, Le You:
Friday the 13th the college hosted a party at a club (Le You). Originally we (Allison and I) weren't going to go (because it was 15€ and I'm cheap) and we went to a bar near campus instead. It was LAME, we met two other American students there and when they left for Le You we decided to go with them. Good idea, we got there at just the right time, there was a HUGE line but since there was a veco (VEsalius COllege, my school) party, we were VIP and got let in with a couple other full time students courtesy of another student who came out from inside. It ended up being only 10€ and that included a drink, woo! I don't know about other European clubs, but this one wasn't full of creepy men like American clubs, everyone just seemed to be dancing to dance. That was refreshing, very nice to see. Most importantly, we had a BLAST and stayed until about 3am despite the fact we had to wake up at 8am for our first ISA excursion...
Ghent!
If you're following closely, you'll have noticed that this trip took place on Valentine's Day, which hasn't been exciting since 3rd grade when everybody gave everybody else cards and candy (I really think that should be reinstated at the college level). Anyways, as it was an ISA excursion it was just us ISA folks, Allison, Maren, Dallin, Becky, Sabine and myself. Ghent is lovely, complete with castle and canal. We toured the castle first, it seemed to be mostly used as a prison, people were brutal back in medieval times, the torture methods were horrific. After that we had lunch...at pizza hut...I've had quite a bit of pizza on this trip. Then, we had a city tour and eventually arrived at the Alijns Huis, a museum of folklore, or everyday life in Belgium over the years. Life in Belgium didn't seem too different from life in America in the 20th century, which isn't that surprising since the early 20th century was a time of mass-immigration and the Europeans brought their culture with them. They had some interesting board games though, one involved little yodelers in leiderhosen climbing on a mountain, it didn't lie flat though, it stood up and the yodeler pieces straddled the 2D mountain...basically, I want to play it. After that we wandered around for a little bit and Sabine bought us some traditional Ghent candies, Becky calls them Ghent nose candies, they're cone shaped raspberry flavored candies with a gooey center, they taste like pure sugar with a little bit of flavoring. Then we headed home for Valentine's Day dinner with Regina, Rachel and Kreesta.
We met up in the Grand Place but couldn't decide where to eat. Eventually we ended up at a nice Thai restaurant, it was delicious. When we were done eating and waiting for the bill, this man comes up selling roses, he was a little sketchy and the roses weren't great. Nonetheless, Dallin buys EIGHT of them, one for each of the girls...yes, 8 girls (including Sabine) and 1 guy, that's our main group, poor Dallin. All in all, it was a lovely Valentine's Day.
Next weekend was Amsterdam with Madame Delsemme's art class. This class consists of 8 kids from Bentley (a school in Boston) Regina, Rachel and another girl, Marian. Allison, Maren, Dallin, Sabine and I tagged along. The Bentley kids did not make the best first impression on our tour of Brussels, so I was skeptical. They have to take the class, their program covers the cost for all the trips, so they're not necessarily taking it because they want to. Despite a bad first impression, they're not bad. Marian, on the other hand, has no social skills at all. She purposely separates herself from the group and she has a tendency to be very short with people, she also can't seem to take a joke. She's engaged after 3 months of dating her boyfriend she found online, he's the topic of most of what she says. Even Sabine isn't fond of her, and it's Sabine's job to like students...that's a sign. ANYWAYS...Amsterdam has quaint houses, lots of canals and more bike's than you could ever hope to count. Unfortunately, I couldn't label most of the major landmarks if I went back because Madame Delsemme talks FOREVERRRRRRR. If she just said, "This is the Old Church, it was originally called St. something until the protestant reformation when they were anti-Catholic and iconoclasts..." something along those lines, I'd know what's what, but that doesn't happen. She talks for about 15 minutes on each landmark, it's impressive that she knows so much, but it's intolerable to listen too, especially since English is her second language. By the time she's done talking, I've forgotten what the landmark is.
We had a jam-packed schedule, leaving at 9am on Friday and going until 10pm that night. We saw one of the churches, either old or new, dam square where the old town hall/palace is (it has unicorns on it, which is just plain cool), the university court yard, an example of Amsterdam school of architecture style, the Amsterdam Historical Museum, had dinner at an Indonesian restaurant (west indies trading company, that was Dutch) and went to the Van Gogh Museum, which was one of my favorites, I love Van Gogh. They had a special exhibit displaying a number of his night time paintings, so I got to see the real Starry Night, which is one of my favorite paintings. Silly me, I thought that the cyprus tree was a church for a long time...until I saw the painting in person, actually...After that the Bentley kids had arranged to go on a pub crawl, Rachel and I came late so it took us a while to find them and we weren't officially part of it...but it was still fun. After a few bars, some members of the group wanted to partake in some usually illegal activities that are legal in the Netherlands, so we began a quest to find a coffeeshop. Success of course, there's one almost every 10ft afterall (the smell is [not] lovely). It was the Dolphins, really cool interior I have to say, a coral-like wall, a few fish tanks and TV screens displaying an aquarium (like those shots of a burning log in a fireplace, but with an aquarium). It is essential that you know that NO, I did NOT partake in any activities, unless you count sitting inside a coffee shop partaking. Also important to remember, it's legal (as if you could forget, we're talking about Amsterdam afterall). We walked home after, following my directions. It was a long walk but we got back just fine, thankyouverymuch.
Saturday, another full day. Left around 9:30 for our boat tour, I'm a big fan of boat tours, especially when I'm not freezing (and I wasn't). There's a housing shortage in Amsterdam so many people live in houseboats. I enjoyed seeing those, I'd live in one. It was very difficult to stay awake though and I definitely dozed off a couple times, I think everybody else did too. After that we saw the Our Lord in the Attic museum, an example of a Catholic church hidden in the attic of a merchant's house. The protestants in Amsterdam outlawed public Catholic services, so they had to hold mass in these kinds of churches. It was pretty neat to see a full fledged church in someone's house. Next was lunch which included a very awkward conversation between Maren and Marian...oh well...then the Rijksmuseum. I've had my fill of audiotours, I don't have the patience for someone to describe 2 works of art to me for 5 minutes, especially on a trip with Madame Delsemme. Hence I stopped listening to the audio tour very quickly. I definitely preferred the Van Gogh museum to the Rijksmuseum, but it still had highlights, two huge and very ornate dollhouses, for example. They were decked out with mini-china meticulously decorated plates and mini-silver cooking utensils. They were symbols of status, not toys, and apparently cost more than some people's real full-size homes. I also saw Rembrandt's most famous painting, Night Watch, which I was completely unfamiliar with. It was massive and I tend to like large paintings just because the only place you really see them is in art museums. That was the end of our planned activities for the day, the Bentley kids and Maren headed off to a tour of the Heineken museum and the rest of us ended up ice skating. The ice badly needed a zamboni, all the bumps and gashes made me very precautious, but eventually I got over that. It was fun. Afterwards we had some tasty mini-pancake-like pastries for a snack and headed off to find Maren, which proved difficult, but we found her. Italian for dinner and there was a mouse in the restaurant, which surprisingly didn't phase me at all. Maren wanted to go to the red light district, the rest of us didn't go in, but the outer wall, if you like, was quite graphic. The rest walked around for a bit, visited a souvenir shop, and went back to the hostel. Everyone had been in a weird mood all day, Sabine was pretty loopy (she fondled the 3D chest of a coffee cup) and Dallin was thoroughly annoyed. Maren had been pretty pissy the whole time as well. It spoiled the evening a little bit. When Maren returned from the red light district she shared her new self-discovery with us, that perhaps prostitution is disgusting and dehumanizing. I'm glad she felt that, because I can't believe that any prostitute truly loves their work and that there's nothing else they'd rather do. If there is such a thing as universal truth, that's one, prostitution is evil. The Dutch don't endorse drugs and prostitution, they tolerate it. Their theory is that it's going to happen anyways, might as well have it safe as possible. This tolerance has turned into a legitimate business market, every other store is either a sex shop or a coffeeshop (which don't sell coffee, apparently it sounded better than "weedshop"). Of all the places I've visited thus far, I think Amsterdam is the first I couldn't live in. If you ignore the sex and drugs, it's lovely, but those two things are unavoidable.
Sunday (finally), aka Jewish day. We started off with the Anne Frank House, my other favorite museum of the weekend. It was very moving and I'm so thankful I can live in relative safety, without worrying for my life everday. They lived there for two years until they were betrayed. The saddest part of the whole museum was a picture of Anne Frank's father returning to the empty house after the war, his entire family died in the concentration camps. After that happier things, the tulip museum, half of it was the gift store. Regina gave her speech for class, a single tulip blub used to sell for 10 times the annual income of the average family back in the 1630s, ridiculous. After that lunch and then, continuing on the Jewish theme, we visited a synagogue. It was freezing, and again Madame Delsemme talked for a good 20 minutes, but it was very pretty. Not as pretty as gothic Catholic cathedrals, especially the ones in Italy, but still pretty. Next the Jewish Historical Museum. It was also interesting, apparently there was a large settlement of Portuguese and Spanish Jews in Holland back in the day. Some were very rich and the others were very poor. After WWII they were not supported by the community at all, which is awful. When Israel was established, many left to live there. I'd never thought of the timing of that before. Israel was founded in 1948, right after WWII, after the holocaust, of course Jews are going to immigrate to the promised land after their homes and lives have been destroyed elsewhere. We then learned about water levels in Amsterdam, courtesy of Madame Delsemme, in a metro station with big water-level-indicating tubes inside. Apparently there was a huge flood in 1953. That was basically the end of the day, we were all itching to get home after such a long weekend so we grabbed our bags and got on the next train. On the way back I learned there's a red light district in Brussels, clearly visible from the train. The girls stand in windows, you can go window shopping for a hooker. Sabine, in her loopy state on Saturday night, was saying how it was odd how they stand in windows, but then she said "well, I suppose you look at shoes in the window before you buy them" which was funny at the time, but in retrospect it's awful. The fact that a human being can be compared to a pair of shoes like that is awful. I guess prostitution is legal in Belgium too.
Sorry for the painfully long post, but I had a lot to catch you up on. Lindsay and Erin, I hope this is an adequate distraction for you.
-Lauren :)
First of all, Le You:
Friday the 13th the college hosted a party at a club (Le You). Originally we (Allison and I) weren't going to go (because it was 15€ and I'm cheap) and we went to a bar near campus instead. It was LAME, we met two other American students there and when they left for Le You we decided to go with them. Good idea, we got there at just the right time, there was a HUGE line but since there was a veco (VEsalius COllege, my school) party, we were VIP and got let in with a couple other full time students courtesy of another student who came out from inside. It ended up being only 10€ and that included a drink, woo! I don't know about other European clubs, but this one wasn't full of creepy men like American clubs, everyone just seemed to be dancing to dance. That was refreshing, very nice to see. Most importantly, we had a BLAST and stayed until about 3am despite the fact we had to wake up at 8am for our first ISA excursion...
Ghent!
If you're following closely, you'll have noticed that this trip took place on Valentine's Day, which hasn't been exciting since 3rd grade when everybody gave everybody else cards and candy (I really think that should be reinstated at the college level). Anyways, as it was an ISA excursion it was just us ISA folks, Allison, Maren, Dallin, Becky, Sabine and myself. Ghent is lovely, complete with castle and canal. We toured the castle first, it seemed to be mostly used as a prison, people were brutal back in medieval times, the torture methods were horrific. After that we had lunch...at pizza hut...I've had quite a bit of pizza on this trip. Then, we had a city tour and eventually arrived at the Alijns Huis, a museum of folklore, or everyday life in Belgium over the years. Life in Belgium didn't seem too different from life in America in the 20th century, which isn't that surprising since the early 20th century was a time of mass-immigration and the Europeans brought their culture with them. They had some interesting board games though, one involved little yodelers in leiderhosen climbing on a mountain, it didn't lie flat though, it stood up and the yodeler pieces straddled the 2D mountain...basically, I want to play it. After that we wandered around for a little bit and Sabine bought us some traditional Ghent candies, Becky calls them Ghent nose candies, they're cone shaped raspberry flavored candies with a gooey center, they taste like pure sugar with a little bit of flavoring. Then we headed home for Valentine's Day dinner with Regina, Rachel and Kreesta.
We met up in the Grand Place but couldn't decide where to eat. Eventually we ended up at a nice Thai restaurant, it was delicious. When we were done eating and waiting for the bill, this man comes up selling roses, he was a little sketchy and the roses weren't great. Nonetheless, Dallin buys EIGHT of them, one for each of the girls...yes, 8 girls (including Sabine) and 1 guy, that's our main group, poor Dallin. All in all, it was a lovely Valentine's Day.
Next weekend was Amsterdam with Madame Delsemme's art class. This class consists of 8 kids from Bentley (a school in Boston) Regina, Rachel and another girl, Marian. Allison, Maren, Dallin, Sabine and I tagged along. The Bentley kids did not make the best first impression on our tour of Brussels, so I was skeptical. They have to take the class, their program covers the cost for all the trips, so they're not necessarily taking it because they want to. Despite a bad first impression, they're not bad. Marian, on the other hand, has no social skills at all. She purposely separates herself from the group and she has a tendency to be very short with people, she also can't seem to take a joke. She's engaged after 3 months of dating her boyfriend she found online, he's the topic of most of what she says. Even Sabine isn't fond of her, and it's Sabine's job to like students...that's a sign. ANYWAYS...Amsterdam has quaint houses, lots of canals and more bike's than you could ever hope to count. Unfortunately, I couldn't label most of the major landmarks if I went back because Madame Delsemme talks FOREVERRRRRRR. If she just said, "This is the Old Church, it was originally called St. something until the protestant reformation when they were anti-Catholic and iconoclasts..." something along those lines, I'd know what's what, but that doesn't happen. She talks for about 15 minutes on each landmark, it's impressive that she knows so much, but it's intolerable to listen too, especially since English is her second language. By the time she's done talking, I've forgotten what the landmark is.
We had a jam-packed schedule, leaving at 9am on Friday and going until 10pm that night. We saw one of the churches, either old or new, dam square where the old town hall/palace is (it has unicorns on it, which is just plain cool), the university court yard, an example of Amsterdam school of architecture style, the Amsterdam Historical Museum, had dinner at an Indonesian restaurant (west indies trading company, that was Dutch) and went to the Van Gogh Museum, which was one of my favorites, I love Van Gogh. They had a special exhibit displaying a number of his night time paintings, so I got to see the real Starry Night, which is one of my favorite paintings. Silly me, I thought that the cyprus tree was a church for a long time...until I saw the painting in person, actually...After that the Bentley kids had arranged to go on a pub crawl, Rachel and I came late so it took us a while to find them and we weren't officially part of it...but it was still fun. After a few bars, some members of the group wanted to partake in some usually illegal activities that are legal in the Netherlands, so we began a quest to find a coffeeshop. Success of course, there's one almost every 10ft afterall (the smell is [not] lovely). It was the Dolphins, really cool interior I have to say, a coral-like wall, a few fish tanks and TV screens displaying an aquarium (like those shots of a burning log in a fireplace, but with an aquarium). It is essential that you know that NO, I did NOT partake in any activities, unless you count sitting inside a coffee shop partaking. Also important to remember, it's legal (as if you could forget, we're talking about Amsterdam afterall). We walked home after, following my directions. It was a long walk but we got back just fine, thankyouverymuch.
Saturday, another full day. Left around 9:30 for our boat tour, I'm a big fan of boat tours, especially when I'm not freezing (and I wasn't). There's a housing shortage in Amsterdam so many people live in houseboats. I enjoyed seeing those, I'd live in one. It was very difficult to stay awake though and I definitely dozed off a couple times, I think everybody else did too. After that we saw the Our Lord in the Attic museum, an example of a Catholic church hidden in the attic of a merchant's house. The protestants in Amsterdam outlawed public Catholic services, so they had to hold mass in these kinds of churches. It was pretty neat to see a full fledged church in someone's house. Next was lunch which included a very awkward conversation between Maren and Marian...oh well...then the Rijksmuseum. I've had my fill of audiotours, I don't have the patience for someone to describe 2 works of art to me for 5 minutes, especially on a trip with Madame Delsemme. Hence I stopped listening to the audio tour very quickly. I definitely preferred the Van Gogh museum to the Rijksmuseum, but it still had highlights, two huge and very ornate dollhouses, for example. They were decked out with mini-china meticulously decorated plates and mini-silver cooking utensils. They were symbols of status, not toys, and apparently cost more than some people's real full-size homes. I also saw Rembrandt's most famous painting, Night Watch, which I was completely unfamiliar with. It was massive and I tend to like large paintings just because the only place you really see them is in art museums. That was the end of our planned activities for the day, the Bentley kids and Maren headed off to a tour of the Heineken museum and the rest of us ended up ice skating. The ice badly needed a zamboni, all the bumps and gashes made me very precautious, but eventually I got over that. It was fun. Afterwards we had some tasty mini-pancake-like pastries for a snack and headed off to find Maren, which proved difficult, but we found her. Italian for dinner and there was a mouse in the restaurant, which surprisingly didn't phase me at all. Maren wanted to go to the red light district, the rest of us didn't go in, but the outer wall, if you like, was quite graphic. The rest walked around for a bit, visited a souvenir shop, and went back to the hostel. Everyone had been in a weird mood all day, Sabine was pretty loopy (she fondled the 3D chest of a coffee cup) and Dallin was thoroughly annoyed. Maren had been pretty pissy the whole time as well. It spoiled the evening a little bit. When Maren returned from the red light district she shared her new self-discovery with us, that perhaps prostitution is disgusting and dehumanizing. I'm glad she felt that, because I can't believe that any prostitute truly loves their work and that there's nothing else they'd rather do. If there is such a thing as universal truth, that's one, prostitution is evil. The Dutch don't endorse drugs and prostitution, they tolerate it. Their theory is that it's going to happen anyways, might as well have it safe as possible. This tolerance has turned into a legitimate business market, every other store is either a sex shop or a coffeeshop (which don't sell coffee, apparently it sounded better than "weedshop"). Of all the places I've visited thus far, I think Amsterdam is the first I couldn't live in. If you ignore the sex and drugs, it's lovely, but those two things are unavoidable.
Sunday (finally), aka Jewish day. We started off with the Anne Frank House, my other favorite museum of the weekend. It was very moving and I'm so thankful I can live in relative safety, without worrying for my life everday. They lived there for two years until they were betrayed. The saddest part of the whole museum was a picture of Anne Frank's father returning to the empty house after the war, his entire family died in the concentration camps. After that happier things, the tulip museum, half of it was the gift store. Regina gave her speech for class, a single tulip blub used to sell for 10 times the annual income of the average family back in the 1630s, ridiculous. After that lunch and then, continuing on the Jewish theme, we visited a synagogue. It was freezing, and again Madame Delsemme talked for a good 20 minutes, but it was very pretty. Not as pretty as gothic Catholic cathedrals, especially the ones in Italy, but still pretty. Next the Jewish Historical Museum. It was also interesting, apparently there was a large settlement of Portuguese and Spanish Jews in Holland back in the day. Some were very rich and the others were very poor. After WWII they were not supported by the community at all, which is awful. When Israel was established, many left to live there. I'd never thought of the timing of that before. Israel was founded in 1948, right after WWII, after the holocaust, of course Jews are going to immigrate to the promised land after their homes and lives have been destroyed elsewhere. We then learned about water levels in Amsterdam, courtesy of Madame Delsemme, in a metro station with big water-level-indicating tubes inside. Apparently there was a huge flood in 1953. That was basically the end of the day, we were all itching to get home after such a long weekend so we grabbed our bags and got on the next train. On the way back I learned there's a red light district in Brussels, clearly visible from the train. The girls stand in windows, you can go window shopping for a hooker. Sabine, in her loopy state on Saturday night, was saying how it was odd how they stand in windows, but then she said "well, I suppose you look at shoes in the window before you buy them" which was funny at the time, but in retrospect it's awful. The fact that a human being can be compared to a pair of shoes like that is awful. I guess prostitution is legal in Belgium too.
Sorry for the painfully long post, but I had a lot to catch you up on. Lindsay and Erin, I hope this is an adequate distraction for you.
-Lauren :)
Monday, February 9, 2009
My Trip to Ireland (or How I Spent the Most Money Ever Spent on a Taxi)
This weekend was my trip to Ireland, a short trip since the cheap flights left for Ireland Friday night and left for Brussels early Sunday morning. The flight was scheduled for 9:35pm on Friday, we left the house around 6, should've been plenty of time, right? Well, we got on the metro for Gare du Midi/Zuidstation, but when we got there, we had no idea where to go. We were supposed to catch a bus to the airport Charloi, not the main airport. However, there weren't any signs telling us where to go, and even though we asked for directions several times, they didn't help at all. We did find out that the bus leaves every hour and fifteen minutes though, so when it was after 7 and the next bus wasn't coming until 8:15 and it would take about an hour to get to the airport, we decided to take a taxi...oy. The taxi driver was very nice, but a 40 minute taxi drive costs a LOT of money, this was probably the most expensive taxi in the history of taxis...except maybe in movies. Thank goodness there were two of us to foot the bill, and he did round down, which was nice but really didn't help.
So we were at the airport, apparently they didn't stamp my visa when I flew into Europe the first time so the security man was very skeptical, fortunately, he let me through anyways. The flight was delayed around an hour, but they didn't really tell us that, we just sat around waiting until they let us board an hour later than we were supposed to. We befriended an Italian woman during the wait though, she spoke French and English as well as Italian...these Europeans and their language skills astound me (the taxi driver had taught himself English). Our plane ride was the noisiest plane ride I've ever been on. There was a big rugby match between Ireland and France in Dublin on Saturday, everybody was singing and shouting, it was crazy. Ryan Air seats are very close together too, not much leg room. Once we arrived in Ireland we had to show our passports again, luckily we don't have EU passports so we were able to go in the shorter line where we met an Australian man who told us about the 45 degree C weather in Australia and I told him about the -20 degree F weather in Minnesota. Allison has a converter on her phone, so we found out that 45 degrees C is about 114 degrees F and -20 degrees F is about -28 degrees C...tell me how that conversion makes any sense. Anyways, the Australian was shocked by that kind of cold. We found the bus we were supposed to take to our hostel without any problems, it was clearly labelled.
Once we got off the bus, we tried to find our hostel. Well...that was an adventure. The hostel was very poorly marked, online it was the Morehampton House Hostel, in person it was something completely different. After walking around for about half an hour and calling the hostel a few times (while feeling very safe, Dublin is a lively city) we found the right address. The woman who ran the hostel was outside to confirm this is what we were looking for. Our booking was hand written on a sheet of paper, it was like a house converted into a hostel. It was clean and pretty cheap though, and we got moved from a 4 person bedroom to a 2 person bedroom for no extra cost which was nice.
Next morning we had to wake up early for our 7am tour to Limerick, Galway Bay and the Cliffs of Moher. We got a taxi to the meeting place, a decently priced taxi, well anything would be compared to Friday. Taxis are EVERYWHERE at ALL hours in Dublin. There were 8 of us on the tour, at least 4 of the other people spoke Spanish, one woman at least spoke ONLY Spanish and talked like we could understand her. We got a huge coach bus. It was a sunny day and the drive was beautiful. We were only in Limerick for about 5 minutes, long enough to take a picture by King John's Castle. Then on to Galway Bay, which was gorgeous. There were fuzzy cows and sheep all over during the drive. The Atlantic Ocean smelled so good too. After lots of picture taking and wandering, it was time for lunch. We had lunch in Doolin, I had seafood chowder, mmmm. Then it was on to the Cliffs of Moher. They were gorgeous, of course, especially since it was sunny. I bought a claddaugh ring right before we left and sampled some mead (yum) a few wines and soda bread. Then began the long ride back to Dublin.
We got dinner once we were back in Dublin at a pub/restaurant, of course the pub part was packed what with the rugby game just over (the streets were flooded with people, Ireland won). The waitress looked at me like I was crazy when I asked how much water cost, water isn't free in Brussels, it wasn't free in Italy either, but it is in Ireland. The lamb stew I had was delicious. After that we walked around for a while, took a few pictures and ended up in the Temple Bar area (don't worry, we had a map). There was a band playing in the street, real Irish music, it was pretty cool. Then we ended up at The Temple Bar and each had a half-pint of Guinness, no money for more than that, although I would've liked to have some whiskey, oh well. We walked back to the hostel, it was very safe, people were everywhere, maybe because of the rugby match, maybe because that's just how Dublin is, it was great though. Our flight was scheduled for 6:50am and we had to catch the bus to the airport at either 4:30 or 5:30, we chose 4:30 which meant waking up at 3:45, sometimes I go to bed at 3:45. Oh well, we found the bus stop pretty easily. Check-in was easy, self service kiosk. Allison had breakfast at the airport, I was unwilling to spend anymore money. The plane was on time, aerlingus this time, not ryan air, so we had more space, we both slept through the flight. Once back in Brussels, we had to show our passports once more and the security man stamped mine this time after a few questions, so that shouldn't be an issue in the future. We hopped on a bus...which we had to pay for despite our public transportation passes...sigh...oh well. We got off near a metro stop and rode back home, then took long naps.
All in all it was a nice weekend, but very expensive...at least that taxi was. However, I have a cold, and my ears are pretty messed up from all the pressure changes. My camera charger still hasn't arrived, I borrowed my hostsister's camera and stole a few pictures from Allison again. If it doesn't arrive this week I'm just buying a new one.
All pictures are on facebook and photobucket, as usual, take a look!
-Lauren :)
So we were at the airport, apparently they didn't stamp my visa when I flew into Europe the first time so the security man was very skeptical, fortunately, he let me through anyways. The flight was delayed around an hour, but they didn't really tell us that, we just sat around waiting until they let us board an hour later than we were supposed to. We befriended an Italian woman during the wait though, she spoke French and English as well as Italian...these Europeans and their language skills astound me (the taxi driver had taught himself English). Our plane ride was the noisiest plane ride I've ever been on. There was a big rugby match between Ireland and France in Dublin on Saturday, everybody was singing and shouting, it was crazy. Ryan Air seats are very close together too, not much leg room. Once we arrived in Ireland we had to show our passports again, luckily we don't have EU passports so we were able to go in the shorter line where we met an Australian man who told us about the 45 degree C weather in Australia and I told him about the -20 degree F weather in Minnesota. Allison has a converter on her phone, so we found out that 45 degrees C is about 114 degrees F and -20 degrees F is about -28 degrees C...tell me how that conversion makes any sense. Anyways, the Australian was shocked by that kind of cold. We found the bus we were supposed to take to our hostel without any problems, it was clearly labelled.
Once we got off the bus, we tried to find our hostel. Well...that was an adventure. The hostel was very poorly marked, online it was the Morehampton House Hostel, in person it was something completely different. After walking around for about half an hour and calling the hostel a few times (while feeling very safe, Dublin is a lively city) we found the right address. The woman who ran the hostel was outside to confirm this is what we were looking for. Our booking was hand written on a sheet of paper, it was like a house converted into a hostel. It was clean and pretty cheap though, and we got moved from a 4 person bedroom to a 2 person bedroom for no extra cost which was nice.
Next morning we had to wake up early for our 7am tour to Limerick, Galway Bay and the Cliffs of Moher. We got a taxi to the meeting place, a decently priced taxi, well anything would be compared to Friday. Taxis are EVERYWHERE at ALL hours in Dublin. There were 8 of us on the tour, at least 4 of the other people spoke Spanish, one woman at least spoke ONLY Spanish and talked like we could understand her. We got a huge coach bus. It was a sunny day and the drive was beautiful. We were only in Limerick for about 5 minutes, long enough to take a picture by King John's Castle. Then on to Galway Bay, which was gorgeous. There were fuzzy cows and sheep all over during the drive. The Atlantic Ocean smelled so good too. After lots of picture taking and wandering, it was time for lunch. We had lunch in Doolin, I had seafood chowder, mmmm. Then it was on to the Cliffs of Moher. They were gorgeous, of course, especially since it was sunny. I bought a claddaugh ring right before we left and sampled some mead (yum) a few wines and soda bread. Then began the long ride back to Dublin.
We got dinner once we were back in Dublin at a pub/restaurant, of course the pub part was packed what with the rugby game just over (the streets were flooded with people, Ireland won). The waitress looked at me like I was crazy when I asked how much water cost, water isn't free in Brussels, it wasn't free in Italy either, but it is in Ireland. The lamb stew I had was delicious. After that we walked around for a while, took a few pictures and ended up in the Temple Bar area (don't worry, we had a map). There was a band playing in the street, real Irish music, it was pretty cool. Then we ended up at The Temple Bar and each had a half-pint of Guinness, no money for more than that, although I would've liked to have some whiskey, oh well. We walked back to the hostel, it was very safe, people were everywhere, maybe because of the rugby match, maybe because that's just how Dublin is, it was great though. Our flight was scheduled for 6:50am and we had to catch the bus to the airport at either 4:30 or 5:30, we chose 4:30 which meant waking up at 3:45, sometimes I go to bed at 3:45. Oh well, we found the bus stop pretty easily. Check-in was easy, self service kiosk. Allison had breakfast at the airport, I was unwilling to spend anymore money. The plane was on time, aerlingus this time, not ryan air, so we had more space, we both slept through the flight. Once back in Brussels, we had to show our passports once more and the security man stamped mine this time after a few questions, so that shouldn't be an issue in the future. We hopped on a bus...which we had to pay for despite our public transportation passes...sigh...oh well. We got off near a metro stop and rode back home, then took long naps.
All in all it was a nice weekend, but very expensive...at least that taxi was. However, I have a cold, and my ears are pretty messed up from all the pressure changes. My camera charger still hasn't arrived, I borrowed my hostsister's camera and stole a few pictures from Allison again. If it doesn't arrive this week I'm just buying a new one.
All pictures are on facebook and photobucket, as usual, take a look!
-Lauren :)
Monday, February 2, 2009
Vianden and Other Things
I hate how fast time moves (unless I'm in class, then time could move even a little bit faster, please). It's February already, I can't believe it. This makes me antsy, I want to start travelling outside of Belgium, outside of Brussels even. Well, I wasn't alone in this, Allison, Maren and I decided to go to Luxembourg this weekend, mostly just to get out of Belgium. Figuring out transportation is rather complicated, fortunately, after we invited Sabine to come with us she said yes as long as we drove. That saved us from major headache, we just had to hop in her car. That was Saturday...
Friday night we went to a play, "The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged)", at an English speaking (or anglophone, as they like to say here) theater. It's a 5 person play and involves quite a bit of interaction with the audience. The entire second act is dedicated to Hamlet, and I somehow got pulled onto the stage to "play" Ophelia, i.e. scream a couple times. That was fine, but then, when Ophelia drowns, the actor (yes, actor, all the lead female parts were played by the same actor in a wig) dumped water on himself right in front of me, so I got wet. Then they did the whole thing again, but faster, so I got wet again, then even faster, wet again, then they did it backwards...I had water spat at me. It was a lot of fun though, I'm a good sport.
After the play, we decided we were hungry. However, as it was around quarter to 11 and everything apparently closes at 11, we had some difficulty. Some people got pizza hut, then we found a quick burger which was still open. I got a caramel muffin and a chocolate shake, mmmmmmmm, I have no hopes for not gaining weight on this trip.
Saturday morning, Luxembourg time! We left around 8:15 and I got a mini-tour of Terveuren - where Regina lives and Maren works and Wallonia, aka southern French-speaking Belgium. We went to Vianden, supposedly a big tourist attraction, where Victor Hugo had a summer home and there is a large castle on a hill (check out the pictures). Once we got closer all the roads were up in the hills, winding back and forth and back and forth...Maren almost got sick. We got there though, but it was a ghost town, the other tourists must go during the summer when the chairlift is in operation. It was freezing, first time I've seen snow since I've been in Europe, what's worse is that it was 50 in Omaha (50!). Nonetheless, I was very excited to be out of Belgium (not that I don't love Belgium) and by a CASTLE! We saw Victor Hugo's summer house. They made it into a museum of sorts, with audioguides in english! I think everybody should read Les Miserables before they die, it kinda sucks when you're reading and he describes the battle of waterloo, which is completely irrelevant to the plot, for about 50 pages, but in retrospect it's well worth it. After that we had lunch at a Dutch restaurant, I ordered what Sabine told me not to, ha, she said it was a typical Dutch meal, which is NOT the way to keep me from ordering something. After lunch it was castle time! Allison and I decided we're moving in. It's on top of a hill, like many castles I think, so there was an amazing view at every angle. After that, we began the drive back, which was anything but direct. We'd be on a highway and the GPS (Sabine named her Missy) led us off on a narrow road through the country...oh well. We stopped in Durbuy, another medievel town, for a snack (I highly recommend amaretto in your coffee) and headed home. All in all, a good day. This schengen states thing is a good deal, I completely forgot my passport and it wasn't an issue once, but I better not do it in the future.
Allison, Maren and I sat down this past week and planned out every single weekend for the rest of the semester. Next weekend Allison and I are going to Dublin, we've booked the flights, the hostel and a tour taking us through Dublin, the Cliffs of Moher, the bay and Limerick. It should be amazing. Hopefully, I'll have my camera charger before then.
-Lauren :)
Friday night we went to a play, "The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged)", at an English speaking (or anglophone, as they like to say here) theater. It's a 5 person play and involves quite a bit of interaction with the audience. The entire second act is dedicated to Hamlet, and I somehow got pulled onto the stage to "play" Ophelia, i.e. scream a couple times. That was fine, but then, when Ophelia drowns, the actor (yes, actor, all the lead female parts were played by the same actor in a wig) dumped water on himself right in front of me, so I got wet. Then they did the whole thing again, but faster, so I got wet again, then even faster, wet again, then they did it backwards...I had water spat at me. It was a lot of fun though, I'm a good sport.
After the play, we decided we were hungry. However, as it was around quarter to 11 and everything apparently closes at 11, we had some difficulty. Some people got pizza hut, then we found a quick burger which was still open. I got a caramel muffin and a chocolate shake, mmmmmmmm, I have no hopes for not gaining weight on this trip.
Saturday morning, Luxembourg time! We left around 8:15 and I got a mini-tour of Terveuren - where Regina lives and Maren works and Wallonia, aka southern French-speaking Belgium. We went to Vianden, supposedly a big tourist attraction, where Victor Hugo had a summer home and there is a large castle on a hill (check out the pictures). Once we got closer all the roads were up in the hills, winding back and forth and back and forth...Maren almost got sick. We got there though, but it was a ghost town, the other tourists must go during the summer when the chairlift is in operation. It was freezing, first time I've seen snow since I've been in Europe, what's worse is that it was 50 in Omaha (50!). Nonetheless, I was very excited to be out of Belgium (not that I don't love Belgium) and by a CASTLE! We saw Victor Hugo's summer house. They made it into a museum of sorts, with audioguides in english! I think everybody should read Les Miserables before they die, it kinda sucks when you're reading and he describes the battle of waterloo, which is completely irrelevant to the plot, for about 50 pages, but in retrospect it's well worth it. After that we had lunch at a Dutch restaurant, I ordered what Sabine told me not to, ha, she said it was a typical Dutch meal, which is NOT the way to keep me from ordering something. After lunch it was castle time! Allison and I decided we're moving in. It's on top of a hill, like many castles I think, so there was an amazing view at every angle. After that, we began the drive back, which was anything but direct. We'd be on a highway and the GPS (Sabine named her Missy) led us off on a narrow road through the country...oh well. We stopped in Durbuy, another medievel town, for a snack (I highly recommend amaretto in your coffee) and headed home. All in all, a good day. This schengen states thing is a good deal, I completely forgot my passport and it wasn't an issue once, but I better not do it in the future.
Allison, Maren and I sat down this past week and planned out every single weekend for the rest of the semester. Next weekend Allison and I are going to Dublin, we've booked the flights, the hostel and a tour taking us through Dublin, the Cliffs of Moher, the bay and Limerick. It should be amazing. Hopefully, I'll have my camera charger before then.
-Lauren :)
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)