The Moher I see, The Moher I love.

This is a big post.

I'm starting with Ireland because that's fresh. Scroll down for the stale Barcelona recap. I met my Cal Poly friend Matt in Dublin for an Irish weekend. Finding a hostel was a hot panic as when we looked 95 percent of lodging in Dublin was booked and 4.99 percent was only in Arabian Prince price range.

I got to Dublin first, so I had a rainy morning to wander around the city. I did Christ Church, Fleet Street, Stephen's Green, Trinity College, and St. Patrick's Cathedral. All of the Irish history I learned in third grade (or was it second?) was put to shame when I realized I'd forgotten everything I'd ever known about St. Patrick and how he was a slave and became a Christian during that time and then was basically the best missionary ever afterwards in Ireland. Or that Jonathon Swift (of A Modest Proposal) was Irish. Or that the guy who invented Dracula. WHO KNEW ALL THESE GREAT THINGS. The Cathedral is beautiful with colorful tiles all over the floor and ancient Irish war flags hanging from the ceilings and the place he baptized millions in the park outside. All of this is misty rainy green Ireland with fall leaves meant I pretty much cried of joy the whole time. At a particularly rainy moment, I popped into a little cafe run by this elderly Irish woman (going to Ireland makes you start saying things like "popped"). She made me scones and a NORMAL SIZED cup of coffee and everything became warm and fuzzy. Then I discovered two Christmas markets full of the world's best Christmas sweaters, better than SalVa thrift shop in Boulder, and Christmas sausage, and Christmas candy, and Christmas wine, and Christmas music. And I can't stop saying Christmas.

Then Matt came and we wandered our way to the Guinness Storehouse brewery. It's not like a normal brewery tour where you get to actually see the brewing things brewing, but it's still this pretty incredible museum. It's massive, you just keep going up and up and up and learning more weird facts about Guinness and experiencing more of the obsession Irish have with Arthur Guinness. Also who else didn't connect Guinness beer with Guinness World Records? I didn't, and I have a mother and sister who hold the Guinness World Record for being the most people dressed as gorillas at one time.

We then got to learn how to taste Guinness via a room of beer smells and baby pint glasses barely bigger than a standard measure. Apparently beer ester is a smell. I just pretended I could tell the difference between that and beer malt smell. Then we moved to the Academy, where we learned how to pour the perfect pint. Not gonna hold back the bragging here, I POURED THE PERFECT PINT. Like it's actually a newly discovered previously hidden skill. I'm so good at it. Then we brought our perfect pints and freshly issued certificates up to the Gravity Bar and drank Guinness looking over all of Dublin. How Irish is that.

Then we dined with the world's largest pile of fish and chips. I actually think it was the size of a large baby.  I have almost never been that full in my life. But again, wow so Irish.

Upon finishing this absurd mountain of delicious food, we discovered that unfortunately we'd missed the beginning of the hostel sponsored pub crawl. It was apparently an exclusive event for only the old-aged and faint of heart because it started at 7:30. To give you all some perspective, I've never experienced anyone in Europe ever going out for the evening prior to 12 am. So that was a shocker. Easily remedied. Matt mapped out our own pub crawl on his phone and we had the lofty goal of going to four or five. Thirty minutes later we'd been to at least seven (no joke). Don't worry Mom, I only had one beer. Friday night in Dublin is the most confusing thing. Pretty much the only people we encountered were middle-aged men in large men groups doing large men group things. But finally we found a pub with a beautiful red-haired Irish band playing red-haired Irish music about lassies. And later another with an average age far closer to our own.Our pub dash was mostly just hilarious.

Then we hopped on a bright and early bus to Galway. It's a large straight line and a couple baby squiggles away from Dublin through Irish green hills. Galway is the best part of Ireland. It was such a struggle to not spend all my time wishing I had spent a whole week (or more) there. We stayed at one of the best hostels in existence. We walked down along the river with stone houses and colorful cottages and pubs everywhere. We found this fun market that sold everything colorful and glorious. We passed by the spelt bakery sample station twice before we were guilted into buying ginger pear spelt cake. MOM AND GRACE: I learned that spelt is a type of grain (?) that has significantly less gluten than wheat and is one of the oldest grains. It's easier on your stomach unless you're celiac AND I LOVE IT, so you can begin experimenting with spelt cake now.

We took a tour to the Cliffs of Moher. It was an all day thing that should be an all life thing. You get on a bus with an old Irish man who tells jokes and stories and exclaims with delight every time we pass a "happy cow" or a "happy sheep" or "look at that happy driver, he's so happy." Happy cows are now my favorite animal. First he told us about the oyster festival in some village I don't remember and then the annual matchmaking festival in the town over. Seems like those two go together. Basically we drove through land that looked like the moon on one side and rolling green hills on the other. He stopped us at castles and happy cows (I'M SORRY I CAN'T STOP) and beautiful vistas and things just kept getting better and better. Then we stopped at the village of Doolin. Literally all of this sounds like a made up joke, but it's not, it's IRELAND. So we got off the bus and ate the best goat cheese tartlet (TARTLET!) and bangers and mash. Just all of those words wow. We learned that Irish is it's own language and Gaelic refers to Irish culture or the Scottish language. And really everyone is named O'Callahan and O'Brien and O'.

Then we got back on the bus and looked at more castles. AND THEN WE SAW THE CLIFFS OF MOHER. We saw them from a distance at first and I panicked. LOL what a rookie. The distance view was the lamest one of the day. We'd be given the secret recommendation of going left first and it made everything perfect. I really will just let the pictures talk for me, but I think I just spent two straight hours screaming with excitement and running and jumping and panicking and running and jumping and panicking more. And trying not to slip in the mud or get blown off the cliff. And then we had time left so we went right and got to see the CLIFFS OF MOHER SUNSET. WOW. Ya that was kind of cool. And I stood on a rock that had nothing below it but the ocean and it was a piece of heaven. And there were happy sheep and happy cows. AS IF the cliffs weren't enough. And then we ate ginger pear spelt cake on top of the Cliffs of Moher.

Then we got back to Galway and ate Guinness beef stew and drank Guinness and watched rugby. YA AGAIN FELT SO IRISH. In other news, Christmas markets are the best thing to happen to humankind.They fill you with samples of Christmas cookies and gingerbread and marzipan (like anyone actually eats that). And have Christmas music and pastries and mulled wine. We tried the mulled wine and you get a choice of brandy or rum in it, except after hearing the Irish boy say rum, you don't really have a choice. Then we went to a few of the blessed pubs in Galway. The King's Head. The Quays. Taffes. The Front Door. Somewhere Else. They all have staircases and live bands that start red and Irish and end singing Lady Gaga which is a little weird. But everyone was dancing and singing and being Irish and my hair was caressed and I loved it. We tried Galway Hooker beer, which isn't great, and Bulmer's cider which IS great. I never wanted to leave. Almost compares to my worst heartbreak. I'm absolutely moving to Ireland. Because it's a land where freckles aren't abnormal and food is mashed potatoes and meat and beer is actually enjoyable. Galway was such a fun refreshment escape from big European cities and has so much character. Christmas lights and wreaths and garlands and trees everywhere.


The bus back to Dublin was even better because it was all frosty and misty and full of happy sheep and cows. I really can't stop. We went to the Chester Beatty lib and looked at all of these displays of this man's personal collection of some of the world's oldest manuscripts of the bible and the qur'an. It's insane the amount of history that one man collected, and so so cool to see the bible that old. We watched rugby at Trinity College and devoured the rest of our spelt cake. We finished up our Irish experience by discovering that we're blood buddies and perfectly suited to save each other in case of massive blood loss. The guy testing us actually terrified me for a minute because of his presentation of the Rhesus factor. Apparently it's a sugar on your blood cells, that if you don't have and if your baby has (for pregnant women) could cause problems. Highly unlikely. But he kept going on and on and on and on and the eleven seconds I had to wait to see if my blood drop produced enough grains to be Rhesus plus were the worst eleven seconds of my life. But the students running the thing filled us full of Irish history and taught us new words and it was so great and I couldn't stop staring at their beards.

Also, Grece, my last Irish meal was your curry chips eaten on a bus that took me an hour and a half to go eight kilometers on the way to the airport. BUT I LOVE IRELAND. All of the above joy is thanks to Grece's impeccable suggestions. Probably buying a home in Lisbon and a vacation cottage in Doolin.

Ok so post-France, pre-Ireland update:

Coming off my newly discovered enjoyment of museums in France, I went to Barcelona's Picasso Museum. Ok no. Didn't love it. Didn't understand any of it. Back to wondering why people understand art.

YoungLife.
I go to el instituto Tuesdays/Wednesdays in the morning to hang out with gals who STILL think that I'm an exchange student at their school. That STILL only goes up to age 16. At least one thought I was the new English teacher. Moving up in the world. But I love them. This is one of my favorite parts of the week. There are now about 5-6 girls in each age group who remember me and get excited to see me the days I come.
I also got roped into playing basketball. Girls v Boys. Kill me. It was the most chaotic experience of my life. Half because the boys who were less than half my height were infinitely better than me (remember that whole no athletic bone in my body? Still a thing). Half because we played basketball on the same court as a football game. Whose idea was that?

Friday night we had equipo meeting and the Western Europe directors for YL visited. We have mutual friends in YL across the world so that was fun. Saturday was the kedada, which was Peace themed so everyone dressed as hippies. My favorite thing in the world is Spaniards' impressions of Americans. Especially historical Americans. And, the confusion between hippie and hipster made me wish that everyone didn't know the difference. Omg. We played this game of what I thought was musical chairs. Until I realized they don't play that you get out when you don't get a chair. It's actually called Musical We Steal Chairs and You Sit On Top Of Each Other Until One Chair is Left for Forty People and the Chair Breaks.

School.
Still not the best thing in the world. I spent my first twelve hour day on campus though. LOL. It was four hours of class. Four hours of wining and dining with friends. But actually, drinking beer at 11 am will never stop being weird. Drinking beer at 11 am on campus, even weirder. Four hours of working on this horrible project we've been assigned for the Maritime Engineering Class, but it left me feeling nostalgic for all the fourteen hour days I've spent living in computer labs at Cal Poly.

Also, spontaneously went to a OneRepublic concert in Barcelona this week with the roomz. Total contrast to be in the fourth row on the floor of basically a gym to the previous concert at Red Rocks. But still. Gr8. And they did this whole tribute to Catalunya. Look whose a conscious band.

Found my favorite Barcelona coffee shop. Their cups are still less than the size of my eyeball, but they've got this fun hipster feel (or maybe it's hippie...) and love me.

Plus it's my new thing to bike every day down to the beach and watch the sunset. Except for the days that Mariko and I climb hills to see the city sunset. She showed me this absurd place that's the best one in Barcelona. Plus there's a rooftop bar for city light viewing on the walk home. And a store named after my sister Groc. All those emotions and all that excitement exuding from my body I think scared several people, including Mariko.

If you've made it to the end of this, you're a true friend and have officially received an invite to Paella Panic. Event details TBD, but basically as soon as I reach America.
 

We Gogh To Paris To Spend All Our Monet

This weekend I flew to Paris to participate in the ultimate throwback where I spent four days playing with the Darnell family relieving our vacation from eleven-plus years ago. I've never been to France without that family, and hope never to do it without them. Except dear members were missing, such as Jessy and Grace and thus our re-enactment of our Eiffel Tower photo didn't quite feel the same with shotty screenshots of them held up on our phones between us. For those of you who aren't aware, the Darnells are my best friends, my second family and I've known them since before birth. I almost don't have a childhood memory without them, and since Jessy goes to Cal Poly (praise), I almost don't have a college memory without them too.

Missy and I started off my Paris experience the right way: with a largely Parisian meal of....Mashed Potatoes and Strawberry Milkshake. There's a reason we were seated in a separate room alone with walls all around us. I don't think my French helped.

The Darnells spoiled me by letting me stay with them in their wonderful rented flat. It was in this great little neighborhood just far enough away from the center to not be overwhelmed by tourists and tacky Eiffel Tower salesman, but still close enough to the metro to keep exploration plans alive. We spent our first big day at Versailles, the famous French palace southwest (?) of the city. We took the world's slowest train to get there, but made it just barely in time for a tour of the private royal apartments. Those were rather spectacular. But my favorite part of the tour was when our audio guide pretended he was the king and said to his wife: "Madame we need to have an apartment party. We owe ourselves to the public." Probably would have missed large amounts of history without that little insight. We also got to go inside the royal opera, that was only used 35 times by royal family members. Versailles is an unbelievably ornate palace and was never officially occupied past the French Revolution meaning it was only lived in for about a century. The hall of mirrors was the best part, except our mirror pic turned out fuzzy thanks to the age of the mirror glass. Disappointing.

We also totally lucked out as the rain kept itself to the little window of time when we were inside the palace, and the clouds parted for some nice sunny moments strolling (more like marching for miles) in the gardens outside the palace. The one bummer was that the statues were bagged for the winter and the fountains were all off, so the place didn't quite have the infamous feel. But the fall leaves and blue sky absolutely made up for it.

We parted ways for dinner, and I took the metro back into the city center to meet my dear friend Madi Kois for dinner. She's a gal from Boulder who just casually took a week off school to visit a friend studying in France and we happened to overlap for a few hours. So we did the touristy Notre Dame thing and then rolled her suitcase with us to dinner. I pointed to a random dish that had lamb in it and was blessed with something beautiful. But even more wonderful was having the chance to catch up with such a dear friend in a restaurant in freakin Paris when we hadn't seen each other in Lord only knows when. God's fun like that.

I made a solo trip to the Eiffel Tower at night to get some self takes. It's kind of awkward to be there by yourself when the annoying street vendors keep trying to sell you champagne. They should know that if I'd wanted a romantic evening, I would have, I don't know, maybe BROUGHT SOMEONE WITH ME? When I got back on the metro, we had a brief glimpse of the Eiffel and it started panicking and lighting up and flashing and freaking out. These guys freaked out with me and I discovered they were both from Barcelona and now working in Paris so I got some recommendations on both ends.

Saturday was another day well spent. We got up nice and early to go climb the stairs of the Eiffel Tower. Debby powered through a hurting knee and we all braved the slightly freezing temperatures at the top to get incredible views of the city--and even the whole shadow of the tower lain out across the river. Mark invariably kept making engineer jokes and tried to test my knowledge of the forces acting in the trusses. There's no winning with him (except that one New Year's Eve where I actually beat him in clue #neverforget). Then Missy and I reenacted our fav Eiffel photo, and I will forever regret not bringing my popcorn shirt. It was also a real low point to later find out Beyonce had been at the Eiffel Tower BOTH times that I was and didn't even bother to say hi. Ugh.

We then made our way to Musee d'Orsay. I had the cathartic experience of discovering that I'm not a complete eggplant when it comes to museums as I previously thought. I actually thoroughly enjoyed myself the entire time. Although, that was probably largely due to the fact that after a few hours of serious art, Missy, Debby, and I approached delirium and succumbed to the temptation of photographing ourselves reenacting the statues in a museum where photos are STRICTLY prohibited. This resulted in Debby showcasing her breast, Missy and I portraying desire, and two photos that involved kissing Missy's eye and biting her neck. For the latter two these two guards wavered between dying of laughter and trying to reprimand us. They kept half getting out of their seats but half not being able to handle it. I panicked and ran away when they finally came over since we were causing a large scene. But apparently to Missy they only thought it was necessary to comment on how red my face was. This is also something that was caught in a photo and I dearly apologize to everyone who has witnessed that side of me. It's more horrifying than I thought to see my face turn shades of red not yet discovered by mankind.

The one part of the museum that I did not enjoy and still am confused about was their special exposition. They have a temporary exhibit on Sade. Yes, Sade as in sadism. It was one of the creepiest things I have ever seen, but in the way where you can't really stop reading or taking your eyes off of it. They had this horrible timeline of his life and abusive acts towards women and horrible quotes interspersed between really dark art. And amid all of this the entire exhibit lauded him for his courage to go where no one had gone before, and his willingness to speak freely and openly about sadism and death and liberty. All I could think was how can this man speak of freedom when all of his disgusting ideas involve denying freedom to some poor woman for his own satisfaction. Really really disturbing that France thinks his works are worth preserving as literary and art forms.

We ended our evening with a quick stop at Arc de Triomf and a beyond delicious Italian dinner where Missy took on an Italian lover. The Darnells departed for Italy the next morning and I packed my last few French hours full of crepes, macaroons, pan au chocolat, and a couple more sites.

Per recommendation from Mark, I went to Sainte Chapelle, a beautiful, almost entirely stained glass chapel. I've seen some pretty incredible stained glass in my time, but this church was absolutely breathtaking. They tell the story of essentially the entire bible from Adam to Jesus and Judgement Day  in wall to wall stained glass. Gorgeous. I then made my way to Invalides (Napoleon's absurd tomb) and Musee Rodin. Musee Rodin was another museum that I greatly enjoyed. It is home to some of Rodin's most famous sculptures and has this wonderful layout of sculptures placed throughout this gorgeous rose garden. The Thinker was by far the favorite and had a really cool view of that work, Invalides, and the Eiffel Tower all in one shot. That concluded my little piece of Paris and left me really wishing I was there longer. But I don't think I could afford it. This concludes my adventure portion of this blog. The rest is a Catalunya history/current event lesson.

It was totally worth coming back in time to see the end of the November 9 independence "vote" in Catalunya. The city wasn't quite as decked out in independence flags as it was on September 11, but independence posters and posters encouraging citizens to vote, regardless of their opinion were everywhere. I'm going to make this a brief current event lesson because I think it's fascinating, and I want to remember being here for this piece of history when I'm old. NPR does a great job of summarizing the event if you don't want to listen to me. Catalunya went forth with the poll although the central government condemned its constitutionality and really tried to stop them. Which to me almost even more enforces the validity of Catalunya's claims that the central government refuses to address their issues. The poll had two questions: the first was should Catalunya be a state? The second was if yes, should Catalunya be an independent state? Basically the way I understand it is that although Catalunya is a recognized region and has its own regional government, they are still denied the ability to implement real changes catering to the needs of their people (such as their own taxes or autonomy in the education systems). If they became a recognized state, it would change Catalunya's relationship with the central government to be like that of the federal and state governments in the US. If they become completely independent, obviously that's very different and largely more complicated. It's been really interesting to read and listen firsthand to reasons why people support independence. Some harbor resentment from the Franco regime where Catalan and all associated customs were forbidden. But more seek distance from Spain's economic crisis and current government. Catalunya has a large portion of the industry and money in Spain and many feel they're bailing out the rest of the country when they could be much stronger separately. It's been really interesting talking to friends, roommates, and classmates about this here. Over 2 million people voted, and the numbers say 80 percent voted yes for both questions, 10 voted yes to the first, no to the second, and 5 voted no to both. I'm very much looking forward to following this exciting time for the rest of my stay here and even when I return home. It's crazy that countries are still changing borders and building walls today.

"Independence is liberty"

"A country where I can create a business with ease." "A country where I can leave the house at 18." "A country where my kid can find work." "A country that is responsible with energy."

Some of the Paris photos are borrowed from Missy Darnell :)

xoxo.