Snapshots of Dublin: Day 1

Meg, Ken and I had to wake up at 3:20 am to catch a 4 am shuttle to the airport for our 6:30 flight. We arrived in Dublin around 9 and were in no rush, taking our time to get to the hostel and figure out the rest of our day's plans. I'll give us some major credit here-we were GREAT travelers!We learned the hard way that tourist maps may not always be to scale and that Dublin has unpredictable weather as we walked in the rain to the Kilmainham Gaol (pronounced Kill-main-um Jail!). Even after our long and wet walk, I still really enjoyed the tour of the jail that housed the leaders of the Easter Rebellion before they were executed. There were some interesting stories and cool architecture.

After lunch at The Patriots' Inn, Meg and I had to convince Ken to postpone our much anticipated nap in favor of touring the Guinness factory. The storehouse museum was extremely well organized as it led us through the main ingredients of the beer, the process by which it is made, the history of its production, its advertising and the culminated with the Gravity Bar glass hub where we got free pints of Guinness. It was an incredible experience to sit in the Gravity Bar, looking out through the glass walls over all of Dublin. It was, (as Meg calls them), a "life moment" where I realized just how lucky I am and how cool of an experience this is. We sat there in silence with our Guinnei (?) and just looked out at the city, soaking in the moment and taking mental and emotional pictures.

After taking a nap for 2 hours, we experienced our first real Irish meal at the Brazen Head. The Brazen Head is the oldest pub in Dublin, established in 1198! Absolutely incredible. It had a really cool vibe and great Irish food including soda bread.

After dinner, Meg and I walked around Temple Bar (the main strip of Dublin with lots of restaurants, pubs, bars and clubs) and got a feeling for the city. We got Malteser milk shakes to celebrate Meg's birthday. Our favorite part was when we stumbled across a street band playing Irish inspired music. I've attached a video at the end because it was so incredible to listen to the music. The city came to life at night and was one of the most beautiful night scenes I've ever experienced. Every bar had live music playing and it was so well lit and colorful. Walking back to the hostel was such a pleasant experience as Meg and I went to bed relatively early to make up for our sleep deprivation the night before.

Retail, Friend and Food Therapy!

Last Wednesday, I had lecture for Sports class, got paninis with Meg and Lynnette, (Meg's big sister from Kappa back at school!), and then we went shopping. Especially during the early weeks of the classes, little work is required so it is fun to be able to do summer-y things with friends. I found a cute skirt that Meg talked me into buying at Zara that I absolutely needed! We all went to tea then for carrot cake, scones and/or chocolate cake. I sure do love those English tea parties, such good food and such a great opportunity to socialize. After that, I went to the gym and then we all went to dinner in Pembroke. After an average dinner, (like always!), we went punting! We rented the boat from King’s College and Ben started as the punter. He made it look very easy, and so I decided I wanted a turn. Let me tell you though, it is NOT as easy as it looks. Simply by pushing off the one side, it makes the punt veer sideways, so it is necessary to use the long pole as an oar as well, guiding the boat on a straight line. I managed to get the hang of it, although I was very cautious—surprise, surprise—and we went very slowly. Duc, Meg and Ken each took turns, but the drama didn’t start until we were done. Ben accidentally dropped the lock into the Cam and so he and Ken changed into swimming trunks and jumped in the river to find it, but unfortunately with no avail. After punting, Lynnette, Meg and I walked around Cambridge before calling it a night.

July 28

Thursday was a marathon day. I was kind of stressed because I was leaving the next morning for Dublin and I just didn't feel prepared for the trip. I had seminar and my art class (we’re painting models now—something I’ve never done before!), and then formal hall for dinner. It was another chance to get dressed up and be served a three course meal. The group took lots of pictures from the night, and the dinner was fantastic. The starter was a “Fresh Tuna Ceviche with Avocado and crisp tortilla,” the main course was “Supreme of honey roasted chicken, pont neuf potatoes, peas, broad beans, and baby gem lettuce,” and the dessert was “marinated strawberries and peaches with sweet basil sorbet.” The meal was made complete with champagne, and after the formal hall, we socialized in the Pembroke bar before going to a bar in the main part of the city to celebrate Meg’s upcoming birthday! Meg and I headed back after the mini celebration to finish packing for the next (EARLY!) morning when we were going to DUBLIN!!!

July 29

Poem

The last few days have been uneventful
But I’m not complaining, I’m not resentful
London tired me out, so it’s nice to be back
But already it’s almost time to repack
Headed to Ireland, Dublin specific’ly
I’ve been planning the trip, almost scientific’ly

The gang saw Inception, it blew my mind
Action packed, mind boggling, a good way to unwind
Meg and I also watched the movie, The Swan Princess
And to celebrate finals, we bought shoes and a dress
We started our sports class, 2 lectures, 1 section
The readings and lectures have required reflection

English tea has been served, along with scones and good cakes
A chance to socialize and just great study breaks
Since finals are done, it’s back to the good days
Chillin’ in Cambridge, no worries, no school craze
I’ve got time to work out, to get into shape
I read while I bike ride, it's a great escape

Lynnette came to visit; we’re showing her the sites
Introduced her to cider, and all the good bites
Relaxation is restored, the lull before the storm
The weather’s been nice, actually it’s been quite warm!
Now headed to dinner, pretty relaxing night
Goodbye and adieu until next time I write!

July 28

London Day 2

Well, those boots may have been made for walking, but my flip flops certainly weren’t.

10:15 Meet a friend from school at Café Pompidou

• Meg and I met a friend from school, Ita, (she is working in London for the summer), for breakfast on Sunday morning. We went to a French café where I got the walnut waffle and Meg had her very first full English breakfast.

11:15 National Gallery

The National Gallery was incredible with 46 rooms of famous paintings. They were organized according to style, place/era (ex. Italian Renaissance), and were so beautiful. Highlight of the visit was definitely seeing the Monet Bridge picture that I remember so well from my art corps days back at Miramar Ranch Elementary School. Mom—you would have loved it! I remember doing a lesson based on that painting and to see it in real life was incredible. (http://www.arttoheartweb.com/images/Claude%20Monet%20Water%20Lily%20Pond2.jpg) There were other Monet paintings, along with ones by van Gogh, including the chair and Sunflowers (http://www.artquotes.net/masters/vangogh/vangogh_sunflowers1888.jpg), Cezanne, Rembrandt, and tons of other famous painters. So cool!

12:30 Walk by St. James Park and Buckingham Palace

• Ita, (from Manchester originally), served as a great tour guide for us as we walked along St. James Park toward Buckingham Palace. It was a beautiful walk and it was really cool to walk up to the Palace. There is a huge fountain in the front and the building is very impressive. It is a major tourist attraction. It was definitely just something to check off the list of things to see, so it wasn’t one of my favorite things, but it was still neat.

1:30 Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and Houses of Parliament

Westminster Abbey was extremely impressive. I was amazed with how easy it is to walk around London and see everything. It would definitely be feasible to walk for an hour down the Thames and see all of the major tourist attractions. It is funny seeing all of these well-known buildings in person because they are very different than what I expected. First off, Big Ben was not as big as I thought it would be, but the Houses of Parliament surpassed my expectations.

3:00 Walking along the river

• Ita left us after we saw the Houses of Parliament, so Ken, Meg and I decided to walk along the river toward the London Eye and stop for an afternoon snack. It was really cool to see it during the daytime because there were a lot of cool street performers to watch. My favorite were two Michael Jackson type dancers. One of them did a really fun dance move with a crystal ball by making it look like it was in a case and he was spinning it. It’s really hard to explain but it looked awesome.

4:00 Tower of London

Meg and I split apart from the boys to go see the Tower of London. We only had about an hour and a half so we had to prioritize what we wanted to see. We started in the “Bloody Tower” and saw some torture devices used when the Tower of London was used as a prison. Next was seeing the Crown Jewels. They were absolutely stunning and it was amazing to see the size of the jewels and just how sparkly they were. The Tower of London really wasn’t so much of a tower as it was a city. I tried to imagine what it was like walking around in the city back when it was still in use. We saw the armour of the past kings and finished up by walking around the little city and going into all the towers that we could. It was such an interesting place and one that I definitely would like to learn more about.

6:00 Dinner

• We met back up with Duc and Ken for dinner at Picadilly Circus. It was almost like a miniature New York City Times Square. We walked around briefly to get a sense of the area, and embarrassingly ended up going to McDonalds for dinner. Hey-what can we say, we’re college students living on a budget.

8:00 Train ride home

• It felt so good to be able to put my feet up on the seat across from me after the long day of walking. I’m tempted to do a “map my run” to see the distance walked. Overall, it was a great weekend trip, and I absolutely love London. I’m hoping to get to go back once or twice more before the end of the summer.

July 25

Rachel’s London Travel Itinerary and Commentary-Day 1

9:00 Bus to London—great opportunity to sleep and then wake up to take pictures of London!

11:00 Victoria and Albert Museum

• Filled with cool artifacts and collections! It was a little overwhelming to try to see everything, so I tried to just get a real sense of the place. Favorite part: Interactive design-a-ring computer module in the jewelry room. It is weird to think about just how much history is in that building.

12:30 Walk to Hyde Park, lunch

We learned that the Serpentine is a lot bigger than our really cool pop up London maps would have us believe. It’s very tiring to walk around the whole Serpentine when it’s hot and you’re hungry. There was a triathlon going on which made it very crowded. It was a gorgeous day, though, and we stopped for lunch after our death march around at Café Lido for pizza.We also stopped by the Albert Memorial and saw the Royal Albert Hall--two more things to check off our must-see list.

2:30 Harrods

• The coolest department store building I’ve ever seen! There were so many people in there and so many rooms to walk through. My favorite room was the chocolate room—it looked like it came straight of either a) Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory or b) a little kid’s dream. I can’t imagine that store at Christmas time. After leaving, we all decided we want a ten thousand pound gift card to Harrods-(they were advertised!).

4:00 Starbucks and go to hotel

• I got my second experience on the tube and traveled to Leicester Square which was close to our hotel. The underground system is so extremely easy to use and we were there in no time. We walked to Trafalgar Square and it was absolutely incredible. It is a sunken square with four statues on the corners of it, (one is always changing with different submissions or contest winners-really cool!), and there were so many people there. More about this later. We wandered for a little while to find the hotel, (I didn’t print out a map but just had the address) but it turned out to be REALLY close! Score for Rachel’s booking skills!

6:00 Dinner

• The group got dinner at an Italian restaurant called Prezzo. It didn’t break the bank and was a very good dinner, making me feel very grown up. It is still just hard to grasp that idea that I am abroad and eating dinner in London with friends!

7:30 See Anne Boleyn, the play, at the Old Globe Theater

• By far one of my favorite parts of the day. Not only was it awesome to be in the Old Globe, but the play was wonderful. I’ve learned so much about that theater, and it was surreal to be there! The play followed the story of both Anne Boleyn and James I, portraying Anne as a manipulator and James I as slowly degenerating into hallucination. The cast was phenomenal, and even though we had standing tickets and my lower back and legs lost feeling, it was totally worth it to see the play. It was witty and funny and very entertaining.

10:00 River walk

• The boys left the play early, (not their thing), so Meg and I walked along the Thames River to meet up with them. It was gorgeous at night and I experimented with my camera night settings to take pictures of the Millennium Bridge and St. Paul’s Cathedral. We walked by the London Eye and over the Embankment Bridge, appreciating how gorgeous London is at night. We took the tube to Tottenham Court to meet the boys, grabbed a drink at Weatherspoons, and finished up the night at the Zoo Bar—filled with lots of teens dancing. Action packed, tiring, but fantastic day!

July 24

Liberated!

This is a post for Friday, July 23rd after I finished finals!

I spent the majority of Thursday evening studying for my D&B final. I woke up early, studied in the dining hall and then went to the final. Upon leaving, I felt that I had studied too much for it—not the worst feeling though. I had the rest of the day free—one of the best feelings! I met up with Meg for lunch and then decided to go on a hunt for a store called “The Works” to buy a book for one of my classes. I found the store in the coolest little shopping center filled with interesting stores and plenty of places to explore. It was really cool being able to tour Cambridge, and trying to find the book store gave me a great excuse to wander around the city. I am very glad that I went on my scavenger hunt, and I am definitely going to have to go back to the shopping center. Despite not having the book I wanted, “The Works” quickly became my favorite store with its 3 books for 5 pounds deal. It’s like an even better version of “Pick ‘n’ Save!” I found water color materials for about 4 pounds and a book for 1 pound. I had a difficult time not buying every book/art material/DVD/scrapbooking/toy that I saw in the store!

After shopping, I headed to the gym, and when I finished, I still had a lot of time before dinner! I was still in a great mood after finishing my class, and with no work to do, I spent the next hour and a half using my new watercolor supplies. I’ve included a picture of the painting I did. For dinner, I went with a friend to a French café called “Café Rouge.” It was very good food. Afterward, I met up with the gang again to go to the “British Bop”—a done-with-finals party thrown by the program assistants of the program. The theme was “anything British,” so I dressed as Dawn from the British version of The Office. Some of the great costumes included: Mars Bars, Pimm’s, the porter at King’s College, James Bond, and The Yellow Submarine. It kind of reminded me of a middle school dance but it was fun because most of the students were at the party. It was a very enjoyable day, marking the halfway point of the program. I can only hope the next 4 weeks are as fun as the first 4!

July 23

Catching Up

I haven’t been able to write in a while because 1. I have been cooped up in the library writing my paper for my D&B class and 2. I haven’t been doing many note-worthy activities because of the aforementioned library imprisonment. Here are the highlights of the past few days:

Harmonious Art
On Monday, I had a very productive painting class! We learned that paintings need to be narrative to tell a story, (we made up a story to describe the relationships between the different pieces of fruit on the table), and that they also should be harmonious. Thomas, our professor, appealed to my musical background explaining that melody implies a story, but harmony is vertical on the musical score with all of the instruments working together. It was a great analogy and I began to understand what he was trying to teach us. Harmony means that all of the elements of the painting work together, and the set-up is seen as a whole so that the background adds beauty to the foreground. When I got frustrated that I couldn’t mix the “right” colors, Thomas pointed out that no one asked me to. The purpose of color is to set up a harmony between objects and to set up the color contrast of light and dark. Once I freed myself from my self-imposed color constraints, painting became so much more enjoyable and my paintings significantly improved. Instead of painting the background in a dull off white, I was able to play up the blue light in the room to offset the greens and reds of the fabric and fruit. My paintings became less about realistic representation and more about what I saw and the colors that caught my eye.

Summer time
Monday night, I opted not to do any work, so Meg, Ken, Duc, Ben and I hung out by the river. Once I made that decision, it was surprisingly liberating because I didn’t feel guilty about the work that I could be doing while I was having fun. I’m going to take that technique back with me to school. It was so nice outside and such a great location to just sit around and watch punters float by and chat. Sitting by the river felt like such a perfect summer evening and was so simply relaxing. It is when I am with my group of friends around Cambridge that it hits me that I am in England, something I had been looking forward to since I applied to the program and I feel carefree and happy.

Stir Crazy
Both Tuesday and Wednesday were not particularly enjoyable in relation to my first few weeks here. Tuesday, I spent from about 1 until 4 in the library working on my D&B paper. I was simply unable to get a grasp on my paper topic. I was getting so frustrated that I had to leave so I went back to my room, where someone was practicing the flute, so I left again and searched for a new locale. I followed the advice of a friend and went to the Double Tree Hotel and sat outside on the river outlining my NEW essay topic. After the earlier hours of frustration, I decided to cut my losses and start anew. I arrived at dinner completely delirious from working. After dinner and on my way to the library again, a friend recruited me to be the fourth player in a croquet match. Even though I lost both games, (the second one was a heartbreaker!), the game put me in a good mood and I was ready to get back to writing. After a couple hours of working, we were all frustrated and so a group of people in the library decided we needed a cider study break.

It was a similar day yesterday, (Wednesday), but I was more successful in writing. I managed to break up my time in the library by going to another Tea Party, (great carrot cake!), and going to the gym—counterproductive, I know. After dinner, it was back to the library to work on my paper, which was once again interrupted with a trip to the bar for a study break and a search for Maltesers for Meg and me. I learned that lemonade in England is way different than lemonade in the States. It’s more like sparkling lemon water.

As for today, I finished my paper this morning (HURRAY!!!!!!) and I will spend the rest of the evening studying for my final tomorrow. I definitely did not expect to be spending this much time in the library when I signed up for the program, but at least I’m not alone in the library. I think I’ve solidified several friendships with students in the program simply by seeing each other repeatedly in the library and commiserating about our work!

Closing thoughts:
Running has provided a great way to see Cambridge and get an overall sense of the city. Yesterday I ran to the gym and noticed just how eco-friendly Cambridge is. It is not uncommon to see men in suits or women in dresses riding bikes. People also walk everywhere! Maybe because it is summer, but the streets are always so congested—don’t these people have work?! I ran by Parker’s Piece, (an open field), and decided it would be fun to spend an afternoon people watching there. There are so many groups of teens hanging out, playing sports and just having fun, and I know I would enjoy spending time there. It really reminded me of summer time. It’s easy to forget that it’s summer when I am taking classes, but I need to remember to mix in some play with my work!

July 22