10 Day Break-- Barcelona, Ireland, and a lot in between

10-22

Day #1 of 10 DAY!!!

Where are we? Munich

LJ and I are sitting in the hotel bed in Munich with Abbie and her parents.We just came back from a delicious dinner her parents, Jesse and Debbie, treated us to. It is so nice being taken care of! They are gracious enough to let us stay with them in their hotel room for the night before we board our flight to Barcelona at four tomorrow out of Memmingen, Germany.

Last night we went to the weirdest concert ever! It was held in a church with no heating system (which was really neat) and the group that sang/played was very random and very big. There was a boys choral group along with a pretty big string ensemble and then improves dressed up in weird costumes. We sat up on this balcony and our view wasn’t that great. Needless to say we kept eachother occupied and being a respectful audience wasn’t quite one of them.

“When all else fails just try something else.” –Holly

“When all else fails, take the metro!” –LJ

“When you’re worried about spending too much money on fall break, just travel with your parents.” –Abbie

“We almost have everything figured out, all we have to do is find that train to Iceland.” –me

Holly just planned out our lives, aka a tentative idea of our next 10 days…

FRIDAYà 7pm arrival into Barcelona

SAT/SUNà Barca

MONà 9pm train from Barca to Paris, get into tues 9am

TUESà day in Paris before boarding train to Cherbourg, France @ 3pm –board boat to Rosslare, Ireland

WEDNSà arrive to Rosslare; bus to Dublin!

WEDNS-SUN à IRELAND!!!!!

Sending my prayers to Kristy & her family & boys (virtually my other brothers) You are all in my thoughts♥

10-24 Day #3

Where are we? BARCELONA!!

Sitting down for the first time today, our first full day in suny, gorgeous Spain!! Well, I should probably back track to last night. After a longer day of traveling than anticipated, we finally made it to Lizzie and Gillians apartment, where we were greeted by Hilary, Nickie, and Julia’s smiling faces! The three of us were so sweaty, tired, and sticky… seeing them all adorable and put together was maddening, haha! Not to worry, LJ, Holly and I are basically the queens of rallying. Two trains, a flight, one taxi, two buses, and the Barcelona metro? We were in the bathrooms shaving our legs and slipping into dresses three minutes later. Once out the door we dined at this yummy Chinese food restaurant and made our way to Starz bar.

Some odd drinks later we headed over to Port Olympic for some infamous barca club scenes. We went to two clubs, ShoKo and Catwalk… good music, dancing with girls I’ve missed too much, my head hit the pillow at 4:35am. That’s how they do it in Barcelona.

Needless to say, we got all of us out of the apartment by noon today.

Starbucks, sunglasses, & tapas—the cure to any late night (or early morning, ha) But today was so fun, we got our second wind and saw so much! Walked around Las Ramblas to this really cool open market where we got these amazing stuffed eggplants from this stand that read “organic is orgasmic” and tried some delicious juices!

We walked down by the water and took pictures, wandered around this huge mall on the pier, got BEN&JERRY’S! (a little taste of home) and walked along the beach where we found this super cute café and had sangria. YUM!

I could definitely live the life here! Tonight we are getting some much missed Mexican food and then going to some bars! Round two. Expecting another early morning?

10-25 Day #4

Where are we? Barcelona

We are just getting ready to do some more sightseeing. Liz has some ideas of some cool touristy things, one of them involving walking up to Park Guell, the view is apparently the best in the city.

We woke up and went to the train station to figure out our next few days. 45 mintues and a few speed bumps later and we have a Eurail route to Cherbourg (where we are boarding our boat to take us to Rosslare, IRELAND)

Presents was last night, congrats to the 11 dirty secrets!!!

Off to explore!

10-27 Day #6

Where are we? Train from Paris to Cherbourg

Looking out the window, listening to Jason Mraz—we are on our final leg en route to Cherbourg. Let me tell you we are just lucky to be sitting here. We knew our travels from Spain to Northern France were going to be a little hectic, but OMG, I’ll quote Holly and just describe it as a real life video game.

FIRST LEVEL: GETTING OUT OF SPAIN

*the first language in my head in English. I feel like I don’t need to say that but it helps to get to my point. Next comes approximately 300 or so German vocab words, let’s say 50ish verbs, and 3 very hit-or-miss tenses. After all that, there is Spanish. After 4 years of high school and 1 year of college Spanish I have something to work with. However, it is now the third language that comes to mind. Now here’s something they forget tell you before going to Spain—no one in the train station speaks English. That’s fun.

*we get to the train station a good hour before our train just to make sure we leave room for inevitable confusion. We finally get our platform number and are told to go down the elevator. Platform numbers are given no more than 10-15 minutes in advance because they don’t give them until the train actually arrives at the station. I don’t understand this because it basically BREEDS MAYHEM because everyone rushes to the platform at the same time, duh.

Our train was set to leave at 5:16pm, we get our assigned platform number at 5:05. We are cool, calm and collected as we follow arrows for platform 7. Just before the escalator that leads us down to our stop we see “metro-looking” gates ? Oh hey, we don’t have “metro-looking” tickets to swipe to get to our platform. In our video game senario, this is like the mote of hot lava.

5:10 The three of us separate in efforts to find/buy these ridiculous tickets to cross over the godforsaken lava.

5:12 I’m sweating.

5:13 Contemplating possible Spanish citizenship.

5:14 The line LJ and I were in parts like the red sea, the lady sees our panicked expressions, Eurails in hand, and three beautiful purple tickets popped out. GAME ON.

Backpacks, purses, souvenir bags, water bottles; WE SPRINTED, crammed those tickets into the horrible machines and bolted down the escalator.

5:15 and 40 seconds. Our train was making noise, showing early signs of movement, we hit the green open button on the side and colasped into a pile of hysterical shocked girls.

~2+ hours to Cerbere

LEVEL 2: GETTING ON OUR OVERNIGHT TRAIN TO PARIS SANS RESERVATIONS

*At the Barcelona train station where they spoke really good English, they told us a lot of really useful information. One being that to make a reservation for the overnight train we HAD to be on to get to Cherbourg by Tuesday we needed to each pay 100E. Well that didn’t go over well. In other words we said, screw that, we have our Eurails, we’ll just “get on” and improvise. Our thinking being that if worse came to worse, the conductor would come around a good hour into our ride, see we didn’t have a reservation, (and if tears didn’t work) we would get kicked off at the next stop and be that much closer to Cherbourg.

We get to Cerbere and it’s a lot smalled than we expected. A LOT smaller. Like more closely resembling a bus stop with a small building that had one a-sexual bathroom, a ticket counter, a wooden box/stand that they pretended to call a “bar” and a pinball machine. Aka, not somewhere we wanted to be strained.

We’re not panicked yet, stick to the game plan, get on the train and pray it starts moving before Mr. Scary Frenchman kicks us off and we’re abandoned in super sketchy Cerbere.

It’s fine though. Holly seems confident. I need to relax. There could be worse things in life. Well, I mean I can’t think of anything worse at the moment but I’m sure there are. Ok, breathe.

We have about an hour layover in Cerbere before we head to our platform. We have dinner—honey roasted peanuts, crackers, chewy bar, peanut butter, and apples. We take turns enjoying a free bathroom and gear up for the train (what I considered most closely resembled the three-headed monster at the end of the hardest level of Mario.

LJ: “Hey guys, not to freak you out or anything, but look.”

Me: “What?”

(Holly and I turn and look across the platforms and see it.)

Holly: “Shhhhiiittttttttt.”

*right outside the only entrance to our train is a fold out table, three French guard men, a Walkie talkie, and a typed out list. Reservations anyone?

*no turning back now, game face. I have my pre-rehearsed speech, ideally wanting to make it from the comfort of a train in motion, but if I’ve learned anything it’s to expect to be surprised. I also learned from my very wise mother that you get more bees with honey.

Utilizing all of my tools, the fact that they were men and we are women, (that’s like 500+ point in video game terms) God was on our side. They had us pay 30E for reclineable seats and gave us tickets. (this isn’t without intense bargaining/flirting/discussion which included a fourth guard being called over.)

But we made it! Seated on the train, we were in awe and had never been happier for an 11+ hour train ride.

LEVEL 3: TRANSFERRING TRAIN STAITIONS IN PARIS—of course it would be too easy to arrive and depart in the same one.

*this level was not too hard. 2 metro lines and 8 stops later and we were there. We even had time for some breakfast. And here we are! 2ish hours until Cherbourg and there we only have a few hours until we board our Irish Ferry! J

10-28 Day #7

Where are we? Coast of Rosslare, Ireland!

The three of us are currently sitting on the coast of Ireland and I had to grab my journal to make sure I remembered this moment. We’ve only been here an hour and already I am at peace. As we were walking off the boat we could instantly hear the sound of the waves crashing and Holly spazzed. We are waiting for our train to take us to Dublin, eating apples and sharing a jar of Peter Pan peanut butter. I felt so inspired I had to forgo Peter Pan to make sure I did this moment justice. I’ll write about the boat later, I can’t bring myself to taint this.

Holly is walking around with her massive camera taking pictures of the scenery. It’s weird how similar we are—we just have different outlets. Through a lens she can see things more clearly, each picture a page in her book. With a pen I feel like, word by word, I am filling in the blanks to my own life. It is on paper where, whatever is out there, things seem brighter and more meaningful.

But picture or paper, somewhere deep inside I know we are searching for the same thing.

10-29 Day #8

Where are we? Galway, Ireland

Laying in my bunk bed in our hostel, SleepZone. 24+ hours in and I can already tell Ireland is my favorite place I’ve visited yet.

We stayed in Dublin last night and went to a nearby bar for a drink. I had my first White Russian and it was delicious. Jordan recommended it and I was not disappointed. Jordan picked us up from the train station and got out whole hostel situation figured out. He has been here since the beginning of our 10 day and it is so nice having someone who can navigate a city lead us places.

We took a bus today to get here, 2+ hr west of Dublin to Galway (where PS: I love you was filmed!!!) It’s a small college town that we heard had a great vibe to it. We have a really nice hostel for 12E a night and its in the middle of town.

We walked around town earlier, took some pictures, and people watched.

**I guess this is where I became ADD, because the entry just stops…. Haha. But yes, Galway was a blast! Very decked out for Halloween FOR SURE. Super intense (understatment.)

11-1 Day #10

Where are we? Train from Memmingen to Munich

Well I wish I would have journaled in Dublin but I think the fact that I didn’t speaks volumes. I have never been happier in a place in my life. Gosh, I visit these places, feel as though we are always on the move & never get a minute to just sit and realize/appreciate where I am. Ireland was as different from Spain and two places can get. Literally.

I couldn’t find one thing I didn’t like about this place. The people are amazing. I actually think this is a huge factor in why I liked it so much. Well that plus the fact that there was no language barrier, very refreshing.

Yesterday was Halloween and we wanted to rent bikes and ride them through this place called Phoenix Park. (which some guy told us is 4 times the size of Central Park….yeah, HUGE!) The scene was literally out of a movie. I tried to take it all in. We walked 25-30 minutes from the center of Dublin to a partial outskirt. It was a pretty crisp day, the leaves were changing and it was gorgeous. We found a little shack that was the bike rental shop, but it was more like this nice man and his dog with a bunch of bikes you could take for the whole day for 10E. He was so laid back and content, you could just tell he was so happy.

We biked along these adorable roads, through changing trees and piles of leaves. Autumn in my favorite season and biking through the Irish countryside—well as much as I love Washington in October this doesn’t even compare.

So there we were, the four of us. Biking, laughing, admiring, and worry-free. We biked all day; miles across to the other end of the park, it didn’t feel much like a park, more like biking through private, intimate hills of Dublin. We maybe saw two people the entire day.

Close to the end of the route we came upon a herd of wild deer. Of course we were not just going to look and bike by! So we did a little off-roading, ditched our bikes and ventured closer to the herd. I couldn’t take enough pictures, I felt like the whole thing was a dream.

We went out that night, in Halloween spirit dressed up in black trash bags (can you tell were on a budget??) and fashioned cute dresses. It was a good day. The happiest I’ve been in a while.

In Ireland I…

- met the nicest people in the entire world

- drank my first (& second!) Guiness!

- ate amazing soup!

- had the best Halloween of MY ENTIRE LIFE

- gained a new respect for the simple things

- fell in love with pubs and live music

- learned that there IS something as too nice, and that can sometimes lead to getting stalked in bars

- made some memories that can never be replaced

- learned that you just have to let life happen, as scary as that sounds

my host in barcelona! /bff till the end of time♥

my other lover in Spain... words cannot describe my intense separation anxiety... 3 weeks!!!!

loves of my LIFE!!! I had so much fun with you all and miss you to the moon and back♥

thank you Jesse and Debbie for the amazing dinner and hospitality! Oh and for the cool playing cards!! Definitely on my list of things to buy....haha :)

I wouldn't have wanted to do 10 days adventuring through Europe with any other two people/pledge sisters/bestiessss

Dublin!!!

pictures really can't do it justice

just our own little secret garden