Barcelona

Hello, all. So this weekend was Barcelona, Spain, and it was a great trip!  Thursday night we went to Osteria Di Anima, affectionately known as "pear pasta place" to us here at the John Felice Rome Center, with my friend Laura's parents and turned in early, which was fun and delicious, then we woke up Friday morning at 5:30 to get our car to the airport and be on our way. We landed in Barcelona around 10 and got to the hostel around 11:30 to find out that we had until 2 until we could put our things in the room. We got some tapas and sangria and then walked to the beach, and then went to Sagrada Familia, which is a church designed by Gaudi which is still under construction, but it was by far the coolest church I've ever seen. Look it up. Then we went back to the hostel and got ready, got some falafel for dinner and made our way to a really cool bar based on a weird stock market sort of system. Prices varied based on how many people bought the drink. So if a lot of people were buying Guinness, the price of Guinness would go up, and the price of Heineken would go down. Really cool place. After that we went back for the night, woke up early and went to an open-air food market and got some lunch. Then we rented some bikes and rode to the top of a huge mountain/hill thing where Gaudi's Park Guell, which is a huge park with incredible views of the city and the coast. We hung out there for a while then rode back to the shore and hung out there for a bit, then went back to the hostel and got ready and went out for falafel and sangria again, then went to an Irish pub to watch the Barcelona football game. It was a good time. We just wandered around on Sunday until our flight, and I am officially tired. I have a huge Italian test tomorrow, so wish me luck. Busy week!  Talent show, end of the semester banquet, calcio (soccer) finals, and last week of classes. Should be interesting. I'll write sometime later this week. Have a good one, all.

Easter Weekend

So for Easter Break just staying in Rome, which has been a nice break from traveling. For the most part I've just been relaxing. I've had some friends in from Madrid, mainly Kate Buckley and her friends as well as Cameron Harding, so I played tour guide most of the day Friday, then I got dinner with Jim and his parents and then headed to Stations Of The Cross at the Colosseum with the Pope. That was cool, but I hated the huge crowd, so I left in the middle. Then Saturday just kind of bummed around all day, went to Hard Rock Cafe with Andrew, Will, and Aaron for dinner, then just went back because I was tired (and the Cardinals' game was on, but naturally that didn't affect my decision...). Then today, Sunday, I woke up at 6, walked down to the Vatican at 7 for Mass at 10:15 with the Pope which was awesome, and I was only 8 rows back!  All of St. Peter's Square was packed with people, and I had a chair 8 rows back. You can't beat that. There was an awesome choir and band, the Pope blessed everyone and said Happy Easter in 50 languages, and it was a great experience. Not sure what the rest of the weekend holds, but we're talking about dinner tonight in the Jewish ghetto, then I'll probably do homework and relax tomorrow! Hope everyone has a great Easter. Less than a month until I'm back in the States. That's weird. I will miss Roma! Buona Pasqua e buongiorno!

Ireland

Well, it was refreshing to go to a country where everything was in English, for starters. This weekend was in Ireland. Mike, Jim, and I flew out Friday at 11, getting into Dublin a little bit before one since we gained an hour. We went to our hostel and dropped our stuff off, then went around the corner to the oldest pub in Ireland, which was founded in 1157. That is not a typo. 1157 AD. So that was pretty cool; we had our first glasses of Guinness and some fish and chips, and we were happy campers. Then we walked to St. James street to the Guinness Storehouse at St. James Gate. That was pretty cool to see, and it's pretty awesome to be able to say I had a pint of Guinness where they make it! From there, we headed back to the hostel to relax a little. It was Mike's birthday, so we decided to do the hostel pub crawl in celebration. We met some British and Australian guys who were having a bachelor party for their friend, who I soon learned was a fellow Tottenham Hotspur fan, and we hung out with them all night. We introduced them to the game of beer pong, which they had never seen before. We had a lot of fun hanging out with them, then headed back to the hostel after the crawl. Jim and I woke up at 6:00 to get to the Dublin tourist center for a day of travels. We took a bus with MacCoule tours to their family farm, followed by the Cliffs of Moher, followed by Galway City. The farm was great, and we did a little hike up a mountain on the farm, then had some homemade cakes and Irish coffee, then we took the bus to the Cliffs, which were the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, and then took the bus to Galway City, where Jim and I got some shepherd's pie and a pint, which was the perfect end to the day. We got home around 9PM, then met up with Mike, who had gone on a hiking tour. We then went in search of some pubs to just relax, and hung out at one all night and played the game from Inglorious Bastards where you pick a character for the person next to you and they have to guess who it is. That was fun, then we slept in the next day. We got some cheap breakfast around noon, then walked around, settled in a pub to watch the first half of Newcastle v. Liverpool, then just wandered around until we saw Ryan's pub, and we had to stop in for a pint in my honor. Then we went back to the hostel and hung out for a bit, then went to another relaxing pub until midnight and just sat around talking to an old, drunk, Irish man named John. He was quite a character. We went to bed, and woke up at 4:30AM to catch our 6:30 flight, and then we flew back. I had class today, and then finished editing my ten page history paper. Busy day, but glad to be done. I'm starring in a film that the kids in the film class are making, so the last two hours has been filming parts of that. I am tired!  Bed time. Have a great week. Arrivederci.