Un fine settimana in Italia--Milano

AHHH, ITALIA!! I just got back on Monday from a beautiful weekend in Italy with my friends. We went to Milan, Florence, and Venice, and I took over 400 pictures. Don't worry, I won't make you look at all of them.

We woke up grudgingly at 3am Friday morning to catch a 6:25 flight out of Dublin. Arriving in Milan at about 10, we hopped on a bus that took us to Milano Centrale train station, right into the middle of the city. We were STARVING by this point, so we headed into a tiny pizzeria on the corner. 

Do you see that slice of pizza!??  As big as my face! When we first arrived, there was a bit of a language barrier issue. But once we got our food, all was well. The pizza was the best I've ever eaten, and it was my favorite meal we had in Italy (which is saying a lot, because all of the food was amazing). We also got a quarter-litre of wine for 3.50 Euros each! Such a delicious value.

We then hopped on the metro to head to the Duomo. I liked the metro. It was like a New York City subway, but cleaner. Little was I expecting to come back above ground to this.

My friends, you are looking at the Piazza del Duomo, which basically just means Cathedral Square. It is the main square of Milan (I mean, how could it not be) with the Milan Cathedral as the focal point. It was free admission, plus it was raining, so we decided to pop inside. I had to pay to take pictures, but clearly it was totally worth it.

These are just my favorites of the many pictures I snapped. This Cathedral was absolutely breathtaking. It was so huge, and made me feel so small. It especially made me think about how it was all built by hand, without machinery. The manpower that went into building such a grand monument for worship… it's all very humbling. There were also several Holy Relics in the Cathedral, but the most beautiful was the one above, down in the Crypt. It is one of the first bishops of Milan, and for some reason it was very captivating. I could have stood looking at it all night.

After we were done at the Duomo, we walked around the city looking for Sforza Castle. It took us a while, but in the meantime we got to see a lot of the city, including an almost-indoor shopping strip with every Italian name brand you could think of.

The other girls in my group wanted to give up. I didn't blame them--it was raining, our feet were wet, it was chilly. But I refused to stop. After all, the longer we spent looking, the more of the city we got to see. Well, God must have pushed us in the right direction, because the next street we followed took us right to Sforza Castle.

I must admit, I didn't take the time to read or learn anything about the history of this castle. I just knew it was beautiful and I wanted all of the pictures. So we walked around inside, and enjoyed the aesthetics of the place. 

We decided to head back to the train station a bit early to get some coffee and a snack before getting on the train to Florence. After the longest and only rainy day we had on our trip, it was nice to kick back and nap for three and a half hours, on our way to another beautiful city.

Many Reasons to Love

I'd like to start out tonight by apologizing for my sour mood in my previous post. It, indeed, has been a rough week, and I'm coming off my "high" since I arrived here, and was in a stage where I just hate everything about this country. Apparently, it's all part of culture shock, according to my Study Abroad advisor back home. 
But as I spent the next day meandering around the city, searching high and low for good wifi to Skype my parents, I thought of many reasons to love Dublin, and indeed Ireland. So I want to counter my hateful grudges against my life here by sharing some things that I really love about living here.

First of all, I absolutely LOVE going into the City Centre. There is so much to do, and it is so easy to get to from anywhere, it's just impossible not to love. Allow me to paint you a mental picture. Let's begin on Grafton Street, which is one of several pedestrian-only roads, lined with shops, street performers, and restaurants. From there, you go straight, crossing over Nassau Street, which has a delightful book shop and a sweater shop with an abundance of cozy, authentic-Irish-wool sweaters and scarves. As you continue on Grafton Street, you will eventually come to the entrance to Trinity College, which is a huge, beautiful, strong-standing historic building. If you were to turn right here, you would be headed down a street with more shops and restaurants, on your way to Temple Bar, which I'll talk about later. However, if you continue straight, and cross the River Liffey, you would end up on a huge, wide, long street, O'Connell Street, which is undoubtedly the heart and soul of Downtown Dublin. It begins with the O'Connell Monument, built in 1882, continues with bus stops every ten meters, more shops and restaurants and casinos and arcades than anyone can count, and more street performers and pedestrians everywhere. In the center intersection of this road, there is a giant pole called the Spire, built in 2003. If you stand on the sidewalk below, and look up at the top of the Spire, it is so tall that it appears to be arching over you. It looks like an obnoxiously tall flagpole with no flag. But it's a wonderful land mark and it does draw attention to Dublin's center. Near to the Spire is the main Post Office, a huge historic building of stone with dark wood interior work, set up like you might see a post office set up in the 1910s, complete with a Post Museum. O'Connell Street then ends with the Parnell Monument, 1911. 
I absolutely love walking through this part of the city. Not only is there every store imaginable to walk into, or any kind of food you could want to eat (including grocery stores), but it has a sort of enchanting vibe to it. It definitely has a big city feel with it's multiple story buildings and crowded streets, but nothing is more than three or four floors high. There are no skyscrapers or big apartment buildings, and many buildings have kept their older architectural design. Nothing really looks commercialized, and many businesses, even though I know they are major chains, look independently owned. There are employees standing outside many establishments, inviting you to come inside. No one tries to sell you anything you don't ask for (a refreshing change from the States), and workers tend to be very helpful and patient. I love going downtown and just wandering, not even having a goal, and not wishing for one. 
Earlier I mentioned Temple Bar. I have only been through the Temple Bar area once on the Pub Crawl (see previous posts), but I really like this area. The Temple Bar district is a series of streets, many of them foot-traffic-only, paved with bricks, lined up and down with, you guessed it, bars and pubs. Sure, there's a cafe or restaurant here and there, and of course there's a McDonald's on the corner, but mostly you come here to go to the pub. It's fun and cozy in a back-alley, hold-on-to-your-purse sort of way, but I don't feel unsafe. There are lots of people around, and the pubs aren't sketchy or shady. It's just an older part of town, and since there are no cars driving by, the streets are narrower, so it feels more "enclosed" in a way. Not to mention it is a very short walk from the Ha'Penny Bridge, a cute old pedestrian bridge that crosses the River Liffey. Apparently, couples come and lock a padlock onto the Ha'Penny Bridge and then throw the key into the river, as a sign of their everlasting love. I think it's a very romantic notion.
This whole time, I've talked about the City Centre, but that's not the only part of Ireland that I love. I love the landscape, the country, the way people model their towns. I love the anti-commercialization of things, and the way people drive. I love the accent, and the way people speak, and the quirks to their language. I love where I live, far enough away from campus that I get my quiet time, but close enough to campus that it is easy to get to, with grocery stores and coffee shops  ten-minute walk away.

There are many, many reasons to love Dublin and Ireland, and I have only begun to explore a small portion of them. But I am sure, as my time here rolls on, I will continue to fall in love with the country, the way I have already fallen in love with the city.

The Little Things

Well, classes started this week. And I am having a hard time.
Today has been a rough day for me, and I would just like to talk about some details that have been bugging me since I got here. 

First of all, the money. I'm finally getting used to how the money works, with all their different coins. And I kind of like it. The bills come in 50, 20, 10, and 5, and get larger as the denomination gets larger. The coins come in 2, 1, .50, .20, .10, .05, .02, and .01. the 2 and 1 Euro coins have a gold outer ring with a silver center, and the 2 is larger than the 1. the .50, .20, and .10 are all gold, and the .05, .02, and .01 are all copper. All of the coins are different sizes, mostly based on denomination, and all of them have a different pattern on the outer rim. Using the money is not the problem, however. It's how often I have to use the money.
Now, you're probably thinking, well everything in the states costs money. Yes, that is very true. But not at my school. At my school, you could go to events for free. You could join clubs for free. The food was much less expensive. Here, I have to pay for all of those things. Food is expensive, even on campus, at an average of 7-9 Euro for a small meal. At a cafe. I'm sorry, but a sandwich and a cup of soup should be 4 Euro, all the time, anywhere.
Another thing that bothers me, the class set up. Let me start with some background. I am used to small classes, about 35 people max most of the time, closer to an average of 15 for my acting classes. BW has 3500 undergraduate students, 4500 total. The campus (only one campus), even though mixed with a suburb, is not large, and doesn't have too many academic buildings. In class, we don't do lectures; we do discussions. We ask questions, the teacher answers with another questions, and lively debates spark.
UCD is basically the opposite. I have lecture classes with at least 100 students while the professor stands up front under 3 huge screens, talking at us while we scribble furiously in notebooks. There are 3 different campuses, and living on the graduate campus, I have to take the bus every day to and from school, making it nearly impossible to stay anywhere past 11pm unless I want to pay for a cab back home (again with the money thing...). Then, once I get to campus, I can expect about a 15 minute walk to get to one of the nearest buildings to the bus stop. There are always people everywhere, and there is never any quiet time anywhere. The few restaurants on campus are always crowded and loud, and they don't serve much of a variety of food like BW always does.
My biggest peeve is my phone situation. I can't use the Internet unless I have WiFi, since when I got here, I decided not to pay for a data plan. But WiFi here isn't quite as common as it is in the states. Yes, the school has it, but it's not very strong and you can only get it in academic buildings. It's not in the bookstore, it's not outside at all, and it's very touch-and-go in the residence halls (at least mine). But if I'm downtown, and I need to check the bus schedule, too bad. I have to just go to the bus stop and wait until the next one comes around. I guess I don't really realize how much I rely on my 3G to get me through the day. But right now my first world problems have quite a hold on me.
Not to mention that on my first day at school, I took the time to go get an Irish phone to be able to stay in contact with my friends while I'm here. But as of right now, I'm the only one who actually has one. None of my other friends have gotten phones yet, making it very difficult to communicate with one another. Sure, we have Facebook  but again, we can only access each other when we have internet.

There are a few other peeves I'm having about being here. Like the fact that nothing is open past 7pm. Or that the only bus that goes from my residence to main campus doesn't run on Sundays and has a very limited schedule on Saturdays and evenings. Or that bathrooms aren't every few feet as you walk through a mall. Or that I have to share my kitchen and my stovetop doesn't work very well and we all have freezer space of about 2 square feet to share.
 But I suppose these are just things I will have to get used to as part of living here. Everything I encounter is part of my experience, and will shape my life in one way or another. Everyone has their likes and dislikes, and who knows. Maybe by the end of the semester, my dislikes will become my likes. These are all little things. Nothing is a crisis. Only an experience.

Better Day...

I met people today! Yes, that's right. I made an ass of myself on the bus this morning by blurting out, "Are you American?" to two lovely ladies who seemed to not have an accent. I was 50% right. One of them was, indeed, American. But the other was Irish, and she kind of looked at me funny. But I was able to bond with the American girl, Holly, for a while over living in Blackrock campus and having to take the bus to the main Belfield campus every day.
When we got to main campus, she met up with a couple of her friends she had met in the days prior, and I tagged along with them for most of the rest of the day. We all were Study Abroad students, so we went to a couple of orientation sessions together, which were very helpful. Beginning with this orientation session, everything started to fit together and make sense, little by little. I'm learning more about how to use the bus system and get a bus pass. I know where to go to buy a cell phone that will work here. I found an adorable coffee shop that I think I will begin frequenting because there's a cute guy that works there who makes me yummy tea. Things are settling a bit, and I know that will continue to happen as I begin my classes next week. And though I'm still finalizing my schedule, it looks like I'm going to have Mondays off, which will be AWESOME for traveling :).
Later on in the day, we all met back up to watch ONCE. They were showing it in the Global Lounge (yup, a lounge just for international students. Whatup!), so we all decided to reconnect for it. It was my first time seeing it, and I was sort of impressed. I didn't much care for the filming style, and the ending upset me a bit, but the music was just incredible. I would totally buy that soundtrack.
I also made my first trip to the grocery store today. It's adorable! Everything seems so fresh and local. The only problem is I can't tell what's a bad price for anything. I ended up spending around 75 Euros, but I did get quite a bit, including several packages of meat and a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc (since I'm legal and all). I also had to pay for bags... which sucked. I guess I'll just have to find some reusable bags to invest in so I'm not wasting my precious 75 cents.
Wow, that was a jammed blog post. BUT! It's not over yet! As I promised, here are some pictures from my first couple of days around.

This was all hanging from the ceiling in the Chicago O'Hare airport in the wing where all of the international flights come and go from. I thought it was pretty neat, so I let big-time-tourist-Olivia come out for a few minutes to take some pictures.

Leaving the Dublin Airport...

The above are pictures of the Blackrock campus, where I live. I'll post some pictures of my dorm room at a later date.

For my dad ;D

Anglican church just up the road. I'll probably never go there, but it's very pretty!

These Cul de Sac signs are everywhere. I just thought it was kind of funny that they post it like that.

I think this is a monument to something important... but I don't know what.

These are all just random pictures from walking up and down the suburban streets of Dublin. 

My first Irish meal! A ham and cheese panini with salad, cole slaw, and nachos, and an orangeade to drink. All from a cute little department store cafe!

All the buildings above are part of the Blackrock village. They're the bigger shopping centers, almost like two smaller malls.

These are from the UCD main campus. Not where I live, but where I do pretty much everything else.

These are the busses I take every day. Pretty comfy, and the upper level is cool :)

Because it's my last name, that's why.

More pretty sights at my end of town.

The birds here are really pretty. I don't know if we have birds like this in the states, but they're big, and they kind of look like black and white ravens. Much less harsh and much more majestic, though.

More to come on the weekend, folks. Until then!