Belgium: chocolate, waffles, french fries, and Vincent Van Gogh

Friday night conversation with the flatmates:

Allie: "Hey! How's it going?"
The girls: "It's good. You look exhausted! How was Italy?"
Allie: "Amazing! But I'll have to tell you more about it later... I'm leaving in a sec for Belgium."

No big deal right?

Who does that?!  I still feel like I'm living in some alter-universe... nobody gets to just hop a plane to Belgium for the weekend.  So you can imagine how unreal this has all been for me.  I still can't believe this is my life right now. 

Belgium was unbelievable.  The minute we got off the plane, it was like we had stepped into Waffle Land.  And I'm not talking about your ordinary waffle.  I'm not even talking about the supreme Belgian Waffles you can get at Ihop (you know, with the fluffiness, and the strawberries, and the cream, and the drizzled syrup, and the nuts, and the powdered sugar...).  I'm talkin' REAL Belgian waffles: made on a street corner and served piping hot drenched in - what else - REAL Belgian chocolate.  I know, you're all drooling a little bit right now.  Me too.  Go get a napkin or something and clean that up.

The six of us traveling together ended up being the sies-amigos-who-are-really-good-at-getting-lost.  Wrong bus here, wrong train there... it was a rough start to the trip.  But it's really not an adventure until something goes wrong anyways, right?  So there we were, in a bar that doesn't serve food, talking to a bartender who only spoke french, trying to find our way back into Brussels.  Thankfully taxis in Belgium are cheap.

Once we got on our feet, it was time to do some real exploring.  Our hostel was right in the middle of everything.  Every other shop sold either chocolate, waffles, french fries (yes, french fries were invented in Belgium), or beer.  You couldn't stop eating even if you tried.  And, as an expert truffle-taster from my days at Special Arrangements, I felt it was my duty to make sure Belgian chocolate was really all that it was cracked up to be.  And it was, I promise.  Y'all need to stop eating that Hershey's junk and get some REAL chocolate.


Drinking chocolate!!!



Legit fondue



How did they know?!?!



Chocolate truffles, chocolate fountains, chocolate wine, chocolate cookies, chocolate figurines, drinking chocolate, chocolate covered fruit, chocolate bars weighing in at over 1 kg - they had it all!!  Then came your french fries: traditionally super-fried and served piping hot with a big doll-up of some sort of magical fry sauce.  Yep, I'm going into cardiac arrest just thinking about it.  And the waffles... Oh! the waffles!!!  They use dough rather than batter to make these things... and ordering a "plain" waffle just can't be done.  Chocolate, whipped cream, fruit, nutella... you name it.  To. Die. For.  I'm telling you, a plane ticket all the way over to Belgium if only to try a real Belgian waffle would be worth it one hundred times over. 

Needless to say, Allie will be hitting the gym after this trip.

That night, after taking lots of pictures, trying Belgian chinese food (yep, that's right), and watching some weird war movie starring Matthew Broderick, we put on our heels and hit the town.  Delirium is a famous bar in the heart of Brussels known for its wide selection of beer.  Are you ready for this?  Over 2,500 beers available to order - over 400 are Belgian beers alone!!!  Cheap beer, expensive beer, homemade beer, beer that's not even real (Duff, anyone?)... they had it all.  Wow.  That's really all I can say.

This is for you, Ethan.

And of course, being thousands of miles away from home, in a bar in the middle of Brussels, with hundreds of Belgians all around us, we managed to meet a group of guys from the USA Air Force.  Go us.  All in all, a very successful night in Belgium. 

The next day, we moved hostels before heading out on the second half of this grand adventure.  And guess what?  We were booked at a hostel in the same building that Van Gogh used to stop for coffee and work on his art!!!  Surreal.  Just sitting there was inspiration enough to pick up a paintbrush and make the next art masterpiece.  Gah, I could've stayed there forever.

By late morning we were boarding a train to check out Brussel's next door neighbor, Brugges.  Um, hello Utopia.  Cheaper prices, better chocolate, gorgeous city... I might just have to live here some day.  There really are no words to express how awesome Brugges was. 


Brugges




Yep, that's a horse drawn carriage.



In retrospect, we probably shouldn't have come on a Sunday, because things like to close really early on Sundays... and in the end, we had a rough time trying to get back to Brussels with food in our stomaches and any feeling left in our toes.  Nothing was open and it was soooooooooooooo unbelievably cold!! Yes, even for a Wyoming girl.  Fastforward to Allie eating peanut butter and jelly in the hostel room at 11 at night wearing every article of clothing she brought with her for the whole trip.  Rough.  But I had an entire backpack full of chocolate, so really, the situation wasn't all that bad :)

Then it was race, Race, RACE back to Limerick Monday morning to catch a 12 pm class.  Phew!  Made it with two minutes to spare!  I'm not kidding... we cut it that close.  Back and forth to Belgium in one weekend?  Check.

Only one more international trip left in October!  Can you believe it?



Fall in Belgium!

 Loving this adventure!!! Wish you were here~
xoxoxo

... and then there was Italy

ITALY!!!!!!

This is the big one guys. Six days, seven nights (one of which was on an airport floor) of non-stop adventure.  Limerick - Shannon - Stansted - Bologna - Florence - Pisa - La Spezia - Riomaggiore - Manarola - Corniglia - Vernazza - Monterosso - La Spezia - Pisa - Stansted - Shannon - Limerick.  WHEW! Did you follow all of that? Let me break it down for you....

Thursday night, the group left Limerick to fly into England for the night.  Adventures in the Shannon Airport? Check.  Whether it was ordering milk at the bar, or sneaking into the presidential suite, we made sure to leave our mark.  And then, Hello RyanAir!  I will never looking at flying the same again.  Basically, seats are a first come, first served basis, and the whole flight is spent with them trying to sell you drinks, food, lotto tickets, perfume, smokeless cigarettes, and countless other things.  Tacky? Yes, but cheap.

That night we landed late in England, and "camped out" on the airport floor.  Bahahaha... more like "froze" on the floor.  People around us had freaking blow-up mattresses... we laughed, until we realized how miserable sleeping on a cement floor can be.  Cold, uncomfortable, cement floor.  Yes, I know, you're saying to yourself "poor Allie".  But it's ok, I survived.  Check one more thing off of my bucket list!  Never sleeping on an airport floor again.

Our little home.

We flew early in the morning into Bologna, Italy... a smaller little city off the "regular" tourist path.  And we had our first tortellini!!! Mmmmmm.... nice bottle of wine and homemade italian tortellini... there's really nothing like it.  That afternoon, we perused the markets, smelling fresh flowers, sipping on cappuccinos, and tasting more than a day's share of gellato.  We MIGHT have gotter really lost at some point... that, or we were looking for an excuse to walk for hours and hours trying to find our way back to the hostel in a foreign country.  Either way, we had a grand time :)

Tortellini and White Wine... mmmmm

Gelato!!! ... This seemed to be a reoccuring pose in future pictures ...

That night, we went to the most amazing local pizzeria, where the owner, Bruno, was our personal waiter, and brought us some of the best wine in the house and more desserts than you can imagine!  Oh the tiramisu!!!! Makes me really miss Mambo's, for all you B-hammers out there.  WOW. 

Maybe the late night out wasn't the best idea... the next morning we were literally running to catch our train.  This is the point in the trip where we all started to hate trains.  Well, it wasn't the trains so much as it was our sheer inability as a group to ever make a train on time or go to the correct station or buy the right tickets.... let's just say it was a learning experience.

Florence was above and beyond any expectations I could have had for Italy.  Oh. My. God.  This place was gorgeous!!!  The rich history - dude, the rich FOOD - it was all too overwhelming in all the best ways.  Put THIS place on your bucket list.  I cannot say enough about it's stunning architecture, the booming markets, the stunning views, and the places/things to see.  This will make your jaw drop if it hasn't already -



Entrance into the church/duomo




Inside of the Duomo



The view after climbing 462 stairs to the top of the Duomo



The day in Florence was also Sean's 21st, so OF COURSE I needed a new dress for the occasion, and what an occassion it was.  Let's just say we're ALL glad Sean only turns 21 once :)

Pisa was our next stop, late the next morning.  After coming from Florence, the city of Pisa was definitely more low-key.  It was a good "intermission" in the trip.  Of course we saw the leaning tower (oh man does that thing really lean!) and explored the markets during the afternoon.  It was such a trip to see so many people perfecting what I like to call "The Leaning Tower Pose".  An entire field of tourists trying to come up with the next big pose that no one's seen before.  Hahaha... good luck with that.  There's only so much you can do with a falling building.  Still, it was very sureal to be standing there, in a place most people only see on postcards.



the streets of Pisa



Creative, right?

 Monday! ... Wow, Monday already???  Welcome to the climax of the trip.  The one thing that brought us to Italy in the first place.  The big event.  The Cinque Terre.  An all-day hike through five costal towns on the Mediterranean Sea.  If you're not impressed, you should be.  Check this out:

Riomaggiore: stop 1



Manarola and Riomaggiore in the distance




Standing in the Mediterranean

 Basically we took the train from Pisa to La Spezia, dropped our bags, and took a short train ride over to Riomaggiore: the first of the five towns.  In each town, you can wander the streets, buying keepsakes from local vendors, eating gelato or fresh italian pasta, and explore the local churches, parks, and museums.  And then you can take the trail over to the next town and repeat the process.  The hikes take you through vineyards, along the coast, and through local neighborhoods.  We went on everything from Lover's Lane (walked by many women in sky-high stilletos because it's just ooooooooooh soooooooooo romantic) to off-the-road, bushwhaking-esque trails that sent us tumbling down cliffsides.  I don't think there are numbers big enough to count the number of stairs we went up or down.  But what an adventure it was!!!  Off the top of my head, I can think of over 50 of you who would just DIE to do this.  So get out there and see it for yourself!  You only live once, and this was something worth seeing/doing.

As the trip wound down, so did we.  I'm pretty sure my body was screaming at me to get more sleep, drink more water, and slow down a little... but all I could hear was "can we have more gelato?" "Let's go out tonight!" and "mmmmm... can I have another cappuccino?"  By the end I was a walking, gelato-loving, pasta-eating zombie who knew less than five words in Italian.  It was worth it. 

And of course you have to know me well enough by now to know that I love lists on my blog, so here we go with the top ten of "Allie goes to Italy":
1. Lemon/Coconut gelato combo.  Best if served without the server's hair in it... as noted by the Aussie from Bondi Beach we met in Florence.
2. Traveling in a foreign country with 8 people and no cell phones is HARD.  Communication is HARD.
3. It never hurts to be a kid again. 

4. PB&J's stay good for at least 5 days.  I've proved it.
5. Buffalo mozzarella is awesome.
6. Italian wedding dress shopping is so much fun.  Don't worry... it wasn't for me.
7. I've officially seen more of David's "parts" than I care to count.  Hats, postcards, boxers, figurines, flags, shot glasses, aprons... you name it.  But in real life, oh my god... this is the stuff that makes it into art books, and here I am experiencing it!

8. Always keep your purse close to you.  We witnessed a real life mugging in Pisa and it was not the most comforting situation.  ... why is this even on my top ten?
9. Never fly with Andrea Ruge.... she'll take your lifevest and let you fend for yourself in an emergency if she doesn't like you.
10. If I ever met a wonderful Italian guy and lived here the rest of my life, I don't think I would be complaining.  Just saying. :)

You all have spent waaaaaaaaaay too much time listening to me rant about this by now, so get up off your seat, wipe that drool from your face (cuz I KNOW you're still thinking about that gelato), and go book your own tickets to Italy!!! You won't regret it!
Ciao bella!

um, October is crazy.

Okay.  I have a confession.  About that blog dealio... woops.  I feel like this hasn't been updated in, oh, AGES.  Where has the time gone????  I swear somebody put my life on fast-forward and I can't find the pause button for the life of me!

I could re-cap this month... but you don't want to be here forever, so I'll just keep you guessing while I update this thing over the next week or so.  Ready? Set? Okay GO:

October 2 - 3: Dublin
Woah. CITY LIFE.  Even though Ireland is considered a "small" country, it sure makes up for it in Dublin.  This was almost too much to take in in just a short weekend.  I'm anxious to go back with the fam in December and see more!  But for those of you interested in a Dublin trip on steroids, let me tell you about this weekend -

Item 1 on the agenda - check into the hotel and be overwhelmed: check!  Can I just say right now that I now have a new appreciation for our small study abroad group in Limerick?  Don't get me wrong, I love meeting people, but the other API groups were so large that I can't imagine ever getting to know everybody!  We all headed to Trinity College (the Yale of Ireland, apparently), to check out the Book of Kells, which is one of the oldest Irish manuscripts preserved over time.  Definitely one of those moments where I said to myself "Holy cow Batman, this is a BIG deal".  The history is just so raw... it's incredible.

[This is where Allie would normally insert a wicked awesome picture so you could all go "Ooooooh... Ahhhhhh", but no pictures allowed of the Book of Kells!]

Item 2 on the agenda - Lunch. ... um, Bailey's Cheesecake = Heaven.  Just in case you were wondering.

Item 3 on the agenda - Viking Tour.  Okay, so I told myself I would never wear one of those Viking hats unless I was at a WWU basketball game.  But....

Needless to say this was a lot of fun.  Sometimes being silly and obnoxious is good for the soul.  Never hurts to be a little kid again. 

This is the point in our journey where I would like to take a moment to explain to you what it means to be "cold" in Ireland.  For all you in Wyoming, -20F may be cold, but be grateful it's not humid.  For all of you in Washington, if you were outside at all during Fall 2009 finals week, you know what I mean.  Yes, I remember back that far.  It was THAT COLD.  This tour was great but OH MY GOD.  I don't ever want to be that cold again.

Item 4 on the agenda - (I promise I'll speed this up.... there won't be 100 "Items on the Agenda" - promise)
Celebrating Oktoberfest in Ireland.  Grand time.  Enough said ;)

Item 5 on the agenda - finding the Guinness Factory/going to the Guinness Factory.  Shout out to Andrea: at least we burned off those calories beforehand during our search for that stinkin' Storehouse.  The tour itself was pretty awesome.  Everyone laughed when we got to the barley section and I said the room full of oats smelled like my barn at home.  Yay for being from the 307!

If you ever make it to Dublin, this tour is a must.  So interesting.  And so rewarding.  Whether you appreciate the beauty and taste of Guinness or not, the view is worth it. 



Oh Dublin....

 So I guess that was Dublin in a nutshell!  Add in a few perks along the way (Leprechaun Museum - What?! ... Avatar spottings - need proof? see below ... seeing U2's official recording studio ... ordering raw salmon for breakfast) and you have a wirlwind of a trip!!!  Can you believe that was only my first weekend in October??? 

True that.

Christ's Church, Dublin

Well ok then, can I come see your hometree??

Hokay, so here's my plan.  So as not to crash the blogging network, I'm splitting October up into multiple catch-up blogs.  Which means that if you want to learn about ITALY (yeah, that's what I said) and BELGIUM (yup, go ahead and start screaming) and LONDON (yeah, I know, you just fainted) you'll have to keep checking back!

Until then! 
Your little travel buddy :)

It's all going just way too fast... Life obviously has no idea what "slow down" means

Hey all! Wow... talk about long time no talk. Or maybe it's just that the trips keep piling up with no time in between to chat!

Hmmmmm... well, let me just start by saying to the Irish school system, "Póg mo Thóin"!  I mean really... I've got way too much traveling and exploring to do to have ANY time for this essay writing/mid-term studying/project researching shenanigans.  I mean, who's to say that the education I'm getting while sitting in a lecture hall is somehow more valuable than the education I'm getting as I travel the world, experience new cultures, and spend my life-savings?  So when I'm not stressed out sitting in a library cubicle, this is what I've been up to...



Grand Opening of the UL Music Building

Drumming sesh: Eyre Square

<3 Galway

Rewind a couple weeks... let me take you back...

Big deal #1: Loius O'BradyCallaghan.  Direct reference to Leap Year.  Basically the new love in my life.  This cheap-o guitar has been perhaps one of the most successful adventures I've had here.  Currently, Loius and I are working on transitions... that darn D chord is going to kill me!

 But I love having music back in my life.  I was even brave enough to sit down at a baby grand the other day! ... And those of you who know me well know that sitting down at a piano hasn't happened very often in my life over the past few years.  It feels amazing.  I never thought in a million years that studying abroad could do so much more for me than simply adding stamps to my passport.

Big deal #2: Got to see the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen. AKA "The Big Guy": the Prime Minister of Ireland.  WOW.  It wasn't until I was standing 15 feet from Cowen, with less than 10 Garda (Police) around, and feeling totally humbled in the fact that I was in the same room as Ireland's leader, that I realized the kind of country the USA really is.  We guard our political leaders with every ounce of protection possible.  We can't attend a Presidential speech/event without going through every form of security.  Our country has become such an incredible superpower that we have lost that sense of equality between our citizens and our leaders.  In such a small country like Ireland, I felt so connected!  You can really sense this feeling of community and intimacy between the people of Ireland and those they elect to represent them.  I've never experienced that before.

Taoiseach Brian Cowen

Big deal #3: Free concert for the Chieftans!  If you don't know who they are, google them.  Basically, they're on par with the Beatles in terms of career success.  I have goosebumps. 

Big deal #4: Trip to Galway.  Before we go into this... I believe we need some theme music:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKIl-v18mgo

Galway is a true treasure in Ireland... no wonder it was my first choice for study abroad!  Between the cleanliness of the city, the solid pedestrian city centre (look at me, already spelling like a European!), the thickness of the culture, and the beauty of the area... Galway has taken my heart.

Christina, Sean, and I left early Saturday morning for Galway.  Word had it that the International Oyster Festival was happening that weekend.  So off we went on our Irish Greyhound bus!  We were dropped off just on the edge of the Latin Quarter, which is Galway's "downtown" district.  Since the festivities hadn't started yet, we headed to our hostel to drop off our bags.  What an adventure the hostel would turn out to be!

Of course our first priority was to find Christina and I real Claddagh rings so we could explicitly advertise our singleness... like I NEED a bigger sign on my forehead!  But the market was unbelievable.  So much character. Could have spent the whole trip there!  Just beyond the market was the main pedestrian street.  And that's where we found this:

 It may not be Lander, WY on the 4th, but it was close!  We followed the parade to Eyre Square, and picked up some drumming lessons in the process! 

The rest of the day was filled with exploring and shopping and eating… of course.  But I don’t mean your typical eating.  I mean yes, there was your average banana coffee and garlic cream chips, but it was the Oyster Festival for goodness sakes! So of course we needed to try oysters… oooooooh my god!  What was it that Pumbaa said in The Lion King? “Slimy, yet satisfying”:

And then came the night life.  This is where we zoom back to our hostel, where SEVEN girls from Dublin were sharing our room.  Um, party?!  Clare, Clare, Sarah, Sarah, Veronica, Keira, and Deirdre, you made my night.  I bought my first pair of skinny jeans and Clare offered me her heels.  I was doing my hair in the mirror and Sarah offered to do it for me.  Veronica told me I looked like her sister and Keira probably doesn’t remember anything from that night but she sure gave me plenty of hugs!  You will never find another group quite like those girls J

Mmmmm… and even though we were all dragging the next morning, I didn’t want to leave.  I’m telling you, if you ever visit Ireland, make it a point to see Galway.  Take a walk down to the harbor (but bring a jacket if you don’t want to lose any toes like we did), have a Guinness in the King’s Head, and check out the playground in Eyre Square (sweetest climbing wall ever!). 

So now it’s into October, and the weekends are REALLY gonna start zoomin’ by: DUBLIN, ITALY, BELGIUM, and LONDON … look out.  RyanAir is really gonna love me by the time we’re through!