Vienna

So, before I actually went to Vienna I met up with Hannah and Kelley in Copenhagen for one night, but I'll write about that later when I discuss Copenhagen with you. We arrived in Vienna around 4 on Thursday and went straight to Katrina's. She had class that day so she gave us detailed directions to get from the airport to her apartment. We arrived around 5 and then decided to go get some food, because we were all rather hungry. We went to a restaurant called Centimeter where you can buy sandwiches by the centimeter. It was a pretty cute place and we definitely enjoyed the dinner. Then we went to find our hostel that we were staying at for one night and were pretty pleasantly surprised with how nice Wombat Hostels are.

The next day Hannah, Kelley, and I went to meet Katrina at her room and then left to tour the city center. We walked towards the city center and saw the Museums Quartier, Parliament, the people's gardens, a lot of statues, and a lot more. Katrina knew a lot of the history of the city and it was great to hear all of it from her. I can't really remember it all, but it was great at the time:-) When we made it to the actual city center we saw some great royal palaces and Roman ruins. We then walked to a church that Katrina and Zeke had found a few weeks prior that was amazing from the inside. We also walked to St. Patrick's Cathedral (Stefansdom) and then enjoyed some great gelato on the street. After a couple of hours walking around Vienna we decided to meet up with Whitney, who is also studying in Vienna. We met up with her at Schönbrunn Palace. It was great to see her, because it had been a while and the palace was really pretty. As we went to the gardens we could see the Gloriette up on the top of the hill and we decided to walk up to the top of the hill so we could get a good view of the city. It looked like some rain was coming in, but we thought we'd take a chance. As soon as we made it to the top it started to really rain hard so we thought we'd wait it out. Unfortunately it didn't let up and we had to walk back in the heavy rain and we got quite wet. After getting drenched we thought a return to Katina's would be good so we could dry off. After a while we left to go to the Naschmart, fresh market. The market was amazing and it had so much fresh food. I am officially jealous that Katrina gets to live so close to it!

Our next stop was to get in line for Opera standing room tickets. The tickets are only 2 euro which is pretty dirt cheap to see a professional opera in Vienna if you ask me so we thought we'd try it out. Madame Butterfly was the Opera that was showing that weekend and I was really happy it was that opera. Madame Butterfly is a rather short Opera at around 2.5 hours and was pretty easy to follow and interesting to watch.

That night we spent some time hanging out and just had some really good times:-) The next morning we woke up pretty early to take an hour long train outside the city to Melk, Austria. In Melk there is an amazingly beautiful monastary and a great small town. We arrived there around noon after seeing some great scenery on the train. We decided to start walking around and climb up to the monastary. We found out an English tour was leaving around 3 so we went back down to the city center and ate lunch at a cafe. We also walked down to the Danube and got to see the river up close. Our tour of the monastary was pretty great and the tour guide spoke great English which really helped. I think it's safe to say our favorite part of the tour was the view from the top balcony which overlooked the city, the Danube, and the countryside. We also really liked the chapel which was very impressive. Overall, it was a great day trip and Katrina really picked a great city for us to visit. Upon our return to Vienna we were in the mood for some Wiener Schnitzel so we headed up to an area called Grinzing where there are tons of Heurigen's. These restaurants are really cool and the one we finally chose was really fun. There was live music to be listened to, great food to be ate, and it was very reasonably priced. That night Katrina and another American hosted a "traditional American frat party," so we all attended and just had a fun night together. Overall, our trip to Vienna was amazing! It was not only great to see 3 out of the 4 of my future roomies, but I also loved the city! Thanks Katrina for such a great weekend:-)

The Last Days in Dublin

As I finished multiple final papers, presentations, and tests I was excited to be done with school, but really sad to be leaving Dublin. I always heard that this semester would go so quickly, but I never believed it would actually be done. My last night in my apartment I went out to Devitt's with my roommates and some friends which was amazing! As usual there was great trad music to be listened to and the musicians were so fun to talk to. I talked to a fiddle player named Vincent who was really friendly and then just spent some time with friends and said goodbye.

I needed to move out of my apartment on April 19th and luckily my grandparents were in Dublin that day so I could move all of my belongings and myself into their hotel room. They had just gotten done with a tour of the Ring of Kerry and then I was going to show them around Dublin for 3 days. On that saturday we decided to get settled in and then tour around the Grafton Street area and see the Book of Kells in Trinity College. I hadn't seen the Book of Kells yet so I was really glad we decided to do it. I personally enjoyed the old library up on the second floor much more than the Book of Kells, because it was a 2 story room just filled with books from the 1800's. It was crazy how many books they had from such a long time ago and the room design was really original. After this we ate dinner and called it an early night. The next day Grandpa woke up with a cold that I probably gave him...ooops. He wasn't feeling very well so he decided to stay at the hotel while Grandma and I went to the National Museum and the National Gallery. We also went shopping for a few souvenirs and then saw that the weather was taking a turn for the worse so decided to see how Grandpa was doing at the hotel. We found him eating chocolate ice cream in the hotel bar and then decided to plan on going to Foley's pub for dinner, because the hotel staff had highly recommended it. The next day Grandpa was feeling a bit better so we got on the Dublin hop on- hop off tour to see all of Dublin. The bus really is a great way to see all the sights and get some good commentary from a Dubliner. We saw Phoenix Park, the River Liffey, Merrion Square, St. Stephen's Green, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Christ Church Cathedral, and the Guinness Storehouse. We got off the bus and took the tour of the storehouse which was pretty fun. We got seats up in the Gravity Bar and got to enjoy some great views of the city. We then returned on the bus and went back to the hotel to pack and organize, because they were leaving the next day and I was going to be leaving for Copenhagen shortly.

Overall, we had some great times in Dublin and it was great to see them and share my semester experience with them firsthand. It was unfortunate that Grandpa got sick and wasn't feeling well, but we did our best to have some fun and see all the sights!