So for my final trip of the semester, I headed to Venice again. But this time with my parents! They came in for the end of the program on Wednesday, saw my concert Thursday (more on the end of school another time), helped me move out on Friday, and then Saturday we headed to Venice. Despite it being my third time I saw a ton of new stuff.
Saturday we more or less got in (our train was really late, well, not as late as one of the trains coming into Centrale which was over 200 minutes late), walked around a bit, and had dinner at one of my mom's favorite places from my parents' visit two years ago (by the way, Saturday was my mom's birthday). It was this enoteca with the crazy owner (I believe) who would walk away while half mumbling things. But we had a great dinner.
Sunday we went and saw the Peggy Guiggenheim collection. Peggy Guiggenheim was an American heiress who collected modern art. She has multiple Picassos and Pollacks and other well known modern artists. It's in her old house too so we saw many places where she was a learned about her crazy life (look her up!). After that we headed to see Maria Della Salute, a church I'd wanted to go in since my first trip to Venice but never made it to (well, Aaron and I tried but it was closed in the afternoon). Then we headed to see the Doge's Palace which was beautiful and interesting. Best part...you get to walk across the Bridge of Sighs. Win.
Monday was really cool because my parents had scheduled a cooking class. We went to the island of Lido (where there are cars) to this professional chef's house (she catered the wedding in Venice for one of the producers of Grey's Anatomy and has been featured in Bon Appetite, she's that good) and she taught us how to make a few seafood dishes. We had a full five course meal for lunch which was fantastic and we got all of the recipes to try out again when we get home. After we went to see San Giorgio which is on its own island and my parents had missed before (I taught them how to take the vaporettos around Venice) and the church where the artist Titan is buried and has many of his major works.
Tuesday was a lazier day after all the craziness. We wandered the Rialto markets (the fish markets were pretty cool), saw the church with Tintoretto's "food fight" Last Supper (Rick Steves' words, not mine...but he was accurate), and took two of Rick Steves' walks in his Venice book (one of which we did backwards, turns out that Venetian streets aren't always the same name depending on what direction you're coming from). We also ended up during one of the walks at La Fenice, Venice's opera house. We went inside and the ticket came with a free audio tour. La Fenice means the phoenix and like a phoenix La Fenice has actually burned and risen again from its ashes, not once...but twice. First in the mid-1800s and again in 1996. It was really beautiful though. We finished with a dinner near our hotel and packed for Wednesday.
Wednesday morning (today) we had a water-taxi to the train station, way earlier than our train, but it was raining so we just hung around the station until our train came. We headed back to Milan and now we're waiting for morning (aka, 4:15) for the car to the airport and then our flights to Rome and to Chicago. Fingers crossed the weather is good!
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
Dublino!
So, thanks to San Ambrogio (patron saint of Milan) day this past Tuesday and the Immaculate Conception on Wednesday and all of our teacher's being super nice and canceling Monday classes, plus a Friday off because we get every Friday off...I had a really long weekend. So Allie and I hopped on a plane Friday morning and headed to Ireland, or more specifically to Dublin.
Friday we got in during the afternoon, ate some fish and chips (a must of course) and walked around the city. Thursday Dublin got hit with a lot of snow (we heard of people rerouted through Shannon and then having to take a bus due to the snow) so there was snow everywhere. The snow hasn't stuck in Milan yet (and might not the entire time I'm here) so my northern self was very happy to see snow on the ground. Allie's southwestern self was not. We found Grafton street where all the shopping apparently is, got some hot chocolate (one thing that the Italians do much better than anywhere else I've been so it was a little sad...) and just walked around. At night we hit up a pub I had read about that is supposed to have fantastic live Irish music, and they did. They have a group of four guys that just play for hours and talk, it was fantastic. Also, I had my first ever Guinness in an Irish pub in Dublin. Pretty special.
So starting Saturday we began to use the Dublin Passes we had purchased. We started at Christ Church Cathedral which is quite beautiful to walk around and one of the two main churches in Dublin. After that we hit up Dublina which is about the vikings in Dublin. A rather hilarious and epic museum if I do say so myself. We learned about vikings (they did not wear horned hats) and life in Dublin during the medieval times. After Dublina was one of the must hit spots of Dublin: The Guinness Storehouse. We walked through the museum which is pretty interesting. They tell you how Guinness is made and you can see old advertising stuff for Guinness. Sadly the pour the perfect pint section was closed so we couldn't take a hand at being bartenders but at the top in The Gravity Bar awaits your "free" Guinness after you go through the tour. I learned a lot actually. Including the fun fact that Arthur Guinness signed his lease on St. James Gate where Guinness is still brewed (including all Guinness sold in the US) for 9,000 years. That was 251 years ago so you do the math on how many years of Guinness we have left to enjoy.
We ended our Saturday with one of the best experiences I think we had in Dublin. We had a discount on the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl so we decided to go. It was mentioned in my guidebook and apparently voted one of the top 50 walks in the world by a big magazine. It was fantastic and I highly recommend it to anybody who goes, especially if they're big into literature. We went to four pubs with two actors who told us about the famous literary connections to the pubs. Many were frequented by writers such as Samuel Becket and Brendan Behan and one was part of a setting in James Joyce's Ulysses (they love James Joyce...). The actors acted out parts of plays and other literature from Ireland. We didn't have a huge amount of time at each pub but it was really cool just to hear about everything and watch the performances. Definitely highly recommended by me if you're traveling to Dublin.
Sunday we started off right by going to church...and by that I mean we visited St. Patrick's Cathedral. It is beautiful, surrounded by beautiful gardens (I assume, they were covered in snow), and you can see Jonathan Swift's grave. Apparently he was a big shot in the church as well as being a writer. This puts "A Modest Proposal" into an even more interesting life. After St. Patrick's we trekked all the way to the Kilmainham Gaol (Jail). This is a since abandoned jail but it has seen much of Irish history. One of the main topics we heard about was the 1916 Easter Rising. The men who started the rising with the reading of their declaration of Ireland as a republic (an act of treason against Britain) were almost all held in Kilmainham Gaol and all were executed in Kilmainham. The only one not kept at the jail was James Connolly who was injured by a shot to the ankle and held at the make-shift Red Cross station in Dublin Castle. He was then famously tied to a chair in order not to fall over, as gangrene had set into his wound, before being executed by a firing squad in one of the courtyards of Kilmainham Gaol. We got to see this courtyard as well.
After the jail we walked to the Dublin Zoo...because who doesn't love animals? We had fun walking around although many of the Saharan animals were hiding inside under their heat lamps. But we got to see them anyway. The zoo is located in Phoenix Park which is the largest park in Europe so we also walked around there. We took a bus back to the city center (we had walked a lot) and got some more fish and chips (yum!). We were going to call it a day since everything in Dublin seemed to close at 5 but we realized that the National Wax Museum Plus was open until seven and included on our card. We thought it would be hilarious so we went. And it was. The first part is actually really interesting. It's all about Irish history, a lot of which we'd learned at the jail that morning. After that you hit the parts where they have various characters and such made out of the wax. We had a fantastic time posing with them, writing letters the the sleeping, wax Santa Claus, and taking a ton of pictures. It was great.
Monday was our final day with the Dublin Pass. We headed first to the Dublin Castle. We saw the gardens (covered in snow) and got to take a tour of the state apartments. This included the room were James Connolly was held before being executed at Kilmainham and the throne which the British ruler would sit upon when in Dublin. A British ruler has not visited Ireland (the southern part obviously) in 99 years and we found out that Queen Elizabeth II will be making her first state visit to Dublin next year, marking the 100th anniversary of the last time a state visit was made to Dublin by the British. She will also be the first of her ancestors not to sit on this throne.
After that we continued our knowledge of Irish/Dublin history by visiting the Dublin City Hall exhibit which was fun. There were lots of video and cool artifacts including the Sword of Dublin (my favorite). We headed from there to the Old Jameson Distillery. Jameson (a whiskey if you didn't know) is no longer made in Dublin but in Cork. However, they show you the whole process in Dublin and tell you about how Jameson is different from most other whiskeys/scotches. At the end you get a "free" tasting and they do a tasting with eight of the group of Jameson, a scotch (Johnny Walker Black), and an American whiskey (Jack Daniels). 6 of the 8 chose Jameson. I didn't do the tasting but my friend did and I got to try a bit of each and I agreed with the group.
We went to lunch after in an old church that's been converted. It's actually the church were Arthur Guinness got married, but now it's a pub and restaurant. We wandered Dublin a bit more since everything was closed, got some dessert and a snack at Bewley's were we frequented often, and just relaxed.
Tuesday we headed out of Dublin. We took the DART which is a train that hits the nearby cities and went to Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Dun Leary...Gaelic is weird sometimes) which is a costal city. Of course, it was the one day it rained. We got some tea the minute we got in because it was so cold and wet. Then we walked the pier. Luckily it stopped raining for some of this and it was beautiful despite the weather. But, we were so freezing we decided to head to Dun Laoghaire's boasted about (on their tourist board) "12-screen cinema complex." We saw the newest Harry Potter. I never saw the 6th movie but I've read the books. I normally avoid the movies because I don't think they're very good after the books. But I have to say that the first part of the 7th is the best yet.
We headed back into Dublin, got some good pub food for dinner, and relaxed in our hostel before heading to bed (we had a super nice hostel by the way. Ashfield House if anybody's interested).
Wednesday was our last day in Dublin and we decided to hit up the free things. We went to the National Museum of Archeology first. I never knew there was so much gold in Ireland. It was half the museum! And then I saw bog bodies which was kinda creepy. If you don't know what those are, look them up, I don't feel like describing them. Then we headed to St. Stephen's Green and walked around, saw the bust of James Joyce, and enjoyed the day. It was pretty sunny even if there still was snow and ice on the ground (Allie had since learned how to walk on ice and how to layer so she was much more content with the snow than before). We got lunch after that and headed to the National Gallery. It was nice to see Irish and English paintings that weren't religiously based (as much) after spending so much time in Italy. Every painting in Italy is "Madonna Con Bambino" (Madonna and Child) and it gets a bit tiring after a bit. However, we did see one of the most famous Caravaggio paintings and we had to go to Dublin to do it.
We went to Marrion Square after that which is another park that boasts the Oscar Wilde reclining statue. We walked around, saw where Oscar Wilde spent his childhood, and then just walked around some more. We checked times for a bus the next morning, did some souvenir shopping, and had a final Irish dinner before heading to bed super early before embarking on our very early journey home the next morning.
If you want to hear about that journey home, you should ask me. Because the details of it are too frustrating for me to write here. But I'll start with this: we got up at 2:45 am.
Friday we got in during the afternoon, ate some fish and chips (a must of course) and walked around the city. Thursday Dublin got hit with a lot of snow (we heard of people rerouted through Shannon and then having to take a bus due to the snow) so there was snow everywhere. The snow hasn't stuck in Milan yet (and might not the entire time I'm here) so my northern self was very happy to see snow on the ground. Allie's southwestern self was not. We found Grafton street where all the shopping apparently is, got some hot chocolate (one thing that the Italians do much better than anywhere else I've been so it was a little sad...) and just walked around. At night we hit up a pub I had read about that is supposed to have fantastic live Irish music, and they did. They have a group of four guys that just play for hours and talk, it was fantastic. Also, I had my first ever Guinness in an Irish pub in Dublin. Pretty special.
So starting Saturday we began to use the Dublin Passes we had purchased. We started at Christ Church Cathedral which is quite beautiful to walk around and one of the two main churches in Dublin. After that we hit up Dublina which is about the vikings in Dublin. A rather hilarious and epic museum if I do say so myself. We learned about vikings (they did not wear horned hats) and life in Dublin during the medieval times. After Dublina was one of the must hit spots of Dublin: The Guinness Storehouse. We walked through the museum which is pretty interesting. They tell you how Guinness is made and you can see old advertising stuff for Guinness. Sadly the pour the perfect pint section was closed so we couldn't take a hand at being bartenders but at the top in The Gravity Bar awaits your "free" Guinness after you go through the tour. I learned a lot actually. Including the fun fact that Arthur Guinness signed his lease on St. James Gate where Guinness is still brewed (including all Guinness sold in the US) for 9,000 years. That was 251 years ago so you do the math on how many years of Guinness we have left to enjoy.
We ended our Saturday with one of the best experiences I think we had in Dublin. We had a discount on the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl so we decided to go. It was mentioned in my guidebook and apparently voted one of the top 50 walks in the world by a big magazine. It was fantastic and I highly recommend it to anybody who goes, especially if they're big into literature. We went to four pubs with two actors who told us about the famous literary connections to the pubs. Many were frequented by writers such as Samuel Becket and Brendan Behan and one was part of a setting in James Joyce's Ulysses (they love James Joyce...). The actors acted out parts of plays and other literature from Ireland. We didn't have a huge amount of time at each pub but it was really cool just to hear about everything and watch the performances. Definitely highly recommended by me if you're traveling to Dublin.
Sunday we started off right by going to church...and by that I mean we visited St. Patrick's Cathedral. It is beautiful, surrounded by beautiful gardens (I assume, they were covered in snow), and you can see Jonathan Swift's grave. Apparently he was a big shot in the church as well as being a writer. This puts "A Modest Proposal" into an even more interesting life. After St. Patrick's we trekked all the way to the Kilmainham Gaol (Jail). This is a since abandoned jail but it has seen much of Irish history. One of the main topics we heard about was the 1916 Easter Rising. The men who started the rising with the reading of their declaration of Ireland as a republic (an act of treason against Britain) were almost all held in Kilmainham Gaol and all were executed in Kilmainham. The only one not kept at the jail was James Connolly who was injured by a shot to the ankle and held at the make-shift Red Cross station in Dublin Castle. He was then famously tied to a chair in order not to fall over, as gangrene had set into his wound, before being executed by a firing squad in one of the courtyards of Kilmainham Gaol. We got to see this courtyard as well.
After the jail we walked to the Dublin Zoo...because who doesn't love animals? We had fun walking around although many of the Saharan animals were hiding inside under their heat lamps. But we got to see them anyway. The zoo is located in Phoenix Park which is the largest park in Europe so we also walked around there. We took a bus back to the city center (we had walked a lot) and got some more fish and chips (yum!). We were going to call it a day since everything in Dublin seemed to close at 5 but we realized that the National Wax Museum Plus was open until seven and included on our card. We thought it would be hilarious so we went. And it was. The first part is actually really interesting. It's all about Irish history, a lot of which we'd learned at the jail that morning. After that you hit the parts where they have various characters and such made out of the wax. We had a fantastic time posing with them, writing letters the the sleeping, wax Santa Claus, and taking a ton of pictures. It was great.
Monday was our final day with the Dublin Pass. We headed first to the Dublin Castle. We saw the gardens (covered in snow) and got to take a tour of the state apartments. This included the room were James Connolly was held before being executed at Kilmainham and the throne which the British ruler would sit upon when in Dublin. A British ruler has not visited Ireland (the southern part obviously) in 99 years and we found out that Queen Elizabeth II will be making her first state visit to Dublin next year, marking the 100th anniversary of the last time a state visit was made to Dublin by the British. She will also be the first of her ancestors not to sit on this throne.
After that we continued our knowledge of Irish/Dublin history by visiting the Dublin City Hall exhibit which was fun. There were lots of video and cool artifacts including the Sword of Dublin (my favorite). We headed from there to the Old Jameson Distillery. Jameson (a whiskey if you didn't know) is no longer made in Dublin but in Cork. However, they show you the whole process in Dublin and tell you about how Jameson is different from most other whiskeys/scotches. At the end you get a "free" tasting and they do a tasting with eight of the group of Jameson, a scotch (Johnny Walker Black), and an American whiskey (Jack Daniels). 6 of the 8 chose Jameson. I didn't do the tasting but my friend did and I got to try a bit of each and I agreed with the group.
We went to lunch after in an old church that's been converted. It's actually the church were Arthur Guinness got married, but now it's a pub and restaurant. We wandered Dublin a bit more since everything was closed, got some dessert and a snack at Bewley's were we frequented often, and just relaxed.
Tuesday we headed out of Dublin. We took the DART which is a train that hits the nearby cities and went to Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Dun Leary...Gaelic is weird sometimes) which is a costal city. Of course, it was the one day it rained. We got some tea the minute we got in because it was so cold and wet. Then we walked the pier. Luckily it stopped raining for some of this and it was beautiful despite the weather. But, we were so freezing we decided to head to Dun Laoghaire's boasted about (on their tourist board) "12-screen cinema complex." We saw the newest Harry Potter. I never saw the 6th movie but I've read the books. I normally avoid the movies because I don't think they're very good after the books. But I have to say that the first part of the 7th is the best yet.
We headed back into Dublin, got some good pub food for dinner, and relaxed in our hostel before heading to bed (we had a super nice hostel by the way. Ashfield House if anybody's interested).
Wednesday was our last day in Dublin and we decided to hit up the free things. We went to the National Museum of Archeology first. I never knew there was so much gold in Ireland. It was half the museum! And then I saw bog bodies which was kinda creepy. If you don't know what those are, look them up, I don't feel like describing them. Then we headed to St. Stephen's Green and walked around, saw the bust of James Joyce, and enjoyed the day. It was pretty sunny even if there still was snow and ice on the ground (Allie had since learned how to walk on ice and how to layer so she was much more content with the snow than before). We got lunch after that and headed to the National Gallery. It was nice to see Irish and English paintings that weren't religiously based (as much) after spending so much time in Italy. Every painting in Italy is "Madonna Con Bambino" (Madonna and Child) and it gets a bit tiring after a bit. However, we did see one of the most famous Caravaggio paintings and we had to go to Dublin to do it.
We went to Marrion Square after that which is another park that boasts the Oscar Wilde reclining statue. We walked around, saw where Oscar Wilde spent his childhood, and then just walked around some more. We checked times for a bus the next morning, did some souvenir shopping, and had a final Irish dinner before heading to bed super early before embarking on our very early journey home the next morning.
If you want to hear about that journey home, you should ask me. Because the details of it are too frustrating for me to write here. But I'll start with this: we got up at 2:45 am.
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