Luck of the Irish

We took a train and ferry into Dublin and I must say it turned out much better than our journey into London. The ferry was basically a cruise ship with restaurants, bars, shops, and cabins … it was quite a luxurious arrival. Dublin was a little more relaxing than other cities, we decided to take the time and do touristy things only. We took a walking tour through the city and did a pub crawl too, but my favorite part of our trip was our day spent in the countryside. We spent a whole day visiting an Irish farm, Galloway and most importantly the Cliffs of Moher. Although it was cold, the Cliffs of Moher were beautiful and we were lucky to have been there on just a cloudy day, no fog and no rain. The luck of the Irish was definitely with us.

FROM DUBLIN (IRELAND), WITH LOVE GRACE

Cheers Governer

The start of our independent trip was a little rough. We took an overnight bus to London from Paris; it may have been the sketchiest six hours of my life. We had to get off of the bus at the Paris border with our luggage, get back on the bus, drive about fifty feet and get off again at the London border, and then we were put into a crate and either ferried or trained over the channel, no knows because there were no windows and we were not told what was happening. Finally, we made it into London at 6 AM but we couldn’t check into the hotel … or hostel rather until 3 PM. After about eight hours of wondering the city on about two hours of sleep and one grande coffee we were finally able to get some rest and see the rest of the city. Other than our awful welcome into the city I have nothing but BRILLIANT things to say about the British. We were in London for two full days and in that time span I had four bloody delicious cupcakes: Raspberry Lemon, Vanilla Coconut, Red Velvet and Oreo, all from Convent Square Garden and/or Harrods. I am happy to say that I loved London and can’t wait to go back and work on my British accent. Cheers.
FROM LONDON (ENGLAND) , WITH LOVE GRACE

EIFFEL FOR PARIS

I fell for Paris. Of all the places we have been to so far this is the only city that I have been to previously and I cannot wait to go back to again. We started our trek through the city at The St. Genevieve Library. The library is older and had a great reading room. The reading room is different from many other libraries, in that the reading tables are in the center of the room and surrounded by the book stacks on the perimeter. We also saw the National Library which is much newer, located on the opposite side of Paris, with a large plaza leading up to four towers that house the archives of the library. Most of the library is actually underground and the four towers create a forest sized courtyard on the ground floor. We continued to the Pompidou Center a museum by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers. Basically this building is inside-out; the structure, HVAC, stairs and elevators, and any mechanical services are on the exterior of the building and the museum space is on the inside. Another museum we went to is the Louvre; it was wayyyy toooo big to be enjoyable but I did like the Lobby addition by I.M.Pei. Some of the more touristy things we did were the Eiffer Tower, the Galleries Lafayette – an insane mall/store that is seven floors of high end retail, and Sacre Coure – massive beautiful, white church, at the top of the highest hill in Paris. Paris has so many amazing things to offer, art, architecture, fashion, history and fooooood. My time here was much too short and I look forward to my return trip.

FROM PARIS (FRANCE), WITH LOVE GRACE