Nollaig shona dhuit!



Grafton Street

It's official, the holiday season is in full swing! No Black Friday shopping in Ireland, but the shops have become busier and the Christmas decorations are everywhere!

"Nollaig shona dhuit" means Happy(Merry) Christmas in Irish. This next month is my favorite time of year and I can't wait to be celebrating it in Ireland. I'll soon be joining the masses to get my Christmas shopping complete.

I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving and is enjoying all their leftovers!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Happy Thanksgiving from Ireland!! I hope everybody back at home has a great day spending time with family and eating fantastic food. Luckily Mom and I were able to find a turkey dinner in Galway which made today perfect!

Turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, baked potato, and vegetables. I'd say a pretty good turkey dinner while in Ireland. Yum!

Going With the Flow

Kilkenny: 2
Newbridge: 1
Me and Mom: 0

   Mom and I are spending some quality time together in Ireland this week!
Tuesday morning we made our way to Kilkenny, a cute little town close to Waterford with a local Irish feel.We had high hopes of seeing the Smithwicks Brewery and the Kilkenny Castle unfortunately the Winter Season tourism has kicked in. The brewery has changed their tours to Thursday, Friday, and Saturday only, which meant our visit on Tuesday and Wednesday were non-tour days. It would have been helpful for the website to provide this information. Even the concierge at our hotel was unaware of this change.

So close, but so far away.

   So with a few extra hours to spare before our train we made our way to the Kilkenny Castle thinking we can take our time checking it out. As we arrive to reception we hear the man informing the couple before us that due to the Winter season only guided tours were available and the next one wasn't until 2:15pm. We had to get back to the hotel and leave for the train by 3pm so an hour long tour wasn't going to fit into our schedule. Instead we spent some time roaming the outside of the castle, taking photos, and enjoying the beautiful weather, but even this didn't take up enough time.

Kilkenny Castle

At least it was a beautiful day.

   Now that we had even more spare time we decided to head to the train station early to catch an earlier train to have lunch in Newbridge (Our connecting stop to Galway). Sadly, Newbridge had nothing to offer. We walked out to the main street and there was no sign of food forcing us to hang out at the itty bitty super cold and lonely train station. We sure do know how to include some exciting mother daughter bonding time into our vacation.

   An hour or so later our train arrived! Lucky for us, the train has wifi which means I'm able to finish an assignment, update you all on our adventures, and Mom is able to send a few work emails.

   We will be spending the next few days in Galway which is a great city. Can't wait to explore and see all that it has to offer, especially the Christmas Market opening on Friday!
 

A Week Full of Travels

Last week I packed up my backpack and made way to Amsterdam and Berlin. Early Monday morning a group of six of us flew out to Amsterdam where we stayed at the Flying Pig Hostel. As my first hostel experience, it was much better than anything I would have expected. It was well kept and had a very fun vibe. We spent the first day walking around the town and in and out of all the little alleyways. Day two we rented bikes and got to see most of the city.

One of the many canals throughout the city

Amsterdam is a gorgeous city with a really great atmosphere. We were only there for a day and a half before two of us took a painful six hour train ride to Berlin.


Of course we needed some snacks so before we left we stopped by a Dutch cheese shop and bought some of the best cheese I've ever had.

 I of course had to buy an entire wheel of cheese. I mean who could pass up the opportunity to buy delicious traditional Dutch cheese?! SO GOOD!

 

 

Our train ride meal. Giant cheese wheel and smoked cheese. YUM

  

We arrived in Berlin around 7pm and made our way straight to the Heart of Gold Hostel. After some direction confusion and a language barrier we made it to our cozy home for the next few days. Luckily for us there was only a couple other people staying in the room so it was like we had it and the bathroom to ourselves.

  On Thursday we went out for some sightseeing in the beautiful city of Berlin. I am completely in love with this city, such an amazing place with so much to see. The only downside was that it was freezing. Literally freezing. It was never warmer than 32 degrees Fahrenheit and there was no sign of sun, ever. Other than the cold it was a great trip and I am so glad I got the opportunity to go!

Berliner Rathaus. Similar to a town hall.

Reichstag. Government Building.

Part of the Berlin Wall

There is an entire area of painted pieces of the Berlin Wall.

Whats left standing of the Berlin Wall

BRRR

The Soviet War Memorial

Brandenburg Gate

Check Point Charlie

Check Point Charlie.

Lasagna and Tortellini at Roma Italian Restaurant

  We had a plan that while we were Germany we would eat German food, but that turned out to be much harder than we thought. We asked friends for advice on where to go and not a single place was German related so we ate some very delicious non German food.

Burritos at Que Pasa Mexican Restaurant

   


          





    For the temperature shock we were in I'd say we got in a lot of great sightseeing. We definitely put some serious miles on our feet. Our "study week" from Griffith was an incredible week of traveling to places I wouldn't have been able to see if I wasn't studying abroad. It makes me more and more grateful that I was able to spend an entire semester in Ireland.

See You Soon!

Guinness Factory in 2009

Can't wait to spend the next week with this amazing person!

See you soon Mom!! <3

Fáilte

"Welcome" 

    Fáilte (pronounced "fall-sha") is welcome in Irish.
Living in Dublin, the Irish language is not spoken very often, but céad mile fáilte ("kad meel-a fall-sha") is a saying I hear regularly meaning "a hundred thousand welcomes."
 

    This past week was our "study week," but for all of us on Erasmus that meant a week of traveling! A post coming soon all about it, but first it's assignment time.

I'm Cookin

This past week I spent three days in a fancy kitchen cooking up delicious foods with my classmates. As part of my Hospitality Operations class we had a week designated to getting hands on cooking experience. It was pretty much like taking a culinary arts class in high school, but only for three days. We made great food and it was much better than sitting in a classroom listening to lectures. The kitchen we used was at a brand new secondary school in the Stepaside area of Dublin which is about an hour bus ride from the City Centre. 3 days, 30 euro, and 9 Hours of bus rides later I am glad the week is over. We made bread, vegetable soup, biscuits, chicken, crepes, bruschetta, pizza, and finished the week off with tiramisu. I enjoy cooking so I loved that we were able to do this and who doesn't love to eat great homemade food?

Here are a few of the finished products:

Sun-Dried Tomato & Basil Irish Bread

 We made "Fork Biscuits" which are basically cookies. Apparently we used the wrong flour instead of the self-rising flour so we ended up with very flat biscuits. Mine are on the left in this picture and didn't turn out as bad as others.

Biscuits

 On day 2 we did a mystery basket appetizer competition. With our partner we picked four numbers which gave us four random ingredients. We ended up with pasta, mozzarella, radishes, and sun-dried tomatoes. So we made some sort of pasta chunck of cheese salad thing.....
We didn't win, but everybody did love our dish.

Chicken a La King

PIZZZZZA :)

Tiramisu