Italia: Rome, Florence and Pisa

Alright sooo Italian food is actually the best.  I think I ate straight carbs and dairy for the whole time I was there.  Not complaining.

So. Italy.  I don't even know where to start.  Maybe with the part where I saw the Pope? Or the time when my phone got stolen on the metro… maybe eating gelato everyday? and spending a day with one of my best friends in Rome? Or maybe when the polcia in Florence decided to give us a fine for not validating our bus tickets? This one might be a little long...

As you can see the stories and memories are endless and incredible in the best ways and the worst.

I will start with getting my phone stolen because that happened with in the first 20 minutes of being in Rome.  So it wasn't the best start to Italy! I was a little sour as might be expected towards Rome but I got over it quickly with some healthy doses of gelato and pasta.  So my phone.  My friends and I took a night train from Milan which was interesting to say the least.  There was a baby in our carriage.. Enough said.  We got off the train and went to find where to get on the metro and lugging all our stuff around too.  We bought our metro tickets and attempted to squeeze onto the metro with a million other Italians.  We were squeezed into the car literally as tight as possible, I don't think I've ever been in a more trapped position.  My phone was in my purse inside another bag that was over my shoulder.  I honestly didn't think twice about it.  Maybe I was just distracted and tired and confused about taking the metro for the first time but when we got off at our first stop and reached for my phone it was not there.  I had a sinking feeling and I knew right away that it was gone.  Too angry and sad and tired for words, I followed my friends onto the next metro like a zombie.

Our first event of the day was to go to the Vatican to see the Pope.  As excited as I was for this, I am sad that I was so distracted from losing my phone and thinking about that because I think it distracted me from having a more moving experience of seeing the Pope.  I am not a practicing catholic, but I attend a catholic school and appreciate the catholic religion and I really enjoy Pope Francis and what he has made of the church in his time of being Pope.  All of that said, I did my best to take in the moment and enjoy the ceremony.  He holds a free ceremony for the public every wednesday where he will drive around the crowd in his popemobile and then say a few words in front of the crowd.  It was very cool because he greeted each different nationality and you could hear the cheers from each different country as he greeted them.  Everything he said was also said in a translation of many different languages.  It was cool to be somewhere with so many different cultures and nationalities but all there for the same purpose.

After the ceremony was over, we met up with a friend of Megan and Tierney who was hosting us while we were there.  We headed to her place to drop our bags and relax a little.  The first thing we did was get pizza.  I was ok with that.  We eventually made it over to the Pantheon and to a large piazza next to it that I can't seem to remember the name of.  We were able to explore a bit of that side of the city and then find a place for dinner (pasta and bread) and then go to a place for gelato that our host suggested to us.  Even though the day started out the worst way possible, I found myself really enjoying what Rome has to offer.

The second day I planned to meet up with my friend Sarah, who I know from Trout (she also visited me in Cork).  She has been studying in Rome this semester so it was really fun to hang out with her and have her show me around a bit.  She also happened to have an extra camera that she let me borrow for the rest of the trip.  Soo grateful for that.  We met at the Vatican (casual) and roamed around the city for awhile. She took me to the Spanish Steps and an overlook of a nice piazza and the Trevi fountain.  She impressed me with her very fluent spanish and broken italian when talking to all of the Italians cause I felt like an idiot when trying to order anything try to talk to anyone! She also showed me where she lives and one of her favorite places in Rome, which is another overlook, where we got some gelato :) We finished the day with the best meal I had in Italy at a family owned restaurant in her neighborhood. The pasta, pizza, bruschetta and house wine were all absolutely amazing.  AND to share it with the best date was so much fun.  Sarah, you're awesome.

Our last full day in Rome was the Colosseum and Roman Forum.  This day is one of the highlights from my whole trip.  It was just such a good overall day! The sun was shining, we were seeing some really cool Roman ish things, we ate really good pastries, pizza, bruschetta, prosciutto and wine.  And of course gelato :) This day is when it finally hit me that I was actually in Italy.  At the end of the night I threw my coin into the Trevi and said arrivederci (goodbye) to Rome (for now!).

Pope Francis (Photo by Tierney Chlan)

Sarah and I at the Spanish Steps

Spanish Steps.  Look at that bluuuee sky!

This pasta was sooo good….

Colosseum

My travel mates: Me, Tierney, Megan and Cameron

Best gelato in the world

Trevi fountain at night

We headed to Florence the next day after indulging one last time on our favorite bakery's pastries.  We took the train and it was actually a really nice train and the scenery that we went through was classic tuscan countryside.  It was so beautiful with the tall skinny trees and colors and hills and mountains in the distance.  It made me want to take a trip to Tuscany and go to a vineyard and take cooking classes someday!

Anyways, Florence gave us a few more adventures.  There were three of us now, myself, Tierney and Cameron.  We got off the train and figured the best way to get to our rented apartment was to take the bus.  So we went and bought bus tickets and went to find our correct bus.  We got on and were feeling pretty good for finding the right one, then we see some police officers get on. They came right over to us and asked to see our tickets so I handed them to the officer.  She immediately started jabbering away in Italian in an angry voice and we were like uh no italiano! So she brought another guy over who spoke english who pulled out a big legal pad and began telling us that because we didn't validate our tickets right away when we got on the bus we were going to have to pay a 50 euro fine each.  Right away we started arguing and saying that we literally just bought the tickets and just got on the bus and we had no idea that you needed to validate your tickets because we didn't see anyone else doing it.  That just made him more mad and they got off at our stop with us and began asking for our passports and kept saying that this is the law in Florence.  He said 'I give you a deal, you pay now for 2 fines otherwise you pay 3 fines at the box office.'  He even pulled out a badge to prove that he was legit.  WAH we were so confused and in disbelief and kept arguing which made him more mad and so he goes 'FINE you pay 3 fines at the box office.' We had no idea where the box office was so I said wait, ok we will pay for 2 fines right now and pulled out 100 euro and shoved it into his hand.  It was so sketchy and we knew we were definitely targeted with our luggage and probably confused looks.

So. Our first impression of Florence was pretty bad too.  After losing my phone though, this was pretty small :) Just really frustrating that we were targeted and they were not understanding that we had no idea to validate our tickets! That evening it also rained on us.  So to lift our moods we set off to find one of our friends who was in Florence at the same time, Emily.  We sat down with her at a nice restaurant for a few hours and exchanged stories of our travels so far.  The food was amazing also.  The lasagna, wine and tiramisu that I had… mhmmm.  We enjoyed getting to relax and eat good food to make us feel better after losing 33 euros to those mean policia.

The next day was Easter! We began the day with a ceremony that involved an exploding cart.  It was in the middle of the main square with the Duomo and there were sooo many people there! The ceremony was in Italian and we couldn't really see what was going on but when the cart started going off it was really cool.  There were fireworks and little firecrackers coming from it and it was really an experience I will not forget.  The fireworks went on for at least 7 or 8 minutes too.  A successful explosion of the cart means good luck for the new year and I would say it was a successful explosion! The afternoon was spent exploring the city and having a picnic in a park.  We met up with our friends, Emily and Gina to cook an easter dinner of sorts.  It was fun to do something a little more special for the holiday as we were all missing our families and our traditions from home.

We stayed and relaxed for awhile then we went to find an overlook that we had been told about to watch the sunset from.  We had a nice walk along the river and thankfully the sun was shining all day and it was a beautiful evening.  The sunset is one that I will not forget.  The clouds were absolutely stunning when the sun was going behind them and the view of the city from the over look was really nice.  Sigh… That was another one of my favorite days from my trip.  The sunset was a good reminder of the meaning of the Easter holiday and how the beauty of creation is pretty incredible.

Our last day in Florence was spent wandering some more streets and spending some time (and money..) at the leather market.  We really enjoyed just looking at everything and listening to the vendors try to sell us things we didn't want.  But of course, when in Italy I guess, buy all of the things and spend all of the moneys… The three of us found ourselves using those phrases more than once and those phrases kinda became a joke for the rest of the trip.  We got one last canoli and sat by the river before catching our bus to Pisa.

Exploding Easter cart!

Duomo

Easter sunset.  Incredible.

MN nice on the streets of Florence :)

Tierney, myself and Cameron

Yummy canoli by the river

Our hostel in Pisa was kind of like an oasis for us.  We walked in and the man who greeted us asked if we wanted some fruit juice while filling out our paperwork.  Why yes I would like some FREE fruit juice! There was a really nice lounge area where they also served coffee and dinner on some nights and compared to our apartment in Florence, this was paradise.  May I add that the showers in both Florence and Pisa were teeny tiny and barely had curtains and we ended up getting water all over the floor.. oops! Those will be some memorable showers!

Our one day in Pisa and last day in Italy was better than I could have imagined.  When people say there isn't much to see in Pisa they were right but I didn't mind! We spent a little time walking around but eventually made our way to the leaning tower.  I was impressed by how much it actually does lean!  No wonder why it is famous.  We had a lazy day napping in a park, picnicking in the square with the leaning tower and ending with our last italian meal.  Pizza, pasta, wine and tiramisu to say our goodbyes to Italy was nice to sit and relax and enjoy our last night in Italy.  We ended up sitting under the leaning tower after dinner, eating snacks and chatting for a few hours while the sun went down.  It was such a great way to end the day and when will I ever be able to say again that I sat looking at the leaning tower for a few hours at sunset?

Classic tourist picture

Sunset while sitting under the leaning tower.

The colors!

As you can see, Italy was truly the best of the best and the worst of the worst for me and my travel mates.  BUT as a whole, I absolutely loved it there. The good things most definitely outweighed the bad and yes I will remember those bad things but now they just make for good stories :)

Phew! I hope you enjoyed hearing about my italian adventures as much as I enjoyed the adventuring.  For now, arrivederci Italy! I hope to be back someday.

Czech Republic, Germany, and Switzerland

Hey everyone!

I figured I wouldn't bore you with all the details of every minute of my travels so I decided to combine a few countries into one post.  This may still be a little long but it will prevent me from becoming long winded and from uploading every single picture! I spent two days in each country, just to give you a sort of timeline for my travels!

May I start with saying that I am so lucky that I speak English! The rest of the world has such a high number of English speakers and even with that, we had trouble sometimes with language barriers.  I can't imagine what it would have been like to travel to all these places and have nobody speak English.

So, we start with Prague.  I flew to Prague from England with my roommate, Megan and we met up with our friend, Cameron who has family friends in Prague and invited us to stay with them.  These people were so kind! We were treated like royalty here.  They drove us around, cooked for us, told us all about Czech history, washed our clothes and even gave us parting gifts when we left.  We were complete strangers to them and they treated us like family.  I will never forget Jana, Petr and Martin!

Prague was such a nice city.  There was a good mix of things to see and we pretty much saw it all! We saw the Prague Castle, Charles bridge, John Lennon wall, the Astronomical clock and the main square, the Jewish Quarter, the Petrin Tower and many others.  I will name a few of my favorite parts of Prague:

Easter markets were being set up in preparation for Easter.  These were food stands serving traditional Czech foods and sweets and fried foods and more! They were set up in the main square near the astronomical clock so it was a fun place to hang out.  We took advantage of these food stands a few times and got the Czech trdlo.  Not sure how to pronounce it but it was a doughy circular shaped goodie that was crispy on the outside and covered in sugar.  SO GOOD.

Exploring the area called Kampa, which was a park like area that went along the river.  The John Lennon wall was over there as well as many placed to sit and watch the swans or just people watch.  It was a nice place to relax.

St. Charles bridge at night was also a highlight for me.  We had only seen the city during the day so we waited around for it to get dark so we could see the bridge and the castle lit up for the night.  It was nice to just kinda sit and wait for the sun to go down and watch all the colors that changed as it got darker.

Trdlo.  SO GOOD.

View of the city

John Lennon wall

Astronomical clock

River view from Charles bridge

Charles Bridge at night

Megan, Cameron and I took a night bus to Munich to save money and time on travel.  It was a good idea in theory but it meant no sleep before another day of sightseeing! We were zombies when we got to Munich.  We met up with our friends Tierney, Bridget and Bridgets boyfriend in Munich at our hostel to make ourselves look like humans before starting the day.  There are a few main things that I will remember about Munich:

Visiting Dachau concentration camp.  I wouldn't say that this was fun, but I'm sure glad we did it.  Walking onto the grounds was very moving and imagining the horror of what went on there brought tears to my eyes.  It is so sad how dark humans can be.  We spent a good amount of time there walking the grounds and going through the museum.  I learned a lot more about concentration camps and world war II in a short few hours.

Eating at the Hofbrahous.  This is a famous brewery in Munich and we treated ourselves to their famous brew and some traditional German food.  Giant pretzels, pork, sauerkraut and beer. Yum.

Exploring the area around the Glockenspiel and spending time in the famous English Garden.  We climbed up a tower across from the Glockenspiel which was cool because we could see the whole square and take really nice pictures of the Glockenspiel.  Eventually we wandered through another market for lunch and over to the English Garden.  It was nice to have some time to relax in the grass outside of the city and play with the daisies and dandelions :)

Me at the Hofbrahaus

Me, Tierney, and Megan in front of the Glockenspiel

Streets of Munich

Glockenspiel from the tower

Chilling in the English Garden

After two days in Munich, we packed up the car and began the drive to Switzerland.  Bridgets boyfriend was kind enough to rent a car and cart us girls for a few hundred miles through Europe.  Once we began to see the alps on our drive it hit me that I was actually going to be in Switzerland.  Its been a place I had always wanted to visit after hearing my older sisters rant about how amazing it is.  And they were right!

We stopped in Zurich for a few hours to explore the city and take some pictures.  (All of which disappeared along with my phone in Rome. More about that in the next post).  It was a beautiful city but we were ready to get to the mountains and settle into our chalet!  It was about an hour and a half to our chalet in Grindewald which is about 15 ish minutes past Interlaken. The chalet was beautiful.  It was nestled right in the middle of the mountains and had a kitchen, beautiful bathrooms and bedrooms and a place to have campfires.  We loved it.

Interlaken had some really amazing things to offer us.  Again I will highlight some of the favorite things in the very short two and a half days we had there:

Hiking up Harder Kulm.  It is named HARDER for a reason.  I think we took the difficult path up.  Once we got over our tired legs and reached the top I forgot about how much my legs hurt a minute ago and took in the incredible beauty that was surrounding me.  It was so exhilarating to finally reach the top after all that hard work and then just know that its ok because I was looking at the most beautiful view of my whole life.  Definitely a highlight of my whole month of travel.  Or actually more like a highlight of my whole life!

Exploring Interlaken and finding the beautiful lakes full of bright blue aqua ish water.  The water though, it was so blue.  And the sunshine! Ahhh take me back.  I could have spent weeks looking at that water and the mountains surrounding the town were just amazing.  I really can't even describe how beautiful it all was!

The last but definitely not least highlight was going to a chocolate show.  We all know Switzerland is famous for chocolate and there is a good reason why people.  It was fun to watch the chocolatier make little chocolates out of molds and then we got to eat them right there. We got so many free samples.. Maybe thats why I like it because he literally said you can have as many as you want. WHAT.  It was sooooo good.  Seriously, thinking about the chocolates with homemade caramel in the middle is making my mouth water.  I may have had a few of those…

Our beautiful chalet

View from the top of Harder Kulm

On top of the world yo

Picturesque Switz (Photo by Tierney Chlan)

Chocolate show (Photo by Tierney Chlan)

Sadly we had to leave Switzerland.  The land of blue water, mountains and chocolate.  Or in other words: Heaven on earth.  I hope to go back there someday and spend more than two days because that was not even close to enough time! And to take my own pictures and actually have them when I return from my trip...

Next country: Italy!  The best of the best and the worst of the worst.  Stay tuned..

England: Cotswolds and London

I have finally returned from my six country travel month around Europe and I am sitting on my bed in my apartment in Cork.

So many memories and adventures to tell about and remember.  The best of the best and the worst of the worst! Traveling is no picnic in the park, I'll tell you that.  I learned a lot about the world and myself in the past few weeks and I am very excited to share all of my stories with you all!

I still cannot believe I saw and did all of the things I did.  I am beyond blessed to have been able to see so much of the world! Its hard to really grasp everything that I've been able to do.

Anyways, I will start with my mom and I's trip to England! First of all, mom, thank you so much for this trip.  I will always have such great memories of England from driving through the English countryside to having high tea with you, the list goes on! I had so much fun and I would not have wanted to share it with anyone else :)

So.  My mom and I flew out of Cork into Birmingham which is northwest of London by a few hours.   We wanted to spend a few days in the countryside before heading to the city. The Cotswolds is an area of villages and towns that make up part of the west of England.  Stratford upon avon is the most well known part of the Cotswalds, just to give a reference. We stayed in a town called Chipping Campden and it was the cutest little town.  All of the buildings in the Cotswolds look like they could be on a movie set.  They are just so old and have a lot of character with the tan color and the really pretty trim and flowers all around.  Its hard to describe!

We really enjoyed exploring Chipping Campden and having our first English tea.  On our only full day there we toured some of the other villages around the area.  It was fun to drive through and see these tiny villages that have maybe some houses and one pub and thats it.  So secluded but very peaceful and not to mention beautiful!  The man giving us the tour was a sheep farmer in Chipping Campden so it was really fun to hear about the Cotswolds from a local who had lived there his whole life.  We thoroughly enjoyed our bed and breakfast that we stayed at as well.  The host was again, so kind and we had delicious breakfasts!

Chipping Campden

Stratford upon Avon

Enjoying the villages :)

We made our way to London on the train and started the adventures right away.  We dropped our bags off at the hotel and began to get ready for our evening.  We headed over to Parliament square which has a lot of the main sights, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and the London Eye not too far away.  My phrase of the whole trip is that "Its not real".  Seeing all of these major attractions just didn't feel real.  And this feeling continued throughout the whole month! Anyways, we took some pictures then headed over to where our show was going to be.  We are some really good Thai food and then went to the live performance of Les Mis.  Oh my.  These people are probably the most talented that I will ever hear in my life! They do not get the recognition that they deserve thats for sure.  My mom and I both loved it.  I think that performing music in the past helped both of us appreciate how difficult it is to sing and act at the same time.  Les Mis was definitely one of the highlights of London for me.

The next day we had a city tour of London. Our guide was great and it was good to have someone to tell us a but more history and tell us what we were looking at some of the time.  He brought us all over to the Globe theater, Tower bridge, Buckingham Palace, the church where Princess Diana was married to Prince Charles, and the Australian Embassy where the doors on the entrance were used in the Harry potter films for the goblin bank, Gringotts.  After the tour, we had high tea which was another highlight.  We got english tea with finger sandwiches, scones, and a lot of cute little cakes.  Such good food! It was so fancy too, I felt a bit out of place but its fun to pretend that we were fancy!

After our stomachs could not hold anything more, we went and did some shopping at Harrods and then wandered through Hyde Park a bit to get to our hotel which was near the Marble Arch tube stop (for those of you familiar with London).  That evening we wanted to see some of the attractions at night so we went over to Parliament square again to see Big Ben and the London Eye all lit up.  We ended up going on the London Eye and I think it was another highlight for me. Too many highlights! I am glad we went at night because seeing the city all lit up was really fun.

The next morning we headed off to a tour of the Warner bros studio for the Harry Potter films.  I'll have to say, thanks to my mom for bearing with my Harry Potter nerd status because I know this was more something I wanted to do.  Anyways, again in typical Mork style we got lost trying to find the place where we needed to catch our bus to the tour.  In the rain.. We ran for a little bit around the city like beheaded chickens not having a clue where we were going but eventually caught a cab to get us to the tour on time.  Anyways, the tour was really cool.  We got to go inside the great hall (for those of you who know Harry potter, everyone else just bear with me), and we saw a lot of the other sets like the Gryffindor Common room, the potions classroom, Dumbledores office, the Weasleys kitchen, and parts of the ministry of magic.  We also saw a ton of the props and learned about some of the animations that took place and the artists that were involved with designing buildings or magical creatures.  We also saw the knight bus, Privet drive, and the bridge that crosses over the river.  I think those last three were my favorites.  I of course got a cup of butter beer while exploring some of the sets.  Its tastes a lot like cream soda!  I also had a lot of fun nerding out in the giftshop and finding a few things to remember my day with Harry!

After the tour we were able to pack in a few more things before it got dark.  We went into the National gallery in Trafalgar Square and perused some of the famous artists paintings.  I wish I knew more about art so I knew what I was looking at but I enjoyed it anyways.  Then we rushed off to catch an organ concert in Westminster Abbey.  We got there just in time and oh my goodness! It was incredible.  Hard to believe that we were sitting in Westminster Abbey listening to an extremely talented organist.  We thought of my grandma Mork the whole time, you would have loved it Grandma! It was also fun to be in there because that is where William and Kate were married!

We ended the evening with a walk over to the river to have one last look at the London Eye and Big Ben.  Our last meal was fish and chips, which was fitting and reeeaalllly good :)

My mom left the next morning and I left a few hours later to begin the rest of my travels around Europe.

Big Ben

Les Mis!

High tea :)

Butterbeer and two of the sets from Harry Potter

One of my favorite pictures of my trip, if I do say so myself :)

Mom, thank you for this trip! I had so much fun and I hope you did too.  Even after seeing everything else, London may still be one of my favorites!

Next post will be about Prague, Germany and Switzerland.  Can't even believe that I've been to those places..

Mom and Dad come to Ireland!

Well, here I am writing from the middle of Switzerland!  Its been awhile since I have written, I have been real busy being a crazy world traveler!

So. Mom and dad came to Ireland at the end of March.  It was such a whirlwind of fun and adventures with them, I don't even know where to start!  I met them in Dublin the day they flew in and we started our adventures right away.  We walked around Dublin for a bit and I let my parents marvel at the very old buildings all over Dublin while I led them around for the evening.  We found a really nice pub in the heart of town for dinner with live Irish music.  It was the perfect introduction to Ireland for my parents!

The next day we headed out into the misty rain for a walking tour of Dublin.  It was very interesting to learn a bit more history of Dublin from a real Dubliner.  My dad loved it as he is a real history buff! We were ready for some lunch afterwards to warm up with some homemade soup and brown bread.  My dad fell in love with brown bread and Im pretty sure he had it at almost every meal.  Wish I could bring some home for you dad!

After that we went to go pack up and head to our train that would take us to Cork.  In typical Mork style, we ended up running for a few minutes to make the train just in the nick of time.  LOL.  It was grand.  We were so excited to find our seats and see that our names were next to them because my dad had booked the tickets ahead of time.  We got to Cork around dinner time and of course it was raining pretty steadily.  Welcome to Cork, mom and dad! Ha... We headed out into the rain to find a place for dinner and ended up at a place that serves really good crepes.

Our b&b was the best! Our hosts, Olive and Kieran were so kind and helpful giving suggestions and just having great conversation together.  We always had great breakfasts and they were so welcoming. Olive even let me borrow a suitcase for my travels! Such kindness...

Anyways, the first day in Cork we headed to the airport to pick up the rental car and we were ready for adventure! My dad was great with driving on the wrong side of the road and I think he maybe kinda liked it? We began the trek to the Cliffs of Moher and it ended up being such a perfect day.  I like to think my parents fell in love with Ireland just as much as I have in that one day :) We did some cliff walking and taking pictures and just admiring the beauty of the cliffs, ocean and sunshine.  We did some exploring around the area and ate at a pub in a small Irish town called Doolin.  Once again the brown bread emerged and seafood chowder also became a favorite for both my mom and dad.

The next day we decided to tour the Beara Peninsula and part of the Ring of Kerry.  It was a lot of driving for my dad but he was a trooper! I loved it because it was a new part of Ireland for me and the scenery was of course beautiful.  We drove up and down and through the mountains and saw so many sheep! My mom and I had a good time capturing funny pictures of all of the sheep.  We stopped at Ladies view on the Ring of Kerry to take a few pictures as well.  That night we ate at a nicer restaurant in Cork and I loved having them both in my city and being able to have good conversations with them.  We ended the night at a favorite pub of mine listening to live music from local musicians.

On my dad's last day, I gave them a tour of Cork! We started at my school, UCC, which I hope was fun for them to see where I had been spending some time this semester.  I brought them to the English Market, O'Connails hot chocolate, Carrolls, and a few other shops and bookstores.  And showed them some of my favorite places in Cork.  We ended that evening with dinner at another favorite pub with really good pizza and a soccer game on TV.

I absolutely loved showing them around my adopted country and city. I can only hope that they can see why I have fallen in love with Ireland in their snapshot view of the Green Isle!

Walking in Dublin!

Trinity College Library

Cliffs of Moher!

Cliffs of Moher

North Face Ad?

Dad, loving his fish and chips

Road tripping on a beautiful day

Mol's Gap on the Beara Peninsula! They got to experience some real Ireland wind.

One of the many sheep :)

My parents loving their homemade hot chocolate!

After my dad left, my mom and I headed to England! A different post to follow for that trip :)
I am loving Europe and all of the unique differences each country has to offer.  I cannot believe I have been blessed with this opportunity and it is all just going so fast! Before I know it i'll be back in Ireland and then back in the states.

I had such a grand time mom and dad, thanks a million for making the trip over to see me and have some adventures in Ireland!

Sending my love to family and friends back home!