Leavin on a jet plane...

It's official: my european adventure is over as of midnight tonight. 24 hours from then I will be in my house. Wow. It's really weird to think about. After packing all day today it's really hit me how much I will miss this place. I'll probably post about my last two weekends once I'm home and really get "europe sick." 

That's all for now, au revoir Europe! :)

Paris- City of Lights!

After toussant we went with my English class to Paris for 5 days. That was rough, mostly becuase I was worn out from travelling for 10 straight days, and then I only had 4 days in Lux. At first, it was cold and rainy just like Ireland so I wasn't so fond of Paris. But after  few days it definitely grew on me. I really enjoyed getting to spend a solid amount of time in one city. Travel was easy cause we just took a bus to get there, so I wasn't worried about train times. Dinner was provided every night by the hostel, and even though it wasn't exactly delicious, it was still something I didn't have to pay for. And Paris really is beautiful. Besides the fact that every street corner looks exactly the same. I honestly got so turned around because every building is a tan building with 5-6 stories and little black balconies. No joke.

I liked going to Paris with my class too cause we had amazing tour guides. Not only was my teacher's wife just the sweetest woman, but we had the same guides for all of our stuff so it was really consistent. The Musee D'Orsay was probably my favorite museum, although we saw the Louvre as well. Versailles had a Jeff Koons exhibit in it which might have been the WEIRDEST thing I have ever seen. I think I took more pictures of his artwork than anything else in Versailles. I thought Versailles was kind of boring as well, every room looked the same, it just was a big open room with a ton of ornamentation. The gardens were nice, but I could tell that they're way better in the summer. There weren't really any flowers, and none of the fountains were on either :( So I guess that means I'll just have to go back during the summer :) haha. 

The Eiffel Tower was totally worth it though. They have it decorated to look like the EU flag because the president is from France. And every hour it sparkled and lit up which was BEAUTIFUL. The first night we tried to go up on top of it, but we got there too late and by the time we would have gotten through the line it would be closed. So instead we sat underneath it and drank a bottle of  2 euro champagne. Which might have been better than actually being on top  of it :) haha. But we went back a few days later, and it turned out better because the sky was perfectly clear and we were practically the only ones up there. 

I think my other favorite thing was the Rodin museum. We just randomly decided to go after Invalides to this little museum cause The Thinker was there. I could have spent forever in that building. I never knew how much I liked Rodin. His sculptures are absolutely captivating. It definitely made my day :)

The UK/Ireland- Lots of Crac!! (don't worry parents, Crac means fun in Irish)

So I feel as though I have a lot of catching up to do. For Toussant break we went to London, Edinburgh and southern Ireland. I loved all of them, however the weather was less than cooperative. But I guess that's what you get when you go to the UK. 

London was a little chaotic. It was raining, 40 degrees and 30 mph winds. Not exactly condusive to sight seeing. And since we went on a weekend, the museums closed early on Saturday and weren't open Sunday, and we had to leave by 2 on Monday. So I'll definitely have to go back to London because there's so much really cool stuff I just didnt get to see at all. BUT I did get to see the Westminster Abbey, the Eye of London, Buckingham Palace, and we saw The Lion King. So it's not like we sat around and did nothing. We also went to Portobello Road in Notting Hill and saw the bookshop from the movie Notting Hill, and the open air market there. They had lots of cool antiques and shops. Lion King was good, except the kid who played Little Simba was god awful. I mean just horrible. But the rest of the cast was really good, and it was fun to refresh my memory of the show cause I'd forgotten how they did a lot of things. And all the actors had British accents haha, so that was cute. We took the underground a lot, and it wasn't as scary as everyone made it seem. maybe we were just used to undergrounds by that point. But this one time, the oxford circus station was closed and they kept saying "Oxford Circus station is closed due to person under the train". GROSS. They said it over and over and over again too, so of course way to many nasty images came to mind. 

We took the train to Edinburgh (which we thought would be like 50 pounds.. turns out it was 100... major ouch). I LOVED Edinburgh. I think it was the first place I could actually see myself living. The people were so nice, and the area is just gorgeous. It rained a little bit here, but most of the day was sunny and beautiful. We stayed in this hostel that was an apartment, but it turned out to be really nice cause the guy told us exactly where to go. We went to a pub that had authentic scottish folk music. There were just 7 or so people sitting in the corner, drinking beers and playing fiddles and whatnot. We met up with my friend Tom at this bar the first night and it was open mic night. absolutely hilarious! this guy with crazy curly hair called himself "Love Juice".. but his real name was Peter. He was god awful, and he knew it, which made it even funnier. 

Then we flew to Dublin. We did this 3 day bus tour of Southern Ireland which turned out to be the coolest thing! I got to kiss the Blarney stone (now I can flatter people with my words... supposedly haha. I don't think it actually worked). We made a wish in a real Irish wishing well (if it landed in the water yo got your wish, if it landed outside the water you got the opposite. yikes!) Mine landed in the water :) haha. We went through Cork, Kilarney, Gallway and eventually back to Dublin. Our tour guide was really funny, and the entire tour was Aussies. Most of them were around our age too, so it was nice to meet other kids traveling like us. When we got back to Dublin we went to the Guinness and Jameson factories. The Jameson was really cool and they taught you a lot about whiskey in general. I also fell in love with Bulmers Cider.