Sunday, April 25, 2010
I Survived the Iceland Volcanic Ash Cloud! Spring Break 2010 Pt. 1 (France, Spain, Portugal)
Well it has been what seems like an eternity since I've posted on here and looking at the date of the last post, it actually has been. As you can imagine, being in Europe over the past couple of weeks, a lot of things have happened so I suggest you sit in a comfy chair while reading because this may be a long post.
On April 9th, my spring break travels around Europe began in the City of Lights, Paris. With my two friends Kiley and Brian, we spent four days in Paris seeing everything there is to see and then some. We stayed in a hostel room with an older guy from Quebec who we referred to as just that, "Quebec." He was nice but the only thing he ever said to us was, "What time is it, please?" Literally that was all he kept asking us every time we saw him. Anyway, that's not that interesting. Now I'll try and rattle off all the places I saw in Paris. On the first full day we were there we took a free walking tour and walked all over the city. We saw everything from Notre Dame to the 1,000,000 euro houses along the Seine to the Place de la Concorde and of course, the Eiffel Tower. We walked through the courtyard of the Louvre and saw the glass pyramid and strolled through Tullery Gardens on a bright sunny day. We walked past the Orangery museum and up the Champs Elysses to the Arc de Triomphe. At night we usually stayed in the Montmarte section around Sacre Coeur and ate a crazy amount of baguettes and crepes. As I'm thinking about it now, it really was basically an eating trip the whole time. As we ate our crepes sitting on the steps of Sacre Coeur overlooking the whole of Paris, it was a bit too surreal. I just spent a weekend in Paris! Paris was really everything I imagined it to be. Stunningly beautiful all over and luckily we had perfect weather. Even the French people were pretty nice which was surprising.
For our one day trip outside of Paris, we traveled to the Palace of Versailles. Let me tell you, you will never see anything as extravagant and amazing as Versailles. We took the tour of the palace and I was awestruck at the decoration and beauty of each and every room. The paintings and sculptures and pottery and adornment was just unbelievable. Out behind the palace the jaw-dropping scenes continued in the gardens that stretched on literally for miles with massive fountains and classical music playing. It was quite an experience.
After four days in Paris, we left for Barcelona to meet up with another group of friends. As a blackberry owner, I had the distinct honor of informing all my friends that a volcano erupted in Iceland. At first we all just shook it off and thought nothing of it. Then the news stories kept rolling in. European airspace was shut down and we were right in the middle of our travels. Madrid and Portugal were still on our list of future destinations but we had no clue what was going on. We received messages from other friends who were stranded in places like Greece and Italy and had no idea when they would be getting out. So began a lot of stress for a group of American college students who were just looking to have fun traveling around Europe for a couple weeks.
As for the sights that I saw in Barcelona, there were many. We walked up a very steep hill/mountain to Gaudi Park where we overlooked the city and got to see Gaudi's impressive and abstract park that looked like something out of Candy Land. We walked in and around La Sagrada Familia Church which has been under continuous construction for over 100 years I believe and won't be done for another decade. We ate palella and drank sangria and hung out on Barceloneta beach looking out on the Mediterranean Sea. The highlight of Barcelona for me was the trip to the Camp Nou, home of soccer team FC Barcelona. This stadium is one of the meccas of European and world soccer and I got to tour it. Such a cool experience. Unsure of the volcanic ash clouds future path, we crossed our fingers and thankfully got our flight from Barcelona to Madrid.
This is where the real stress began. Unfortunately, because we were constantly checking the Ryanair website and CNN.com, we probably didn't get to enjoy Madrid as much as we would have liked but it was a great city nonetheless. Our hostel was really nice despite the fact that we were in a room with some woman from San Diego who looked like a witch and would literally spend the day sitting on her bed saying strange prayers and mediatations. I think she might have been working on some spells or incantations but I can't be sure. In Madrid we went to the Prado museum, saw the big bullfighting arena, walked through the Plaza Mayor, and hung out one afternoon in an incredible park, the Central Park of Madrid if you will. We also ate some great tapas and drank more sangria.
Our final stop on the trip is a rather unique and perhaps obscure one: Porto, Portugal. After an 8 hour bus ride from Madrid to Porto which included a random roadside drug checkpoint in which the bus was searched by Spanish police and two of my friends were taken off the bus for random checks from huge K9 drug dogs, we arrived in Porto confused and exhausted. For the last three days we strolled around Porto and spend the evenings along the Duoro River eating some good food. The stress of the volcano continued to mount and came to its peak when we were informed that our flight home to Dublin was cancelled. After this deflating news, we created a plan that would continue our journey right into our spring break part 2 which actually begins tomorrow in Germany and Prague. However, just to make us all a little crazier, our flight was miraculously reinstated and by some strange miracle, we arrived back in Dublin on Thursday, just as we intended when we originally booked this trip. Don't ask me how it all worked out, I don't think I'll ever have an answer for that.
All in all it was an experience I'll never forget. The semester that I went abroad, and the two weeks that I took a spring break trip, a volcano erupted in Iceland and wreaked havoc across Europe, and I was there for it. It's certainly a story that I'm sure I'll tell a few more times in the future.
Hope you've all gotten to this point and have not fallen asleep yet. I'll make another post right after this with some pictures from the trip.
You may be shocked to know that I actually am still doing schoolwork and I'm just finishing up an essay now. It needs to get done today because tomorrow morning, bright and early at 5 AM, I take a bus across Ireland to Dublin Airport and depart for another week to Munich, Prague, and Berlin.
Hope all is well with everyone at home and I must take this opportunity to say Happy Birthday to Grandma! Hope you have a great day at Uncle John's with everyone. Wish I could be there.
Conor
On April 9th, my spring break travels around Europe began in the City of Lights, Paris. With my two friends Kiley and Brian, we spent four days in Paris seeing everything there is to see and then some. We stayed in a hostel room with an older guy from Quebec who we referred to as just that, "Quebec." He was nice but the only thing he ever said to us was, "What time is it, please?" Literally that was all he kept asking us every time we saw him. Anyway, that's not that interesting. Now I'll try and rattle off all the places I saw in Paris. On the first full day we were there we took a free walking tour and walked all over the city. We saw everything from Notre Dame to the 1,000,000 euro houses along the Seine to the Place de la Concorde and of course, the Eiffel Tower. We walked through the courtyard of the Louvre and saw the glass pyramid and strolled through Tullery Gardens on a bright sunny day. We walked past the Orangery museum and up the Champs Elysses to the Arc de Triomphe. At night we usually stayed in the Montmarte section around Sacre Coeur and ate a crazy amount of baguettes and crepes. As I'm thinking about it now, it really was basically an eating trip the whole time. As we ate our crepes sitting on the steps of Sacre Coeur overlooking the whole of Paris, it was a bit too surreal. I just spent a weekend in Paris! Paris was really everything I imagined it to be. Stunningly beautiful all over and luckily we had perfect weather. Even the French people were pretty nice which was surprising.
For our one day trip outside of Paris, we traveled to the Palace of Versailles. Let me tell you, you will never see anything as extravagant and amazing as Versailles. We took the tour of the palace and I was awestruck at the decoration and beauty of each and every room. The paintings and sculptures and pottery and adornment was just unbelievable. Out behind the palace the jaw-dropping scenes continued in the gardens that stretched on literally for miles with massive fountains and classical music playing. It was quite an experience.
After four days in Paris, we left for Barcelona to meet up with another group of friends. As a blackberry owner, I had the distinct honor of informing all my friends that a volcano erupted in Iceland. At first we all just shook it off and thought nothing of it. Then the news stories kept rolling in. European airspace was shut down and we were right in the middle of our travels. Madrid and Portugal were still on our list of future destinations but we had no clue what was going on. We received messages from other friends who were stranded in places like Greece and Italy and had no idea when they would be getting out. So began a lot of stress for a group of American college students who were just looking to have fun traveling around Europe for a couple weeks.
As for the sights that I saw in Barcelona, there were many. We walked up a very steep hill/mountain to Gaudi Park where we overlooked the city and got to see Gaudi's impressive and abstract park that looked like something out of Candy Land. We walked in and around La Sagrada Familia Church which has been under continuous construction for over 100 years I believe and won't be done for another decade. We ate palella and drank sangria and hung out on Barceloneta beach looking out on the Mediterranean Sea. The highlight of Barcelona for me was the trip to the Camp Nou, home of soccer team FC Barcelona. This stadium is one of the meccas of European and world soccer and I got to tour it. Such a cool experience. Unsure of the volcanic ash clouds future path, we crossed our fingers and thankfully got our flight from Barcelona to Madrid.
This is where the real stress began. Unfortunately, because we were constantly checking the Ryanair website and CNN.com, we probably didn't get to enjoy Madrid as much as we would have liked but it was a great city nonetheless. Our hostel was really nice despite the fact that we were in a room with some woman from San Diego who looked like a witch and would literally spend the day sitting on her bed saying strange prayers and mediatations. I think she might have been working on some spells or incantations but I can't be sure. In Madrid we went to the Prado museum, saw the big bullfighting arena, walked through the Plaza Mayor, and hung out one afternoon in an incredible park, the Central Park of Madrid if you will. We also ate some great tapas and drank more sangria.
Our final stop on the trip is a rather unique and perhaps obscure one: Porto, Portugal. After an 8 hour bus ride from Madrid to Porto which included a random roadside drug checkpoint in which the bus was searched by Spanish police and two of my friends were taken off the bus for random checks from huge K9 drug dogs, we arrived in Porto confused and exhausted. For the last three days we strolled around Porto and spend the evenings along the Duoro River eating some good food. The stress of the volcano continued to mount and came to its peak when we were informed that our flight home to Dublin was cancelled. After this deflating news, we created a plan that would continue our journey right into our spring break part 2 which actually begins tomorrow in Germany and Prague. However, just to make us all a little crazier, our flight was miraculously reinstated and by some strange miracle, we arrived back in Dublin on Thursday, just as we intended when we originally booked this trip. Don't ask me how it all worked out, I don't think I'll ever have an answer for that.
All in all it was an experience I'll never forget. The semester that I went abroad, and the two weeks that I took a spring break trip, a volcano erupted in Iceland and wreaked havoc across Europe, and I was there for it. It's certainly a story that I'm sure I'll tell a few more times in the future.
Hope you've all gotten to this point and have not fallen asleep yet. I'll make another post right after this with some pictures from the trip.
You may be shocked to know that I actually am still doing schoolwork and I'm just finishing up an essay now. It needs to get done today because tomorrow morning, bright and early at 5 AM, I take a bus across Ireland to Dublin Airport and depart for another week to Munich, Prague, and Berlin.
Hope all is well with everyone at home and I must take this opportunity to say Happy Birthday to Grandma! Hope you have a great day at Uncle John's with everyone. Wish I could be there.
Conor
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