I Should Have Written This Days Ago

I really should have!

But getting back was busy (of course), and then being back was - well, I wont' get ahead of myself.

So those first two days in Dublin, I took one of those hop-on, hop-off tour buses, as I'd mentioned in my last post. Ultimately, though, I've concluded that after the first go-around, they are a monumental waste of time. Next time, I'll take the bus once around to get a glimpse of everything, maybe, but other than that, I much more enjoy myself and the city on my own.

On the third day, I just started walking. I had only a vague itinerary - Christchurch, Dublin Castle, and St. Patrick's, right?



Mission accomplished! Mostly!

I went to St. Patrick's first - sort of. Actually, I went to Grafton Street first, and got a fun time getting lost. This was the place that reminded me of different spots in Barcelona the most, if only because of all the shops - but I liked it better because Grafton Street is a relatively short street, with lots of other little walk-only streets crossing it, so it's like a little network of pedestrian fun. There were lots of streets like these in Dublin, and I adored that - I love the walk-only street. They're so much nicer, and I feel like they make you really get into the nooks and crannies of a place.

So anyway, after I did a little shopping and discovered that I'd missed a walking tour on the 1916 revolution (which made me sad), I struck off on my own; I visited St. Patrick's, which is beautiful. There's a park next to it that's just gorgeous, and in the back of it, they have memorials to various Irish writers:



So after I went inside and took a million pictures of the gorgeous stained glass, I went to Christchurch for probably my favorite historical moment of the trip - this exhibition they were doing on the Vikings!!! :D

It was so interesting to learn about them, and everything was interactive - and they had these great replicas of places and people:


Hehehe... he's on the turlet!

They also had a medieval village/market - but that floor was beset on all sides by hordes of Spanish teenagers, gumming up the works and just making me want to get out of there. Though I did talk to some of them, and they were actually really cute and sweet. I just didn't want to be taking pictures and trying to get my learn on with them wandering around, getting in the way, and yammering the whole time. LOLOL. But they were nice. One of them asked me where I was from, and I told him the U.S., and he asked me how I spoke Castillian so well (YAY! :D) and I told him my mom is Cuban, and then he was like, "Ah, yes, -that's- your accent!" LOLOL YAAAY!

So anyway, after Christchurch, I wandered around a bit more, and found Dublin Castle.

Sadly, they were done with tours for the day, so I wandered over to the Beatty Library, had a little lunch, looked at some things, and tried Turkish delight for the first time.

As I wrote in a text that many of you received:

"You know, it's not bad, but I find it hard to believe that Turkish delight was ultimately responsible for the betrayal of Aslan and Narnia."

And I agree with Alexis' assessment; respect has been lost for Edmund. LOLOL.

Okay, enough nerd humor.

So after the library, it started pissing rain - it was crazy! It had been blue-skied and sunny, gorgeous, and then all of a sudden - deluge! My cute little sheep umbrella that I got from the airport immediately succumbed to the wind, and I went to the library/museum gift shop to see if they had any umbrellas for sale.

They didn't, but they just gave me one they had back there! So sweet!

So after the library, I wandered back another way toward St. Stephen's Green, and stumbled upon this:



What a neat little market! I found a CD store that was playing what sounded like The Knife - so I went in and asked. The Irish hipster at the tiny counter looked at me with impressive disdain and disgust as soon as he heard my American accent - but when I asked if what was playing was The Knife, he looked at me again, less suspiciously this time. He informed me that actually, it was the chick from the Knife's solo project - I was like, "Oh, really? I didn't know about that! Cool!" And then he actually seemed to kind of warm up (well, relatively speaking), and told me that yeah, it'd only just come out a few weeks ago. So I was like, "Awesome," and asked for it, and I bought it, and I am excited because it's pretty cool, but I also actually bought a physical CD that just came out - I don't know if this has happened to me since before 1998. LOLOL.

Anyway, I also got a nice banana nut bread, and then took a walk through St. Stephen's Green. I'd been planning to go to the National Gallery, but I was pretty beat, and my feets were hurting from walking all day! So I went back to my inn instead!

Sadface!

But anyway, it was a lovely day. I wish I could have had just one or two more - but c'est la vie! :D

Mallorca

So I debated for a little while about whether I'd include my Mallorca trip in any great detail here. After all, this blog has been mostly about personal observations and adventures during my time abroad from a sort of... I don't know if I want to say removed or detached, or even outside perspective, but certainly it's been the entity of me encountering the entity of Barcelona.

Mallorca was not so much the case.

But what's nice about this thing is that there aren't really any rules for it, so I can document whatever I want. And this includes my time in Mallorca, where I spent a very lovely birthday week.

My cousins Marta and Guillermo were gracious enough to host me for five days and four nights at their beautiful, gorgeous, lovely home in Palma, which I did not take pictures of, because I thought it would be intrusive and maybe weird. But it's a beautiful place, on the seventh floor of a building in the center of Palma, with a huge roof deck/terrace/what have you and a lovely view of the mountains. There are windows everywhere in the apartment, and natural light and great breezes pervade it as a result. I stayed in their guest room, and while I was there, so was Marta and Guillermo's granddaughter, my nine-year-old cousin, Isabel - who's sweet and fun and insatiably curious. Guillermo had to work during the day while I was there, so Marta, Isabel, and I traipsed across the island together (short traipses - you can drive across the widest part of the island in about an hour and a half), seeing the sights.



We went to see the Cathedral de Mallorca, which is this gorgeous building dating back at least to the thirteenth century (if not before - I don't know where I put my pamphlet), and featuring Gothic architecture as well as a beautiful piece for the altar by Antoní Gaudí.



In addition to the Cathedral and the Old City (as well as the palace where the King of Spain summers - Bill Clinton was there!), we also took a trip across the island from Palma to the Cave of the Dragon, which is a twenty million-year-old cave with the most incredible stalactite and stalagmite formations I've ever seen. Not that I've seen many. But it was damn impressive. Pictures were not allowed, alas, but many of the formations were quite breathtaking. At the end of our walk through the cave, there was a lake, and in front of it rows of benches where we sat to take in a little concert performed by musicians in little lit-up row boats! They turned off the rest of the lights in the cave, and the water and our surroundings were illuminated only by the light of the boats - it was very like that Grimm's fairy tale, "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," when they all sneak out in the night to go party underground and are taken to a castle across a lake in magical boats!

LOLOL it's far less corny than I'm making it sound, I promise. LOLOL.

I got to meet two new cousins, Dalay and Venus, both of whom emigrated from Cuba recently - Dalay three years ago, Venus a year and a half ago. They are awesome, funny, smart, and lovely girls. Part of what was really cool about that was recognizing the similarities that emerge and remain despite having been raised worlds and seas apart. It's clear that we are of a kind.

Marta and Guillermo were kind enough to take us all out for Spanish pizza for my birthday, and then we took a walk through Palma at night, which is as lovely as any place I've been. The pace is markedly different than Barcelona's, for obvious reason - less bustle, fewer tourists (in the city, at least LOL), and in general a more relaxed attitude. The Moors occupied Mallorca for four-hundred-plus years rather than the mere one-hundred-plus of Barcelona,

Anyway, the beach was an integral element of this trip; we visited four or five different beaches in three days, each with a different attraction and character. I keep saying on this trip that these are the most beautiful places I've ever seen, but it's true; I'll grant you that having grown up in New Jersey and living in Boston doesn't necessarily give me the best exposure to the best of the best as far as beaches are concerned, but...



Anyway, I adored Mallorca. By being with my cousin there, I really got the sense of community that exists; knowing everyone you meet, running into friends on the bus. Palma is a small city, but beautiful and historically rich. The island itself is mountainous (I wish I could have gotten a photo of when I was flying in, and all I saw was this enormous mountain, before anything else) and undeveloped in most parts, and just... lovely. I had a great time there, and was quite sorry to leave.