La Dolce Vita

Hey guys!

Sorry about the delay, I finally got my bulk photo uploader to work again! So check out all the extra pics in my photo gallery.

Our next stop on Saturday was the Guinness Storehouse. How could I come to Dublin and not visit the home of the most iconic Irish beer in the world? I really enjoyed the Guinness Storehouse tour.

The building is designed in the shape of a giant pint of Guinness, that, if full, would hold 14.3 million pints! It was so interesting to see all the care that goes into making a good Guinness. First we start with the ingedients:

...water from springs in the Wicklow Mountains, aka St. James' Wells

On the next floor, we learned about brewing, cooperage, and transport.

1st barley is malted, roasted, milled, mixed with hot water and mashed.

Roasted barley out for tasting...mmm.

The liquid is then filtered off and boiled with hops.

Then yeast is added, and fermentation begins.

The beer is clarified, matured, and prepared for packaging.

Now, follow the route to the tasting lab, where you can sample the finished product.

Here, we watched a video to see how to taste the brew like a true Guinness connoisseur. The process is a lot like tasting wine!

Next, we visited the Cooperage exhibit and discovered the ancient craft of cask making.

Also on this floor, we explored the various methods used to transport Guinness beer for centuries.

On the next floor, we learned about Guinness history, Guinness’ past advertising campaigns, and more!

Past Guinness bottle labels...

We saw the colorful world of Toucans, Ostriches, Surfers, etc... that comprised John Gilroy's world famous "My Goodness! My Guinness!" ad campaign.

The last stop of our tour was the Guinness Gravity bar...we had now reached the high point of our visit to the Guinness Storehouse. This bar sits on the top of the Guinness Storehouse, forming the head of the pint. This bar had spectacular 360 degree views across Dublin.

The great thing about this bar is that it is entirely free!

You just present your factory tour ticket, and they hand you a pint of Guinness! I must say, this was probably the best Guinness I have ever tasted, and will ever taste in my life. It’s such a sad thought, because every Guinness hereafter will be a disappointment!

This Guinness was perfectly pulled, did you know there’s a special way to pull a Guinness? They filled it about 2/3 of the way, let it rest for 2 minutes, and then filled it to the top.

It was creamy, smooth, and delicious! You can even watch a video on how to pour it correctly and "savor" your beer correctly on the Guinness website: http://www2.guinness.com/en-row/Pages/thebeer-draught.aspx

Also, the Guinness in Ireland, unlike the Guinness in the United States, is not pasteurized, so I’ll really never get the true Irish taste of Guinness back home! :-(

That ends our tour of the Guinness Storehouse...but on our way out we walked around the complex.

Hope this all makes it into one post!

Cheers!

Hello again!

So on Saturday morning, we slept in, and then my friend Corby made me her signature cider pancakes for breakfast! Cheap hard cider is a lot less expensive than milk, and the carbonation allows you to skip the leavening ingredients. They were apple-y and delicious! I don’t even remember the last time I had a real pancake with real syrup; it was such a treat! Then we caught the bus into the city center to walk around and explore.

Corby took me back into the Temple Bar neighborhood, where we visited the Saturday morning market. This market was awesome! Unlike the market I have in Rome, it’s just a little specialty market with cheeses, baked goods, spreads, etc… We picked up some sharp Irish cheddar cheese (my favorite! they don’t make cheddar in Italy!),

some blueberry scones to die for,

and some Indian food. I’ve never really had Indian food; Corby was shocked and said I must be introduced, because this particular stand had fantastic Indian fare. We got some stuff with tomato sauce and some stuff with curry, it was all vegetarian, and I really liked it! How was I missing out on the greatness that is Indian cuisine all this time? After the market, we walked back up Grafton Street to window shop and look for some Irish souvenirs, and then we headed over to Trinity College. Trinity’s campus was cool because it was your quintessential college environment with impressive looking buildings, cobblestones, etc…

This is also where they keep Dublin’s famous Book of Kells. We could have gotten in to see it for free, since some Notre Dame students go to Trinity, but no one was home at the time, and I didn’t want to pay for the ticket. So I’ll have to check it out the next time I go to Dublin! We hung out at Trinity and ate our Indian lunch on the quad. Then we headed back to Corby’s apartment to drop off the rest of the wares we had acquired over the day.

Hello everyone!

Last Friday was my traveling day to Dublin. I took the shuttle bus to the airport with my new friend Mike from the Old Prague Hostel. I met Mike on Monday when I asked to share the breakfast table with him, and Genevieve, Tom, and I had breakfast with him every morning since, sharing news of what we had seen the previous day, and what we were planning to visit. Mike is a retired guy from the UK who decided to travel to Prague on a whim because his bonus air miles were about to expire. He remembered from his earlier travels that he like Prague, so he came back to see it again. Mike must have had a pretty lucrative career in his day, because he has traveled all over the world. I enjoyed hearing all his stories about traveling to Russia, living in Thailand, Kazakstan, taking flight lessons in Florida, etc… I think he’s been around the world more than once! I loved hearing his perspective on the relations between Europeans and Americans. He said we’re easily targeted because our accent is so distinctive. What accent? I asked. lol. It’s strange for me to think of Americans having a certain accent. Anyway, since I was traveling by myself to the airport, it was nice to have someone along to look after me. He made sure that the shuttle bus driver was going to, “Take the lady to Terminal 1.” It was so funny to hear him call me a lady with his British accent. I felt so proper!

Another interesting thing about today was the Prague airport. First of all, it’s nicer than I expected for Prague. Also, I first thought there wasn’t going to be any security check because all I needed to do to enter the departures area was show my passport. But then, I realized they do have a security check, it’s just at each individual set of gates instead of one security checkpoint for the whole airport. This seems like a good idea to me. Everything here is running a lot smoother, and since the security personnel have less people to check, they can do a more thorough job.

Anyway, my flight ran smoothly, I met some nice girls on the airplane to chat with. Then we landed in Ireland! The first thing I see as I walk though the Dublin airport…men, lots of them, in KILTS! “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Italy anymore!” Then I got on a yellow double-decker bus (all the buses are double-decker here!) to go to the city center to meet my friend Corby.

I discovered on my super long bus ride, that Dublin traffic is horrible, even in the middle of the day! It took me over 40 minutes to reach the city center from the Dublin airport. I was then freaking out about where to get off the bus, because there were no visible stop signs. Corby called and assured me, we would turn onto O’Connell St., and I would know by the huge spire in the middle of the square. Sure enough, the bus turns and I see an enormous spire right in the middle of everything! This spire marks the middle of Dublin. I got off the bus with all my stuff in tow, and met up with my friend Corby. It was such a happy reunion! It was so great to see a good friend from home again!

Since the weather was unusually nice that day, Corby gave me a short overview walking tour of Dublin. We started off by walking down O’Connell Street (I love street names in English!), which is the main shopping area of Dublin. Then we turned and walked along the Liffey River, crossing it at Ha’penny Bridge. It’s a pedestrian bridge that was built in 1816.

Next we explored the Temple Bar neighborhood, which is an artsy Pub area. She also took me past Trinity College, Dublin’s most famous university, established in 1592. From Trinity College, we walked up Grafton Street, which is another famous Dublin shopping area, and through St. Stephen’s Green. Next we crossed into Merrion Square park, which has a statue of the famous Dublin writer, Oscar Wilde. A lot of the scenes from his book, Ulysses, took place right around here. This guy is REVERED in Dublin.

The Merrion Square park was beautiful, green grass, budding tulips, blooming daffodils, I loved it! Right across from the Merrion Square park is the Notre Dame center at the historical monument home of Daniel O’Connell: the guy responsible for Catholic emancipation in Dublin. How appropriate for Notre Dame, no? This house is SO CUTE. It’s got a blue and gold door, and has a beautiful chapel inside with a gorgeous stained glass panel. The O’Connell house is used as a congregation area for Notre Dame students in Dublin, as well as classroom space. Seems like us Rome kids got the short end of the stick!

Then we walked to the bus stop, and boarded a double-decker to University College Dublin (UCD) for short, where Corby lives and goes to school. The dynamic of the program here is completely different. First of all, the Dublin kids live on a real, honest to goodness college campus. I think UCD has somewhere around 20,000 students, most commuters though. As I walked up to Corby’s dorm, there were tons of people out on the quads tossing around footballs and playing soccer. She shares a dorm apartment with 3 other girls. Each girl gets her own room, and then they have a common space and a kitchen. I KNEW life here was totally different when Corby’s roommate Kelly came in and announced she had found some abandoned rugby stadium chairs in the woods, and we needed to go salvage them for extra seating in the common room. This is such typical college student ingenuity! So the first thing I did when I arrived in Dublin was trek out to the woods behind the rugby stadium with Corby and Kelly and carry back three stadium seats to be hosed down and hauled up to the apartment. Let’s see, if I were to go to the hypothetical woods in Italy (kind of impossible with no green space!), I’d be too afraid to go anywhere near it for fear of getting accosted by gypsies camping out there. I was officially totally jealous of the Dublin program’s carefree college life.

After we installed the new fabulous seating arrangement, Corby and I got on another double-decker bus and headed down to the grocery store. We picked up ingredients for dinner, well, breakfast for dinner. Corby made me the Full Irish Breakfast, including eggs, Irish link sausage, black pudding, baked beans, roasted tomatoes, and sautéed mushrooms. What a weird combination of food, but oh so good! I even loved the black pudding, although Corby wouldn’t tell me what it was made of. She said I didn’t want to know, and I’m fine with keeping it that way! We also got some real brown Irish soda bread, and spread Kerrygold Irish butter on top of it. I had been dreaming about soda bread since St. Patrick’s Day, so I was in heaven! We washed it all down with a cold glass of hard Irish cider. I’ve never had anything like it before, I really enjoyed it!

A bunch of girls from the London program were also visiting Corby’s roommate, Maureen. So once they got in, we all got together for some good fun and good conversation. We ended the evening by checking out Dublin’s famous nightlife. Dublin is just as busy at nighttime as it is during the day, but the town has a completely different vibe, with Irish music pouring forth from every pub. And there are soooo many pubs here! I don’t know how they fill them all, but they do! I especially like Grafton Street after dark, if you want to get an idea of what I mean, watch the movie, Once. It was filmed right here.

I'm also adding some videos from Prague to their respective posts, check them out!

Ahoj everyone!

So today was my last day in Prague. I know, sad! Genevieve and her brother were leaving this morning to go back to Rome, so before they departed, we all went to this great coffee shop called Café Ebel for the Czech coffeehouse experience. We are totally getting used to this European coffee culture where you just walk in, pick yourself out a nice looking table, and hang out for a long time sipping coffee and chatting. It’s completely different from America where everyone just wants to hurry up and get his/her cup of caffeine before heading to work. Imagine a sit-down restaurant where your waiter serves your food and then disappears until you hunt him down to get the check, that’s what they consider good service here. They believe that you’re there to take a break, relax, have some good conversation with friends, and they acknowledge that by trying to interfere as little as possible in your meal, and not rushing you out of their establishment. Genevieve and I both had caramel lattes, and we all split a piece of Czech “honey pie”. I bet by now you can guess what I’m about to say…as I do with all the ethnic food I taste…it was delicious!

By this time, I had seen most of the big sights in Prague, and was wondering what to do with myself all day, when someone from my hostel had told me about a free alternative walking tour run by American ex-pats living in Prague. They assured me that “alternative” meant that they didn’t take you past all the main sights and bore you with historical data. This tour was all about side streets and the quirky side of Prague you might not discover otherwise…I said, “Sign me up!”

So at 12:45, I met our tour guide, Eric from Ohio, near the Astronomical Clock on Old Town Square. There was group of about 10 of us, from all over the US and the UK. We started by watching the classic Procession of the Apostles on the hour, and then we learned some fun facts about the clock. In the bottom circle, the horoscope symbols, and the 12 months of the year are represented, but a ring with a lot of Czech writing also surrounds these pictures. Well, the writing is actually names, and there are 365 of them, one for each day. Apparently, back in the day, the Czech people were very into the whole name-day ritual. In fact, you were required to be named out of these 365.

The clock is also interesting because it is the only piece of authentic-Czech style architecture on the Old Town Square. Everything other building is designed after a borrowed architectural style: gothic, baroque, rococo, etc… This might have something to do with the fact that once the architect who built the astronomical clock finally finished construction the Czech people plucked his eyes out, because they didn’t want him to create anything similar for anyone else! Another fun fact is that Prague looks so cute because it was basically untouched during WWII, unlike most other major cities in this part of Europe. Except for one thing. There used to be a great big Nazi storehouse next to the clock tower during the 1940’s, but when the Nazis realized they were being encroached upon by Allied troops from both sides, they blew it up. There’s a nice park/plaza area there now. After Old Town Square we also checked out the Jewish Quarter, Charles University, and the Rudolphinum.

Oldest Synagogue in Prague

Eric lead us under the Charles Bridge and through the “lesser side” neighborhood of Prague. In this area, we stopped in by the Franz Kafka museum, outside of which stands a sculpture of two guys peeing. They’re peeing on the country of the Czech Republic. It’s apparently supposed to symbolize how the Czech Republic has gotten “pissed-on” its whole history. First it was a part of the Hapsburg Empire, then it got some independence after WWI as Czechoslovakia, only to be occupied by the Nazis during WWII, and then overtaken by communism, only to get re-occupied by Russia, who thought the Czech’s couldn’t run communism properly. They’ve only been the independent country of the Czech Republic since 1989, just 20 years!

Eric also pointed out that a lot of famous movies have been filmed right in this area, including XXX, Mission Impossible, and Eurotrip. He showed us the bridge where they shot the Amsterdam scene in Eurotrip, and also informed us that most of the movie was filmed in Prague. The English “soccer-hooligan” bar, is a bar here, and the entirety of the Bratislava section was also filmed here. I guess the outskirts of the city must be pretty sketch?

Watch Eurotrip again. You'll see this place when they're in Amsterdam.

Next we stopped in at Eric’s favorite cheap pub for a pint of pilsner to get us warmed up, it was still bitter cold out today! Outside of this pub, he showed us on the wall where they marked the water levels of the worst floods in Prague’s history. The area where we sat inside had photos of these floods, really catastrophic!

Eric took us past the “Love Bridge”, so now I finally know why all those locks were there, and to the John Lennon wall. From there, he showed us the US Embassy (just in case we might need it…), and started walking us up the hill toward the Castle. Along the King’s route, as it’s called, he pointed out the house where Mozart lived when he was in Prague, and told us that Mozart and Casanova both lived in Prague at the same time.

Mozart performed in this Church!

Mozart's House

Along this same street, he explained to us the Czech address system. There were no house numbers. He said that we might notice how a lot of places are called “U (insert something here)”. Well, most of these buildings had pictures above their doors, and “u” means “at” in Czech. So the address was whatever image was depicted. Among these “addresses” were “At the Red Lion”, “At the Golden Horseshoe”, and “At the Two Golden Suns”. (A little funky, no?)

The horseshoe is exaggerated to play on the "u" of the Czech word "at".

Once we reached the top of the hill, we looked out over a vista, where Eric pointed out the “Hunger Wall” built by Charles IV. He had the wall built not to protect the city, because the entrance to the city was on the other side of the river at the time, but just to employ his subjects and stimulate the bad economy. He paid his workers in food and beer, so they wouldn’t starve, and now it’s known as the Hunger Wall, because it was the wall built to avoid hunger.

Next to this wall in the distance is a large tower called Petrin Tower. It’s very reminiscent of the Eiffel Tower, and it’s supposed to be. This tower is supposedly the same height above sea level as the Eiffel in Paris.

Another tower we looked at was a large tower left over from the Communist era. This tower was built to block out/scramble radio waves coming from Western Europe. It’s definitely one landmark of the Iron Curtain. In the picture, the radio tower looks like it has black spots. These black sports are actually black baby sculptures with no face. Apparently these babies are meant to symbolize misinformation. They were sculpted by the same guy who did the peeing-guys fountain. The story goes that the babies were originally placed far away from this radio-scrambling tower, but in the night, they moved closer and closer to the tower. Eventually, they moved right up the tower; somebody cemented the babies onto the tower itself. Pretty interesting.

Eventually, we made it all the way to the top of the hill, and the tour ended at the castle. I have to say it was a pretty great way to get out and see Prague for one last time. The last thing I did was check out the Prague market. You all know by now that I love markets! I was looking for a Bohemian crystal charm to add to my charm bracelet. They sell Bohemian crystal ALL OVER the place in Prague, but I heard the market was cheaper. Well, I didn’t find a charm, but I did find a jewelry maker/bead vendor, where I bought a clasp, but he didn’t have the kind of Bohemian crystal I was looking for, so he gave me directions and marked on my map where I could find another bead store where I might find what I was looking for, how nice! So then I adventured to this other part of town to the Star Beads shop, where I met a nice Czech guy who explained the difference between genuine Swarovski crystal and regular Bohemian crystal with Swarovski crystal components (which is what you find at souvenir shops), and helped me pick out a pretty Swarovski heart to go with my bracelet. So because I went to this guy’s shop, I got a real Swarovski crystal charm for only 120 Kc (6 dollars!), whereas a tiny little Swarovski component heart necklace at a souvenir shop was going for 590 Kc! I love escaping tourist traps!

This evening, I also made one last stop at our favorite Prague restaurant, the Bohemia Bagel. It’s the talk of the ND Rome Program, because bagels don’t exist in Italy, along with a lot of the other food they serve there! The first group who traveled to Prague told us all about it, and so now every group that goes to Prague has been stopping in there. I love it! On Monday night I had a chicken salad sandwich on a wheat bagel, and tonight I had a chicken Caesar salad on a Parmesan and oregano bagel with some dill, egg, and potato soup. It was fabulous! It’s as close to Panera Bread as you can get in Central Europe.

Off to Dublin tomorrow, check out more photos in the gallery! And by the way, I’ve added the organ video from St. Stephan’s to the Vienna post, and photos to Genevieve’s post. I’ll put up the video from the Presidential encounter as soon as I can get it uploaded!

Hey guys!

Wednesday, we decided to check out some of the other sights in Prague. After breakfast, we headed out the Jewish Quarter, but our desire to check out the Jewish Synagogues was extinguished when we discovered that you had to buy a ticket to get into any of the synagogues, and even the Jewish cemetery. It was kind of ridiculous! Being the cheap students we were, we decided to just head over to our next destination, the John Lennon Wall. On our way, we walked along the river and passed Charles University, and the Prague Symphony Hall. We also stopped in the Charles Bridge Museum before crossing it, and found a free and very informative museum about the bridge’s engineering and history. This museum is located in an old Convent, which is connected to a cathedral, but in this museum, and under the cathedral, is a really old church that was excavated. The sanctuary was pretty awesome!

Charles IV- Charles Bridge namesake

After some wandering on the Kampa Island, we finally found the John Lennon Wall. This wall is the only wall you are legally allowed to graffiti on in Prague. (Maybe Rome should adopt and enforce this policy?) The wall’s famous because of its use in a free-speech movement by Charles University students. They wanted to share John Lennon’s message of peace, so they created this wall dedicated to him and the ideas from the song Imagine. I hate graffiti, but I loved this wall! This is the girl-raised-on-Beatles-music fan coming out in me, but I loved seeing all the lyrics from the different Beatles songs on the wall. The ND kids who went to Prague two weeks ago left a mark for the ND Rome Program, but when I went to look for it, it had already been covered by something else. It’s a testament to this wall as a living and changing artwork. I made sure I left my own mark before we continued our walk!

As we left, we crossed this bridge with barbed wire and locks with writing on them. At the time, I had no idea what they were there for.

After leaving Kampa Island, we crossed the Vltava River via the most Legii bridge, which is open to vehicle traffic, so we could get some better views of the Charles Bridge.

We headed into what is called New Town, where most of the Prague shopping is located. We walked up a very long street which is reminiscent of Paris’ Champs Elysees, but instead of ending at the Arc de Triomphe, it ends at a statue of King Wenceslas. Yes, that Good King Wenceslas, from the Christmas song. Behind him is a great big municipal building, which now houses a National Museum. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to go check it out. It would have been great to learn something about my Bohemian heritage! On the way home, we passed St. Henry’s Tower, and the Powder Tower. I don’t really know their significance, but the Powder Tower was connected to a really cool building!

We spent the rest of our night at the hostel, attempting to figure out the best packing strategy to get all our stuff onto Europe’s discount airlines without fees!