Paris Day 1

Well, the first thing we did in Paris was go to the Musee D'Orsay. But before we went in, we found this amazing pastry shop on the street right next it. First of all, I would have to say that Paris has the best food out of all the places we went, by far. You walk down the street and there are pastry shops (called patisserie) all over the place. They have the most amazing looking desserts, plus an assortment of breads, pastries, croissants, quiches and sometimes pizza. Almost every meal we had in Paris we got from a Patisserie. Anyway, so we got some pastries and ate them on some doorstep across from the Musee D'Orsay and then we went to the Museum. I love the Musee D'Orsay. For one thing it is absolutely beautiful. It was made from an old train station and the building's inside is absolutely stunning. Plus, it has probably the best collection of Impressionist art. We got to see Van Goghs, Monets, Manets, Degas, Renoir, Turner and all kinds of other people. I was in pure heaven the entire time. I'd have to say that my favorite painting in the entire Museum was probably a self portrait of Van Gogh. So much better in real life than in books, unlike the Mona Lisa. After the D'Orsay, we walked along the Seine to where the Louvre is, which is also where the Tuilleries (a garden/park thing) is and kind of where the Main Champs Elysees walk begins. Well, we started there and walked all the way down the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triumph. The Tuilleries were absolutely gorgous and just how I imagined Paris to be - every bit as beautiful. Not too far along the Champs Elysees we came to the Place de la Concorde which used to be Called the Place de la Revolution and is one main place where the Guillotine was set up during the Revolution. It's a big round area surrounded by a roundabout with lots of cars going around it. It's interesting to stand there and imagine it during the revolution, with a guillotine set up in the middle doing a few beheadings each day with crowds gathered round to watch. There is also an Obelisk in the middle of the Place de la Concorde which was gift from Egypt and which is 3,300 years old. The rest of the walk was nice, but it was very long and there was quite a bit of wind and some rain too. By the time we got to the Arc de Triumph our feet were killing us. We took some pictures in front of the Arc and then tried to find our way to the actual Arc. See, the Arc is in the middle of a square surrounded by a roundabout just like the Obelisk is and it is such a busy intersection that you have to take a pedestrian tunnel underneath the road to the middle of the square. Well, so we went down these steps that we thought would take us to the middle of the square. We come back out the exit and we're like "there it is! wait a second, it doesn't seem any closer!" Yeah, we definitely took a metro entrance to another metro exit and ended up basically in the same place. However, the correct entrance was right in front of us then, so we found it. We were laughing and joking about how it could totally be used in a talk like "sometimes you have to make the wrong choice and go the longway to see what was right in front of you right along. So we got to the square and looked around underneath the Arc for a minute before climbing the bazillion steps to the top. The top had an amazing view of all of Paris and we absolutely loved it. Also, we got a pamphlet that told us all about the monument as well. After the Arc, we decided to go home and see if Shannon had arrived yet. Oh and i can i just say that the Paris metro system is amazing. It is sooooo easy. It pretty much has a tender place in my heart. Anyway, so we left a note for Shannon and headed over to the Sacre Coeur which was really close to our hotel and which you could see if you just walked around to the other side of the block. Unfortunately it happens to be on a hill, so we ended up walking up this huge hill and taking a bunch of steps before we finally got there. We were planning on just going in the crypt and saving the actual church for when we could go with Shannon, but the crypt was closed due to the whole terrorist scare thing so we just went in the church anyway. I thought the Sacre Coeur was one of the most beautiful buildings we saw on the whole trip. I mean, the building itself is beautiful, plus it's on this big hill overlooking the whole city. The inside was better than most too. Pretty and not too gaudy. We walked around the inside of it and then decided to go find some food and then come back for the evening mass. Close to the Sacre Coeur was probably the most touristy place we saw in Paris. I mean, everyone on this little block was a tourist and there were souvenir shops everywhere. It was kind of random that it was next to the Sacre Coeur of all places, but that's where we ended up eating. Mass was pretty cool. I think other religions are fascinating and so I love to go to things like that - and it was my first mass. We ended up going a different way home because we found this cool tram thing that took you up or down the hill and we had to try it out. By the time we got home, Shannon was indeed there, so we picked her up and took her to the Musee D'Orsay for our second go around. We didn't get to see nearly everything the first time, or even the second time. She used to be an art major, so she was like giddy whenever we went to art museums. I don't blame her. By this time Marina and I were so tired that we were slap happy and Shannon kept looking at us wierd, so we just went on back to the hotel.

Madame Soto Would Be Proud

On day two we took our luggage into town and found a left luggage place (heavy luggage, large hill). Then we went to Holyrood House which is one of the official residences of the British Royal Family. It was pretty, but not, like, amazing. I will compliment the way that the visits are set up though. Free headphone tour that is really easy. Also, another cool thing about Holyrood House was that it helped us piece together even more of british history. Like, the type of thing where a lot of the time we heard part of the story at Edinburgh Castle and then got the rest of it at Holyrood House. After Holyrood House we just walked up the Royal Mile to go to this place where we'd seen cheap postcards. Then all we had left to do was go get our luggage and hop on a bus to the airport. Well, much easier said than done. We got lots of bad directions (very common in europe I've decided) and ended up walking and sometimes running with all our luggage all over the place before finally catching the right bus. But luckily, though we thought we might be a little bit late, our flight was delayed once again and we made it just fine. We didn't get into Paris until like 10 oclock at night, and then it was a huuuuge ordeal to try to get to the hostel. We had to find the metro that would take us into town, which was pretty hard. Then we were on that for quite a while before switching to a few different metro lines in order to actually get to the right ending stop (Simplon). Then, luckily, a really nice guy helped us with our luggage. Otherwise I think we may have just never gotten to the hotel. I mean, there were soooo many stairs it was like walking up the arc de triumph. Anyway, after we got out onto the street he showed us where our hotel was and it was really really close, which was great. The hotel was like really.....French. What I mean is, it looked almost exactly like the hotel in Charade (movie with Audrey Hepburn in it that takes place in france). Like, it was really old fashioned and was just so authentic. Like, it wasn't in the center of the city and not in a touristy district, most of the people that stayed there were French, we had no idea how to use the toilet in our room, so we just used the one in the hallway which you actually have to pull a chain in order to flush, in order to use the shower you had to push a button every 30 seconds, and the elevator was just...special. We loved it. It had character. Well when we got to Paris we were really hungry and thirsty, so we went walking around in the area to try to find something to eat. We managed to find a small market where we got some water, but the only food we found was cafe food, which is really expensive. We ended up eating at a cafe that was actually closed, but the owner let us get something anyway, which was really nice. It was cool to walk around too because the area around our hotel was so pretty and we were just soooo excited. There was even a little carousel on one of the streets.

"Mind Your Heed!"

So we arrived in Edinburgh late the night of the 21st and took a taxi in to our hostel - our first hostel. In fact, let me take a moment to describe the hostel. It was called the Globetrotter Inn and is a total party hostel. It boats that it is a top 10 world hostel and is very proud of it. According to me, the top 10 award means that it just isn't quite as ghetto as the rest of the hostels out there - it doesn't mean it's actually nice. In fact, the thing that bugged me most was the way you paid for things. Like, in order to buy food at the store in the hostel you had to put money on your hostelcard. In order to put money on your hostelcard you had to put cash in a machine. In order to put cash in the machine you had to have cash, and for me that meant getting it out of the ATM. The ATM was broken. Then, you'd think you'd have to pay with you hotelcard for the internet too, but no. For that you had to go to the front desk (wait in the looong line) and give, yes, cash to the receptionist. The receptionist would then take you over to the store where for some reason the internet codes were locked and give you a code that you would put in the computer. So, everything took cash and had lots of steps. Anyway, enough about the frustrating hostel. So we got to the hostel and went to our separate rooms that were mixed dorms with 8 beds. That's one of the bad things about hostels. Luckily I got put with a pretty chill room and made friends with one guy who had been in Edinborough for quite a while trying to work. We'd always come home and ask him a bunch of questions about the city. I thiiiink his name was Steve. Well, the next morning we had to take the hostel's shuttle into town (which of course you get tickets for by giving, yes, cash to another desk) and of course, almost missed it. The city was absolutely BEAUTIFUL though. All the cities we went to for this trip were very beautiful in their own ways. I mean, I'd give Inishmor most beautiful landscape and Galway most beautiful river. Well, I'd give Edinborough most beautiful architecture. Literally every building was goregeous. Also, it was very hilly with the streets going up and down all over the place reminding me of San Fransisco. When we first got there we were incredibly confused and had no idea where we were. So we wandered around and walked down Prince Street and found the Sir Walter Scott Monument and went and got some lunch and ate it at the park. The place that we got the food for lunch was actually pretty cool too, but I have no idea how to describe it. Only thing I'll say is that it had more varieties of sandwitches than I have ever seen in my life. The big tourist street in Edinborough where almost everything we wanted to see was located is generally referred to as the Royal Mile. It is situated on a slope and we had two ways of getting there. We could either walk all the way down to where the bottom of the slope met flat ground and walk up the whole street to the highest part where we wanted to be, or we could walk up a very steeply inclined street which led to the end and highest part of the street. We chose to do that. It was absolutely gorgeous and I felt like I was living in a fairy tale, but I also was so tired by the time I got to the top I felt like I was going to die. The whole street was very lively with lots of entertainers, much like Times Square in New York or something. It was like that largely because we arrived during The Festival where all kinds of underground type shows put on performances, so that there were people advertising and lots of flyers for all the shows everywhere. The first place on the Royal Mile that we went to was Edinburgh Castle. It is the very endpoint of the Royal Mile and at the highest point, so that the castle is on the edge of a cliff. It's gorgeous. We went in and took a tour with some headphones that we bought. Actually we bought just one pair and one of us would just repeat everything it said to the other one. It was pretty neat. Basically just how you would imagine a castle to be. Outer wall, drawbridge, soldier's quarters, dungeon, etc. A highlight though, I would say, would be the Canine Cemetary that was built for all the dogs who were owned by great military people - most of which died in battle. I thought it was cute. We also learned a lot about British History (which I love) and some cool people who were imprisoned there. After Edinburgh Castle we went to St. Gile's Cathedral (which was, um, very difficult to find). The Cathedral was alright, but basically the same as any other Cathedral. That evening, since we couldn't find a good show to go to (most were far too sketchy looking) we just ended up eating dinner at this baked potato place which loooooked pretty cool but was pretty disappointing. Oh, and we also went to this cool little souvenir shop and met a guy who worked there who was from Orange County. Always fun to meet random people in Scotland who are from Orange County. After eating, we needed to catch the shuttle home, so we started heading down the Royal Mile and we were just planning on turning left on the next street and figured that would just take us right there. Well, not so simple. Every street we tried to turn left on ended up running into the railroad tracks so that we had to go aaaaall the way down the royal mile, through a park, up a hill and down another street for quite some ways. It was torture because I had a killer side ache and could barely walk and we were trying really hard to hurry so we couldn't miss it. Anyway, we caught it and rode it home and just spent the rest of the night emailing people, getting ready for bed, etc.

If I Were a Terrorist I'd Make Galway Airport my Home Base

So to make a long story short, I wandered around on the bike for a really long time and saw some amazing views. I went along a lot of paths that were really random and ended up going up a lot of humongous hills. Finally I decided I should probably ride back as it was getting pretty dark and did so. Ireland is gorgeous. The next morning, we wanted to try to bike ALL the way to Dun Aengus before catching the 12 ferry. Well, we wouldv'e just left super early in the morning, but the B&B didn't start serving breakfast til 8 and that was too hard to pass up. So we got going as quickly as we could but with eating breakfast, getting to town, leaving our luggage at the travel office and getting Marina a bike, it was around 10 before we actually got going. Well, Marina wasn't feeling well and just was really struggling, so we decided to separate and she was going to go find this closer fort while I biked like mad and tried to get to Dun Aengus AND get back for the ferry at like 12. Well, by this time it was like 10:30 and Dun Aengus was like 4 miles away by bike, then another mile by foot or sooomething like that, with lots of hills on the way. Oh, my goodness. I don't think I've ever bikes so fast or gotten so exhausted in my life. If it weren't for the fact that I can be incredibly stubborn when I want to be, I don't think it wouldn't be actually physically possible for me to get there. I mean, my body was about to just break out of its skin or something my muscles were stretching so much. I'd be sooo tired but every time I saw a hill I just thought about how if I wanted to see anything on this island, Dun Aengus was that thing and I'd just push myself up the hill as fast as I could. Well, I finally got to the base of the hill that the fort is on. I locked my bike up and just started running. I ran through the office that you pay in and basically threw my money at them and then ran all the way up the rocky hill path. When I got to the top, the fort was amazing. It's huge, with several walls. Like, there's an inner wall, then 20 feet later or so there's another wall and then another and another or however many walls. Also, the walls form a half circle where the edges of the half circles end in a cliff that drops down a couple hundred feet to the ocean. Hard to explain, but it's basically as if it was originally several circle walls but half the walls fell into the ocean. That's actually one theory. They don't know much about the fort since it's like 2000 years old or something. Well, anyway, when I got to the top of the fort there was a tourist group there and they must've thought I was crazy because I ran up to the fort panting and just ran frantically from place to place inside the fort trying to see everything as quick as I could because I was in some serious danger of missing the ferry and if we missed the ferry we'd also miss the flight to Edinburgh and be stuck in Ireland. Well, after I'd had a good enough look around I just had to leave and bolted back out of the fort and down the hill again. On my way down I ran past two little boys who were putting on a show for the tourists. One was player the recorder and the other was dancing some irish dance next to him. As I ran toward them I just remember thinking "wow, I'm running down a green irish hillside away from a beautiful high jagged cliff with irish music all around me - this is so cool!" I definitely threw them a coin. Well, by the time I got back to my bike it was probably 11:15 or so and I had to get all the way back in significantly less time than it had taken for me to get there and I hadn't even had a rest this whole time. Seriously the most difficult exercise I've ever had, but I made it. As I sped into the village it was literally 11:59 and I still hadn't turned in my bike or gotten my luggage and I had no idea where Marina was because i hadn't seen her as I whizzed by the fort she'd gone to. I quickly decided to bike first to the boat to see if I could talk to them and buy myself sometime. Well, luckily as I turned the corner and came around the boat I saw Marina at the end of the dock with all our luggage. They'd been about to leave already and she'd been begging with them to stay and promising that I'd be there in two seconds (and praying her heart out that I would be). I didn't even have a chance to turn in the bike, I just trusted them to turn it in for me and they gave me the deposit for it out of their own pockets. Yay for nice boat crewman! Yeah, so that was basically insane. Well, the ferry dropped us off at Rossaveal where we took a bus to Galway. At Galway we checked our luggage (that sounds like an easy thing, but it actually involves tugging a large peice of luggage through crowded city streets and up hills for quite some time while your hands develop blisters before finally finding the luggage place - every single time) and then stopped by subway and grabbed a sandwich to eat at the park. By the way, all food places, including American ones are much different in Europe. Most depressingly you only get like one cookie for a euro instead of three for a dollar at Subway in Ireland. AND there's no such thing as a cold cut trio!!! Anyway, we ate our food in the pretty little park and then just wandered around wherever we wanted to. I actually really liked Galway, it was gorgeous. We found a cute little shopping district with all kinds of colorful shops and cobblestone streets. Then we stumbled upon a little church (you are constantly just stumbling upon churches that in europe are seen as totally insignificant but that would be amazing architectural masterpieces in any city in the US). After seeing the church we wandered a little further to the banks of a pretty little river in the middle of the city with lots of ducks and geese in it. Well, we had some bread with us, so we threw the ducks so bread and were joined by a cute little girl who we also gave bread to. I don't think I've ever seen a little girl so happy to get a piece of bread. She pretty much had the time of her life throwing bread to those birds. After we grew tired of feeding the birds we continued on and finally find this Cathedral that we'd seen on the bus ride in and that we'd actually half heartedly been trying to find this whole time. Well, we went in and it was pretty sure enough, but hosestly I wasn't too impressed. We just spent a little bit of time there and then headed back and got our luggage, grabbed a taxi and headed out to the Galway airport. We got there way early because we were worried about luggage allowances and wanted enough time to work with the luggage situation if it turned out to be difficult. And it's a good thing we did. Turned out we were only allowed a ridiculous 20 Kg (44 pounds) for our carry on and 7kg (about 15 pounds) for our carry on and were going to have to pay 5 euros for every pound that we were over. Well, as it were it'd have had to pay 40 Euros and Marina would have had to pay 115 Euros and we weren't about to let that happen. So what did we do? We just wore the extra weight on our person! I kid you not, after throwing away all we could stand to part with, we seriously carted our bags over to the bathroom and just threw on article of clothing after article of clothing. I was wearing a lot of clothes, but I didn't end up nearly as bad as Marina. By her final wardrobe change she was wearing every pair of underwear she owns, about 4 bras, 2 swimsuits, probably 10 shirts, a few sweaters and a jacket, a couple pairs of jeans, some gouchos, so sweats, so basketball shorts and a pair of scrubs, mittens, a scarf, boots with a lot of socks and a TON of jewelry. Add to this the fact that we both had cameras and such attached to our belts and basically anything else we could think of that would be even remotely ok being just on our person. Oh and this was not a big airport. For all you Californians, it was about like John Wayne except maybe smaller. Like, there was only one departure gate room and it was pretty small. So you'd think with how tiny the airport was, we'd have drawn a lot of attention, right? Well to our suprise, we got almost no weird looks whatsoever! In fact, they didn't even choose to pat me down! They patted Marina down, but then again, they ALWAYS pat Marina down. So that's how we left Ireland. The flight wasn't too terribly interesting and in a few hours we were in Scotland! Alright, farewell for now. Go on yahoo and look for pictures to go with the blog!

Continuation of "If I Were a Vegan I Would Not Live In Ireland"

Ok, so I'm in the middle of this huge expanse of sand that you can now go see pictures of on my yahoo photo album and it's amazing. Well, I treck pretty much across the whole thing to the other side and then decide it would probably actually be easier to go to a different part of it and climb through the thick vegetation til I got to the top of this little hill thing that I saw over there. So I trek back across the sand to the top of this thing. And try as best I can to see how to get to the lighthouse. Well, alas, there didn't look to be any real way of getting any closer to a better view of the lighthouse. Luckily the place where I was was pretty darn cool too. On the other side of the little hill, it sloped down into this area of sand surrounded by the thick vegetation. It was really random in fact. It would been perfect as one of those secret meeting place types of things. I remember wishing I had some great use for it. Even more random though was that there was this big clump of sand with some vegetation hanging on the side of it, right it the middle of this little area. How this area came to be would be really interesting to figure out. Anyway, so I walked around in there by myself a little while before just heading back through the weeds to the beach and path where I'd left my bike. After that, since I was at the end of the Island, I decided it would be good to head back. Plus, this whole time all I'd had to eat since breakfast was, like, a scone and it was about 4pm. So I biked back and checked on Marina, who wasn't doing much, before deciding to keep exploring and go to the other side of the island. I knew I wanted to see Dun Aengus (an awesome fort that's the biggest attraction on the island) before I left, but that I probably wouldn't have time before it got dark. So I decided to explore some other parts of the rest of the island right then and try to see Dun Aengus in the morning.

Ok, I found a picture of Inishmore. If you look on the East of the Island, you'll see "Arkin Castle." My B&B wouldv'e been a little to the West of that. The place I biked up to now was all to the East of my B&B and Arkin Castle. After that I biked back over to where it says "The Aran Fisherman" and I think I took the path that goes North and then West and is closest to the shore, but I'm pretty sure at certain points, at least, I took random other paths that aren't on the map. So, I biked up there and basically had no idea where I was but just biked around anyway. I ended up seeing lots more beautiful scenery that I can't describe and also a few beaches, in cluding probably the one on the map that is the most northerly one. I saw a few ruins and churches, but I have no idea which ones they were and what they were called. Most of the time I was the only person around because it was late and because I don't think it was the most touristy path. It was great. I'd go for like thirty minutes and never even see anyone. Not even the townspeople who lived in the village that was on the hill above me. It was like they just never came out of their houses. Um, to be continued once again. Internet time is like gold here and I've taken up my share. But go look on yahoo for the pictures that going along with this bike ride. Their more or less in order, so look at the ones after the little sand experience. Bye!

Pictures again.

Ok, so now that I'm pretty much caught up with the pictures, I'm going to start writing some more and I'll try to put some pictures in the blogs and then update the yahoo pics to that point at the same time. And by the way, if you click on the picture, sometimes I put comments on them and you can see them - that'll help you figure out what the picture is in relation to what I've written on the blog. And that's it! K bye!

More Pictures!!!

Ok, I put even more pics up and labeled most of them but they probably won't all have labels because I'm doing it right now and am just about to run out the door to go to the Black Sea, so yeah! Yay for comments! Love you all!

Pictures!!!

Ok, so I've decided that blogger is too slow so instead I've created a photo album on yahoo for all of my pictures. Just go to http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/misshepburn3/album?.dir=8faere2 . I'll get descriptions up there next time I get to be on the computer, but til then, the ones at the top are Ennis (see my "first day" blog) and then there are a bunch of pictures of just pretty green ireland and also this really cool beach in Doolin by the Cliffs of Moher. Then the bottom ones are the Shannon airport and LAX and even some Heathrow. More later!

Bad Blogger!

Ok, so I'm sorry this page is a little random. You can blame that one the fact that blogger's photo system is a little wierd. And sorry there aren't that many yet. You can blame that one blogger's photo system being a little retarded. It has taken me about 2 hours just to get these ones up! Anyway, more later when it's working!


The top one is what Ennis looks like. The bottom one is our airport picture for Shannon.


This is the church in Ennis which we couldn't get all of if one picture and then more Ennis with church in background.


Taken while on some bus ride in Ireland.
Basically all we saw of Ireland indicated that it
is ALL green and all separated into little patches.
















Here I am on our makeshift bed in the Shannon airport and here's our first aiport picture: LAX, taken with our random friend Steve.

I'm in Romania!!!

Ok, this is going to be quick, but just to let you all know I am now in Romania! I got to Bucurest, Romania on the 4th, slept over, then took a train the next day on the 5th to Iasi and today (the 6th) is our first full day in Iasi. Ok, there will be much more on here soon. Hopefully our internet will be up and running tomorrow. Bye!