Katie and the Chocolate Factory

This past weekend, April 9-11, I went to Brussels, Belgium, with Liz and Amanda. We headed out Thursday night at 1 AM for Dublin airport because our plane was pretty early. There is a bus company that runs pretty much 24 hours unlike Bus Eireann and makes slightly less stops. I slept a little bit on the bus, but the lady behind me was coughing and snoring the entire way.
When we got to Brussels, we got a round trip bus ticket (I don't know if I've explained this but the airline we fly through, RyanAir, is a cheapfares line, and therefore drops you off at airports that are not exactly nearby the actual city you want to visit) in to Brussels. We made sure we knew when the last bus was going back in to Charleroi, the airport, so we didn't have another mishap like Katie and I did in Paris! We also grabbed maps at the tourist information desk.

The bus dropped us off somewhere in Brussels. We pulled out our maps and tried to figure out where the heck we were on the map, which was a challenge. We were near some sort of shopping center/train station.We thought we suddenly had an idea of where on the map we were and went up to a guy working at the train station and said "Is this where we are?" We felt so intelligent :) We also discovered we had quite a ways to go to get to our hostel, which haha is an interesting story. When booking our hostel, which we did a little late in the game, one of the only places still available and cheap was the Van Gogh hostel. Some of the reviews on hostelworld.com were pretty good but some made it sound like the sketchiest place on earth. Some people called it a "hole" and claimed that it was possible to get in to any of the rooms. My favorite was the person who wrote that the hostel was not good at keeping their reservations straight--she had booked an all female room and ended up staying in a room with 2 middle aged men! We reserved a 4 person female room and prayed we actually ended up in it...and were relieved at the idea of only having 1 other person to potentially deal with.

Anyway, after getting our bearings, we started heading towards Grand Place, or Groote Markt, the main square in town. It wasn't a bad walk. The architecture of the square was amazing. It was very European!

We got lunch at a sandwich shop (a lot of the restaurants in the square were really expensive and a lot of the hosts tried to butter us up to get us to come in) and then went to a chocolate shop that was advertised on the map called Chocopolis that said it gave out free samples. Ha, little did we know they weren't the only place in town that gave out free samples! but I'll get to that later. I also bought a little cup of chocolate pudding type stuff. It was yummmmy!

After Chocopolis, we went to find Petit Julien, or Mannequin Pis, a fountain/statue of a little boy urinating. There are 2 stories explaining the origins of the fountain:
1) A young boy got lost from his parents on the street where the fountain is today, and I think supposedly was found urinating there?
2) The fountain is a tribute to a little boy who in the 1600s saved the day by urinating on a lit firecracker

I like the 2nd story better :)


Next stop: The Chocolate Museum! Here, we got more free samples. The museum was cool...I mean, hey it was devoted to chocolate, but we were starting to get a little weary because it was super hot and crowded...it wasn't a very big building. My favorite part was the demonstration by the chocolatier. We got to see her make chocolate shells, and she gave us 2 more free samples!


After the chocolate museum, we found our hostel and took a much needed nap. The hostel lobby was pretty nice, and didn't make it seem like a "hole" so we thought maybe it wouldn't be so bad. We got to our room (no middle aged men to be found!) and weren't impressed but weren't horrified. It definitely was not a nice room. The metal folding chair that was the only furniture besides the beds had the paint rotting off. There cracks and scratches in the walls. All in all though, it wasn't nearly as sketchy as we had feared..and the locks on the doors seemed to be fine. It was definitely the slummiest hostel I've been in so far. The street was super noisy though, but I was so tired from the lack of sleep I'd had since Wednesday night that I still took a decent nap. We got up and headed for dinner at about 8:00. We ate at a pita place in the Grand Place, which was very conveniently located next to a chocolate shop with a fondue fountain in the window that said "Sample the fountain for free." Yes, please! We went in, sampled the fondue fountain, along with all the other chocolates they had out for sampling. We bought some little chocolates too. We walked around the square and essentially did a Chocolate Store Crawl. I bought a box for my sister. Then we headed back to the hostel and called it an early night. We ended up getting a roommate in the middle of the night because her plane got in late, but she pretty much unpacked her stuff when she got there and went to bed which was nice.

Saturday we ate breakfast and checked out of the Van Gogh, because we planned to spend Saturday night at the airport because our plane left really early again. We decided to do some non-chocolate store sight seeing and got on a Hop on Hop Off Bus. The first place we got off was the Atomium, a building shaped like a giant atom. It had exhibits inside too. It was sort of like a museum for technology. To get to the top molecule, which boasted a great view of Brussels, we had to wait in line for the elevator because that was the only way to get up there. We waited for about 20 minutes or so. The Atomium elevator is the fastest in Europe. It goes up about 335 feet in 20 seconds! The lady in the elevator gave us all the info we needed. The view was pretty cool....and we could see the "Mini Europe" park which is basically, a miniature version of all of Europe.

After we got back on the bus we hopped off again back at Grand Place and got Belgium Waffles! Belgian waffles are legitimately good and unlike anything they try to claim is a Belgian waffle in the states. Theyre so warm on the inside and you really need to try one to know what I mean! Liz and I had chocolate and strawberry with whipped cream and Amanda had kiwi and caramel and whipped cream which she said was really good!

We got back on the bus again and went to a really nice park There was a pond in the middle and the walking path went in a circle, so we did a loop around and took some pictures of the trees and some ducks being fed.
We walked back to the square again and ate dinner at the same place we ate the night before, and of course went back in to the chocolate shop. Funny story--we went in to a different chocolate shop earlier on Saturday with a fondue fountain...and the girl from the one Friday night was working there too and we were pretty sure she recognized us! We probably looked like all we were doing was walking around eating chocolate...which we kind of sort of were. We all bought more little chocolates. I bought a box for my cousin Molly and a box to take back. Which yes, is already gone.

We caught the bus back to the airport, and had another looong night. I did sleep a little, which is weird because the chairs were far less comfortable than the Dublin ones. When we got back to Limerick, I took a 5 hour nap from like 5 to 10 PM...and woke up exhausted still and went back to bed for the night. I don't know the last time I slept that much!

As a city, I don't feel I learned as much about Brussels or experienced it quite like I did like Paris, obviously because I was only there for a couple days, but I think I definitely got a good taste of it. No pun intended. :)

Turning 21 Irish style

I turned 21 last Wednesday, the 7th. The big joke all semester was that my 21 wouldn't be as big since I'm in a country where I've been legally drinking since the day I arrived, but I was still really excited! I went out and bought a cute new dress with some birthday money I was given by one of my mom's friends. My friend Erin was really helpful and did so much--she bought things to put in my hair and a 21st birthday pin. She did my hair and makeup and I must say I thought I looked pretty damn good. Everyone else seemed to be blown away too. I felt like the end result of a What Not to Wear episode and was almost thinking "Wow am I a total dog most days?" Haha.
The plan was to have people over to my house, do some drinking, and then go downtown to a club. I wanted to go to a place called Molly's, because it's free to get in and I've never been there. Unfortunately, I ended up having too much fun at my house party, got a little sick, and then everyone was telling me it wouldn't be a good idea to get in a cab and go downtown. I was kind of argumentative about it because I really wanted to go out but it was a really fun house party I must say. I did a lot of dancing and had so much fun and quite a few people came over! The cake was devil's food and was DELICIOUS. Security ended up busting it, because you're not supposed to have people over after 11:00. After that, I ended up going to the house next door and hung out for awhile.

21st birthday dress!

Erin, my makeup artist and hairstylist

Some of our Eau Claire group: Ben, me, Lily, Kathleen, and Katie W!

Drunk!

Plassey House 2! (missing Karen, Jimmy, Leona, and technically Sean!)

J'Adore Paris: Part Trois (All The Rest!)

Ok....so I've majorly been slacking and I can't believe it has taken me this long to write about my spring break. I know I tend to include a basic play by play of my travels, which is probably why this has been so hard because I spent 5 full days in Paris and did so much. So here, it is, an experiment in trying to be concise.

Wednesday: We went to the Louvre. We were there for probably like 5 hours or so. Saw the Mona Lisa (it was like a rock concert...there was a HUGE Crowd of people to see her. Amazing what 1 painting has become over the years) We were dead tired at the end. We grabbed lunch at a place by our hostel (had a croque madame...which is a croque monsieur with an egg on it! Then we went back to the hostel and were majorly lazy for the rest of the day. We went down to the restaurant in the hostel at about 10:00 to get a last meal for the day. I had nachos.
On Thursday we went to the Luxembourg Gardens. It was a gorgeous day...the sun was shining and it didn't rain at all for once! We had fun imitating being the statues. I finally had a crepe...got one from the stand in the park! Next we went to a cemetery because Abbey wanted to see the graves of 2 philosophers she really liked. Then Our next stop was the Catacombes! It was really cool but creepy because there were sooooo many bones and skulls. After the Catacombes, Katie and I went to Notre Dame to try to find her friend from UWEC who was there with the marching band because they were supposed to have just started performing a little earlier. We didn't find them and the line to get in to the tower was insanely long, so we decided not to do it, and went to the Arc D'Triomphe to go to the top of that, but the line was really long and we just didn't feel like waiting. We walked around the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, the main street in Paris. We went in to the Luis Vuitton store--the prices were crazy! We also got Haagen-Daaz ice cream. YUM. After that we went back to the hostel. Abbey, Katie, and I went to the Pompidou, the museum of modern art. It was cool, but modern art is a little too out there for me. Katie left at about 8:30 to go meet up with her friend at their hotel. I ended up taking a really great picture of the Eiffel tower at sunset from one of the windows at the Pompidou! Abbey and I left at about 9:15 and went to McDonald's. It is so much better there than in America. France uses their own ingredients and the burger patties are way bigger than America! Ha. Sad that I'm so pumped about it. :)








On Friday, Katie got up early to see her friend perform with the band at the Eiffel tower one last time. I packed all my stuff up, had breakfast with Abbey, and then checked out of the hostel. Abbey and I headed to the Orsay, a contemporary art museum. Katie met up with us later. That museum was pretty cool...I saw a few paintings I knew (The Renoir girl, which is featured in an episode of Gilmore Girls!) and I loved the collection of dot paintings. Katie and I grabbed lunch in the cafe while Abbey looked around more. We ended up crashing on a bench and just vegging for awhile. Then Katie's friend Beth called because they wanted to hang out one last time. We made arrangements to all go out to dinner. The dinner was AMAZING! Beth's mom paid for everything, including mine which I did not expect because we'd never met. She ordered a bottle of wine and escargot! I was a little scared to try it, but I ended up eating 3 and didn't think it was as disgusting as I always imagined it must be. the butter and parsley definitely help. My main course was grilled beef with mashed potatoes....SO AMAZING! Definitely the best meal of my life. And of course, DESSERT. I had a cup of vanilla ice cream with whipped cream, and fresh raspberries and strawberries. I felt like I had food twins after, but it was so worth it! Then we went to the Eiffel Tower because Beth and her mom hadn't seen it at night yet. It was the perfect way to finish out the week. I was so sad to be leaving...well then anyway. After what happened later in the evening, I was starting to look forward to being back in my house, in my bed!

We went back to the hostel to pick up our luggage we had stored and to say goodbye to Abbey.
We had thought the last bus went back to the airport in Beauvais at 12:30 AM. However, that was the last time it came to Paris. We wouldn't be able to go back till the morning. We didn't have anywhere to stay. Our hostel was all the way across town and the metro was going to be closing soon. Katie thought maybe we could just hang out in a hotel lobby all night, but I didn't really think that would work, and sure enough we got kicked out of one that we went to. I was not keen on the idea of spending the night on the Paris streets, even though it was already late and would only be a few hours till we could get on the bus. I was already tired and didn't want to haul my bag around. We ended up getting a room in a best western. IT cost 60 euro which kind of sucked because we were there for probably 3 1/2 hours! But we were glad we did it because we both needed sleep and it would have just sucked being on the streets. We got on the bus at about 6:00 AM, made our plane to Dublin, grabbed a bus back to Limerick (which took forever!) Oh, and I somehow lost my phone for Ireland on the way back. I don't know if I left it at the Best Western or it fell out of my coat pocket, but it was gone! Luckily my mom wasn't too upset with me. I went and got a new one a couple days later so all is well.

Well, that's Paris, in somewhat of a nutshell. It was amazing and such a beautiful city. I can't wait to go back someday! :)

The last of the pictures...my delicious and free Parisian meal!

 J'Adore Paris! (Part Deux: Versaille and the Eiffel Tower)
Tuesday, March 30, 2010: On Tuesday, we went on a tour of the Palace of Versailles, where King Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette lived. It was a little bit on the outskirts of Paris, because Versailles was actually it's own village at one time, but if I remember correctly now it's considered part of Paris. Or still it's own. I don't know haha. But anyway, we were on the train for about 40 minutes. The palace was amazing! It was so big and so beautiful with beautiful gardens and magnificent fountains and statues. King Louis was way in to Greek mythology so, a vast majority of the fountains were of Greek gods like Dionysus the God of Wine and Apollo the sun God, who was his absolute favorite. The tour itself was basically walking around outside the palace and through the gardens but we were given the option of staying after and going inside if we wanted to. It rained quite a bit on the tour, but it was still really cool. Katie and I ended up going inside. I would have loved to travel back in time and been there when people actually lived in it. Here's a fun, yet somewhat not so fun fact that I learned: in the entire time that Louis lived in the palace, which was many many years, he only took 42 baths! Alex said that equaled about 1 bath every six months! Gross!

inside the palace

Katie and I took the train back to Paris and met up with Abbey back at the hostel. We ate dinner in the restaurant down there and got cocktails (It was ladies night!) Then we headed out to THE EIFFEL TOWER!! We took about 100 pictures of it when we first got there, trying to get the right lighting and what not since it was at night. I got a couple of pretty good ones--others turned out a little blurry. Then we headed closer and decided to take the stairs to the 2nd floor. We were pretty high off the ground from the get go, and I was definitely getting my Fear of Heights Panic feeling. I took it slow though, and before I knew it we were at the first floor. It really wasnt that bad once we were on the actual platforms. I felt very safe on it, and not like on the edge of anything, so that definitely put me at ease. Then, we started going to the 2nd floor, and I went soooo slow and watched every step because I didn't want to trip. I'm glad we went at night so there wasn't a huge crowd. When we finally got the 2nd floor, I had such an adrenaline rush I seriously almost thought I was going to throw up. Haha, I'm such a weirdo. But seriously, this is the girl who gets scared going up to the top of waterslides at WI Dells. The Eiffel Tower itself is 1000 feet in the air. I'm not sure how high up the 2nd floor is, but it's HIGH. Alex suggested we only go to the 2nd floor because it is still an amazing view and the top is pretty much the same only just way farther away, and it's a lot cheaper to just go to the 2nd floor. So even though I can't say I've been all the way to the top of the Eiffel Tower, it was still an amazing view and who am I kidding--I probably would have hyperventilated at the very top. Conquering the 2nd floor was good enough for me. I called my mom when I got to the 2nd floor because I wanted to share this experience with her. It was definitely a moment where I felt 100% alive and free and belonging to the world and a feeling I will never ever forget! And going back down, I took it VERY Slow.

Ok...who am I kidding? I am leaving this post as is for now and will try to take care of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday in a 3rd post but knowing me how I write way too much may end up having like 2 or 3 more posts :) Hope you guys find this interesting enough.

J'adore Paris! (Part 1)

Bonjour! Well, spring break in Paris is sadly over. We got back yesterday at about 4 PM. What an adventure the past week was! I will try to not ramble on and include every minor detail, so I will break it down day by day.

Saturday March 27, 2010: We left Limerick at about 9:30 on a bus headed to Dublin, where we were flying out. I had been to Dublin once when Ellen came, but hadn't seen everything there is to see. Katie saw quite a bit when she was there on St. Patrick's Day, so she took me to a couple parks. We also went to the National Gallery of Art for a little while. We did quite a bit of walking that day. We went to a park that had a statue of Oscar Wilde sitting up on a rock, and I climbed up to get a picture on it, which was an interesting climb up and climb down!

Beginning my climb

getting closer

on Oscar's lap

We spent the night in Dublin airport to save money rather than getting a hostel. We crashed outside the Starbucks in the food court area. I slept for a half hour--and that was at 7 in the morning! I was wide awake. Katie slept for awhile; I guarded the luggage and did word searches. It wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. I'd better get used to it because I'll probably be doing the same thing this coming weekend when we go to Brussels and when we go to Rome!

Sunday, March 28, 2010: Our plane was supposed to leave at 10:55 AM but ended up being delayed for about 45 minutes because of air traffic regulations. I was getting super tired at this point, but slept for most of the plane ride. It was cool seeing Ireland from the sky! We got to the airport in France, which was Beauvais, and it is about a little over an hour away from actual Paris. We were able to get on a shuttle bus right away and were off to Paris! I have to admit, I was a little overwhelmed by the fact that I wasn't in Ireland anymore! Our next job was to find the hostel. The only map of Paris we had was in my Europe book. It was fairly simple enough to read, but our hostel ended up being all the way across town from where the bus dropped us off. We really didn't want to pay for a taxi, and weren't sure how to navigate the Metro system yet, even though some nice man tried helping us, so we walked for like TWO hours. The first landmark I recognized was the Arc De Triomphe. I was starting to get tired and very weary and was convinced we'd never find it, when Katie called the hostel and it turns out it was just ahead of us! We checked in, dropped our luggage off in the room, shared a pizza in the hostel restaurant, showered and then were in bed. I was OUT. I don't remember the last time I slept that deeply.

Au revoir, Ireland!

Arc De Triomphe!

Monday, March 29, 2010: We started the day off by going on a free walking tour that is done by a company in many different cities in Europe. Katie had been on the one in Edinburgh, Scotland when she went with Amanda and Liz last month.

When we first started getting dressed, we started talking to another girl in our hostel. Her name is Abbey and she's from Florida. She just graduated from UF in December and was traveling around Europe for 7 weeks. We had breakfast with her, and went on the walking tour together. The walking tour was great. Our guide was a young guy named Alex who was originally from New Zealand and he was full of energy and made it very interesting. I actually learned a great deal of French history. He told us a pretty gruesome story of how they executed the man who killed King Henry IV. Well, execute is putting it delicately. It was pretty gross. Anyway, we went across one bridge that had all these "love locks" on it. Then Alex said that this was the bridge that Big professes his love to Carrie on the Sex and the City finale. According to Abbey and Katie my face lit up haha. I really love the series finale of that show! Some other highlights of the tour are the prison where Marie Antoinette was kept before she was beheaded, the Louvre, Notre Dame Cathedral, Tulerie Gardens, the fountain where Anne Hathaway throws her phone away in The Devil Wears Prada, etc. We had a lunch break, and Abbey, Katie and I each had a croque monsieur, which is sort of like a grilled cheese. I instantly recognized it when we were at the restaurant because it was one of my favorite words in high school French when we learned about food and I was somewhat excited to be able to have one, haha. Here are pictures from the walking tour.

Notre Dame

Love locks

The Sex and the City Bridge :P That's what I'm calling it. It's really Pon du Arts

Katie and I outside the Louvre

Guess which fountain this is?

After the free walking tour wrapped up, we talked to Alex for a little while and then decided to go with him to buy tickets for the Montmarte tour that would be later that night. Montmarte is an area of Paris where a number of famous painters like Picasso and Van Gogh lived, and is on a big hill. We also bought a ticket to go on the Versaille tour, which is the palace where King Louis the 14th and Marie Antoinette lived. Alex was leading these two tours also! He also gave me and Katie some very helpful knowledge. Our immigration cards for Ireland proved we were leaving in the European Union, which would give us free admission to a number of Paris attractions, including the Louvre! We were pumped. It was like getting a little money back for the cards, since they cost 150 Euro.
The Montmarte tour was really cool. It met in front of the Moulin Rouge! We saw Van Gogh's old apartment, a cafe where Picasso drew the waitresses in an attempt to get free meals, and an old art studio that a number of artists lived before they made it big. Alex told us Van Gogh's life story, and boy, he was really messed up. I knew he cut his ear off, but I didn't know he did it for a woman he was interested in! How very romantic. It started pouring during this tour, there was even a little lightening! One of the last stops was a beautiful white church called Sacre-Couer, or Sacred Heart that overlooks Paris. The view was phenomenal! The tour ended at a wine bar where we were all treated to a free glass of wine. A husband and wife on the tour bought platters of cheese and meat and bread baskets! Yum. After that, Abbey, Katie and I went in search of a place to eat dinner. We found a cute little restaurant and decided to eat outside. I had pasta carbonara. This guy started playing the violin and I thought I recognized the song, and I looked over at him,and suddenly he smiled and then came up to me and was like rubbing his fingers together, like he wanted me to pay him. I was kind of confused, but decided to give him a little change, but suddenly he was beckoning me for a 2 Euro coin. I was like what the hell? and ended up just giving it to him to get him out of my face. I was annoyed though. Then these other guys kept coming up to us trying to tell sell us flowers. That sort of thing is probably not legal and is probably considered soliciting, because they only did it when the waitress was inside. Well, I will end this post with some pictures from the Montmarte tour and then write about the rest of the week another time soon!

The Moulin Rouge!

Van Gogh's apartment

Awesome view of a Parisian street

Sacre-Couer

view of Paris

our new friend Abbey!