četrtek, 27. november 2014

Thanksgiving

I know, I know, its an american thing, however, when I heard International society will be organising it, I signed up. You know,  new experiences. It was overall a very lovely night, with a lot of good food and a lot of geting to know american people, who explained us the thanksgiving story and a little about american history (and geography). So here goes the story.

Around the time, when people were forced to change their beliefs here, on the old continend, a ship of 100 people (pilgrims) sailed from england to sail towards new country to live their life as they wanted to. However, when they arrived to Plymouth colony (todays Massachusetts) they realised that they are not able to farm the land, they occupied and as they were facind their terrible destiny, a native american came to their rescue. Squanto, who spoke english because of the time he spent in Europe as a slave (Much like St. Patrick:)), helped settlers, learned them how to cope with their new land, how to crow crops and how to farm. So at the end of growing season, on the last Thursday in November, they all ate a Thanksgiving dinner together, to say thank you for the successful year. (the original version: click)

Love,
Urška


torek, 18. november 2014

Christmas market in Dublin

Dublin, Grafton Street (click)

Christmas indeed comes early to Ireland! From christmas music, decorations and christmas markets, all is set for the arrival of christmas here in Dublin! On the picture you see Grafton street, one of the main shopping streets in Dublin. The decorations are crazy, as are the crowds, live music is preformed on every corner and wintery food is sold in stores (one word: chocolate!).
Maria and me visited the Dublin book festival on Sunday, where we listened to some extremely talented poets battling out and enjoyed some bookshop browsing. After that we hit the streets of the city centre and went to see the christmas market. It smelled of mulled wine (my favourite), sugar, chocolate, christmasy things were being sold ... just like home. Even though its early, Im feeling it. Christmas is comming!

Howth in rain

It was a fun Saturday, where people make all the difference, turning rainy day into sunny, turning bad mood into laughter. Thank you for great trip, guys! :)


And the lesson of the day: its necessary to carry a hat with you at all times!

Love, 
Urška

petek, 14. november 2014

Glendalough + Kilkenny



So, the day we visited Glendalough and Kilkenny was ... Irish. Meaning we had sun and rain change aproximately seven times during the day, with the fog in between. Nevertheless, this did not spoil the mood. Because Slovenian girls dont go down that easily!;)



Glendalough is known for being the biggest monastic site in medieval Ireland and probably one of the most serene and unspoilt parts of Wicklow mountains. Kilkenny is known for one of the most preserved medieval castles on one other thing: Ireland's second most popular beer, Kilkeny! So the places dont seem much alike. But the first impresion is different.

Glendalough:


Kilkenny:


There is some resemblence, riight? But the lower one is much higher and on sunny days you can climb to the to top (which we certainly did:)).

Šalo na stran! 

Glendalough was very different from the first (and second:)) time I visited. It was wet, cold and consequently, deserted. However, that means there was much more peace and silence than usually, and there were many awesome waterfalls. It really felt different this time around and I enjoyed this other picture very much. Of course, kids must have some time sometimes and you can see this in the pictures.:D

Bus photo ... but I think it looks cool :)


It statred rainy.
But that has it upsides :)
Urška!

Lower lake.
Upper lake.
And now the fun :D
 
SHEEP
URSKA and IRSKA ... see the resembelance? ;)
Kilkenny (click!) is a beautiful city, I really recommend you to visit, if ever in Ireland. The norman castle is truly magnificent and the city centre is small, but very lively, full of caffee houses and pubs to enjoy the best the city has to offer. We certainly did.:)

Kilkenny castle
And the other side :)

The gardens

The river

The view from above :)

And finally, had to include this one! <3
So this was an overview of our trip! It was short, but definitely ful of fun and spontaneous moments. It was great having you here, Mateja. And talk to you soon!

Love,
Urška

November Howth

Heyhey,

the second story of Matejas visit coming up!



On our second day together Mayeja and me visited Howth. You can maybe remember, that I was there already, but I loved it so much, I decided to take Mateja there too.

Some of the top experiences of the day:
- seeing the cliffs. the first view is amazing!
- coffee overloking the sea and feeding a huge dog with the biscuits.
- chips with vinegar! surprisingly delicious.
- walking the longest loop walk.
- the fence made of seashells.
- seeing multiple seals in the water! of course, none would pose for a photo.
- seeing a WHOLE BUNCH of rabbits.
- aslo seeing rat and some interesting birds.
- climbing rocks and touching the sea (Mateja:))

We did a ful day of walking along the cliffs and enjoying the views in the sun, but our favourite part
was a little hidden beach we found. So here are a few of my favourite moments of the day!








 


Love,
Urška
<3


ponedeljek, 10. november 2014

Mateja comes to visit!

Hello everybody!

Last week I had a plesure of hosting my best friend from home, Mateja in my home in Maynooth and showing her around Ireland. We had a blast! It was so great to finally see somebody from home after two months of living abroad. So it was one happy reunion when we first saw each other at the Dublin airport.

In our week together we did a little bit of everything: the cliffs, the towns, the castles, Dublin, Maynooth, college life and classes, irish dancing and singing, traditional food and partying of course! And I got to hear all the news from home. :) I hope you enjoyed as much as I did, Mateja!

I will show you what we did in a few separate posts, today I would like to share with you what we did in our first day together, when I showed Mateja around college and my town. Enjoy the clips!

It was sunny afternoon

Every where we go, she finds something to climb on :)



Carton house
Until the next time!
Love,
Urška

nedelja, 9. november 2014

Edinburgh

Heey,
long time no see. Its not that I didnt have anything to say, its just that there was no time. So much going on right now! And all good things: traveling, Mateja coming over to visit me, meeting new friends and doing new things. So all is grand with me.

Today I have an amazing trip to share with you guys. Its our trip to Edinburgh, Scotland (click). Its just a quick flight away from Ireland and not a very expensive one, so when I got the opportunity to visit this beautiful city, I immediately said yes. This is where I spent the second part of my study week, strolling around the capital of Scotland!


We did a lot of awesome things that I want to share with you. My travel company: Franzi and Anja (Gremany) and Dani (Spain). After arriving to the airport and taking the bus to the city centre we found our hostel, that looked like this:


Yes, it was a former church! I didnt know whether to feel that it is interesting or wierd.:) By the way, they are really into re-using old churches here. I saw one, that is now a restaurant and another one was a climbing centre. Crazy. Than we walked to the city centre and did a free walking tour. How this works is you find your tour guide and he takes a group of people to the guided tour around the city, on the end you tip him whatever you feel is right. We got our tour guide Dave of the Sandemans New Europe. He took us to one of the best tours Ive ever been on! It was an entertaining and educational from the first minute to the last and he kept us interested fot the whole 2 hours the tour lasted. If you ever come to Edinbourg, I recomend you to check the tour out, its totally worth the time. Franzi shared a very cool story the guide told us on her blog: click. After that we bought some food and in the evening the last part of our group joined us: Anja.

Some glimpses of the city:







That hill in the distance is an extinct volcano. Yes, Edinburgh is so cool, it has a volcano in one of the city parks.


In the evening we went for a pint and later on we joined another tour: the Edinburgh vaults night tour. The vaults of Edinburgh are small underground chambers, built way back in 1700s that during some parts of the history provided a living habitat for the poor and the criminals, and are not a very nice place indeed. They are small, dark, cold and presumably one of the most hunted places in the world. Well, if you believe in that stuff. (Some more info: click)  First they show you (and explain the use!) of various torture devices, than they lead you downstairs and explain the ghost stuff. But I can tell you, I got scared. An entrance to the vaults:



The next day we decided to explore the surrounding area of Edinbourg. So the girls decided to check out the Royal botanic gardens (nice) and then walk to the seaside (not so nice). Dani did some busking.



And the evening was the interesting part: it was halloween night. We dressed up indeed:


So there you have it, scary masks. Firstly we joined the party that was going on at the hostel and later we went out to a party. It was great craic!

On Saturday we went to check the graveyard where JK Rowling got inspiration for some Harry Potter character names, while writing in a nearby coffee house and later we had some thai all you can eat. We whached the sun set from a nearby hill with a lot of monuments and a great view around the city.
Any HP fan will know what that is.

By night.
Sunday was our last day. We went to the National museum of Scotland, which is totally worth checking out and later Anja and me went to some more museums, including The Museum of childhood with a massive collection of toys. Also some unhealthy food: if you think, that deep fried twix is bad, try a deep fried pizza. Not kidding. And in the evening we had our own whiskey tasting, as I thied my first real Scottish whiskey in a Scottish pub. Very cool.


So this was our trip, I got home very tired, but ful of new memories and experiences. Edinburgh is a lovely city, ful of nice pubs, restaurants and nice people (also surprisingly a lot of cementeries. really a lot. i have pictures to prove.). The whole city consists of old buildings and everwhere you turn, there is a place worth taking a photo (I took sooo many:)). Its a small city, so after four days, everybody knew their way around. The Scots are great fun, a very welcomning nation too and also very proud of their heritage and that is clear in their capital. Definitely the trip, I will remember!
 

Love,
Urška