Part 3: Ireland

Last stop was 9 days in Ireland, where I rendez-voused with my friend Hannah. After a day in Dublin, we went up to Bundoran, a sweet little surf town up North. We ended up meeting an Irish girl on the bus who pretty much adopted us for the weekend. Her mom fed us, and drove us around, and Ciara took us out on the "town" on Friday and Saturday night. Saturday morning, I went out with the guys at the surf lodge for a session in full-body wetsuit. It was way more difficult to move than I had imagined--the wetsuit was super restrictive. And the first time my head went under (I wasn't wearing the hood part since it was sunny), I though I was going to pass out. Nonetheless, it was awesome! You had to wait around for the sets, but I got back into it pretty quick.





Sunset in Bundoran
Next stop: Overnight in Galway
Next, we took the bus to a tiny village called Letterfrack, just next to the Connemara National Park. Hannah and I took a hike in the Park, up Diamond Hill.




Second day in Letterfrack, we walked out to the Kylemore Abbey.
We returned to Galway and took a tour of the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher. It was full springtime, with lambs and baby cows all over!

Cliffs of Moher

Part 2: Stockholm

After Copenhagen, I took the train up to Stockholm for a brief tour of the town and to visit Uncle Mike's new digs. The weather was perfect! And since it was April, the sun was staying out til nice and late. The first night I met a girl I knew from Stockholm at Gamla Stan, the old town, for a drink. The next day I got to see it during the daytime.

Hmmmm, moose meatballs and reindeer stew.

Vasa Museum-cool.


They used the bones found on board to re-create some of the Vasa's original unfortunate passengers. It was eerie how realistic they looked.

Spring Break, Part 1: Copenhagen

My first destination on my spring break was Hillerod, Denmark, just outside of Copenhagen City. I stayed with Bruna in a strange greenhouse-type "school" in a tiny suburb surrounded by lakes, woods, and a random castle. We were lucky enough to have awesome weather for the whole time that I was there, which made the visit that much better.

One day we took the train up north through the woods to arrive at a cute little town where you wader through the forest for a while and pop out onto a beautiful beach.
Bruna's roommate lent me her bike and I explored the wooded bike paths of Hillerod.

Copenhagen the city in Spring: Idyllic, quiet, beautiful. Hardly any traffic, by far the most bike friendly city I've ever seen. I noticed that hardly anybody even bothers to lock their bikes up, since apparently the Danes just abide by some foreign moral code. A moral code that extends to not j-walking, as I found out when the cops pulled me over on Easter Sunday for crossing a deserted street against the red. Good thing I was a foreigner, so I got off with lecture instead of a ticket. The city center was a great size--not too big, not too small, just nice and manageable. I was there at the perfect time to see everyone emerging onto terraces and into parks to take advantage of the spring sun.







We headed back into the city to check out Christiania, the little 'autonomous,' drug-dealing, hippie community in Copenhagen. There are no cars or real streets, just lots of cool tags on the buildings and sketchy looking characters. It was pretty strange, but cool.

118th Ball de l'X

Last night we crashed the 118th annual Ball de l'X at the Opera Garnier. Girls in fancy dresses and high heels, waltzing, white rose-covered banisters, and young men in their school uniforms. It's the ball of the fancy Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, one of the science Grand Ecoles, founded in 1794.