Vatican City, or Where is Monica's ID?

Our first (and only) morning in Rome was spent not actually in Italy, but instead in Vatican City.

Let's talk for a second about the Roman metro system. I know there are a cornucopia of ancient ruins that can't be disturbed by a subway system running underneath them, but something's got to be done! For those of you who haven't had the joy of taking the metro while in Rome, it's pretty easy, and cheap. Not hugely efficient, though --- there are two lines, A and B, and they intersect at only one station, Termini. Thank goodness our hostel was just two blocks from Termini, but really, Rome! There's got to be a better way. There's never not rush hour at Termini Station. It's like somebody combined a snowglobe and an ant farm. Lots of frantic scurrying, lots of shaking and looking around to see where the herd's going, zero elbow room. Needless to say, it made me miss New York quite a bit!

We beat the crowd to the Vatican, patting ourselves on the back. By this time, our merry group of travellers had split --- Carmen, Jac, Sarah and Will were off to Paris, while Nia went to London. Lexi and I wanted more time in Italy, so we swallowed all our doubts and language insecurites (there weren't many, actually, we figured our smiles and good intentions needed no translation) and headed off to Rome alone.


Something about this morning was very stressful. I'd heard that from other travellers we'd met along the way, that Saint Peter's and the Vatican Museums were the most hair-raising experiences you could have in Italy. It's overwhelming in every sense. Beautiful, absolutely, but nearly too much to take in. It was especially a mental shock for me to wander around the piazza and see the Church as an establishment, having spent the entire semester in Ireland, one of the most Catholic countries in the world. At the same time, how much of Irish history has been exhausted on the persecution of Catholics, or the war between the Catholics and Protestants? To step inside lavish Saint Peter's, to kneel and pray in the gilded and marble chapels, it was too much. How strange, to think about the young men and women who died because of their association with Catholicism. I doubt the religion they suffered for had much to do with the glory and extravagance in Saint Peter's.

Anyway! Though troubled by my thoughts, I was still able to appreciate the Vatican immensely. Easily two-thirds of my time there was spent with my jaw hanging open. Lexi, with her passion for audioguides, convinced me to pay five Euro and get one to show us around. The narration was pretty heavy-handed, what with the narrator calling me "pilgrim," but I learned a lot.


After we emerged bleary-eyed into the sunny noon, Lex and I went over to the Vatican Museum to see the Sistine Chapel. I hope I'm not offending anyone's artistic sensibilities if I say that I'm not sure the Sistine Chapel should get top billing there. Out of all the treasures and beautiful rooms there, I don't necessarily think the Sistine Chapel is a worthy centerpiece. All the tourists rushed from room to room, holding their breath until they reached the Chapel. Is it awful to say it's a little underwhelming? It's jammed full of people, with guards yelling "SILENCE PLEASE" in a half-dozen languages. It is anything but restful or reflective.

Feeling a little betrayed by Michaelangelo, Lexi and I trudged back to Saint Peter's to return our audioguides. By this time, the piazza was chockablock full of sweating pilgrims downing water and snapping photos. Knowing we had just a few more hours of daylight in Rome left, we were ready bid farewell to the Swiss Guards, handsome as they were, and to get out of the Vatican. Clutching our receipts, we arrived at the office to return our guides --- only to be instructed to go back out to the piazza and stand in the TWO AND A HALF HOUR line to get back in. "But, but," we stammered...No luck, just a stern Vatican grimace.


There was no way we were giving up two and a half hours to wait in line to return a piece of plastic. So, cringing at our dubious morality, we left.

Ahh! I'm still so guilty about it. Please don't think I'm proud of this! I'm mailing back the guide tomorrow. It's my very own telltale heart now, sitting in my bag under my bed. I know that if I want to, I can lean over and be told in eight different languages about the cupolas of the Basilica. I'm sick thinking about it.

In any case, it's not like I didn't make a sacrifice. The audioguide office required a deposit: a passport, a credit card, a student ID, or 100 Euro. So that's where my ID is. In the Vatican. I'm amazed --- if we had left any of those others as collateral, you're darn right we'd wait in line another two and a half hours to retrieve them. But our flimsy purple NYU IDs? Completely dispensible.

I'm awful, I know. But it makes a pretty good story!

Barcelona 2.0

So! The javelinas have made their grand entrance. If that were the most exciting thing that happened to us in Barcelona, it would still make a great story. However! We still had four more jam-packed days in the city.

We moved on to our second hostel, perfectly located on the Paseig de Gracia, Barcelona’s answer to the Champs-Elysees. And we were just a short walk from Placa Catalunya, just like Union Square in Greenwich Village. Below Placa Catalunya stretches Las Ramblas, the main drag of Barcelona. Along Las Ramblas there are cozy cafes, Hemingway's favorite absinthe haunts, and quite a few merchants selling plants and animals of all sorts.
Believe you me, it took every ounce of willpower I had not to buy a chipmunk as a little companion. Only 15 Euro!

About six more NYU kids met up with us there --- although somehow I was put in a different room from them, which was not altogether unpleasant, since my Brazilian roommates all looked like disciples or fishers of men and had strong penchants for playing “Dear Prudence” on their guitars at all hours of the day. That’s half the fun of budget hostelling, isn’t it?

Our Barcelona days were spent trying to get as much sunshine and culture into our lives as we possibly could. We took in the Museu Picasso (a mind-blowing collection of his early exercises and artwork, so humbling to look at what he produced at only 15 years old!) and a Alphonse Mucha exhibit at the CaixaForum (beautiful, feminine posters in the style of Toulouse-Lautrec) and blew dozens of Euros on postcards and prints. We walked kilometer after kilometer, taking in the strong Spanish faces. There’s something about the “Old World” countries, I’ve found. It’s effortless to look at the man sitting across from you on the subway and imagine his face in a 17th century court. Something about the eyebrows and the nose --- they’re just timeless, compared to all of our muddled American features.

That’s something else --- in Ireland, we blend in fairly well. With our pale film-school faces and big eyes, we’re actually considered kind of beautiful here! Not so in Barcelona. While here in Dublin we can get away with messy Rapunzel hair and pasty arms, in Spain we looked like short albino mushrooms, all moist and mutant. It was humbling, and a little mortifying.

You can imagine our new priority was to soak in as much sun as possible. Carmen and I started a feeding frenzy in the harbor, coaxing fish two feet long to fight over cookie crumbs. All the beaches in Barcelona itself are manmade, but that only means that the sand is dark and trucked in monthly, and falls like cornstarch under our feet. It was such a welcome rest from the gloomy seashores of Ireland --- the Mediterranean, how exotic!
Pasty Irish moonface and all, I was really, really happy there.

Benvinguts a Barcelona!

I feel bad starting out writing about Barcelona. Chronologically, we visited it first. But I loved it so much and was so sad to leave that I'm afraid any entry not about Barcelona will be a letdown. Not that Italy was a letdown at all! But all of my enthusiasm and all of my exclamation points have to go to Barcelona. It's phenomenal.

Our introduction to Spain was a really pleasant one, and pretty indicative of the five days we spent there. Immediately, we knew we weren't in Dublin. The air was warm and moist, and everything smelled like orange juice and wet trees. We shouldered our bags and, amused, followed the directions to our first hostel, a place out in the hilly suburbs --- "walk 500 paces up the mountain." Something had been lost in translation, we assumed. It couldn't have been a mountain we needed to march up!

It was, though, and it took much more than 500 paces to reach the summit. But what a reward, once we got there! Our bunks were really comfortable and actually kind of good-looking, a far cry from the sleepaway camp aesthetic we’d seen in so many hostels.

We threw our bags down and found a sweet Spanish senyora who handed us trays and plates and bowls of food --- our first meal in Barcelona, a real feast! Tomato soup ladled over rice and peas, fish sticks, good bread, salad with unbelievable olives, and a poached apple. The fish sticks I fed to a cat that was creeping around my ankles, but everything --- the food, the company, the view --- was wonderful.

We spent our first day exploring Barcelona, wandering up and down Las Ramblas, the main drag in the city center. La Boqueria, a giant marketplace, provided our entertainment. Stacks and stacks of fruits we’d never seen before, crates of eels and crabs and seashells meant to have their innards scraped out and eaten with broth. And of course, new and foreign words yelled at us.

Catalan is not at all an angular language, so no matter what volume it’s being spoken at, it sounds nice. Lots of eus, and xos, not many zs. It’s similar to French and Portuguese to my ear, at least. And Barcelona being bilingual is really something amazing. In galleries and museums where there are no English translations of texts, reading both panels of Castillian Spanish and Catalan will clue you in on most of the big ideas, in terms of the English cognates and similarities to other Romance languages.

And if all of this weren't enough for our first impressions, we had the absolute terror and delight of climbing the 500-plus paces back up the mountain to our hostel in the pitch black, clutching each other and hoping we didn't trip and fall off a cliff. Imagine the three of us, tiptoeing and clutching our keys between our knuckles to stab anyone who might try to emerge from the bushes and abduct us. Instead, we came across these little javelinas rummaging for food between the yucca plants and the morning glory.
If they had had tusks, we mightn't have gotten so close to take pictures. Hindsight's 20-20!

Ryanair, and the Beginning of the End

After the past ten days of roaming around Spain and Italy, I am over the moon to be curled up on the couch in my apartment with tea and my journal, going back over all of our adventures. There's hot water in the kettle, clothes in the wash, and socks in the trash. There was no way of resurrecting them after the abuse they'd been through these past few days. So I tossed 'em.

Where to begin? Last Friday morning, I caught a cab at 4:30 with Carmen and Lexi, my companions for the first leg of the journey. Drowsy but excited, we headed out to Dublin Airport to catch our flight to Barcelona.
We flew Ryanair this fall break, which was an absolute experience in itself. Dirt cheap flights --- I don't think we paid more than 35 Euro, or about $50, for any of our three flights. In fact, going from Barcelona to Pisa was 11 Euro, taxes included. But here's the thing about Ryanair. It's awful. In a really entertaining way, of course, when you're a student backpacking on a budget, but it's just terrible. The plane's decorated in banana yellow and navy blue, the flight attendants are grumpy, and you have to pay for your own barf bags. But hey! If the plane can get on and off the ground when necessary, I'm a happy camper. The flights make for great blog fodder, at least.

Every Ryanair trip's a mixture of a gypsy caravan and a Tupperware party. There's complete anarchy as you board the plane, because there are no assigned seats, no first class or business class. Everyone scrambles for a seat, they strap you in, and we're off. No fuss. Until the official Ryanair jingle comes on! This is when things get exciting. You didn't think you paid 11 Euro to sleep on the flight, did you? Not a chance. The flight attendants, wan and smelling like Lysol, troll up and down the aisles for the entirety of the journey, hawking wares. Not the cool gadgetry you sometimes see in the catalogues on American Airlines planes. Ryanair sells discount makeup, phone cards, scratch-off tickets, generic corn-based snack products. It's like an infomercial without the charm, Chinatown in a culture vacuum. It is appalling and amazing, and you should try it at least once.

We're Getting Off the Island!

It's officially fall break! In six hours, I'll be hopping in a cab to Dublin Airport and heading over to Barcelona for the first leg of our journey. We'll be trekking around until the 27th --- then it's back to the grindstone! While I hope to stop in a few internet cafes whilst in Barcelona, Florence, Rome, and Venice, please don't be upset if I don't post any new entries. Just think of all the stories and photos I'll have you for when I get back!

Slan go foil, Dublin! I'll be back soon.

Transatlanticism Much?

You know how sometimes you wake up in a bed and you're disoriented for a few seconds, trying to remember which side the wall is on and what day it is?

Wouldn't you think you were in D.C. if you saw that? No such luck. It's Phoenix Park, in northwest Dublin.

Being in D.C. sounds pretty good right about now. Anywhere but on this island, really. We're all getting cabin fever, I think --- but if we can survive midterm week, we'll be set for fall break, finally! It should be amazing. We're flying early Friday morning from Dublin to Barcelona, then spending five days there, then off to Florence, Rome, and Venice. I'm open and enthusiastic about any suggestions you have for me --- where must I eat? what can't I miss? what should I bring you back?

"New York is my Lourdes, where I go for spiritual refreshment...a place where you're least likely to be bitten by a wild goat."

- Brendan Behan

Lazy Sunday

Today I saw this bird:trip on this grass:That's how dense and thick the grass is here! His little foot got all caught in the roots --- stepping and bobbing, munching on a crisp, stepping and bobbing...then WHAM! He's down for the count.


Can't you read, mister? They've got signs for a reason!

P.S. Yes, that's a Calder sculpture behind the sign. Such a eirephile am I that I completely forget to take pictures of it. Ta bron orm! Apologies!

Field Trip to Kilmainham Gaol

After public executions were banned, this became the hanghouse. Seven men were killed here.

Kilmainham was established as a dungeon and corrective jail in 1796.

The jail was abandoned in 1924 after Eamon de Valera was freed. It's considered the Irish Bastille.

This is some inmate grafitti. It's a quote from "The Rebel" by Patrick Pearse, a famous political prisoner at Kilmainham. In full, it reads "Beware of the Risen People, Ye That Have Harried and Held, Ye That Have Bullied and Bribed."

The East Wing of the jail was built in 1864 and held both men and women, political dissidents and petty thieves. Two seven-year-old boys were jailed for stealing a rabbit from the Dublin Zoo.

Constructed during a period of Victorian prison reform, the East Wing was modeled after the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia.

It's a tall, open space with high skylights --- the architects concluded that exposing the prisoners to the redemptive "Light of God" could only be a good thing.

The leaders of the 1916 Rising were executed against this wall. The cross marks the place where James Connolly was tied to a chair and shot --- he was so badly injured from the fighting that he could not stand and face the firing squad.

Droolin' over Doolin

At last! The final chapter in the story of last weekend's expedition to the west of Ireland.

When last we left our brave explorers, they were on a ferry bound across Galway Bay to Doolin, a tiny seaside town. Rough waves and a chilly breeze did nothing to quench the enthusiasm of the nine travellers --- though the rainstorm that caught them by surprise certainly did.

Doolin's tiny. One road that can't even remotely be called a Main Street winds through, passing the two hostels and three pubs that host and entertain visitors. However, this road passes by golf courses and cow pastures for a whole mile before it actually reaches Doolin. This is the terrible fact we discovered when we stepped off the ferry, umbrella-less and without a dry change of clothes. We trekked, caught between amusement and hysteria, alarming the munching cows with our cursing and complaining about the lack of sidewalks and good Samaritans.

But a hot bowl of Guinness stew with good brown bread cures a whole bunch of ails, and shivers and sniffles are two of them. Plus, we had so much to look forward to the next day --- the Cliffs of Moher. We turned in early in our lovely hostel, with the promise of hot scones in the morning.

And what a morning it was!

Tummies full and bodies rested, we went out to the Cliffs prepared to be astounded.

This is what we saw:

Imagine, the sun rising over this. Now turn over your right shoulder:

Can you picture anything more idyllic? Keep turning:

Ahh, there are the cliffs! And, once more, turn:

There's an Irish saying: "Is glas iad na cnoic i bhfad uainn." It translates to "far away hills are green," a more lyrical way of saying the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Here's the thing, though. Every hill is green here!


Basking in the Monday morning sunlight.


I cannot get over this.



From the cliffs you can see Inisheer! If you look closely, you can make out a brownish oblong thing on the righthand side of the island just by the water. That's the wreck of the Plassy, the beached ship we played in on Sunday.



I wish you were here on top of the world with me!

With a Little Help From James Joyce...

' "There was no row," said Gabriel moodily, "only she wanted me to go for a trip to the west of Ireland and I said I wouldn't."

His wife clasped her hands excitedly and gave a little jump.

"O, do go, Gabriel," she cried. "I'd love to see Galway again."

"You can go if you like," said Gabriel coldly.'



Oh, Gabriel. What you missed out on, you'll never know.

Thankfully, we took a little field trip out to the west of Ireland this weekend, and it was just wonderful. Unlike the trip we'll be taking to Belfast in a couple of weeks, this excursion had nothing to do with any class --- it was pure fun and exploration, courtesy of Tisch. All of us students, plus our program director Susanne and our R.A. Sigita, drove out to Galway on Saturday morning, taking in kilometer after kilometer of green fields and dozy cattle.


Apparently Saturday was the best day of the entire Irish summer this year. It was nearly cloudless, with temperatures hovering in the low 80s. Coming from Washington, where the average summer day feels like the inside of a vacuum cleaner bag, hot and damp and dusty, that's laughable. But boy, did the people we encountered make the most of it! We strolled around Galway, munching on crepes as we took in the weekend farmers' market, packed with olives and leeks and blocks of limestone for sale --- all of it hawked by sunburnt smiley men. It's a sweet and good-natured town, far less industrial than Cork and less self-involved than Dublin. If only we had more time there!

But we hustled on. We had a ferry to catch, you know!

The next leg of our journey took us out to Inisheer, the smallest of the three Aran Islands. It's located between the Atlantic Ocean and the mouth of the Galway Bay. Let's go back to Joyce for an introduction to the Islands...

' "O, Mr. Conroy, will you come for an excursion to the Aran Isles this summer? We're going to stay there a whole month. It will be splendid out in the Atlantic. You ought to come...and haven't you your own language to keep in touch with -- Irish?" asked Miss Ivors.

"Well," said Gabriel, "if it comes to that, you know, Irish is not my language." '

Well, Gabriel, it is the language of Inisheer. All of the Islands are considered part of the Gaeltacht, or Irish-speaking region of contemporary Ireland. For the most part, Gaeltachts are quite traditional, close-knit communities. Inisheer is no exception. About 200 people live on the island, most of them fishermen. There are three pubs, two restaurants, a hostel, a bed and breakfast, and a general store. No police officers, no firemen, no bowling alley.


There are, however, ancient ruins and Napoleonic watchtowers, a rusted shipwreck on the shore, and a half-dozen loyal dogs who followed us over boulders and past blackberry hedges as high as my chest. It's a lonely, lovely place. With so much free time, I walked around the island, hearing at long last actual Irish spoken conversationally! I was so thrilled to finally be able to use what I'd learned from my two semesters of Irish. While everyone knows English, they always were happy to answer my "go raibh maith agat" with a "failte romhat." I wish we could have stayed longer.




Dead seagulls and all, it's an astounding place. But there was one leg left of our adventure: traveling back across Galway Bay to Doolin and the Cliffs of Moher. That's a story for another day. Maybe tomorrow! Stay tuned.

I love and miss you all!

See? The Cliffs of Insanity!

Remember this?



That's exactly how I spent my weekend:





NYU took us on a field trip this weekend --- Dublin to Galway, then out to the smallest of the Aran Islands, Inisheer, to spend the night. A few of the screenwriters broke off to spend an extra day exploring County Clare and the Cliffs of Moher, where that scene from "The Princess Bride" was filmed.

I'm getting together all of my stories from the past couple of days...stay tuned!

You Say Baloney, I Say Blarney

So --- Cork was disappointing. That's been said. Do I regret the trip? No way.

Rousing ourselves early Saturday morning, we dashed down to catch a bus to Blarney, about twenty minutes outside of Cork. It's a tiny little village with a beautiful town green, a few cafes, a school, and a post office. It's also home to one of the biggest tourist attractions in Ireland: the Blarney Stone.

Yes, it's all very cliche. But if the legends are true, and kissing the Blarney Stone really does impart "the gift of gab," then why not? We're screenwriters here --- we need all the eloquence we can get! The castle itself is just stunning. Few of my preconceived notions about Ireland have been challenged --- it absolutely is a country full of tiny towns, green fields, and random ruins scattered about. The Blarney Castle was built around the 11th century, but it was destroyed in 1446. The King of Munster rebuilt it, placing the legendary Blarney Stone at the top of the castle. And so it stands today!




We clambered up the stairs, holding tight to the stone walls. I'm so amazed by Carmen...completely afraid of heights, she went all the way to the top --- documenting the journey on her video camera! I couldn't be that brave.



So we kissed the stone. Check! Now we join the ranks of thousands of other overfed tourists who lay on their backs and lean over the edge to get a little piece o'luck. Don't cluck your cynical tongues at me, please. I fully embrace the tackiness of my ways. But that wasn't even the highlight of the trip!

I can say without hesitation that the gardens at Blarney Castle are the most beautiful place I have been in years. Perhaps even ever. Six of us girls went wandering through them, just stunned by the peace and the loveliness. The timelessness of the forest is almost supernatural --- it's peppered with these natural rock formations that have been around forever. An old circle of stones where druids used to walk. Deep streams that flow soundlessly between trees and underfoot. You can see perfectly to the bottom, where old willow branches and river weeds drift around. I held my hands underneath a waterfall and drank ancient water. Ancient water!

As quiet as the forest is, you never quite feel alone. It's so easy to understand how many fairy tales originated in Ireland. Something about the light, about the moss and the stone...it's another world. I honestly would not have been surprised to see a unicorn emerge from behind a clump of trees. We all had goosebumps --- realizing that as little girls, we had dreamed of playing princess in a place like this. To find it exists entirely and utterly as we imagined is mindblowing.