Visit My New Site

Hello Everyone and Happy 2014!

I have had this blog for two years now and although I have not always been the best at keeping up with it, this blog holds a lot of great memories.

This year I decided to start over and create my very own personal website. Kristinctuality will be moving to that site and hopefully with a new year I will be blogging more than I have in the past. I have not decided what I want to do with this site yet because I don’t want to lose everything on it, but please visit my new site for new posts and updates.

Please Visit kristinfoley.weebly.com and let me know what you think!

Thanks for everything,

Kristin

Regan Communications Internship

So as you have noticed I have kinda been MIA from the blogging world this summer. So since I didn’t blog weekly about my internship this summer I’ve decided to write a final wrap up.

This summer I was a Social Media Intern at Regan Communications Group in Boston, Ma. Regan is the largest PR firm in New England. Besides the office in Boston they also have an office in Providence, NYC among others.

I commuted into Boston three times a week this summer, which was definitely something I was excited to be doing. Although it led to some really long days taking the train in and out and walking to the office it was definitely worth it! I ended up enjoying my walks to the office which became very scenic since the office is located in the North End right on Boston Harbor.

As a Social Media Intern I was part of Team Creative and had many responsibilities:

• I attended weekly social media meetings and assisted in brainstorming ideas for the internal Regan social media (Facebook and Twitter). These posts varied from fun random posts based off of random holidays to client based or about the company.
• I sent out daily emails to the social media team about social media news and trends
• I wrote press releases, photo captions and media advisories for various clients
• I created Media lists for specific releases and clients based on the target audience using Cision
• I reached out to greater Boston and New England Media and secured coverage for clients

Some key clients that I got to work on included: The Boston Celtics, Cumberland Farms and Outside The Box (Music Festival in Boston).

The best part of my summer with Regan was being able to staff different events. I was able to attend Outside The Box, Celtics Cowens Camps and The Strega Prime Grand Opening.

Outside The Box was the nine day free music festival that happened in Boston on the common in July. I was able to help staff the event one of the days at the main stage. That night Augustana and Boys Like Girls were performing. My job for the night was to work at the media tent. There we gave out press passes to media and coordinated any interview requests with the artists. After doing a lot of work with this event prior it was really rewarding to actually see it happen.

Lucky with some Cowens Camp Campers

The Celtics Cowens Camps are hosted by The Boston Celtics in different facilities around the area. During each session they host different special guests including Lucky, The Official Celtics Mascot and Dana Barros, a Celtics Legend. I was able to attend a camp one day to take pictures when both Lucky and Dana Barros attended. Lucky put on his famous dunk show normally seen at games and Dana Barros came as a guest speaker and also ran drills with the campers.

Dana Barros interacting with a camper

My job was to take pictures of the kids interacting with the guests and then get their information. After the camp we went back to the office and created photo captions and sent it to the local newspapers of the kids from the camps.

Strega Prime is also one of Regan clients and they were hosting a grand opening event for their brand new restaurant in Woburn. Strega Prime has a restaurant in Boston on the Waterfront, which is known to bring in a lot of celebrities. My job was to help check in the guests and make sure that each guest received a wristband before entering the party.

The Strega Prime Grand Opening event was unlike anything I have ever seen. There were about 3,000 guests that were supposed to be attending. Guests walked in on a red carpet, took pictures on the step and repeat and then toured the restaurant, which lead to the party outside. The party was outside under the tent with food and drinks being served, while The Jersey Boys were also performing. There were also a few notable celebrities in attendance including Actor Richard Jenkins from Step Brothers and a few of the actors from The Sopranos.

Overall I had an amazing experience with Regan and they opened up so many opportunities for me. I could not have asked for a better summer internship and I can’t believe it is already over.

Euro Trip Part Three: Prague!

Bonjour from Paris!!! I had some time on the way here so figured I would update everyone. I can’t believe we have been traveling for over 3 weeks now and soon will be back in cork.

Prague is a beautiful and amazing city and we just spent three days there so I figured it deserved its own post.

Day Eighteen After a quick flight from Venice to Prague we quickly realized that unlike any of the other countries we had visited so far that Prague was different. first we landed and took out money. There money is very different here and we really didn’t understand it. I took out 500 Czech which is only equivalent to around 25 dollars. It felt like a lot of money when really it wasn’t. Second the language is unlike anything I have ever heard, so that was hard to get used to.

Luckily we figured out the public transport and we quickly got to our hostel after taking the bus and metro.

Day Nineteen: Tuesday we woke up bright and early and had planned to go into the main part of Prague to visit the famous John Lennon wall and the Prague castle.
The John Lennon wall was one of the main reasons I wanted to come to Prague. It is basically a wall in tribute to him, but people come and basically graffiti the wall with inspirational quotes, art and signatures. I think we spent over an hour at the wall just reading quotes and taking pictures. We off course signed the wall ourselves! I wrote one of my favorite quotes from Bob Dylan:

“All I can do is be me, whoever that is…”

Taking the bus from our hostel into the main old square was the easiest way to get there. We crossed over the Charles bridge which is beautiful and lined with so many sculptures. One thing about Prague I noticed was a lot of the buildings had sculptures of poor people struggling, which was very disheartening. They also have a lot of shops with puppets that are really creepy looking…..

After spending a lot of time at the wall we headed up to the castle. You can see the castle basically from anywhere you are in Prague because it is so high up. So we hiked up to the castle and got an amazing view of the city. We walked around, saw the changing of the guards and bought a pass to go into some of the attractions. We went into golden lane, which is an old street with really small houses and it showcases how people used to live. We also saw all the old armor, weapons and torture tools they used to use. Walking into the dungeon was really creepy and it even showed how they used to lower prisoners into a hole to drop them at the bottom floor in full body shackles.

One thing that I really loved about Prague was the buildings everything was just so pretty! Especially up at the castle. Also we tried one of there traditional pastries and it was really good. It was basically a pastry with cinnamon sugar and walnuts on it!

Tuesday night I also had to interview for SPB executive board from the hostel, which was an interesting experience. Skype interviews are just awkward and I had to do it from my phone. Hopefully it went well and I will be finding out soon!

Day Twenty: Wednesday we decided to go back into town and see more of the old town square. We went and saw the famous astronomical clock tower and even climbed it. It was really cool to climb the tower because its so central in the city from up top you can see all the main attractions in the city.
After the tower we walked around more and explored the city and all the little shops. We decided that we were really craving American food especially wings so even though we were in Prague we headed to Hooters. Never thought I would say I went to hooters in Prague. Luckily the wings were great and it was a nice break from walking around so much.

After lunch we decided to walk to the high castle, which we thought was a castle but really wasn’t. It ended up being more of a park, but had a really great view of the river. We went int. the cathedral ip there and walked through the cemetery. It was actually really peaceful up there and we hung out for a little bit.

We then headed to more of the newer part of town. Where they have a lot of the shopping ( some that we recognized others we didn’t). We ended up going into Starbucks and for whatever reason their machine wouldn’t accept our American cards so the cashier ended up giving us all our drinks for free! This was definitely a highlight of our day since by this point in the trip we are all a little tight on money.

Day Twenty One: Thursday was our last day in Prague and Jill left to go back to Dublin to be with her family. So Erica and I after packing up our stuff went to explore some more for the day. We walked along the river and saw the national theatre and this really weird looking building called the Fred and ginger dancing building. Not sure why it’s called that, but it was cool to look at. After walking around for a bit we relaxed in a park.

Some things we noticed in Prague are that everyone is extremely tall… Must be in there genes. Also just some general things from traveling: Asians love to take pictures with their iPads…. But really why it looks dumb. also tourists love the Hard Rock Cafe. I seriously think I have seen a tshirt from every hard rock in the world.

Prague was definitely an awesome city and I am so glad I got to come here. It’s beautiful and cheap.

Hopefully I’ll write a post when I get back about Paris and London!

Eurotrip Part Two: Italy!

Ciao from Italy! Well really I’m in Prague now, but  I’m writing about Italy so close enough! At this point we have been traveling for over 2 weeks now which is crazy and it is going by so fast! I can’t lie I do miss Cork, which I keep referring to as home by accident. So since I last posted I have traveled throughout Italy. We went to Rome, Florence and Venice.

Day Eleven: with barely any sleep we got up at 3:30am, left our hostel and we were off to Rome! I don’t remember any of the flight because we all passed out before we even took off. After smoothly arriving in Italy without any problems with out bags again we took the shuttle from the airport to the center of Rome. This should have only taken 30 minutes but took forever because of traffic and after getting no sleep we were all not that happy. Luckily from where the bus dropped us off it was less then a 10 min walk to our hostel.
We dropped out bags off and went to explore the city. Our hostel was only a 10 min walk to the Colosseum. Rome was breath taking and with so many ruins around it is an incredibly old city. We walked to the Colosseum first and saw the ruins around it. Since we are on a right budget we decided to not pay to get into the Colosseum since it was cool enough to see it from the outside.
One thing about Rome and Italy in general that I did not like is Te amount of vendors on the side of the street that do not leave you alone! It’s crazy how aggressive they are to get you to buy stuff. Especially The Italian men are very forward and aggressive, which we didn’t like, but we learned to just keep walking and not make eye contact.
After the Colosseum we walked around the center of the city and saw the main buildings and ruins and then headed to the Trevi fountain. The Trevi fountain was definitely as beautiful as it looks in pictures. We all made our wish in the fountain, so hopefully they come true.
After seeing the sights we also did some shopping, but more like window shopping. One street in Rome has all the designers, such as: Gucci, Prada and Fendi (none that I can afford). It was still awesome to see all the fashion and designers.
Monday night we made dinner and we wanted to go back to The Trevi Fountain at night. We also had heard that there was a really great bakery with some of the best cannolis in Rome. The bakery was right down the street from or hostel and they were amazing. It was cool too because they had the shells out and then they filled the inside with what you wanted making it fresh! We got our cannolis and walked to the fountain. The fountain was definitely worth it to see at night. It was beautiful with all the lights and it was less crowded.

Day Twelve: Tuesday we decided we wanted to head to the Vatican. Unfortunately the pope only comes out on Sundays so we would jot get to see him, but how do you go to Rome and not go to the holy city! It was about an hour walk there but we got to walk by a bunch of really cool shops and other sights that we hadn’t seen in the city. We were told by girls in our hostel that we should buy a skip the line pass because we would have to wait in line for hours to get in, but we only had to wait not even 20 minutes to get in. We were so glad we didn’t waste our money on that. Unfortunately we didn’t realize that in order to get into the Sistine chapel that you had to go trough the museum, so we didn’t see that. Still it was really cool to actually be in St Peters square and see the basilica. Especially after watching on tv all the stuff with the new pope.
After The Vatican we walked to the Spanish steps and went to let my friend Gen! Gen is studying in Rome for the semester and I was so excited to see her! gen and her roommate met us and took us out to dinner. It was our first authentic Italian meal. I got some type of pasta with mushrooms in it and it was really good. The menus are hard since they are all in Italian, but we figured it out. After catching up at dinner we went to a really good gelato place. This was also our first real gelato place in Italy. Now we got gelato in Spain and early at the Vatican, but those were tourist trap this gelato place was legit.
It was great to see Gen and hear all about Rome and her travels. It was too bad we only had 2 short days in Rome because Rome was definitely a city I would have loved to explore more.

Day Thirteen Wednesday morning we took a train to Florence.  In Florence we were staying with my friend Christina who is studying there for the semester. It was nice to have a break from hostels and hang out with other students our age going through similar experiences. So after some very detailed directions from Christina we found her apartment. Her roommate let us in and gave us a map and told us a few places to visit. Luckily we had great weather all three days we were there because I guess it had been raining in Florence a lot recently.

Our first stop was to get some Italian food and meet up with our otehr roommates Sydney and Sam! Without knowing it we were going to be in Florence at the same time. It was great to see them after being apart for so long. In Ireland we spend so much time together it was weird to be apart from our roommates. Luckily Sam and Sydney had come from Venice and Paris so they gave us some tips. They also were heading to Rome so we gave them so tips as well of what to do and not to do.

For food we went to GustaPannino a well known sandwich shop in town. We all got fresh cold cuts with fresh mozzerella and it was definitely one of the better sandwichs I have ever had. They do not lie when they say Italy has amazing food!

After lunch we headed to the ever famous leather market! Now the leather market consists of streets of booths of vendors selling all leather bags, belts, wallets, jackets and anything else you could think of. It was a little overwhelming at first, but we figured out how to tell what was real and not. We even got good at bargaining with the vendors and ended up getting really good prices on all of our stuff. Lets just say after florence it took a lot of skill to pack our already over packed bags and our new stuff.

After spending what seemed like hours at the leather market we made it back to Christinas to relax for a little bit before going to GustaPizza for dinner. This was supposed to be the best pizza in florence and they don’t even open untill 7pm at night. This pizza place is also owned by the same family as the sandwich shop we went to. We also met up with Sam and Sydney again for dinner and this pizza was unreal. Definitely hands down the best pizza I have ever had.

Now one great thing abotu statying with someone is that we were finally able to do laundry! after traveling for almost 2 weeks it was nice to wash some stuff and clean out or backpacks. unfortunatley in Italy they dont have dryers so we had to air dry all of our stuff.

Day Fourteen: Thursday morning we woke up bright and early and we went off to Pisa for the morning. Pisa is only an hour out of Florence and we really wanted to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I mean how can you go to Italy and not take the typical leaning tower of pisa picture. All aruond the tower is tourist taking the same picture and it is rather amusing to watch people take it.

After sopending the morning in Pisa we returned and Christina took us to a really good gelato shop! thanks to her we learned that the most fresh and real gelato are not the ones with the big mounds in the windows but rather the ones keep in the counter in small metal tubs. At this specific shop they also only serve the fruit flavors that are in season. They had a really great blood orange flavor, which I had never heard of before.

After Gelato we went to see the famous Michealangelo sculpture of David. Now we saw the fake on outside and had every intention of going to the museum to see the real one, but the line was not moving and we decided to try again the next day. We then of course ended up at the leather market again. We also walked by the famous Florence cathederal: The Duomo multiple times and never got a chance to go in.

Thursday night we met up with Chistina and her friends and hiked up to The Piazza Michelangelo which is supposed to be the best place to see the sunset in the whole city. After a lot of stairs we made it and the view was amazing. We all brought bottles of wine (Since wine is cheaper in Italy than water) and sat, talked and watched the sunset. Well unfortunately the one day we went it got a little cloudy by the time the sunset came around so it wasn’t as cool as it was supposed to be. The view was still amazing though because you can see all of Florence.

After the sunset we went out to dinner to an authentic Italian restaurant. We all got pizza and pasta for dinner and it was really good pasta. The menu was all in Italian so it was hard to figure out what was what and there was at least four pages of different pastas.

Day Fifteen:
Friday we decided to sleep in for a bit, which was nice just to relax and not have to get up early and rush around. Christina didn’t have anything planned so she was going to show us around the rest of the day. She told us about this American Diner in town and we decided to go. We were craving any type of American food, so we decided to go. Being able to have a burger in fries (that’s not McDonalds) for the first time in months was great!

After the restaurant Christina took us to Massimos! Now the other night Christina told us about Massimo, who makes leather jackets, but gives almsot a 70 percent discount to students. Students from all over come to Florence to get a jacket from Massimo! Erica really wanted to get one and so did one of Christinas friends, so we were off. Now I did not plan to get a jacket, but once you put one on there is no turning back. Massimo loves Christina too since she has brought him so much business.

After trying on a lot of jackets and much going back in forth I ended buying a jacket…. but hey you know what they say when in Rome ( in this case florence, but close enough!). Since so many us made the pruchse Massimo decided we needed to celebrate and even bought us 4 bottles of champagne! We popped some bottles and celebreated with Massimo and everyone else in the store. He even let us try on a  full fur jacket, that is probably worth more than I even want to know! After this purchase I need to be really tight with my money and it was safe to say we did not go out to dinner that night.

Since it was friday night we all got ready to go out. We decided to go to a cheap Mexican restaurant where you can get really cheap sangria! We ended up having a lot of fun and dancing! We also were told that in diffferent bakerys around Florence if you knock on there window at exactly 1:30 am they serve a secret bakery item. For only a euro you get a croissant with nutella in it! We went and found a secret bakery and it was really cool!

Florence was awesome and it was great to see Christina too bad we didn’t do a lot of sightseeing and instead spent most of our time at the leather market! Also coincidently my friend Hannah from home was in Florence! So I ran into her a couple times throughout the city! It was awesome to see her and now we have been together in three countries in Europe!

Day Sixteen: So we parted ways with Florence and we were off to our last stop in Italy: Venice. After a 2 hour train ride and then another long confusing bus ride we found our hostel. Now our hostel was less like a hostel and more like someones house. Even so the guy was really nice, we had our own room and the beds were wicked comfortable. Our hostel was outside of the actually island of venice, but it was an easy 20 min bus ride to get there. By this point we were exhausted because of all the traveling so we took a nap in the afternoon and did not head into venice until that night.

After we made dinner we headed into venice. Venice is a really unique place since once you get there there are no cars and the only way to get around is either walk or by canal (Water bus, taxi or Gondala). We walked around for a bit as the sunset and found a really awesome Gelato shop! Too bad venice is so confusing we could never find it again.

Day Seventeen:  Sunday was our first full day in Venice we walked around and found San Marco Square, which was packed like crazy with tourists! It was really pretty, but almost impossible to enjoy because of so many people. We decided that we wanted to take the water bus to Murano, an island off of Venice. Murano is known for Murano glass and they have really awesome jewellery. it was awesome to take the water bus there too because we got to see a lot of Venice from the water.

Murano was beautiful and way less crowded. Every shop was super cute with glass and jewlery. Anything you could imagine made out of beautful glass! We shopped around and went in and out of shops for most of the day.

Day Eighteen: Monday morning we woke up and headed into Venice for our last day in italy! We explored venice more and walked through the shops on the Island and sat by the canals and layed in the sun. unfortunately we never did a gondola ride, since they are so expensive we decided not to. Either way venice was an awesome city.

Monday night we took of for Prague! So now I am in Prague until Thursday and will be leaving for Paris then to London! I loved every city in italy and can not wait to hopefully go back! I am currently uploading the pictures I have on my phone from italy to Facebook so check those out there! this trip os going by so fast it is crazy!!

Well peace and love from Prague! Will keep everyone updated soon!

Euro Trip Week One (Portugal and Spain)!

I’ve been traveling already for over a week now and it is crazy how fast it is already going! There have been some ups and downs to this trip so far, but I am loving every minute of it!

Day One: After packing my life away in a backpack and after much debate on what to bring, we headed off to Cork airport. Our flight was through Ryan Air to Faro, Portugal and after much stress that they wouldn’t let me on with my definitely oversized backpack we got on without any problems! Two and a half hours later we landed in Portugal! Stepping out of the airport and seeing palm trees and smelling the ocean was definitely a nice change from Ireland.

We finally found our hostel after getting a little lost in the small city of Faro, but the owner accidentally over booked our room. Thankfully he was very nice and had arranged to have us stay in a hostel nearby and we would still get a private room.

After a long day of traveling we were starving and the only place open nearby was a Mexican Restaurant: Taco Tequila. For really cheap we got margaritas, chips & salsa and quesadillas. The owner even brought us. Over some free tequila shots! This of course became a favorite restaurant in Faro and we visited again during our stay.

Day Two: Waking up and seeing the sun for a change was awesome and of course the first thing we wanted to do was go to the beach! So we put in or bathing suites and figured out what bus to take and we were off. Now it was probably only around 70 degrees if that, but we didn’t care the sun was out and it felt hot to us. All the locals were practically still bundled up for winter. The beach was beautiful, but a little to cold and windy to lay out. None the less we hung out for bit and grabbed some lunch.

After returning from the beach, we decided we wanted to explore the city. faro is not big at all and after walking around the center we saw almost everything. The only thing was that most of the main attractions were old churches and not one of them was open! Which we found odd in the first place plus it was Easter weekend. All the buildings were so old and beautiful.

Day Three Easter Sunday was a little bittersweet I was so thankful to be able to be on such an amazing trip, but it was also so weird not to be spending the day with my family. We had planned on waking up and going to a mass, but like I said before we didn’t know when any masses were being held since we couldn’t get into the churches and we were exhausted. We ended sleeping in all morning plus we lost and hour with day light savings time.

Finding something to do on Easter Sunday was difficult. A lot of places around town were closed and we felt like we had already seen all the sights. We had heard about a boat ride to an island right off the coast, so we decided to do that. We took a nice boat ride to a deserted island and spent the day there. It was a little windy, but when the sun came out it was really beautiful.

Overall Portugal was a beautiful place and faro was a nice little city, but being Easter weekend there was not much to do. Luckily alcohol was really cheap aka 1.50 euro for a beer and fun fact McDonald’s sells beer there!

Day Four Early Monday morning we took a bus from Faro to Seville, Spain. After an almost 4 hour bus ride and another time change we had arrived in Spain. It was a lot warmer than Portugal, which we were wicked excited about. After finding our hostel, which was conveniently located really close to the city center we went off to explore the city. Seville was beautiful!

Of course the first thing we did was find the Dunkin donuts. After being in Ireland for 3 months with no Dunkin that was all we wanted. Although the iced coffee here was more iced espresso and a large was the size of a small at home, we had no complaints. It was definitely worth it and made me miss home just a little bit more.

After getting Dunkin we then went to walk around the city. We didn’t really know what we wanted to see, but we walked around and did some shopping. All the shops had the cutest jewelry and really awesome hand made pottery. Lucky for my bank account I’m living out of a backpack and have no room for anything else.

Although it was a Monday night we decided that we wanted to go out and see the city at night, since it was so nice out. Our hostel told us about a great bar nearby called 84 with sangria for 1.50€ a glass. 84 was a very chill bar and most people sit outside and hang out. Also is Europe is seems that dogs do whatever they want and aren’t required to be on leashes so there were a lot of dogs running around even going in and out of the bar, which we found hilarious. After hanging out there got awhile we stumbled upon a gelato place that was still open and even though we weren’t in Italy we decided to get some. Now this gelato was great, but I am even more excited to try it in Italy!

Day Five: Tuesday we woke up pretty early to give us a full day in the city. We walked through some parks, walked by the river and saw the bull fighting ring. Of course we did more shopping. We also decided to go into the cathedral, which was amazing. the cathedral was huge and the amount of design and detail that went into it was unreal.

Definitely the most breath taking part of Seville was the Plaza De Espana We actually accidentally stumbled upon this, but it was amazing. All along the building they have tiling for each city in Spain, which was really cool. There is also a little moat around the middle where people can rent boats and paddle around. Coincidently enough my friend Christina who is studying abroad in Florence was in Seville the same time as us and we even saw her! It was great to see her and we are staying with her when we visit Florence.

We then visited the alcazar, which is where the king stays when he comes to visit. The alcazar was beautiful and huge! Every room had different tiling and the gardens seemed to be never ending. This was out last stop of the day and I wish we had given ourselves more time because you definitely could spend hours exploring inside.

Later that night out hostel was taking everyone to see some traditional Spanish flamenco dancing. Even though we were exhausted and had to be up early the next morning we decided to go. The concentration and skill of the footwork of the dancers was amazing to watch.

Day Six after only getting five hours of sleep we were up at 5:45 am to catch a train to Granda for the day. After almost missing our train cause Jill printed her confirmation email instead of her ticket we were on our way. In Granda the only thing that we wanted to see was The Alhambra, which is one of the most famous sites in Spain. Since we weren’t staying over night in Granada we had all of our stuff and our heavy back packs. After finding the correct bus to the Alhambra we made it there. Unfortunately we couldn’t buy tickets for the morning and wouldn’t be able to get in until 2pm later that day ( it was around 11). Luckily the Alhambra had free lockers where could store our stuff for the day! We went and got some breakfast/ lunch and hung around until we could go in. Unfortunately the weather was not that great and it was on and off raining the whole time we were there.

The Alhambra is huge and has so many different parts to visit. Originally the Alhambra was built by the Muslims and then was later taken over by Catholics. Currently it is owned by UNESCO as a world heritage site. The view from the Alhambra was beautiful since it was high up in the city. I definitely wish the weather was better, but there was nothing we could do about it.

After over 2 hours in there we collected our bags and headed into the city center. Definitely having our backpacks and not a lot of sleep really put a damper on our moods. As much as we wanted to see the city waking around with our backpacks is no fun. We did walk around a bit and found a really awesome out door market. Although the people working there really didn’t like us walking around with our big bags.

Granda is also known for there really cheap tapas. Tapas are basically little snacks that they serve with drinks. We found a cute traditional tapa bar were we could sit outside. They had really good Sangria and we ordered a couple different tapas to try.

After a long day with our bags we caught an overnight bus to Valencia. We left Granda at 11:30pm and got to Valencia at 7am. After only getting 6 hours of sleep the night before it definitely was not a fun bus ride. We tried to sleep but it’s not that comfortable and someone brought a baby on the bus that wouldn’t stop crying!

Day Seven: After a long bus ride we arrived at our hostel, but we couldn’t check in until 1pm that day. Luckily the let us drop out bags off until we could get into our room. So we went and ventured off into the city. We headed off to the newer part if the city that holds the aquarium and science museum. The architecture of the buildings is beautiful and there is a park all around it that we walked through. We just walked around and enjoyed the nice weather.
After exploring a bit we were really hot and wanted to go the beach! We headed back to the hostel and changed into out bathing suites. It was only a 20 minute bus ride to the beach. The beach was beautiful and with the sun out it was hot! At this point we were also exhausted with no sleep, so we laid out and slept on the beach. Now none of us brought any type of sunscreen and especially in Ireland there is no sun so they don’t have any or it’s crazy expensive. Needless to say we were all fried to the crisp after this beach day. Thank god for aloe but it was nice to be able to lay on the beach and soak up the sun!

Day Eight: After a nice long sleep we woke up to start our day. We knew it was probably going to rain today, but we decided to make the best of the day. We wanted to explore the older part of the city since we say the new part yesterday. We walked around for a bit and saw the famous city landmarks, but it started to down pour, which really made walking around no fun. We did get to see a lot before it rained, but once we were soaked we opted to go back to the hostel to make dinner and wait for our bus to Barcelona.

Day Nine: We arrived in Barcelona late Friday night and Saturday morning we woke up ready to explore the city! The hostel we are staying in provides a really nice free breakfast in the morning even free cappuccinos! At this point we had seen a lot of Spain and as much as I love it here some if the buildings and monuments were starting to look the same. We spent Saturday walking around the main streets of Barcelona and of course we did some shopping.

Saturday night we decided that we wanted to go out in the city, since we heard the night life was amazing. We ended meeting a bunch of American students just like us in our hostel so we all hung out before in the lobby, which ended up being a lot of fun. But after getting ready and by the time we were going to go out it was already almost 2am! So we decided to opt out of the club and just walk to get some food. Now for a city with sub great night life it was almost impossible to find anything open! But with determination Erica and I found a bakery open with some really good croissants and pizza!

Day Ten: After a really late night we were exhausted, so we decided to sleep in a bit and take our time. As our last day in Barcelona and in Spain we decided that we wanted to go to the cathedral in Barcelona that everyone talks about. The Sagrada Familia is the largest cathedral in Spain and they have been building it for almost 100 years! The architecture and design of the building is amazing and so modern!
Also for our last day in Spain we decided to try Paiella, which is a traditional Spanish dish with rice, vegetables and usually shrimp and mussels. For a picky eater I actually really enjoyed it!

After lunch we headed to parc guell which is actually designed by the same guy who designed the cathedral. That park was really pretty and the structures were awesome, but the parc was packed with tourists! Literally couldn’t move and take pictures without so many other people being in them. Either way it was cool and is really high up so had an amazing view of the city!

Sorry this is so long, but that’s all for now! We are off to Rome early in the morning and will be spending the week in Italy! I can’t upload any pictures from my camera, but I have been trying to add pictures from my phone so check those out there!