Murralcat Chat: My Month in Pictures - Part 1 (Paris, Copenhagen, & Edinburgh)

Hi everyone! Can't believe it's been so long since my last post! Guess that means I'm keeping busy though, right? Anyway, I wanted to take a few minutes to update you all on the trips I've been lucky enough to go on in the last few weeks.

As I mentioned in my last post, I was in Paris for Valentine's Day weekend. To my surprise, the city didn't have quite as much of a romantic feel as I expected. In any event, it was fun to travel to a new place with new friends! I went with Sara, who also came to Galway through API, and Sara's friend Laina, who is studying in Dublin for the semester. We packed a lot into the short amount of time we had there - we saw the Eiffel Tower lit up at night, explored our surroundings on our way to finding a Ferris wheel that overlooked the city, went to a fancy dinner, climbed the Eiffel Tower the next morning, saw the Lock Bridge, explored the Louvre (and saw Mona Lisa of course), in addition to figuring out the Metro system and eating some delicious gelato (thank you to my SMC classmate Peter, who's studying in France this semester, for the recommendation!). Here are some of my favorite pictures from the trip:

One of the first things I saw once we left our hostel to go
explore - it of course reminded me of Saint Mike's!

Me in front of the beautiful Eiffel Tower!

A cool picture of the Tower's shadow from when we rode to the top!

The following weekend, I traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark with my friends and SMC bloggers Alex and Lauren. Unfortunately, many of the things we had planned didn't actually work out (the market we wanted to go to doesn't run in February, we somehow misread the times that tours from City Hall left, etc.). However, we still managed to have a ton of fun simply walking through the streets of Copenhagen and appreciating the beautiful architecture and each other's company. Alex has a wonderful European guidebook that gave us some restaurant recommendations. We even got to meet up with Bizzy, who goes to SMC and is studying in Copenhagen for the semester. I had to leave a bit early, but after I left, Alex and Lauren got to meet up with another girl named Lauren, who is also studying there. Getting recommendations from and meeting up with people from Saint Mike's this semester has helped take my SMC community to a whole new level, and I'm absolutely loving it!

From left to right: me, Alex, and Lauren

A square directly in front of the delicious sandwich place we ate at!

A little piece of home, all the way across the ocean :)

The following weekend, I went to Edinburgh, Scotland with API. It was awesome to be able to go on a trip that didn't require any planning on my part! Because Alex is also in Ireland through API, we were actually on the same trip. I got to see some of the people from her program who I had met during my API visit to Dublin in early February. Being the Harry Potter nerd that I am, my favorite part of the weekend was the Harry Potter tour of the city I got to go on. Before the tour, I stopped by The Elephant House, which is a cafe where J.K. Rowling spent a lot of time writing some of the Harry Potter books. The bathroom walls are covered with book/movie quotes and messages of love and appreciation for the stories. It was absolutely amazing! The tour itself was a lot of fun and highlighted many of the places where J.K. Rowling got some of her inspiration for the books - including gravestones with Professor McGonagall and Tom Riddle's names, a castle that looks a lot like Hogwarts, and Victoria Street, which looks a bit like Diagon Alley. In addition to the tour, I got to tour Mary King's Close, an underground area of Edinburgh that was inhabited by members of the lower class in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Edinburgh Castle, and explore the city center - which included a visit to the market! At the market I tried gluten free and dairy free chocolate, which turned out to be way more delicious than I expected! Before heading back to Ireland, I also got to tour the Royal Yacht Britannia. Everything was so luxurious - I think I could handle living at sea for a few months!