Tag Archives: Architecture

Apr24

My Irish Spring – A walkabout, A date to the coast, and The Dublin Castle (Friday)

Posted on by
Standard

Wow… How long has it been since I’ve done an international trip? How much longer since I’ve gone international solo?

Let’s see. The last international trip was to Scotland, right before the Pandemic hit. When I had that really bad flu… right before the Pandemic. With COVID. That presents sort of like a flu. That I’ve somehow avoided getting, as if I’d already gotten it and gained an immunity… Okay we’re not going down that road the last time I went abroad was January 2020. Three years and change.

The last time I went on a solo international trip? Well, that’d be New Zealand, back in 2012. 11 years.

It’s high time I explored.


I got accepted to Trinity College’s MBA program back in November, and accepted the offer that same month… though I delayed admission until 2024, to give me some time to finish up in Oregon and save up a bit more money. While talking to the admissions officer though, I learned about a Business forum put on by Trinity in March – a perfect opportunity for me to stretch my international adventure legs and see if Dublin would make a good home for a year or three!

I planned, I packed, and I set off on my first solo international trip in over 10 years…

(Please note that these are my raw notes from the trip. I’m proofreading them for obvious mistakes… but they’re still short-hand. Because life is busy, and blogs don’t need to be perfectly edited.)


Friday, 10-Mar-2023



I had a date today!

A while back, I’d moved my dating profile over to Dublin in an attempt to meet people and hear some stories and info from the locals. I was pretty clear about where I lived, and how long I’d be in town, and had some great chats with a few very interesting folks… though, interestingly, I didn’t end up chatting with too many native Irish. But I did chat with quite a few folks going to Trinity, one of whom was actually from Boston originally!

I’m getting ahead of myself – I started the day nice and early with breakfast at a bookshop.



It’s a nice bookshop, but not quite as homey as a used book store, and not nearly as extensive as Powell’s… Somethings, Oregon takes the cake with, no doubt. While not a record setting store, it was quite lovely and offered up an excellent breakfast, so I wasn’t complaining by any stretch of the imagination. I ate, read a bit, and did some shopping.

I wandered, made good use of the morning, and soon enough found myself meeting with with Katherine – a woman from Boston who’d been studying in Europe since ~2011! She’d started with her Masters in Vienna, and is almost done with her PhD here in Dublin, studying at the same College I’m looking at. We met up for seafood at an excellent restaurant literally 100yards from my apartment, where I got to try out my first serving of Fish and Chips!

They were delicious, if you were curious.

We chatted, she filled me in on a ton of neat little tidbits about both Dublin and Vienna, and then we headed onward to the Coast, via my first train ride in Ireland! First public transit! Heck yeah!



It was lovely, and definitely a good sign about whether I’d enjoy living in Ireland. Folks were polite, the gates were efficient, and buying a ticket barely took any time at all. There was even a guy proactively spreading salt, in preparation for a possible freeze over the next day or two.

That’s an interesting thing I’ve noticed, here in Dublin – There’s a lot of people working. Places are approximately equally priced to the States (food is a bit cheaper, actually), but there seems to be more staff at any location. The coffee shop I’m writing this in has four baristas, for example, whereas in the States there’d be one or two at most.


Katherine and I chatted as we walked, with her telling me interesting stories about moving around the world, and the varying pieces of knowledge that she’d picked up in Dublin while working on her dissertation. I shared insights about how life in the States has been going, and told her about some of the fun parts of my work in industry, giving her a sense into the corporate life that I lead in the States.

We sat by the water, spent some time chatting with a few cold-water swimmers, and made our way back to where she’d left her bike. Another good note about Dublin – I’ve seen TONS of bikes around! It’s definitely a bike-friendly city, no doubt.

After Katherine headed out, I wasn’t quite feeling ready to settle in for the evening yet… so I let my feet take the lead and wandered a bit. I found myself walking through Dublin Castle (still in use, it seems!), through a few gardens, and into the sunset. A stop at a grocery found my dinner, which I cooked up back at the apartment before turning in for the evening.


Apr13

Christmas in Italy – Exploring and wandering through Rome

Posted on by
Standard
Christmas in Italy – Exploring and wandering through Rome

In keeping with the tradition of adventure, Sarah and I went on a big trip for Christmas and New Years!

This year, we met up with Sarah’s family in Italy, traveling to Rome and Florence; not quite a perfect midpoint for everyone, but it was close enough. And, also, you know. Rome. Florence. Amazing!

Please forgive me for some of these being a bit out of order… the posts are organized somewhat chronologically… but also organized by theme and location.  Some may not be exactly in chronological order, so for reference please see the initial summary post, which has a complete day-by-day, blow-by-blow account of the adventure.

 

Various days, between 22-Dec and 27-Dec – Exploring Rome, and the outdoor sculptures

Rome is huge.

I mean, you already knew that. But take how huge you think it is, and then make it huger. Yes, that’s a word now.

I mean, Rome isn’t the size of LA (I think), but it’s just so… dense. There’s so much to see, and so much to do. More amazing food than you could eat in a year, or in ten years. More beautiful sculptures and sconces and buildings and, and, and…

It’s impressive, let’s just leave it at that.

I wrote up some pretty concise posts about a lot of specific places that we visited earlier, but there were a lot of spots that we simply saw in passing, or stopped in for dinner at. They didn’t really lend themselves to inclusion in other posts, so I’m going to put a few of them down here. Think of this as a compilation of short stories from Rome?

Fancy dinner out, 26-Dec

One of Greta’s coworkers was unexpectedly in town, and invited us out to dinner at a restaurant that he knew nearby. Since we’d planned on doing a fancy dinner out on the town anyways, this was a perfect way to get an insiders scoop on where to go. We dressed ourselves in our finery, and headed out for an especially excellent meal (as if every other meal wasn’t also exceptional!)

The ambiance was more casual than I think we expected, but it fit in well with the expectation of Italian eating. I could see a college student bringing their Grandma here, or the Prime Minister entertaining a foreign dignitary.

The food…

Starter: The whole table split a plate or roasted artichokes, half cooked the traditional Roman-style, and the other half cooked Judaean-Style

Pasta Course: Sarah and I split a plate of gnocchi, topped with cheese and cooked almost like a crem bruilee

Main Course: The table shared a roast spring lamb with rosemary

Dessert: Chocolate cake with pear, and a tiramisu

Wine: Sparkling wine to start, followed by a few bottles of house red with the main course

Street Votives

Something I’d never seen before, but in Rome there’s constant reminders of Christianity. I mean, yes of course there’s the uncountable churches, but there are also a ton of small devotionals, inlaid into the walls along the streets. Some of these look recent and cared for, and some look like they’ve been undisturbed since the 1700s. They’re not hugely obvious or confrontational, but if you take the time to notice they appear nearly every block.

Obelisks

Across the city, we saw multiple tall stone Obelisks. To me, they looked almost Egyptian, but I learned from Sarah and Bill that they were basically storybooks, similar to the triumphal arches in design. They’d tell a story, winding around the tower, of some major event such as a major military conquest or annexation.

But, as time went on, ideals changed. Where the obelisks originally had statues of emperors or generals, the Church replaced them with saints and effigies of Jesus. Now, most of them will have a haloed figure at the top, crowning the ancient stories of Rome.

Man, I don’t know. Just glorious architecture.

Seriously, the architecture in Rome was beautiful. So many amazing stone buildings, crawling with ivy and flowers. Interior courtyards, and even small sewer inlays. Instead of the street drains, they’d have carved stone features. Seriously amazing.

Shopping in Rome

Whoof. This one. On our last day in Rome, we had the morning unbooked – since we’d be getting on a train in the early afternoon, we didn’t want to rush any sightseeing. Instead, we earmarked the day for a bit of fashion…

And man, fashion is expensive. My goal was a nice Italian sportcoat, and I’m not lying when I say that I found multiple beautiful ones, that I would have loved to take home. Thankfully, common sense prevailed… or more accurately, the aneurysm that I had when they showed me the price protected me. Not that they weren’t amazing, and probably worth it… and the sales people were definitely willing to negotiate… but not down into the low triple digits, unfortunately.

Aside from fashion, Rome is also known for Art… thankfully for us, since Sarah had been whipping through the supplies that she’d brought with her from the States. This was Rome, so finding an art supply store wasn’t any sort of challenge… the challenge came from trying to find the specific type of paper she needed, out of the uncountable different options available. But again we prevailed, and escaped with exactly the type of paper she needed.