okay, y’all. i’m just going to go ahead and apologize for
the delay in this blog post.. it’s been a long time coming. i haven’t posted all year (ba dum, tsss) and i have no
excuse except for the fact that i traveled for 20 days straight over the holidays
and couldn’t really sit down at a random computer to start blogging. soo…
happy new year! it’s 2014!! i can’t believe it.. i feel like
new year’s 2013 was just like 6 weeks ago… i really need to get my internal
calendar sorted. i’ve been out of the country for over 4 months, and i’ll be
home just over 4 months from now! ay caramba.
in the interest of not making this post a total “captain’s
log” of my travels, i give you a bridget jones version of my holiday season
saga. (if you want the longer version, feel free to read below!)
days elapsed: 20
countries visited: 3
cities visited: 9
friends visited: 14
friends made: 16
modes of transportation used: plane (4), train (4), bus
(11), car (many)
party games played: 4
presents: given – 6 // received – 5
cups of tea consumed: innumerable
most interesting experience: england – singing christmas
carols on the train to
cambridge with a bunch of mildly-intoxicated football
hooligans //
ireland – partying until nearly dawn with a different bunch of
slightly-more-than-mildly-intoxicated couchsurfing buddies
okay, that’s enough of that. here’s the longer version!
basically, i spent the first week of my break (well, tuesday
through saturday) getting to the
place where i’d be spending christmas – six cities in six days, and it was a
whirlwind. excideuil, bordeaux, nantes, dublin, london, cambridge! i had a
blast visiting friends in each of my stops along the way – several of whom i
hadn’t seen since 2011! crazy! the highlight of that week was probably my pit
stop in london. i hung out with my first-ever couchsurfing host, tristan, and
got to see the beauty that is london at christmas. plus, i finally got my
picture at platform 9 3/4. so, i got that going for me.
arriving in cambridge was a welcomed respite – i was really
looking forward to sleeping in the same bed for more than one night! i spent
the week with two dear friends from home – cameron and carly. if you’ve been
following this blog for a while, you might remember them from my time in
scotland back in september! they spent this fall semester in cambridge as a
part of a seminary exchange program between westcott house in cambridge and
sewanee, back in tennessee. we visited several of the major colleges in town,
decorated our makeshift christmas tree, attended multiple anglican masses
(including christmas eve midnight mass and christmas morning mass, a scant 8
hours apart), cooked several lovely meals, shopped a little, and celebrated our
first christmas away from home, together as friends abroad. it was a wonderful
way to enjoy the holiday – i was so grateful to have a little bit of home with
me here in europe! :)
the next week and a half of my vacation was spent in varying
parts of ireland. i moved around so much in the first few days! one night in
dublin, two nights in cork, one night in galway, and then i finally landed in
clare for new year’s! the weekend in cork was an absolute blast – one of the
best couchsurfing experiences i’ve had to date. my host and his friends were
the epitome of hospitality and i felt right at home from the very beginning. i
mean.. i was jokingly (but maybe not?) invited to their friend’s wedding in
brazil next summer after having been at the house for like 6 hours. typical. a
weekend was not long enough in cork; i can’t wait to go back and explore the city
a little more! a quick pit stop in galway allowed me to visit with my friend
emma and her family before i headed back down to clare to relax for a few days
at my friend shane’s house. we essentially had a 4 day house party, with
varying groups of friends coming to hang out each night! i always love getting
to spend time in that house – it’s so wonderful to be in a family environment!
warms the soul. and our new year’s eve was the perfect mix of relaxing and
entertaining – and by that, i mean i got to wear comfy clothes and not worry
about braving the elements outside, while still partying it up with my friends!
my last night in ireland was spent in wonderful company, wandering around
dublin and soaking in that fantastic irish charm. this break really reinforced
my desire to move to ireland in the very near future.. might have even started
researching grad school options! shh, don’t tell my parents.
i finally, finally made it back home to my little village on
sunday, after spending the night in bordeaux after my flight. living in a place
with no train station (or even bus access on the weekends) makes getting in and
out fairly difficult, but thankfully i have friends at each step in the journey
that make traveling much more enjoyable! now that i’m home and can reflect on
this break, i have to admit.. i probably overdid it a little bit. my life here
in excideuil is so relaxing and laid-back that my vacations are actually more
demanding and stressful than my work weeks! next break, i’m going to focus on
one country (morocco!!) in the hopes of giving myself more time to enjoy fewer
places. and i might even take a week off from travel planning before i launch
myself into that new endeavor! vacationing is hard work, y’all.
i hope that you had a wonderful holiday season, and that
2014 brings you all the happiness and adventure that you can imagine! wander
on, my friends!
*as always, if you’d like to see pictures from this post,
just click here (starting at #29)!*
