Tag: Heritage

Let’s continue on our journey through Western Europe. You are now arriving in Dublin, Ireland! Please keep your seatbelts fastened until the aircraft has come to a complete stop. We hope you enjoyed your flight. Welcome to Ireland!

Ireland, every inch of Ireland, is an overflowing flower pot.

All the streets, in all the towns we went in Ireland, embrace the rains and plant vibrantly colored flowers on buildings, sidewalks, and in every nook and cranny they can, just to brighten up your day. But, no matter how vibrant, all the beautiful flowers in the world couldn’t compare to seeing my mom and Aunt Monica for the first time in 10 months! Before Jason and I left we made a plan to meet with my mom in Ireland sometime in 2017. In February, it was decided we’d do a week long tour from Dublin to Shannon with Aunt Monica, our resident photographer and ever cheerful compadre. Ireland, unlike Germany, is a place where I really do hold heritage and it was fun to see my mom’s maiden name in various locations throughout the country.

The tour was jam packed and we always felt like we were on the move, so I’m very grateful we schedule a day before and after to chill out together before moving on. Seeing the Cliffs of Moher was a check off the old bucket list, as was having a Guinness and listening to Irish music in a poorly lit pub. Dirty old town. It’s amazing how much of one country you can see in a little more than a week. Next time, we’ll move at our own pace, and revisit all little spots we fell in love with.

Aberdeenshire, Scotland, is home.

Before leaving Ireland I was feeling pretty stressed out. We’d been traveling for so bloody long and felt drained, lonely, and done. In December of 2016, a women in Scotland reached out to us on WorkAway and asked if we’d like to stay with them over the summer of 2017. We were in the process of looking for a place to work/live in Australia, so work-trade was already top of mind. I reviewed the profile and thought it felt like a great fit for us, so I said yes and we planned the entirety of our time in Europe around being in Scotland for mid-July through early August. As the time approached to do our WorkAway I felt very resistant to going, but we’d made a commitment so go we went.

After spending two days in Glasgow, mostly getting Jason a raincoat, we took a bus up the Scottish countryside all the way to the tip top of the country, by the North Sea. There, we were greeted by Mike, one of our hosts for the next three weeks. Him and Rosie have a smallholding operation with a variety of animals, garden products, and lots of land to manage. They share the property with Rosie’s dad, a charming and energetic 90 something year old man with early stages Alzheimer’s, and their four dogs: Jasper, Maddie, Sprout, and Ruby. There’s also Raffles and Harry, the donkeys, Tino and Emily, the unique sheep, and Huey, Dewy, and Lewy, the more common sheep, plus a boatload of chickens.

Rosie and Mike provided more than just a place to stay and meals to eat during our Scottish days — they became lifelong friends of Jason and myself. They love having a big group of people around their table for meals, sharing stories and jokes. They love to joke and Mike has the best sense of humor. Generally, they have four WorkAways at a time living in their home. This meant, for Jason and I, that we met four new friends from the world over in addition to our hosts. Jodie is an early 50’s “retired” dentist from Colorado, traveling with a mission to care for animals and see the world. Vicki is a nurse from Australia who had been living in the UK for years, and decided she needed a break, so she quit her job and started working on the farm. Laura is training to be a vet and is a spunky Spaniard. She was looking to improve her English skills and so was Steffi, a German economist turned school teacher. These last two came at the same time and formed a tight bond, which Jason and I enjoyed being part of as well.

Jason celebrated his birthday while we were in Scotland and I made him a terrible cake. Now that I’m obsessed with the Great British Bake Off I’m even more embarrassed with myself! No one seemed to mind though and the tacos Jason and I made together were a smashing hit! Rosie and I formed a tight bond. We have some unique  similarities and she is so exceptional at being a great listener and asker of important questions. I miss her very much.

While I’d love to tell you more about our time in Scotland, I’ll wrap it up with a little musing that sums up how it felt to go:

It’s a great honor to be heartbroken
It’s a privilege to give your heart away
To love without limits
To give while knowing it’s over too soon
A blessing and a curse

Barcelona, Spain, is architecture alive.

Barcelona is a stamped out grid shaped city, which you can clearly see from above, but in the streets it doesn’t feel as sterile as that sounds. In fact, one particular architect helped shape much of Barcelona’s unique structure, Gaudi. Inspired by both God and nature, Gaudi’s work is still under construction today at La Sagrada Familia, a church that will take 145 years in total to construct. We didn’t think we’d be able to visit after stopping by on Thursday and being told tickets weren’t available till Sunday, but we were able to grab two and step inside this masterpiece.

Tapas — every meal should be tapas. Small, sharable, bite-sized snacks eaten with an alcoholic beverage. They’re everywhere in Barcelona. Other enviable cultural traits include relaxed work and sleeping schedules. Siestas are real and alive in Spain, making for a happier populous. Having a beach in the city isn’t too shabby either. It was Jason and my first topless beach experience and, my goodness, was it eye-opening!

Barcelona has the world’s greatest street art, in my humble opinion. As you have most likely noticed, it’s a hobby of mine to photograph street art in every city I go. The caliber and abundance of Barcelona’s street art is rivaled by none other.

As most of you know, Barcelona suffered a tragic terrorist attack four days after we left. What you most likely didn’t know is the day after the attacks La Rambla, where the attacker plowed his car into a group of people, overflowed with even more individuals that ever thought possible. La Rambla is the main tourist street in Barcelona and they did not let terrorism win after the deadly attack took place. My heart goes out to Spain.

Bordeaux, France, is rosé.

Bordeaux is a place I felt necessary to visit so that I could learn to better appreciate wine. I realize saying this is akin to saying, “I went to the bakery to appreciate cookies and cakes.” Unless you’re broken, you should appreciate some cookies and cakes and, unless my tastebuds don’t work, I’ll appreciate wine in Bordeaux. While red wine isn’t my thing, rosé is! In the states, rosé seems to be a lesser wine, but not so in most of Europe and especially not in France. God bless the French, for all of their wines range from perfectly palatable to downright mind blowing.

Bordeaux isn’t solely about wine, it’s also about food. French food. Do you know who created fine dining? The French. Hate them for whatever jealous reasons you may have, but the French know how to eat, drink, and be alive. While not every meal was the greatest, we did have some unbelievable food throughout France. Like mussels and escargot and pork belly and steak tartar… Sadly, because we went in August, the best restaurants were closed so their chefs could go on vacation. Good for them, poor for us, but that just gives us yet another reason to return.

We found a great cooperative space in Bordeaux. It had workspaces for various professions, from offices to auto mechanics, and included a restaurant and art space. There was an art installation about cruelty to animals that really hit home. All of the street art here was strikingly well done! Heaven!

Paris, France, is pure romance.

Ending our trip in Paris always felt like the right decision. Cities the entire world over want to be Paris. They sell memorabilia that resembles Paris. People wear hats and shirts with Paris sparkled all over them, with no regard to whether the wearer has visited or not. Nowhere comes close to the fan fair Paris gets. It’s the most iconic city in the world, with NYC following close behind. We had to visit. Plus, Paris had the best flight deal home, so it won by default.

Paris is a city you have to cram everything into because there are endless possibilities. While we were only in Paris four days, one of which was our travel day back to the US so we did nothing but get lunch, we kept busy. We visited the Louvre, the Catacombs, Notre-Dame, Moulin Rouge, Père Lachaise, the Arc de Triomphe, Champs-Elysee, and of course, the Eiffel Tower. All in three days.

My one request for Paris was the Catacombs. Paris has miles of hidden underground tunnels connecting the streets of the ancient city.  A portion of these tunnels are home to millions of skeletal remains. These skeletons are arranged in delicate patterns, honoring the dead, and serving as a tour of a different time. The walls of the catacombs are lined with bible verses and French phrases and poetry, which I couldn’t read very well but could feel their sentiments of mourning and revere. In a similar vein, Jason wanted to see Jim Morrison’s grave at Père Lachaise cemetery, since it has that rockstar appeal. In fact, several famous people are buried here and many of the gravesites are intricately decorated, making for a great walking spot.

We spent seven hours in total in the Louvre, a museum I was ambivalent about going to at first. Who doesn’t want to go to the Louvre?! My main concern is I didn’t care about the Mona Lisa (Ah. Shocking!). It’s fine, but it’s a great deal of hype. Jason put it best, “It’s a nice painting.” In reality, the Louvre is far more than a single painting. It’s art from all over the world and in our seven hours we only saw about 20% of the museum. 10/10 would go again and try to see another 20% or so.

While it seems like we couldn’t fit anything else into our time in Paris, we were able to check one more box off of our collective bucket lists. After visiting the Eiffel tower, Jason insisted we head to Champs-Elysee, the main shopping street of Paris. As we walked, his palms were very sweaty. We were trying to check in for our flight back home and I wasn’t sure if he was nervous about that or something else… After a few moments Jason tells me we’re going ring shopping. OK, let’s do this!

When you’ve been with someone for 4.5 years, you don’t just get engaged on a whim. At least, Jason and I don’t. We spend months/years talking about it, deciding what our lives will look like, and ensuring we both have a place in our hearts and homes for one another.  So, after about an hour of completely unsuccessful ring shopping, something we’d actually never done before, I told him let’s try at home. Ring shopping is something that I now see often happens over weeks, not minutes. We’re both loathful shoppers, so the whole process drained us, but we gave it the old college try.

Later that night, after drinking my first real glass of champagne and dining on French bread paired with cured meats and cheeses, we were walking along the waterfront gazing up at the Eiffel Tower as it brilliantly sparkled. Jason takes the ring I wear everyday from my finger, ensures he sets the lighting just right, drops to one knee, and asks me to marry him. I said yes.

The next day we headed home. Home to America at least. We flew into NYC first and met up with Jason’s parents. These two adorable people rented us a hotel room, brought us celebratory bubbly, fully equipped with glasses and ice, and bought us pizza. While we were away, Jason’s mother made a chainlink out of paper that marked the date and number of days we were away. It has 342 links in total, one for each day we were gone. They’re some of the most kind and thoughtful people in the world.

That’s it. I have one more final recap to post, then the blog comes to a close. I hope you enjoyed our trip as much as we did!