Assissi, Dublin, London, Venice

Yes, Dear Readers (or casual skimming acquaintances) I realize that it has been an excruciatingly long amount of time since last I wrote. About anything. For this I apologize. It follows that I should also apologize for what will be, logically, an excruciatingly long entry. Ahem.
First came Assissi. The program with which I'm studying took an excursion there a few weeks ago and it blew my mind. For those of you who haven't caught on already Assissi is particularly famous for St. Francis of. Before we went we watched a movie called "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" about his life, which I've been meaning to see for ages anyway. He was the most fascinating figure! Italy is funny, in the fact that since I've been here I've added a fair bit of Catholicism into my giant stew pot that I call faith and St. Francis was a huge addition. Before recently, I knew vaguely of Francis (animals and kids, right? pet blessing?) but had honestly never really thought about him before. He was amazing, though. He gave up all of his wealth and power to commune with nature, be impoverished, care for lepers and the poor and build churches and was even a huge activist against the Crusades (we're talking conferences with Sultans to stop the violence.) Even if you don't buy the whole "two years of stigmata" thing, which, admittedly, I haven't really decided on, this guy was truly amazing. A pacifist, an activist...really someone to look up to. I finally get the whole 'saint' thing. It's something for humans to strive for. Anyway, we went to Assissi, up mountains, driving by a multitude of old medieval castles, until we got there. The main focus of the town is San Francesco's Basilica. The building is beautiful, of course, but the inside was phenomenal. Every square inch from floor to ceiling was decorated in beautiful frescoes detailing Francis' life, or stories from the Bible. And in the very basement, is the corpse of St. Francis himself, just as he requested to be, "buried in new earth." The whole place had this hallowed nature to it. Many of the churches in Italy feel that way, but especially here. People travel from around the world to pray at the body of St. Francis and it felt like all their energies converged into this basilica, filling us all with a deep sense of awe and wonder. Saint Claire's church was lovely as well, though more simple, and it contained the church at which the original Franciscan monks used to worship as well as the cross which inspired St. Francis to do all the things he did. It was magnetic, the way we were drawn to it.
Besides feeling spiritually stimulated, Assissi also held the delightful bonus of having a multitude of monks and nuns, everywhere. There was Macchismo Monk (on a vespa,) Northwest Monk (with a Northface backpack and Birkenstocks,) Eating-Gelato-From-A-Cone Nun (with an admonishing, "I know you're taking a picture of me air) and, my personal favorite, Nun-Having-Fun (swinging on a swing, with tourists on her lap taking pictures!) Sounds too whimsical to be true? I would never lie about Nuns Having Fun.
The week or so that followed, I don't really remember, but that generally indicates that nothing particularly exciting happened, so it's just as well.
Now: Holiday (as the Irish and English folks call it)
Our Holiday started out with several night trains, a three hour layover from 1am to 3 am in what is lovingly dubbed "the armpit of Italy" and, finally a plane into Dublin. We took a bus from the airport, (by the end of our trip we had deduced that apparently airports are always at least 40 minutes away from anything interesting) and walked down O'Donnell street as happy as clams. We could speak English here! HOORAY! That's not to say we didn't forget every now and then and say, "scusi" or "gratzie" with weird looks in response, but we definitely did not have to try so hard here! We looked at the statues lining the streets, listened to the incredibly lovely accents and found our way to the Litton Lane Hostel. The interesting thing about Litton Lane is that it was the recording studio of U2, Van Morrison, The Cranberries, Sinead O'Connor (Ireland LOVES Sinead) and various other bands. The walls were all decorated with paintings in a pop-art style of musicians, especially those who had recorded there. There were two big scary paintings of Sinead. Nothing compares to me, apparently. We lived on the Bono and Bowie floor. Delightful! Since we'd been up all night travelling we took a nap and got up right at dusk. We began to explore Dublin, and crossed the Lithee River, with all its monuments lit up with lights of green and blue and it swept us off our feet. It was magical, even if the Lithee, judging by its mucky contents, does appear to have a nasty habit of swallowing bikes. We found a local pub "O'Shea's," which we would later dub our place, and went for a traditional Irish dinner. We had soup or stew, which was hearty and warmed us right up, apple pie, which is not at all like American apple pie and not something I would reccommend, and, of course, our very first Irish pints of Guinness. There was some live tradition Irish music later, which we enjoyed (the Irish call it a trad sesh, or sesh, or session.) Then we met some rowdy but endearing British men who had flown to Ireland for a stagdo (bacherlor party.) They could not stop going on and on about how amazing our accents were or how lovely and straight our teeth were. One of them explained to us that his teeth were "mingink" which apparently means, really bad teeth. They made us say phrases like "bachelor party" over and over again and quite simply thought we were the cat's pajamas and danced with us to the trad sess. Our first time being liked because we're Americans! We then went to another pub and heard an Irish guitar play cover famous songs. It was an excellent first night, all in all. Over our time in Dublin we explored Phoenix park, the biggest park in Europe, with its big autumn-colored trees (which we don't have in Italy, damn you evergreen olive trees,) rolling hills, red-headed children playing,trails, bikers, monuments, and plinths. It was beautiful, a lot like Central Park, actually. There was a huge, somewhat phallic giant plinth erected (pun may or may not be intended) for Waterloo, which we climbed and admired. My favorite part, though, was the lyrics to "Wonderwall" by Oasis, which someone had unassumingly graffitied in a small area. It must be the starving artist in me. We saw Dublin castle...which was big and gorgeous, and all signs point to the fact that it's been turned into offices...sadly. The tourism center was an old Anglican church with gorgeous architecture...But since Episcopalians are notoriously poor they had to sell it to the state. Jenny and I came across a beautiful Catholic church, while Brooke and Vanessa were on tour in the Guinness factory (I saw the outside, and certainly tasted its wares but was too poor for the actual tour) and while trying to look at the artwork, we sort of stumbled in on mass. It was a lovely service, and a short one, somewhat hard to understand because the lectors had thick Irish accents and were about 9000000 years old, but nice all the same. We were certainly the only ones there under 65, and we slipped out during Communion seeing as neither of us are confirmed Catholics. It was a nice experience though. We also went to a dance club one night, and I met an Irish guy who liked Death Cab so we had a good conversation about music. He was jealous of my living near Seattle...IRONY! While we were in Dublin, we also took a day-trip to Howth, (pronounced HOEtt as in goat,) a little fishing village nearby, not unlike Gig Harbor...only a little less kitschy. It was foggy, and we were surrounded by huge green rocky cliffs and seagulls and seals and rocky shores and everything Roan Inish said Ireland should be. We ate these giant tasty beautiful buns (we would call them cupcakes) and looked at all the Irish children, most of whom seemed to be in matching outfits. We also took a trek up to an old beautiful church, which ended up being built in the 12th century and restored in the 14th. It was now an old old graveyard. Graveyards, especially interesting ones, are always fascinating, however morbid that my sound, and it was really cool to look around. Then I started to get sick, and a girl in our Hostel who had been keeping us awake with her boyfriend every night, and who broke about every hostel rule woke me up four separate times, both with shaking and shouting telling me to "STOP SNORING!" I kid you not. I had a tiny wheeze because I was sick and this girl goes mental. BAH. The next day the girls left for Galway, and I spent a feverish last night in the hostel alone. I got up at 3 in the morning and started my journey to London. I finally arrived in Melanie's area at noon. It was so good to see her, we had so much fun. I didn't do a lot of touristy stuff, which was actually kind of nice, I felt like I got more of a real taste of life there. But I did see the gay district, chinatown, the theatre district, and one of the most gorgeous views of my life. At dusk, Melanie took me to a place where I could see Big Ben and Parliament (look kids!) and the bridge from Harry Potter 6 and an industrial area and the Theatre and the London Eye. It was gorgeous. Again with the sparkling. Nearby there was also a skatepark covered inch to inch in graffiti...another favorite of mine. We ate Italian food that night and I spoke with the owner in Italian, which was fun. Afterwards we went to this old Stables that they'd turned into a venue and saw some bands play, after which it turned into a club where we danced with an adorable, yet intoxicated gay couple for a while. From the hours of 1 to 3 AM we attempted to get busses back to Richmond (the area of London where Mel lives, and where her school, which is gorgeous and fascinating and looks like a castle, is.) We took a night bus (no 'K' see, or I would have just stuck out my wand arm) and got in around 4. We had an interesting conversation with a man sitting behind us, who said I had a unique speaking pattern and he thought I would become a famous writer because of it. I told him if I did I would dedicate my first book to him. "To London, and the dear fellow on the Night Bus to Richmond." The next day I went back to Ireland, at this point I am getting very sick of planes and still have one more to take, where the girls and I had a hotel literally in the airport parking lot. We still weren't feeling well, so we mostly soaked up as much English-speaking TV as we could, before we headed back to Italy in the morning. We left early early, took our last plane (YES) and landed in Venice. Venice was a most interesting place. It's true, everything there is on the river, water taxis, gondolas, buildings. It's very fascinating and has some gorgeous architecture, boats, STRIPEY SHIRTED GONDOLA men, intricate masks, each with their own personality, light and lovely blown glass and kitties (including one who looked like a short-haired, Italian, straight-eyed, less cute Mark Cohen.) It's also very touristy, very dirty, very expensive, and a VERY long train ride from Macerata. Since I still felt sick, Brooke and I took an early train home that day. We had a stimulating political conversation in Italish with some trainy locals and finished the night in our own beds. It was a truly brilliant holiday...even if I may have bronichitis.