After arriving back in the states I spent a little while at my parent’s house in Central California. It was so lovely to see them and talk about all the things I did and saw in Europe, but since they follow this blog they were pretty caught up with everything. My family is now in full gear wedding mode, as my sister is getting hitched in July! Hannah and her fiance both live in Oregon, but they are planning on getting married on the central coast so my parents home is being used as kind of a holding area for all sorts of weddingy and crafty sort of stuff until then.

I also got to spend a couple days in Oregon hanging out with Hannah and Arthur (http://arthurhitchcock.tumblr.com/) in the coastal town of Coos Bay where they both temporarily reside. My sister is probably the best person I know, so when she got engaged last fall to someone I had never met I was more than a little skeptical. Sure she’d known him for years, but they started dating after I moved to a different state, so Id never met him.  It wasnt until I actually got to talk to Arthur did he get my stamp of approval. As it turned out, hes kind of an awesome guy. He’s intelligent, articulate, kind, and best of all balances out my sister. He’s also had a whirlwind of a growing up experience and despite his age, he has done a lot of really really great things. I foresee him making a rad addition to my family.

The video above is a documentary by Adam Sjoberg (http://www.adamsjoberg.com) about Arthur’s 6 month journey last year when he walked across the entire United States. Its only about 15 minutes long, so if you have time and want to see how cool my soon to be bother is, you should definitely check it out.

I spent my last two full days in Ireland with my very wonderful second-cousin-twice-removed Ted.

I had never met Ted until just the other day, and up until a couple months ago I didn’t even know he existed. Specifically that is, because I knew I had some Irish relatives. It was all very vague though. Not so any more! Ted and his sweet wife Mary were not only gracious enough to host me for a couple nights, but Ted also gave me a very interesting lesson in our family history. He has put countless hours into studying genealogy, reading old letters, doing field research, and inputting dozens and dozens of names from the family bible into a family tree program on his computer. From this program I was able to see how I was specifically related to him as well as see the names of my multi-great grandparents as well as which was the first to emigrate from Ireland. I now have an actual copy of my family tree in addition to hundreds of names of other people I am somehow related to. Ted also showed me a whole album of full old pictures and two portraits of both my great great great grandmother and my great great great grandfather. It was really cool to see, especially considering I have absolutely no knowledge of any of it.

Before my crash course in genealogy, Ted took me to some of the outlying areas outside of Dublin. This picture was taken at Glendalough, the site of a medieval monastic settlement. The round tower in the background of the photo was used by villagers as a watch tower and as a safehouse when under attack. Besides the few old churches also on site, I loved looking at all the old graves. The oldest legible headstones were from the 1700s, but the site was founded in the 6th century, so obviously there were MUCH older ones that that.

I fly back to the US today, but ending my trip with family (no matter how distant!) was just perfect.

Accents are weird. Its okay, I’m laughing at me too.

Hiking around Howth, just outside of Dublin, Ireland. It was sunny but cold. Sweeping cliffside views coupled with bright puffy clouds made for a glorious afternoon. Afterward I took myself out for a late lunch at pub, obligatory pint included.

When I arrived at my hostel that morning, it was too early to check in. So rather than a planned nap, I decided to go on a free walking tour of Dublin. I exhaustedly and almost mindlessly followed behind the tour guide who, had he been anything less than extraordinarily charismatic, would’ve put me to sleep.

The sights were nice and I’m glad to have had a brief lesson in Irish history, but the best thing about going on the tour was meeting these lovely fellows above. A couple of brothers traveling together, Dave and Phil were from Boston. They were on a three week trek across Europe, taking the opportunity to do so between work opportunities. They were delightful! I soaked up story after story about Phil teaching English in Sri Lanka, Dave’s summer job babysitting robotic kayaks for MIT grad students, and both of their takes on growing up near Boston. After the city tour they invited me to go to the Guinness Storehouse which includes a factory tour and a free pint at the end. I snapped this picture from the Gravity Bar overlooking the old brewing facilities and the Dublin skyline.

I got into Dublin just after midnight a couple days ago, just after public transportation shut down for the night. Unwilling to take an overpriced cab to a hostel where I wouldn’t sleep much, I opted for curling up on a booth bench in the airport food court. I secured my heavy pack to my little backpack and then used it as a pillow. That way if anyone tried to run away with my bag it would rip my pillow out from under my head and I would have time to spring to life and fight off the thief who was dumb enough to steal a bag that really only has my stinky clothes in it and a few unsent postcards. Luckily no one bothered me, and no violent gimme-my-dirty-clothes-back altercations ensued.

I managed to get maybe an hour or two of solid sleep, waking up every so often to flight and security announcements, a janitor on a floor cleaning machine, and at one point, by another girl my age who came to sleep on the bench opposite mine, because all the others were full of other tired passengers waiting for something.

When transportation started running again, I groggily climbed onto one of Dublin’s double decker busses and made myself comfortable in one of the top front seats. There was something unusual about the bus, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. As the driver pulled away from the curb and into the flow of early morning traffic, I was smacked in the face with the realization that the Irish are left lane drivers! Ireland is the 7th country I’ve been to on this trip but only the first that practice this. It was such an unusual feeling seeing cars whizzing past on the right side of the freeway.

Sweden from the plane.

Greece—>Norway—>Ireland.

Quad riding around Corfu. Taken just after I broke down on the side of the road, but right before I had to trudge back uphill where I rented it.

And now for a few words on Athens…

Look who I found while there! My couch surfing host from Venice! Okay, so running into Petter in Greece wasn’t quite a random occurrence, but what a great story would that make? Anyway, if you remember I met Petter a couple months ago when I was in Venice. We managed to stay in contact so when he said he was going to Greece around the same time I was leaving Positano, it just made sense to meet up for a cappuccino freddo or two.

He’d been trekking down through eastern Europe while I’d been wrapping up my time working at the hostel, and it was quite nice to see him again. This was my first experience “traveling” with someone, even though we didn’t venture far out of Athens together.

Traveling alone allows you the freedom to create your own schedule, wake up when you want to, eat what you want to, and do whatever you please. While I really appreciate this aspect, it admittedly can be a bit lonesome at times. I’d consider myself more on the introverted side, so I don’t mind it usually. But when you are seeing incredible works of art or architecture or even just a nice sunset, it’s sometimes just nice to experience it with someone. Petter was a great person to do this with. Besides being an excellent conversationalist, he’s also one of the most adventurous people I’ve ever met. I admire that very much about him, just to a lesser degree when he dragged me along to explore some creepy old abandoned buildings…

In the couple days we were there we walked around quite a bit. The hostel we stayed at had a rooftop seating area, complete with a stunning nighttime view of the Acropolis. We hiked up to the top the following day. I managed to get in for free to the archeological sight by pretending to be a European student (sneaky Petter.) It was awesome in the truest sense of the word to just stand in front of the real Parthenon and gawk.

We spent most of the rest of our time wandering through the open air market, discussing linguistics, hanging out on the beach, eating fried halloumi pitas, and indulging on cappuccino freddos, a foamy sweet iced coffee that seemed to be everywhere. At the end of our time together we bid adieu at the metro station, both of us continuing on in different directions.

I’m fairly sure I have secured a lifelong friend in Petter, but for now I will continue traveling alone. I am in my final stretch now. Tonight I will land in Ireland, my last country before this chapter of the journey ends.

Greek beer with a view over Athens. It was only half cold, but blissful after traveling the better part of a day via too many methods of transportation to count.