Lessons Learned

The view from my window in Dublin.

Ciao amici! 

Wow.  I'm still trying to catch my breath from the insanity that has been these last couple of weeks...but I don't even really have time to do that because in two days I jet off to Brussels for the weekend (November 1st is a holiday in Italy, so we are taking the opportunity to see another city, haha!).  Seriously, when I look at my planner, I just have to ask myself:  "whose life am I living right now?"  

For those of you who don't know, I had a break from school and spent the last ten days travelling around Spain and Ireland with my roommate Jenny (you know, no big deal, hardly even worth mentioning, right?).  Seriously though, for both of us, it was really the first time that we had traveled alone (i.e. without our families or a big group) for any substantial amount of time, let alone for ten days!  We were a little bit nervous, but everything turned out to be fine, INCREDIBLE actually and it was one of the most eye-opening experiences of this trip, and really any of my travels, so far.  As you can imagine, we learned A LOT.  How to navigate around a place you've never been, how to find a good ristorante, a little bit of Spanish....  These are the most important lessons that I learned:

1. Communication is a miracle.  Seriously, the fact that one person can think of something and have it in their brain and then communicate to another person who doesn't know anything about what that person is thinking and then they both understand it-think about it-that's nothing short of MIRACULOUS!!  Take out the capacity for language...and consider that we can still understand each other...that's beyond miraculous...I don't even know a word for how ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE that is.  Here's what happened: Neither Jenny nor I really speak Spanish.  Since I've studied Italian and since I am around so much Spanish during the summer while I am at Disney (and sometimes in Tallahassee when certain people are around *cough* what?), I can understand about 30% of what people say when it is in some context.  We got by during the week speaking Spitanglish, which is what we called our conglomeration of mostly Italian with random Spanish and English thrown in and it was actually kind of fun- almost like having to stop and put together a puzzle every time we stopped to ask for directions- exhausting, but, it was certainly an adventure.  And as soon as I started asking for the check at the end of the meal instead of for a bedtime story (ask for la cuenta, not el cuento), people seemed to understand what we were saying.

The Spaniards are very warm and welcoming and friendly and they spoke to us A LOT in Spanish, even though we didn't understand that much, but it was AWESOME.  One lady in Barcelona even had a whole conversation with me while we were waiting for the bus.  We didn't understand everything each other said...but, somehow, we communicated.  She told me to be careful with my camera on the bus and and I told her that we loved Italy and Barcelona.  Not the most life changing conversation, but I still think it's pretty miraculous, no?

Through our unique language, we made friends with Leo, a guy who
worked in a great ristorante in Barcelona.  We went back everyday.

Food is something of a universal language.  All we saw of
Madrid was the Prado and this one ristorante.  If all of Madrid
is as lovely as these two things, I can't wait to go back and do it for real.

The Valencia Cathedral 

2. There are two Valencias in Spain.  Buying a bus ticket from one of them does not guarantee that there will be a bus for you in the other one.  Valencia is a beautiful city on the Eastern Coast of Spain.  There is another Valencia about which I know nothing except that it is in the Northern part of the country.  I wouldn't know this except that when I booked our bus tickets coming out of Valencia online, I apparently chose the wrong city.  They are both equidistant from Madrid (our destination), so I didn't realize my mistake until we couldn't find our bus at the bus station. Fortunately, everything worked out fine and the bus company even refunded our money for the wrongly purchased ticket.  Personally, I'm just glad that we bought the ticket OUT of the wrong city and not INTO it.  This is a good thing to keep in mind if any of you are ever travelling in Spain.

The most beautiful rainbow ever.  Ireland is awesome.

3. If you want to meet nice Italians, go to Ireland.  Really, if you want to meet nice people period go to Ireland.  The Irish people are warm enough to make up for the reputation of awful weather (although we were blessed with beautiful weather everyday!).  However, for some reason, we kept meeting Italians and they were all wonderful.  In Galway, we met a cool guy named Daniele.  He lived in Verona and his father owned a vineyard where he worked (yeah, basically living my life).  His goal was to travel the United States in a camper.  When he told us this, we looked confused.  he asked us: "do you know what it is, a camper?"  We explained to him that we knew exactly what a camper was and that is why we were so confused.

4. Don't be afraid to reevaluate your concept of home.  Our last night in Dublin, in one of the pubs, we met two Italian men that had been living in Ireland for almost a decade.  One of them was named Andrea (like 97% of Italian men) and when I asked him why he was in Ireland, he said that Ireland was his home.  He taught me to appreciate Irish music and told me that Irish (Gaelic) is an incredibly poetic language.  He said that he came to Ireland after travelling when he was young carrying only a suitcase with a few pairs of shorts and T-Shirts, which he would remind you is NEVER appropriate attire for Ireland.  He said that he immediately felt at home in a way that he couldn't explain and he just never left.  When people ask him if he's going home (i.e. back to Italy) for Christmas, he said he gets confused.  "As far as I'm concerned my parents live abroad and I like to go visit them but....my home is here."

My homeland?

We were fortunate enough to be at home, if only briefly, in all of the places we stayed, but truly coming "home" and having "home" be Florence was one of the most surreal experiences of my life so far and its good to be back.  As they say, there's no place like home!

Home.
This is not an illegal picture of David taken
at the Accademia.  No, really....