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[sangria-and-guinness-shenanigans]

Friday, January 10, 2025 | Philly, PA, US

I had one helluva travel day yesterday that began at 8am Dublin time and ended at 3am Dublin time (10pm Eastern). I ended my journey at my parents’ house, where I’ll be for the next few days before I head back to MA.

Now that the trip is over, it’s time to reflect! Getting sick at the end and homesick in the middle made this trip a bumpy ride at times, but as you can tell from this blog I had a lot of fun.

Anna and I agree that we love traveling together, but next time we want better amenities and a warmer climate. The bus tour was a highlight for both of us, so more of those are probably in our future.

I would love to return to both Spain and Ireland, especially to spend more time in small towns and spots of natural beauty. But for now I’ll be glad to stick to the East Coast (save for a quick trip to LA in February) for the next year or so at least. The last time I traveled internationally (a writing retreat in Wales) gave me a real desire to travel more, but this trip if anything has made me more of a homebody. I also think I began the trip as more of a homebody than I’ve ever been. Guess that’s getting older for you!

As much as I liked meeting people in our hostels, by the end of the trip I found I really missed being in a community of queer people, academics/nerds, and people my own age and older. (Our last hostel was a lot of 19 & 20 year olds.) That probably means grad school was the right call for this time in my life. I can’t wait to get back to UMass!!!

I can’t say I had a favorite city between Madrid and Dublin. Madrid was objectively a better city: better weather, better hostel, better transit, better food. But Dublin was just so my vibe, and I felt like I could have stayed another week at least (Anna thinks I’m out of my mind for this). I’ll miss Chueca, Madrid’s gay neighborhood, where we went to the bookstore. I really liked it there and we ended up walking through it almost every day to get to wherever we were going. I didn’t find a spot like that in Dublin where I felt like I got to know a neighborhood. Maybe next time!!

For now, it’s time to say adiós and slán to this blog while I begin the adventure of my second semester in grad school :)

[sangria-and-guinness-shenanigans]

Wednesday, January 8, 2025 | Dublin, Ireland

In an anticlimactic end to our trip, here on our last day I’m too sick to do anything. I was supposed to fly from here to DC and spend a long weekend with my friends there, but now I’m going straight to Philly, so it’s one disappointment on top of the other. I had a fever last night but I think I’ve kicked it, but I still feel generally crappy. With the help of our mom, we got a hotel room near our hostel and it is NICE!! I spent the day dozing in a comfy hotel bed and watching panel shows on TV, very “home sick from school” vibes.

This is the only photo I have from today. Anna took it when we got to the hotel because she said I looked “like a street urchin in Oliver.”

Anna took a tour of Kilmainham Gaol and the Guinness factory today so I’ve asked her to write a guest post about that!

[sangria-and-guinness-shenanigans]

Tuesday, January 7, 2025 | Dublin & Galway, Ireland

We caught an early morning bus to Galway that got us in at 10:45a. I fell asleep on the bus and woke up to views of rolling green hills, medieval ruins, and sheep. Magical!!

Anna is sick too now, and I’m feeling a little worse for wear, but we still managed to enjoy a slow day in Galway. We started at the Galway City Museum to learn some local history (my favorite kind!) then got lunch at a cute cafe. We stopped in some shops, listened to some buskers, and took a beautiful walk along the water.

Our walk took us to Galway’s cathedral, where we saw beautiful stained glass.

Then we took a rest at another cafe. I was getting progressively sicker so the rest of the day was kind of a wash. We stopped by Taaffes Bar for some trad music and it was very good, but we couldn’t stay long since we had to catch the bus back to Dublin. I wish I could go back to Taaffes under better circumstances, I could tell the energy would’ve been fantastic later into the night.

Galway was beautiful, being sick is not :(

[sangria-and-guinness-shenanigans]

Monday, January 6, 2025 | Dublin, Ireland

Today the inevitable happened: I woke up a wee bit sick. There’ve been sick people everywhere we’ve stayed, so it was only a matter of time. All trip Anna and I have been quoting the Guys and Dolls song “Adelaide’s Lament” which comes back to the refrain “a person… can develop a cough.” We sing it (quietly!!) every time we hear someone hacking away. Now it’s me who has 🎶developed a cough🎶 Thankfully it’s extremely mild, so I took my inhaler, masked up, and got on with my day!

We had a delish breakfast at a cafe called Bread 41, highly recommend for their super unique and yummy pastries!

This was an epic three museum day. We started at the National Library by chance because we walked by it and it was free. It had an amazing Lego replica of the building and extremely well-done exhibit on poet WB Yeats. The exhibit could’ve used more broad context on Yeats and what was happening in Ireland while he was writing, but it was still really enjoyable.

Next we hit the National Museum of Ireland’s Archeology Museum. We breezed through a lot of it (as Anna said, “we have Ancient Egypt at home.”) But we saw the famous bog bodies and some clothes that were preserved in and unearthed from bogs. We also saw some very beautiful jewelry and religious shrines.

We got delicious and gorgeous avocado toast at a cafe called First Chapter and did some vintage shopping.

Lastly, we split up so Anna could see the Dublin Castle and I could see the General Post Office museum. The GPO was at the center of the 1916 Easter Rising and I always feel like I need a refresher on that era of Irish history. This might be one of my favorite museums ever, certainly my favorite of the trip! It was pretty small as far as museums go, but gave a really clear and concise timeline of Irish political and social history 1916-1923, with an extra exhibit that covered all the way up to 2016. It tied together threads of history that we’ve seen at other museums on this trip. I would SO highly recommend it as a first stop for any history nerds visiting Dublin.

We met up back at our hostel and grabbed dinner, then went in search of trad music with our hostel friends. We didn’t have much luck, but we’re hoping for more when we head to Galway tomorrow!

[sangria-and-guinness-shenanigans]

Sunday, January 5, 2025 | Dublin, Ireland

Today it was, as the locals might say, pissing down rain. It looks like this is the only full day of rain we’ll have our whole trip, so I’m counting myself lucky. Anna and I had breakfast together then split up because I wanted to see the Book of Kells at Trinity College. I forgot my raincoat at home so I bought one of those dorky rain ponchos. I felt very much the tourist in my bright orange poncho heading to the overpriced and crowded Book of Kells experience. But! As a medieval manuscript aficionado, it was worth it. The exhibit, inside Trinity’s library, gave a pretty good overview of Ireland’s medieval religious history. More interesting to me though, were the details of how the Book of Kells and other texts like it were made and how they’ve been cared for through history. Yesterday Anna and I were talking about what jobs we’d do if we were monks, and we decided she’d be the monk who raises animals for vellum, and I’d be a scribe of course.

The library is in the midst of a huge cleaning & stabilizing project with all of its books, so their main hall (the Long Room) was mostly empty shelves. That actually made it more exciting for the archivist in me because there were big screens with videos showing how the books are being conserved. The globe in this photo is an art installation which I assumed would be gimmicky, but I have to admit it was pretty stunning im the space.

The Long Room is full of sculptures of great thinkers, and the library just introduced its first 4 sculptures of women: scientist Rosalind Franklin, dramatist Augusta Gregory, mathematician Ada Lovelace and British women’s rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft. (Below are Shakespeare and Lovelace)

The Long Room also had a small exhibit on Trinity alum and writer Oscar Wilde. The exhibit made really funny but frustrating veiled reference to the fact that he was gay. Gee, I wonder what the “sad circumstances of his downfall and final years in exile” were. Guess we’ll never know! Here’s Wilde in an advertisement for a “bosom beautifier.”

I got hot chocolate and journaled at a cafe, then stopped in and out of some shops on my way back to seek shelter from the rain in the hostel. I added some things into my travel journal/scrapbook, got some rest, got a bite to eat, and did laundry. Then we went out for a nice pizza dinner with our hostel friends. They kept going on to a pub but were both tired, so it’s bedtime for us!

[sangria-and-guinness-shenanigans]

Saturday, January 4, 2025 | Dublin & Wicklow, Ireland

Today was our bus trip!!! A colleague of mine at UMass suggested doing a bus trip through the Wicklow mountains, a national park south of Dublin. We found this tour with Wild Wicklow and it’s been rated #1 experience in Ireland and #2 bus trip in the world by TripAdvisor! We were really excited to have a relaxing day where we didn’t have to make any decisions or navigate ourselves anywhere.

Our tour guide Patrick, a local, picked us up in Dublin along with about 12 other people. He drove us through Dublin giving us some of the city’s history, then out of the city along the coast. We drove by Dún Laoghaire Harbor, which is where some scenes from my movie Sing Street were filmed.

Our driver had a lot to say about B-list celebrities who live in the area or used to live here in the 80s and have since moved away and/or died or who simply passed through one time. Also he told us a lot about the housing market and driving laws. He was cracking us up from the minute we got on the bus!!

Our first tour stop was Killiney Hill, a short walk with great views of Dublin. We saw a ton of adorable dogs out and about. There are so many spaniels here, we saw one springer spaniel who looked just like our Jamie at home!! Our tour guide told us he lived in Upper Darby for 2 years in his youth, we’re obsessed with him.

Next stop was Avoca, a little shopping center with nice wool goods.

Then we were headed up into the Wicklow mountains! It reminded me a lot of the Brecon Beacons, a national park in Wales. As we went up in elevation we saw more and more frost, until we got to the bog at the top of the range which was so frosted over it felt like another planet. Also in that bog is the stream that forms the beginning of the River Liffey that runs through Dublin near our hostel.

We had several stops along the way at lookouts over gorgeous valleys and it even started snowing lightly! The twisty roads on the edge of the mountain were making me very nervous, even though the road was pretty wide and had stone walls along the edge.

We had lunch at a little restaurant in the town of Lauragh (pronounced like if you said the name “Laura” and sneezed halfway through). Then we saw the ruins of a monastery and cemetery. We also took a bit of a rainy walk around some small lakes.

Back on the bus as we were getting ready to head back to Dublin, our driver Patrick mentioned offhandedly that he went to school at Synge Street, the school where my aforementioned favorite movie takes place. If we weren’t already obsessed with Patrick, that sealed the deal!

We’ve been keeping a list of our favorite Patrick-isms. Here are a few:

He likes to say “has anyone ever heard of…” and then say something extremely common like “ferns” or “ash trees”

He uses the word “say” in the same way a Valley girl says “like”

When pointing out historical things, he usually says “and if you were to ask me why [insert detail here], I wouldn’t know.”

Here’s a direct quote, from when he was talking to a Chicagoan couple on the bus about the US election: “We have a saying called ‘dilly dally,’ and with Joe Biden, he wasn’t right.” (Don’t worry, he’s no fan of Trump either)

We saw some cyclists going up the mountain when it was starting to snow and he said, “I like to call them martyrs for the cause, everyone and their grandmother knows it’s going to snow today”

We love Patrick and we loved our tour!!!!! As we got off the bus he gave us a hug and said “Philadelphia freedom!” Philadelphia freedom indeed!!!

We grabbed a quick dinner and then joined our friends from last night on another hostel pub crawl. I barely lasted through 1.5 bars so I went home, but as I write this Anna is still out! Maybe if we’re lucky she’ll write another guest post tomorrow :)

[sangria-and-guinness-shenanigans]

Friday, January 3, 2025 | Dublin, Ireland

Today was a super fun day!! We got donuts at The Rolling Donut near our hostel and then took a bus to Howth, a coastal town north of Dublin. This was another recommendation from our friend Genevieve and oh man, it really delivered!!

The morning started off chilly (frost on the ground!!) but we warmed up with a GORGEOUS 2 mile-ish walk along a cliffside. We saw lots of cute dogs, friendly people, and stunning views.

We walked around the harbor and got our first fish & chips. We also discovered that a humming contest (where you hum and have the other person guess the song) is much more fun than hangman when you run out of things to talk about.

When we got back to the hostel in the late afternoon, we realized there had been an almost complete rotation of who was staying in our room. We got to chatting with the new arrivals (two from Australia, one from France) and we all got along immediately! We decided to get dinner together and go out to the hostel’s pub crawl. There was live music where we went for dinner and at both pubs, so obviously I’m in heaven. I also had my first Guinness of the trip. Sorry to say, it’s nasty! We had a blast, but Anna and I left after the second pub because we have an early start tomorrow.

[sangria-and-guinness-shenanigans]

Thursday, January 2, 2025 | Dublin, Ireland

We started our day at Shoe Lane Coffee then off to the museum I was probably most excited for this whole trip, the National Museum of Ireland’s History & Decorative Arts museum. Like the Smithsonian, the National Museum has multiple separate museums. Having history and decorative arts under one roof was right up my alley!

Highlights were an exhibit of fashion designer Ib Jorgensen and a part-history-part-art exhibit by Alison Lowry called (A)Dressing Our Hidden Truths. That exhibit was about several forms of violence against women: Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries where “fallen women” were forced to work in brutal conditions, church-run mother and baby homes where women and children were abused, and domestic violence. The Magdalene Laundries were operated from the 1700s to the 1990s (yes, you read that right, the 1990s). It was a very powerful exhibit and also said a lot about clothing history and labor history, which are two of my major areas of interest.

The museum really stood out for how it used exhibit text to demystify the museum processes for visitors. Some exhibits had text explaining things like why the galleries have low lighting, how the museum acquired the objects on display, how visitors could research their own family history with the museum’s records, and what the museum is doing to broaden the types of stories it tells.

We got lunch at Brother Hubbard, which came recommended by our friend Genevieve who was in Dublin this time last year!

We had an afternoon of shopping—the vintage/thrift store scene here is great! We went to a yarn store and bought yarn made in Ireland and inspired by Dublin. The yarn store was inside an enormous old townhouse that is now a swanky shopping center.

After some hostel rest time we headed to a nearby bar for some LIVE MUSIC!!!! It was a duo of a guitar/singer and a banjo and they absolutely rocked. They even played a song I love, Dirty Old Town, a rousing folk tune. The bar was about 50/50 Irish people and foreign tourists. Half the fun of being there was people-watching, there were some real characters!! The atmosphere was so friendly and joyous!! Erin go bragh!!!!!! (Can you tell I’m still feeling my beer as I write this? 😉)

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Wednesday, January 1, 2025 | Dublin, Ireland (Part 2)

A lot of shops are closed today because it’s New Year’s Day, but that’s a blessing in disguise because I’ve seen some cool art on the grates over shop windows. The woman in the second photo is Madge Fagan, a tenants’ rights activist.

In my wandering I found this pretty hideaway behind a Catholic church where I lit an electric votive candle for my grandma. Hi Mimes, I know you’re reading this!!

Anna and I met up for a little outdoor music festival near our hostel. It was a mix of singer-songwriters and trad tunes.

We had dinner at a Korean place down the street from our hostel. We’ve run out of conversation topics so we had to turn to a game of hangman (or “clothing man” as it was called in Quaker school).

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Wednesday, January 1, 2025 | Dublin, Ireland (Part 1)

After yesterday’s terrible travel, Anna and I decided to split up for the day so we could each have a quiet day at our own pace. I slept in then took myself on a very Emma-specific musical tour of Dublin!

First up was the River Liffey, where we watched fireworks last night, which is referenced in my favorite Hozier song, “Anything But.” For the uninitiated, Hozier is a singer-songwriter from Dublin!

Next I walked along Grafton Street, where scenes from one of my favorite movies, Once (2007) were filmed.

I stopped in a pretty swanky restaurant and got a nice lunch and journaled.

After lunch I made the ultimate pilgrimage: filming locations from my all-time favorite movie, Sing Street (2016). Sing Street is made by John Carney, who is also the creative genius behind Once. It’s about boys at a Catholic school in the 1980s who start a rebellious rock band. I saw the real school, the exterior of one of the character’s houses, and a park where a pivotal conversation between the movie’s romantic leads takes place.

It was surreal to see the places in real life, and also nice to just walk around a quiet residential neighborhood as opposed to the bustling commercial areas where we’ve been here and in Madrid.

Tumblr won’t let me add more photos to this post so a second post is coming later today!

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Tuesday, December 31 | Dublin, Ireland

Today was our travel to Dublin day aka my personal circle of hell. I know I’ve kept it upbeat on this blog, but I’ve hardly ever been as miserable as I was in the airport & flight to Dublin. It was a dastardly combination of a sleepless night before, the most crowded airport I’ve ever experienced, my water bottle spilling inside my bag and getting all my clothes wet, generalized anxiety, homesickness, and a VERY turbulent flight. The weather on arrival was, as the pilot put it, “wet and wild” 😬

By some miracle we arrived at our hostel in one piece. This one is much larger than the last, but also very clean. We’re in a room of 10 girls and have already made friends with a duo of nineteen-year-old girls from Finland who are traveling around Scotland and Ireland on a gap year before university. The beds are like little pods that close with a curtain. I like the privacy!!

After some much needed R&R, we got pizza and drinks with the Finnish girls and went out with them to ring in the new year! We found a bar where a guy was playing pretty decent guitar covers of American music. I must admit, I was lured in by the sweet sounds of acoustic “Mr. Brightside.” Then we counted down and watched the fireworks on a bridge over the River Liffey. I’m exhausted but loved hanging out with our Finnish friends and celebrating 2025!

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Food We’ve Seen & Eaten

I’ve taken so many photos of beautiful (and scary!!) food we’ve passed by in Madrid but they didn’t fit into any post, so here they all are:

[sangria-and-guinness-shenanigans]

Monday, Dec 30, 2024 | Madrid, Spain

We went back to the cafe from yesterday and got more delicious mochas for breakfast!

Then it was off to Parque del Retiro, Madrid’s equivalent of Central Park. This place has everything: a pond, topiary, fountains, cafés, the remnants of a zoo that operated from 1770 to 1972, peacocks, a public library, medieval ruins, and beautiful views everywhere!! Photos of all those aforementioned delights ⬇️

Some miscellaneous observations we’ve made during our days in Madrid:

There are people walking tiny dogs EVERYWHERE, even more than in US cities, and they’re all, without exception, wearing little sweaters. Lots of dachshunds, which we’ve been calling “salchichas” (Spanish for “sausages”).

We never cease to be delighted by seeing fountains all around the city still running in the winter.

The Spanish word for peacock is “pavo real,” which translates to “royal turkey.”

When we meet female solo travelers we think they’re so cool and must be on a journey of self-discovery. When we meet male solo travelers we assume they’re loser-loners who are bumming around. We’re working on our implicit biases :)

There are a lot of ads for theater, mostly Broadway shows, and it’s 50/50 whether their titles have been translated into Spanish. We saw an English ad for one of my favorites, Come From Away. Anna said, “What would that be in Spanish? Entrar de atrás?” Reader, “entrar de atrás” means “to enter from behind.” So no, not the correct translation 😅

We took a nice walk back to our hostel but upon arriving we discovered that a girl in our room is suuuuper sick. She was here a few days ago in a different room and was already sick then, but she went to a different hostel and came back sicker today. We got some generous money from our grandma for our trip so we decided to treat ourselves and upgrade to a private room for our last night. We only had to pay the difference, just 43 euros!! And the room is NICE!!!!! I had been feeling overwhelmed and a little homesick for my quiet and private studio apartment, so the room switch really perked me up. The biggest luxuries are: hand-washing laundry in our private sink, controlling the room temperature, getting to talk out loud without worrying about people sleeping, spreading out all my belongings, and SO much more. I’m not sure if I’m cut out for the hostel life…

We ended our last full day in Madrid with dinner at Mercado San Miguel, a covered market similar to Philly’s Reading Terminal. We got empanadas and churros 😋

We’re off to Dublin tomorrow morning!

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Sunday, Dec 29, 2024 | Madrid, Spain

Welp, after several days of relatively smooth sailing, we finally went off the rails. We had a delicious breakfast at a nearby café, so we were off to a good start. But…

…We were immediately stymied because we had trouble figuring out transportation to a suburb/town-ish area outside of the city. In our confusion, I left my credit card on a bus seat and realized almost as soon as the bus pulled away so…. you can imagine how the rest of the day went.

Despite that kerfuffle, we made it to Alcalá de Henares, a beautiful historic town where Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, was born. This was a must-see for me because I took a class devoted to Don Quixote during my first year at Smith and really fell in love with the book. The 16th century house where he was born and lived in his childhood is now a museum set up to look like how a moderately wealthy family like his would have lived, plus a few small Cervantes-specific exhibits. I have such fond memories of his writing that the house felt somehow very comforting and familiar.

It turns out that there were a bunch of other historic sites and museums in the area we could have visited, but the hours/days didn’t line up. Still, very cool to know that one of the oldest continually operating hospitals in the world is next door to Cervantes’ house and offers (very limited) tours! The town also had a small Christmas/Three Kings/Reyes Magos parade while we were there with these awesome larger-than-life puppets!

We did get to walk around the historic area, a garden, did some window shopping, and read lots of interpretive signage. Here’s Anna with remnants very old sewage system (it made us think of Ben Franklin’s privy pit in Philly, if you know you know).

We picked up some snacks and got the train back to the city. We got off near Berkana, the gay bookstore from yesterday, so we went back to see if Mili Hernandez (lesbian icon) was working there. She was!!! So we bought the children’s book she wrote and I got to thank her for the work she does. I told her we’re from Philly and of course she knew Philly’s gay bookstore, Giovanni’s Room. After a somewhat mixed-up day, it felt good to be back at Berkana :)

We made a chill ramen dinner in the hostel kitchen, rested, and did some financial logistics after my credit card fiasco. Then, since we deserved a treat after a day of trials and tribulations, we went out and split a bottle of wine at the CUTEST bar near our hostel. Twas a much-needed and well-enjoyed bottle of wine!!

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Addendum to December 28!!

I did some research after our trip to Berkana, the gay bookstore, and it turns out that the kind shopkeeper who gave me book recommendations is a LIVING LEGEND!!!! Her name is Mili Hernandez and she founded the bookstore in 1993. She’s one of the most famous living lesbian activists in Spain. She was inspired to start Berkana by visiting other gay bookstores, including Gay’s the Word which I went to in London! She also wrote a picture book, Frederico y sus familias (Frederico and his families) which Anna and I read in the shop by chance and totally loved.

I might go back to the shop again to try and talk to her, but maybe she doesn’t work there every day 🥲 Either way, I feel honored to have met her! You can read more about her here if you can get Wikipedia to translate. 🌈💕🌈💕

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Guest Post from Anna!!!!

Going out was lots of fun! Went to 3 clubs and it felt quite wholesome, a little like being shepherded around during freshman orientation, when everyone is friendly and trying to make connections. We went as a big group from the hostel, official headcount was 23. I stuck with Day and two gals who work at the hostel, from Houston and Guatemala City. Lots of goofy unencumbered dancing, about 50/50 Latin pop and American pop. We got there at around 11:30 and left the 3rd club around 2:30 (people kept going out 😲) we were definitely on the early side but by the last club it was very full! Weirdest connection, one of the Germans at the hostel did an exchange in Collinswood NJ. Two others went to Philly and told me about "the bell of liberty" and "the freedom bell.”

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Saturday, Dec 28, 2024 | Madrid, Spain

We slept in a bit today and then headed to a pastry shop we passed yesterday to get breakfast. I had one of the best pastries of my LIFE!!! I don’t know what it was called but Anna says it’s similar to something called an elephant’s ear.

From there we stopped at an outdoor Christmas market and then headed to one of my most highly anticipated parts of the trip: drag brunch!! Madrid has a strong gay community (which I learned about in my Smith classes of course) and a good drag scene, so I was really looking forward to this! It was in a GORGEOUS old theater, Teatro Magno. The food was extremely mediocre but the drag was EXCELLENT!!!! It was a whole show with 4 queens, a stage, backup dancers, props and projections and everything! Most of the numbers were in Spanish with a lot of comedy bits and crowd work. Between not being quite fluent in Spanish and being deaf, I picked up about 60% of what they said, but it was mostly physical comedy and glitter so I was very happy!! Partway through the show they brought out the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race Spain Season 4, Le Cocó!!! She was incredible, absolutely gorgeous and a great dancer. Overall a fantastic show!!

We walked to another one of my most anticipated stops on the trip, Chueca, Madrid’s gay neighborhood. It’s smaller and less visibly gay than Philly’s gayborhood but it has the best thing a gayborhood can have: a gay bookstore!!!!! Liberia Berkana, the bookstore, was everything I dreamed of and more. They had some popular English titles translated into Spanish and it was fun to see how the titles were different. But even better the store was full of books in Spanish by LGBTQ+ authors and with queer themes—history books, poetry, queer theory, novels, picture books for kids, everything! I asked the very kind older lesbian (I assume) cashier for some recommendations of feminist poetry since books of poetry are smaller to pack on our travels. I’ve already read a few poems in the books she helped me pick out and I love them.

We sat outside in Plaza de Chueca and had some rosé. I learned that in Europe when a server comes to pour your wine, they let the oldest woman in the duo/group taste the wine before pouring it for everyone else. Awkward!!

We walked back to our hostel doing lots of window shopping on the way. The hostel had free dinner (small slices of bread with mayo and cheese and deli ham and tomato, yum……….) so we ate that and then had some quiet time.

The hostel had drinks and social time which was fun, I got to know another girl living in our room (except she’s leaving tomorrow!). A bunch of people from the hostel (Anna included!) went out to the discoteca but I didn’t feel up for it. Turns out, after going to a historically women’s college and then exclusively partying in lesbian bars, I’m not really comfortable around the combo of men and alcohol. Mom and Dad I know you’re reading this, Anna is in good hands with two nice young women who work for the hostel who are going!! Signing off from my cozy bed :)