So, You Want to Travel?

I’ve got travel on my mind so I feel inclined to discuss it a little here. From our talks and ice breakers (yes, they’re here too) at the beginning of the semester, I quickly found that the majority of students go abroad to travel and see the world. For me, it was basically the same, although I had a particular interest in seeing Ireland itself in addition. Hopefully then, I can shed some light on travel out here on the Emerald Isle.

Four-Day Weekend

Assuming future semesters are similar to my own, the college advertises and encourages two times in particular for travel, although since you have every Friday off, short travel dates every weekend (class fieldtrips permitting) are not undoable. For us, we have a four-day weekend in October and all of Thanksgiving week off which lend themselves nicely to longer travel plans. I don’t know how the Spring schedule is set up but I would imagine it is similar with Spring Break.

Since the four-day weekend has now passed, I can discuss it with a little more certainty. I put off planning for it until about two weeks prior, which probably isn’t a good idea if you have more ambitious plans than I did. I couldn’t think of any particular travel destinations because all of the places I wanted to visit could also easily be done in a weekend and I didn’t want to waste the extra day. What I ended up doing is taking a short plane ride to Leeds, England to catch an all-day rock and metal festival. I knew nothing about Leeds beforehand so it was a little bit of a gamble, but I knew I would likely never see it otherwise so I didn’t care. It actually turned out pretty well (ignoring the fact that it rained the entire time I was there) and the festival was huge fun. If anyone is interested in music, Leeds seems to be a great city to visit. It is also littered with colleges so you are bound to meet other students. Note: I forgot my camera so please excuse the external images.

If you aren’t a music lover, my plans might seem dull so I will try to recall what I can remember of others’ travel plans. Some people went to Galway which is only a 3 hour bus ride from Dublin and a wicked fun city, some went to Barcelona, Spain which I’m told was also a fun city with great night life, awesome food, and warm weather, some went hiking in the Scottish highlands, some went to Norway and others to Italy. So if going to a music festival isn’t your thing, there are certainly other options available. Be creative.

Longer Weekend (Thanksgiving)

This is the week you came here for. We get an entire week (from Friday to Sunday the following week for a total of ten days) off and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to use it to travel. The week has not yet arrived so I can’t give any feedback on it yet but I certainly plan to when I get back. For now though, I can obviously talk about my plans and a little bit of the planning process for a big trip.

I am planning on making my trip with two other friends and although I can’t verify for sure yet, I would have to say making a group trip is a lot more fun than going solo. We have decided to sort of travel across northern Europe, beginning in Bruges, proceeding to Amsterdam, and finally landing in Prague before returning back to Dublin at the end of the week. Although it may sound ambitious and pricey, we have so far, in the final steps of the planning stage, managed to find an excellent schedule of relatively cheap transportation.

Before planning your trip, discuss your prospective destinations with the professors and staff over here; I can guarantee someone has been there and will give you useful feedback. Some cities sound a lot better than they really are. When you begin the planning process, look on the internet for guides and blogs of others who have made certain trips between two cities because you can gain a lot of useful transportation information from them. By doing this, we found an overnight bus that travels from Amsterdam to Prague a couple times a week and saved ourselves around $150 by not flying. On that same note, don’t set in stone the order in which you visit your destinations, it can be much cheaper to check every possibility. If you have the patience, try to check each mode of transportation. For longer trips, a plane will almost always be cheaper, but on occasion, some buses and trains will give you a better deal depending on the popularity of the trip.

If you want to visit England and Scotland, take a plane. Although there are ferries that run frequently between popular ports, you will spend a lot more using them in addition to busses and trains to get to your final destination than you will if you just take a direct flight. And when it comes to airlines, don’t assume Ryanair will always be the cheapest. A lot of times Aer Lingus will have better rates if you travel on the right days. Just make it a rule of thumb for your trips to look at all of the possibilities when it comes to transportation.

Concert and Hen Party

Concert in Dublin:
I just got back from my first concert in Dublin so, naturally, I feel like writing about it. I went to see Opeth play at the Olympia Theatre, but since people have varying tastes in music and I don’t feel like shamelessly promoting my own, I’ll leave out the details. I will say they played a great set, though.

Instead, I want to talk about the theater itself in case anyone has plans to attend a show there. From outside, it’s difficult to make a judgment on its appearance because it kind of blends in with the rest of Temple Bar, but it does have one of those theater awnings so it is easy enough to spot. Entering the theater, you immediately notice that the place is old (or at least has that appearance) and is an actual theater. The cramped halls open up into the main room and make it look much larger than it really is. I would say the floor is around the size of Higher Ground in Burlington, but with the addition of a balcony and four boxes. The main room is very ornate looking with red and gold all over everything from floor to ceiling. Pretty neat place to see a show, and I suspect many plays are put on as well.

Music in the North:

I want to talk a little bit about our trip to Northern Ireland this weekend. Besides the fun of the run of the mill tourist stops around Belfast, the Giant’s Causeway, et al, we had quite a unique experience in Ballintoy. The town is small and is home to only two pubs (unheard of in Ireland) so keep that in mind when I explain part of the night. After our hostel dinner, we all took a walk down to the pubs to enjoy a drink. Upon arriving, we found out there was going to be a hen party in one of the pubs that night so we were thrilled. Long story short, the pub filled completely with American college kids and locals singing songs and playing guitar for hours. The group really got into the affair and quite a few of us took a jab at the microphone; I ended up playing a Pogues song on the guitar, much to the pleasure of the bride to be. All in all it was a fun night that hopefully both we and the townspeople will remember for a long time.

Source: http://images.partyamerica.com/images//products/en_us//detail/111751_dt.jpg

Music in Dublin

I’m going to change up this blog a little bit and divert from the topic of travel for a while. As much fun as traveling is, it is only one element of the study abroad experience and I hate to focus solely on the one element. Because I consider myself a music lover and I’m sure there are others out there, I’m going to try to keep a somewhat recurrent theme of music in these posts from now on. With a bit of luck, that should give this blog a little more individuality and separate it from the others so if people are in fact reading all of them, or even more than one, they aren’t reading the same recycled accounts.

Something I thought when first coming to Dublin, a sentiment that perhaps others shared, was that Dublin would be filled with traditional Irish folk music. I’m not sure how the thought got implanted in my mind, but somehow it got there and I was ready to enjoy hearing some old Irish guys jamming on their banjos, mandolins, tin whistles, and bodhrans. I soon found out, however, that Dublin is not really a folksy city. That isn’t to say traditional Irish music is not played in Dublin, but that it is not a rampant music scene here. The pubs are typically filled with cover bands playing (mostly) the same handful of songs everywhere you go.

After a couple of nights, you will quickly discover the bands

here have some weird fascination with the Rolling Stones—they love Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Other common tunes include Roadhouse Blues, Sex Machine, Come Together, and Cocaine. There are obviously others, but you get the idea—blues rock is pretty damn popular here. I haven’t investigated deep enough to discover whether this is a phenomenon exclusive to the pub scene or not, but I’ll report back when I find out.

So what about popular music? As much as I love the Burlington music scene, we don’t get a lot of big bands to grace our small city. Dublin, although not terribly large, is still leaps and bounds ahead of Burlington in population and the music scene reflects that. I already have tickets to see two bands here in Dublin, with plans for a third. In 10 days, I’ll be going to see Opeth, a popular progressive metal band, at a venue less than 15 minutes walking distance from our apartments. I’ve also got a ticket to see Canadian riff-rockers The Tragically Hip in December. Although they’ve played several times in Vermont, they are about the biggest band we see. And they kick ass, just putting that out there. As for my third concert, prospective Dubliners may know of a band called The Pogues, a popular folk-punk group from the ‘80s. Well, they are one of my favorite bands and just so happen to be playing for three nights in Dublin in December, and if their first show wasn’t on the same night as T-Hip, I’d be at all three.

So the bands I’ve mentioned are my own preference, but not everyone has the same taste in music so here are a few other bands playing in Dublin during my stay here that might peak some people’s interests. Pixies (I’d see them too but the show sold out), Massive Attack, Motorhead, Thin Lizzy (canceled), Toby Keith, Yes, The Mars Volta, Paramore, Fleetwood Mac, Green Day, Muse, Elton John, Beyonce, Depeche Mode, The Prodigy, Pink, Miley Cyrus, Backstreet Boys, Yusef Islam (Cat Stevens), and Jonas Brothers. That’s a decent sized list of big-name bands and artists, most of whom you would be hard pressed to find playing in Burlington. I’m sure there are others as well, that was just a quick throw-together of search results I recognized at a glance.

So I’ll leave it there for now, but I think you get the idea. The music scene in Dublin is more than just folk instruments; it has a little to offer for everyone no matter their musical preference.