¿Where are the Reuben Sandwiches?

At the Temple Bar in Dublin

I am back in Spain and Kelly returned home this past Sunday. It was so great to have her here and show her how I have been living the past year and how awesome Granada is. Our trip to Ireland was amazing and we were lucky to have fantastic weather and some Irish folk buy us some Guinness. At 4 to 5 euros a pint I am not going to pass up any offers, haha. We did a lot of moving around, 4 places in 5 nights, but it did not seem rushed and we had sufficient time to see what we wanted. After we went to Inishmor, an island off of the coast of Galway, we went to Doolin to see the Cliffs of Moher which is probably something most of people have seen in pictures of Ireland. We walked along the cliffs for about 3 hours and it was so beautiful. We are really immature and renamed the Cliffs of Moher, the Cliffs of Mohair on my crotch. We told a few Irish people about it and some of them thought it was really funny and others thought we were idiots, haha.

Cliffs of Moher

Doolin is a tiny little town but I still loved it, very quaint and laid back. We went to one of the pubs to listen to some Irish music and met a group of people from West Port Ireland who work as a rescue team in the mountains where they live and were there for a retreat and to climb the cliffs. They were so nice, in fact most Irish people I did meet where really nice and friendly in the pubs, in the stores, just about everywhere. I really loved the west coast of Ireland and it is just so GREEN!

From Doolin we went to Dublin. Dublin is a nice city, but typical of any large European city. I am glad we went but seeing the west coast made the trip and gave me a feeling of what Ireland is like. I am so glad that I did not just go to Dublin and although it´s a fun place to go I would recommend that if you go to Ireland, you go beyond Dublin. In Dublin we of course went to the Guinness factory which was actually kind of interesting because Guinness is such a unique beer. We had intended to go back to our hostel but we went to a bar the buy some t-shirts that we liked and then landed up sitting there from about 7 pm until 1 am. We met some nice guy from Northern Ireland that lives in California. He gave us some valuable life lectures about how we should love our men and leave them before they screw us over. He repeated this a million times but also kept saying he wanted us to have a good time and kept on buying us beers so his lessons were tolerable.

The cliffs in Inishmor

Pictures from Inishmor

A few days into the trip I realized that I had not seen a reuben sandwich on any menu so I was curious as to if they even existed in Ireland so Kelly and I started asking people about it only to find out that the reuben sandwich is an American creation. Every Irish person we asked had never even heard of a reuben let alone had tried one. I guess I thought the sandwich was Irish because it is a standard in almost every Irish themed restaurant in the United States but I googled it and it was invented in New York City. If anyone thought the same as I, I am happy that I cleared up this mystery for you. We also learned that people in Ireland walk against traffic rather than with it. We had to walk on the side of the road a lot and we were always confused as to what direction we should walk, and the fact that they drive on the wrong side of the road did not help either. We also asked people if they liked U2 and most were indifferent.

Next week is my last week in Granada. I have a lot of mixed emotions about it. I love this city so much and am so happy I got to spend a lot of time here so I will be really sad to leave it for a few weeks. But on the other hand I am really excited to travel to some places I have not been to as well as return to Italy to see my family. I wish I did not have to do all of this traveling alone. Although it has advantages I do get lonely sometimes and I have not traveled this long alone so it will be interesting. One of my friends is thinking about meeting me some where for a week so hopefully he can get off work.

I am finally starting to feel like my Spanish has improved so much since I got here. I have felt it little by little but now I feel so comfortable speaking and like I can say almost anything that I want and understand almost anything, although it is still hard to understand people from Andalucia (the region where I live) They speak crazy fast and eat all of there words. But I know other native Spanish speakers that have trouble understanding them as well so it makes me feel a bit better. I have read quite a few novels this past semester, some up to 400 pages so that has really helped to improve my reading skills and I now realize that I don´t have to look up every word I don´t understand in order to understand the context. I had to read a lot of books that really sucked to I am actually looking forward to reading a Spanish novel that interests me. I am still nervous about loosing my Spanish when I travel this summer and even more so when I get home but I am hoping that I can meet people to practice with this summer and make some Mexican friends when I get home.