OK, I don’t live in Europe anymore and haven’t updated this blog in almost 2 months. Things were crazy… I was completely obsessed with my thesis work and had no time for anything, even eating. I managed to eat one meal a day for 2 months and still GAINED weight. Of course, I’m the fat American no matter where I live. Then I was stressed out about moving and trying to slam 4 suitcases’ worth of clothes into 2. (I succeeded by the way). Then the holidays came, and there was no time for blogging.

Now that I’m back in NYC I’ll backtrack and write some posts about my last few weeks in Italy, but starting with my birthday trip to Ireland that I took in November. Here is goes!

Standard Guiness tourist pic

The Italian boy and I went to Ireland for my birthday, since it was on my 30-to-30 bucket list. We went for 4 days and did the “American tour”, which means driving all over like maniacs trying to see as much of the country as possible. We started in Dublin, then drove to Cashel, Kenmare, Killarney, Doolin, and then back to Dublin. We got to see everything we wanted and had really amazing weather- it was sunny for 3 days out of 4!

Watch out Ireland- Suzanne is behing the wheel!

I crossed off a second item on my bucket list by driving on the opposite side of the road. I was behind the wheel for about 5 seconds in Doolin… you can see me trying to shift with my right hand in this pic (force of habit!!) I freaked out though when a car started coming down the other lane and a little boy was walking on my side of the road… someone was definitely about to die, so I made the Italian take over the driving responsibilities. My 5

seconds behind the wheel still counts, right?

Happy birthday to me

Last pic of my 20′s

I turned 30 the last day we were there, when we were just strolling around Dublin. We had seen that most of the parking spaces were free on Sundays, so didn’t think much about parking in a small street off St. Stephen’s Green. After about 2 hours, we returned to find a wonderful present from the city of Dublin- a boot on our rental car! (Or clamp, as they call it in Irish.) I had a small freak out, since we had a flight to catch and who knows how long it would take to remove it. Thankfully, the Irish CSR who answered the phone told me it would take 20 minutes max for the tow truck to arrive. We had parked in a 2 hour max parking zone and had been gone 2 hours, 15 minutes. Ugh. But, we managed to get to the airport on time so it was still a good birthday.

I have a few more travel stories to write about, particularly my Italian robbery by the local mafia. Stay tuned!

I can almost see the pot of gold

I turned 30 this past Sunday and I managed to cross off some bucket list items before the day. I’m pretty busy cranking out my thesis dissertation now, but I’ll post a quick update until I have time to write a post.

I went to Ireland with the Italian to celebrate my Dirty 30s. We had a great time, and I think I saw more rainbows in those 4 days than in my 30 years of existence. The weird thing about them was that you could actually see where the rainbow ENDED. In America, you can never see the end of the rainbow- it usually disappears before it “hits” any part of the landscape. It was pretty neat to see the “end” in Ireland, and no wonder the Irish have legends about pots of gold.

This pic is of the mythical double rainbow, which we saw on our first day! Too bad we didn’t find any leprechauns…

Stop 1: Night picnic

When I lived in NYC, I would sometimes organize pub crawls around town to celebrate certain holidays. Halloween was one of them- it was fun to get a bunch of people together and troll the streets dressed in wacky costumes. I really wanted to organize a Halloween pub crawl in Italy, but A) Italians aren’t that enthusiastic about dressing up in public and B) Bars in Italy are super expensive! Pub crawls just aren’t affordable or sensible here.

Florida in the house!

However, I had a stroke of luck right before Halloween when my brother told me he was going to Paris on business. I decided to take a last-minute trip to the city of lights and knew my brother would be up for a pub crawl.

My brother only had free time at night, and he had never visited Paris before. We started our “pub crawl” (aka me and my brother going out by ourselves) beneath the Eiffel Tower with a glass of wine. There were surprisingly a lot of other like-minded people hanging out and drinking in the dark. It was a little too chilly to stay, so after our wine we took the metro to the Oberkampf district (cheap college bar district).

Our first stop was Au P’tit Garage- a fun, divey place that reminded me of the East Village bars back home. The weird thing about this place was the overabundance of Duff beer- everyone was drinking it and labels decorated the walls. I didn’t even know Duff beer was a real thing! My brother also spotted a lone Florida license plate in the corner- not from our county, but that’s OK.

Beer? French fail!

After Garage we headed down the block to UFO, where we saw UFO beer on the menu. I got excited, and told me brother to order a round while I went to the bathroom. When I came back, my brother handed me a fluorescent blue cocktail- WTF? He obviously has problems with his French. Oh well…

After that disgusting drink, we realized it was almost midnight, and the Paris metro closes at 12:30. (Another reason why pub crawls in Europe are difficult!)  We decided to head back to our hotel and go to another bar in the neighborhood.

UF Gators!

When we had arrived at the hotel, we noticed a Harry’s New York bar across the street. We had laughed about this, and decided to make the bar stop #4 on our lonesome pub crawl. The inside of Harry’s is completely covered with American college pennants- we saw all of our siblings’ colleges, but couldn’t find me and my brother’s alma mater, University of Florida. We were joking around with the waiters about how the bar couldn’t be complete without a UF pennant, but even though they were laughing, I’m not sure they understood. As we were walking out, we noticed a UF championship banner in a far corner, almost hidden from view. Too bad about the placement, but at least UF is represented!

Roof party in Paris

My brother had an early start the next morning, so we headed back to the hotel. I had the ingenious idea to climb out on the roof outside our window before going to sleep. Going on a roof with no safety rails after a night of drinking was definitely not a good idea, but obviously I didn’t die. Plus we had a great view of the Opera at night!

So, even though my “pub crawl” was just me and my brother bar-hopping, I’m still counting this as a success and marking it off my bucket list. It really made me miss NYC though… I can’t wait to get back and troll the East Village with my friends in January!