FOTA Wildlife Park

So on Saturday Montana, Kyla, Holly, and I took a train to FOTA and then Cobh! It was a beautiful day without a single cloud in the sky, but it was VERY cold so we all had to bundle up nicely.

FOTA Wildlife Park was our first stop. It's almost like a zoo, except a lot of the animals, like the kangaroos, maras, ducks, geese, and peacocks have free range of the park. You can literally get within snuggling distance of them (though you'll get kicked out if you do). The larger and more dangerous animals like the cheetahs and ostriches are fenced off like they would be in a normal zoo. The monkeys however are kept on islands in the center of the park, and have huge climbing frames that they can play on all the time!! Its not possible to capture this place in words, so here are gobs and gobs of photos for your enjoyment!!

A Day in One Photo: Coppinger's Court

This is Coppinger's Court in West Cork. We visited it as part of a field trip for our Archaeology Early Start class (where we went to school a month early in order to get used to the different school system). This building represents a transition from the Late Medieval period and castles into the Early Modern Period and gentleman's estates. It was built by Walter Coppinger, a successful business man, in the 17th century. It thrived for a short amount of time but when his son took over, the estate faltered and fell. In front of this would have been an expansive garden. Now, it is on farm land and cows can graze here! You can see the little metal fence there in the entrance; that's some sort of modern animal pen. Only in Ireland!

There is a TON more I could say about this, but I don't want to go on and on! For some more quick reading: http://www.abandonedireland.com/cc.html

A Day in One Photo: Newgrange

This is Newgrange, one of three large passage tombs in the Bend of Boyne outside of Dublin in Co. Meath. Passage tombs are from the Neolithic period and are named after their long passage down the center of the structure that ends in three chambers (forming the shape of a cross) with the east end being the largest and most important. Each chamber has a single basin stone, which is where cremated remains of several different people would have been placed. This particular passage tomb has an entry stone which you can see, its the long horizontal rock in the center of the photo. It features original artwork including three swirls and several squares. These are thought to perhaps represent the surrounding landscape, with the squares being farmland, and the three swirls being the three passage tombs (Newgrange, Knowth, and Dowth). 

The current reconstruction of Newgrange is based on Professor O'Kelly's excavations in the 60s and 70s. He found these white quartz stones on the ground in front of the mound and using their position calculated the exact angle of the wall before it fell! Some disagree with his findings however and say that the quartz was actually a pathway around the front of the structure. According to O'Kelly's plans, the quartz would have continued up to the opening and people would have slipped over the entrance stone that I mentioned to get into the tomb. Because that would gradually destroy the artwork, they opened up part of the wall (illustrated by the grey stone) and put in the stairs. The interior of the structure hasn't needed any work however. The creators of the tomb placed the ceiling support rocks so perfectly that even without mortar the structure has stood since the Neolithic, and not even a drop of rain has ever penetrated the cover.

Ok, I'll share one last thing!! Inside the tomb is pitch black but when the sun hits the entrance just right on the winter solstice (right Holly?) the light projects into the end chamber and goes across the floor. Even now, important Irish leaders and a lucky lottery winner get to go into the tomb and witness this same phenomenon that people witnessed thousands and thousands of years ago. 

Morte la bête, mort le venin.

This Sleeping Beauty's castle was actually inspired by a real castle in France!

The main focus of our trip to Paris was in fact Disneyland. I know that its not the proper, cultural, adult thing to visit when you're in Paris, one of the most amazing and quintessential cities in the world, but as soon as Brianna and I walked through the Disney gates, everything was perfect! If the entire trip to Ireland hadn't been worth it already, it would have been made worth it in the moment when we saw Sleeping Beauty's Castle. So anyways. Disneyland Paris is very similar to Disneyland in CA. There are two parks, one magic kingdom-type-park, and one specifically catering to Hollywood/movie-based rides. They had a Thunder Mountain and a Tower of Terror that were pretty similar to their Anaheim counterparts, but most of the other rides were quite different! The Indiana Jones ride was a roller-coaster, the Pirates of the Caribbean was reformatted (and all the pirates yelled at each other in French), and the Space Mountain had a modified track and was called Mission 2. In the Walt Disney Studios park there was also a "Crush's Coaster" based on the turtle from Finding Nemo! This one was more similar to Mr. Six's Pandemonium or Tony Hawks roller-coaster from the Six Flags franchises.

Disney was all decorated for Halloween!

This was a cove near Pirates

Pirates was a lot of fun. Brianna actually judges it as better than the one in Anaheim. It had a few different scenes and you actually went up into the second story of the building instead of the basement. However, this Pirates didn't have a skull saying "Dead men tell no tales" in the ride at all! Other than that, the ride was a lot of fun! It was especially fun to try to translate what the animatrons were saying to each other.

Space Mountain Mission 2

 Mission 2 was actually quite different from #1! They started out by shooting you from the bottom of this tube into the other building, where you went upside-down! Multiple times! Paris definitely had more intense roller-coasters, probably because the Paris park opened more recently. They're celebrating their 20th birthday! Just like me :)

C'était tres chouette! Au revoir!

P.S. "morte la bête, mort le venin" literally means "dead the beast, dead the poison" but it's the French equivalent of "Dead men tell no tales" :D

Paris et Notre Dame

So eventually we got into Paris and checked into our hostel (Friends Hostel near le Sacré Coeur) which was decent but in quite the sketchy neighborhood. We decided to walk by le Sacré Coeur and then to continue on to Notre Dame, which is a LONG walk but totally worth it as we got to see a lot of the city that way.

Le Sacré Coeur

The view of Paris from Le Sacré Coeur

Notre Dame

 And of course, there were some references to Ecclesia and Synagoga on the lovely Notre Dame!!

 We got to go into the cathedral when there was actually a service taking place, which was pretty special. We tourists must have been pretty annoying though!

The Eiffel Tower at night

 After staring in awe at Notre Dame Holly and I went back to the hostel, but Brianna and Montana took a night tour of Paris in a boat on the Seine. They totally recommend it, so keep it in mind if you plan on traveling to France!

Midnight in Beauvais

This past weekend my friends Brianna, Holly O'Brien, Montana, and I took a trip to France!! The first night Brianna and Holly and I stayed in Beauvais, a town about an hour outside of Paris. Unfortunately we decided to walk into town instead of taking the bus. An hour and a half later, at midnight, we finally arrived in town, and all hotels were closed!!! So instead of staying in a bed. We slept for about an hour on the southern porch of the Beauvais Cathedral, the most awe-inspiring building I have ever laid eyes on!

Beauvais Cathedral

 This cathedral is so tall that when it was first built it actually collapsed while people were inside!! Luckily, it collapsed so slowly that everyone was able to get out. They rebuilt it but never successfully finished it, so there's no nave. If you were looking at it from the sky, you would just see the top of the cross-shaped form, with a small more modern church added on where the body of the church should be.

The "Pimple" Church where the nave of Beauvais should be.

A side street on our walk back!

So after that hour on the porch of a cathedral, we got very cold, so we started the hour and a half walk back to the Beauvais airport. We even ran into a new furry friend!

Finally, we got back, and we slept/tried to keep warm on some tables outside of the airport for about four hours until it opened.

Altogether, the night was unusual and eventful, but totally worth it, at least for me. I wanted to see Beauvais Cathedral ever since I took a course on Castles and Cathedrals, and we sort of stumbled upon it. If we hadn't been walking into town that night, I don't know if I would have seen it at all!

Nancy DREW!!!!!!!

I just wanted to say that after a day and a half of trying to get the Deadly Device to download, it finally worked. And I'm off to Paris today. So I could not be happier at this moment. :D :D :D I hope you all have a beautiful beautiful day!!!