On leaving Italy

The past few days have been exhausting. As I said earlier Thursday night was our Gala (and Italian Thanksgiving) and with it being the last night we would all be together we stayed up wayy too late (like almost 3am) and sang a lot of karaoke (because that's just what you do apparently). So needless to say the Friday morning was a bit rough for everyone. To top it off Rosella comes in and tells us that there is a train strike in Italy so the trains we were hoping to take to get us to Rome probably wouldn't be running. Great. We were all a bit worried at this point but Rosella took care of us, she found buses that will get us there and even tried to get our money back for the train tickets we were unable to use (stinking strike). So around 1:30 10 of us and Rosella made our way to the bus station. Earlier that morning Dave and Cassandra had left for the airport already so our numbers were down. A group of me and 5 others were to get a hotel together and then 3 others were at another hotel, Mike came to the station to say by to us as he's the only one flying out on Saturday afternoon. So we had a 4 hour bus ride instead of a 2 hour train ride, there was not much sleeping to say that much. Once we finally made it to the airport we had to find the shuttle to our hotel and then we waited. It was nice to just sit and enjoy everyone talking one of the final times. Once at the hotel we quickly dropped off our stuff and made way for our last meal as a group in Italy (how sad is that). We had pizza and fries (patatine frittes in italian) and made our way back to the hotel for the night. Chris was leaving super early in the morning to catch his 6am flight so we said by to him before going to bed. It's so sad seeing our group slowly disperse.
At 5am Saturday we all were up and ready to leave (the remaining 5 of us) and left for the airport at 5:30. Two more were dropped off at terminal 5 and then the last of us went to terminal 3. We all said our goodbyes and went our separate ways, which led me to the train station taking me to the city center of Rome (lucky me, flight doesn't leave till 9... PM) so I could spend one last day in Rome. I had a ticket for the Borghese at 9, so I wandered around trying to find the place (I may have spent a week in Rome, but I only know how to get to places from where we were staying not from the Termini station) and so I was lost for a bit. It was nearing 8:30 and I knew I had to get there soon so I gave up searching and hailed a taxi. The museum was awesome, there was only two floors but it was awesome. The top floor was paintings done by artists in the renaissance. The bottom floor were the sculptures and the really good ones were done by Bernini. He was an amazing sculptor, Dave described his work as making the marble liquid so he could shape it and then magically turning it back to hard marble when he finished (yes he was that good). So I oogled at those for a while then made out of the museum. I pretty much stayed in the Borghese gardens for the next few hours taking a few pictures here and there and reading a book (Gone Girl, I haven't seen the movie but I'm sure the book is much better so you all should read it). It was pretty chilly and looked like rain so I started moving again and made my way to the Colosseum so I could ooh and ahh at it one last time before leaving. I read there for a few hours also then went to get the last gelato I will have in the country before getting another taxi to take me to the airport.
I showed up kind of early but I was exhausted from carrying all three of my bags all day (two backpacks and a rolling one, the streets are not conducive for rolling bags) I nearly got blisters from them. So I made my way through customs and security and waited. And waited. And waited. My flight to Dublin was supposed to leave at 9 which usually means board at 8:15ish but 8:45 rolls around and nothing about the flight. It's raining pretty hard at the moment so I'm sure that was it but I just kept adding up all the time and how late we were going to land and how miserable I was going to be that late at night in the rain with all my luggage trying to find my hostel. But we finally got on the plane and off we went. We landed in Dublin at 11:30 and I had found my hostel by 12:15 which isn't too bad for being in a country by yourself for the first time. Needless to say I passed out when I finally got to bed.
Oh and I never even mentioned my food consumption, after dinner Friday night I had an orange and crackers for breakfast a croissant for lunch that I dipped in jam and a tiny can of pringles, a twix, and a snickers for dinner. Yay nutrition.
Today in Dublin I had cereal (with real cold milk, egahd cold milk who would have thunk it) and then went to the Dublin zoo. The zoo was really nice and even though it was a bit chilly and threatened to rain all day the animals were all pretty active. Unfortunately there was no giraffe feeding today (my luck with giraffes is outstanding, they're my favorite animal and I've yet to be able to touch one and I've gone to so many zoos). Then I walked around the city just kind of wandering. i ate a lot of snickers today (did you know that foreign candy taste so much better than our candy it's because we use high fructose corn syrup and they use real sugar it makes a real difference), I think the final count was 4 (but the days not over yet) and I had a bagel. Oh how I've missed bagels they're so delicious and warm and breadlike. I have decided I like Ireland a lot. They speak english do you know how hard it is to live somewhere and not understand the language, it sucks but then again I've gotten so used to Italian that when I tried to say thank you to someone today I said grazie they looked at me weird because they knew I wasn't italian so I should probably break that habit soon. Alright on with the pictures.

Fountain from the Borghese gardens. Much flow so wow.

There was some event going on in the center of Rome, there were cops and swat-like trucks everywhere.

Some lovely public gardens I walked through after the zoo today, I don't know why they've showed up before the zoo and honestly I'm too lazy to move it.

Lion cub running after momma. So cute.

A sweet building in the middle of the gardens I was in, it might have been a park instead of a garden but I'm going to keep saying garden.

Look at how majestic this tiger is, he posed like that for almost a whole minute it was very impressive.

A pretty nifty church I stumbled upon.

Monkey! Or orangutan or something like that.

Hehe, lemur. Poor Zaboomafoo who died recently. These guys are pretty cute.

A nicely reflected bridge.

I like this one better though.

Drum roll please (I'm doing it in my head so I hope you are too). Giraffe!

Mr. (or Ms I don't know rhino genders very well) Rhino.

I could not tell you the name of this animal but it's cool.

Doesn't he just look angry, again I'm assuming it's a he.

Elephant bums.

What a beautimus peacock.

Dohh sleeping red panda.

This painting was amazing, it was in the Borghese museum (excuse my scrambled pictures). The boy in the bottom left corner has a foot that looks like it is actually coming down towards us, theres even a shadow on the frame I was so impressed.

A sculpture by Bernini of the rape of Persephone. Happy scene, maybe not but absolutely stunning piece, yes.

Another Bernini, Apollo and Daphne (not scooby doo Daphne). She's a nymph so it looks as if her hands are actually turning into leaves, so freaking cool.

This was kind of creepy, it spins around and the lights go out and it goes so fast you see the scene of men killing babies. But it was still really cool (obviously not an ancient piece of work).

Look Mark I found Moak!

This is the theater I went to tonight to see Interstellar (which was amazing, Chris if you're reading this and haven't seen it yet you probably should like now), I just thought the theater was super cool and massive. I loved it.