North Park to NYC!

Molly and I have been lucky enough in the past month to host some of my best friends from Steamboat out here in the big city. Back in March, Aaron and Becky came to visit right during St. Pat's, which is one of the best times to be in the city. Way better than lame Boston! So, for four days we got to tromp around the city with the Walden crew, showing off the city that I have come to call my second home. (Still ranks behind Steamboat, and Durango but how can poor NYC compete with mountains and friends). It was also Aaron's 30th Birthday, so we had fun celebrating that with him as well.

Aaron and Becky flew in very early on the red eye flight from Denver on a Friday. Early enough that we had coffee before Molly was even leaving for work. They were excited to see everything, so I decided taking them on a "death march" of downtown Manhattan would be the way to keep them awake.

Follow the red line below to see the long walk we took. Remember: for them this was their first day in the city, after a night of no sleep...AND we had to fight NYC crowds the whole day in some of the craziest parts of the city.

We took the 6 train downtown and got out at City Hall. We walked to the Brooklyn Bridge and went about halfway across, just far enough to see great views of the city. Back to land, we went to the World Trade Center site, and walked up to the Ghostbuster's building. We walked in SoHo, Chinatown, Tribeca and ate at Lombardi's Pizza in Little Italy. A very full morning and afternoon.

Ahh the Brooklyn Bridge. It's very old, and a great way to see the city.

After a long day of walking, it was time to go out and see the city nightlife. We went to the bar at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, a high rise fancy hotel on the corner of Central Park. The lounge area has great views of the Park and you can see down the streets to the top part of Times Square. We didn't get a great picture there, but you can see the buildings in the back. From there, we went to a nice dinner and then immediately home to bed. Everyone was exhausted!

On that Saturday, Molly took Aaron and Becky around while I was a work. (Molly part of post). We started the morning with an Ireland rugby match at Kinsale. From there, we went down to Tiffany's. Becky really wanted to see Tiffany's and we figured it would be a good non-Cody activity. We wandered around the entire place for about an hour, until Aaron started making sad noises...then we knew it was time to go. Aaron did buy Becky a beautiful bracelet before fading completely. Then, we went to get lunch at a little Italian place in midtown - it was delicious! We ended the afternoon with a walk home through Central Park. It was a gorgeous day, and they definitely appreciated a calmer walk than Cody's the day before.

Aaahhh the subway. Full of strange and crazy people. It takes some getting used to, that's for sure. By the end of the trip, Becky and Aaron had no problems at all figuring out the whole mess. On Saturday night, Aaron and Becky had Broadway tickets and managed to navigate Times Square all alone for the first time. We met them after their show and grabbed a bite to eat at an Irish pub in Times Square - bad choice. The beers (including Guinness) were served in Solo cups. In order to appease the beer gods, we went to Heidelberg after dinner to enjoy some good German beer in proper glassware.

Sunday was a rainy day so we headed to the MET. The Impressionist wing, our favorite. Since Molly and I have been here five or six times before, we tried to search out some new things that we hadn't seen before. It was also kind of fun to come around some corner and see Aaron and Becky just staring at some painting. We kept track of where we were by sending pictures of paintings to each other via texts.

There are a lot of strange paintings in the MET, and this is one of them. Why does that lady have birds in her hair? Why is she kissing the flamingo? I just don't understand art sometimes. Some people don't like Modern art, not understanding the color blue on a canvas. Not me, I know that the artist just really likes blue and wanted to share it with the world. But kissing animals? Strange.

As we made our way out of the MET, we found the Islanders art gallery. The boat looking shape on the ceiling is actually hundreds of shields put together.

The weather started to clear off in the afternoon, so off we went to the Statue of Liberty. It was my first time taking the Circle Line tour boat, which goes up both rivers and takes you out to the Statue. It was still really cold (especially on the water), and they don't drop you off at the Statue, but it was a good tour. Ellis Island looks real cool, I will be going out there sometime soon. Oh and a side note, we had the world's worst tour guide on our boat. A kind of broke down Liza Minelli wannabe, giving boat tours to German tourists who don't understand her. She was fun.

Monday was St. Patrick's Day, and it was time to rock! As in: have lots of fun, walk in the parade, and have some pints of Guinness. Here I am looking very handsome on the subway!

We headed to the parade for a 1:10 start time. But first we had to stop to pick up our sashes. Here are Aaron and Beck in Grand Central on our way to the start point.

Molly wins the trooper of the year award for her stomach bug fighting skills. She had a mean case of food poisoning and spent the night feeling very ill. She still wanted to march in the parade (especially since she took a vacation day from work), so she was nice enough to get us in the parade with her school and walked very calmly and quietly next to us. I felt the need to make up for her lack of "Spirit" and took charge yelling at everyone. I sure am a good boyfriend.

This was the group ahead of us.

Yep! That's me. With the green scarf that I picked up in Dublin Airport. You may have received this picture as a TXT message. I went a little over board and let everyone know I was marching. What can I say, I was having a good time.

Later that night we went to Kinsale for some post march pints (without Molly). Becky was very excited we had pushed our way to the front of the crowd.

We had a great time with Aaron and Becky. We saw lots of sights, ate lots of good food, and found lots of good pubs to enjoy. All in all a great weekend. They are allowed to come and visit us anytime.

Day 8 & 9: Trip to Roma and Home

(Molly Post)

The last two days in Europe were made up of bus, trains and planes (and everything in between). We woke up on Saturday morning in Positano to a spectacular view, though it was a VERY windy morning.

You can actually see the wind blowing the water in the below picture!

We had a great final breakfast at our hotel, showered, packed, and went down to the beach for a final walk around town. We found a bench in the sun, and I couldn't resist laying in the sun for a few minutes while Cody walked around.

We finally went to the Duomo (the dome we saw from our window). It was very pretty, though if you enlarge the photo you can see that some of the stained glass window was broken.

We went back to the restaurant we ate at the previous evening for a bite to eat before we left (it was the only place open). Cody tried some lemon dessert, while I had some of the great mozzarella and tomatoes once more. Below is one last view of the beach...

By 12PM, we were on our way to the bus stop to catch the bus to Sorrento. From Sorrento, we caught the local train, the Circumvesuviana, to Naples.

When we arrived in Naples, we discovered we had just missed the train to Roma and had to wait around for over an hour. Cody had drank one too many bottles of water that morning and needed a restroom, and I was freezing in the train station - it was outdoors, as most train stations in Europe are. So, we stopped in McDonald's...our greatest shame of the trip...and rested there for the hour.

The train back to Roma was not as nice as the one we took on the way down. We had an assigned seat and were stuck facing other passengers. I spent most of the 2 hour train reading and Cody listened to music. We got to Roma around 5 PM. After a quick stop at the best gelato place in Roma (the train station), we walked over to our hostel. Even though we hadn't been there for 3 years, I remembered exactly where it was. Unfortunately, they didn't have any 2-bedroom rooms left for the evening, so we took our 2 beds in a room of 6. There were 3 Aussies in the room when we arrived, and they were getting ready for a night on the town. They seemed very nice, but definitely ready to party. On the other hand, Cody and I dropped off our bags and set off to window shop and grab an early dinner. To Cody's dismay, we didn't find any "Euro-shoes", but we did have some good pizza for our last Italian meal.

We attempted a fun last night in Italy by grabbing a beer in the hostel bar when we returned from dinner but were both so tired that one beer was all we managed. It didn't help that some high school kids made the hostel their weekend hangout place and were blasting Italian music. We were in bed by 10PM, though we were woken up multiple times between 11PM-2AM by the various people knocking on the door for help getting in. They were all too drunk/tired to figure out the lock. Poor Cody had to let them all in since he was on the bottom bunk.

We woke up Sunday morning around 6AM to catch our flight back to Dublin. A walk to the train station, a bus to the airport, and a plane later, we found ourselves back in Ireland! :) Below are some pretty pictures of the Alps from the plane.

Back in Dublin, we got some lunch (and our last Guinness/Magners) and did all of our souvenir and gift shopping. Leaving Dublin was a little sad. It felt like we had barely left New York, and we definitely hadn't spent enough time in Ireland this trip. Italy was absolutely beautiful, but Ireland is a second home. Cody and I agreed that our next trip to Europe should include at least a week in Ireland. Below is one of our final views of the Emerald Isle from the plane...the rolling hills of Glendalough.

Until our next trip...