Venice, Italy

Venice is a unique European city, and it would be considered so anywhere in the world. There isn't any room on the narrow streets for cars, so you have to leave them in a parking lot a little ways off. There are boats everywhere, and throughout the entire time that we were there, every time I saw two boats on the same canal I was afraid that they were going to crash. But they never did. Somehow, whoever was steering the boats always managed to avoid contact at the very last moment. We ended up not visiting many things, but what we did see was amazing. We toured the San Marco church. The walls were covered in beautiful gold mosaics that depicted various scenes from the Bible and phrases in Latin. At one time, the mosaics had all been silver because it was the most precious metal. But when gold became more valuable, they had everything redone. By far our favorite thing in Venice was the clock tower in the Piazza San Marco. It was a twenty-four hour clock, which was something Darcy had always fantasized about. At every hour, two mechanical men at the very top rang a bell. We only got to see it once, but at certain times of day more mechanical men come out from the middle. The clock had a sun on the hour hand and a moon on the minute hand. Around the edges there were all the signs of the Zodiac. Since we went during June, Gemini was at the top, which was cool because Darcy and I are Gemini.
It rained every day that we were there. As soon as the rain started, all of the street venders would suddenly conjure umbrellas from nowhere. The Piazza San Marco flooded, and there was  only a small strip of land that wasn't covered in water. Everybody who didn't want to get their shoes wet got stuck in a human traffic jam on this tiny strip. However, those who didn't care about getting wet (me included) took off their shoes and ran through the water. We got around much faster and had much more fun than those in the human traffic jam.
On the last day we visited the fish market. We saw all manner of strange and exotic fish (we even saw a swordfish head), when we realized that we were actually looking at fish that we had eaten in their raw form we got pretty grossed out. The day we left it was bright and sunny (of course). We took a water taxi to the mainland waved goodbye to the floating city of Venice.

The Cliffs of Moher

 If you have seen the movie The Princess Bride, then you will remember the Cliffs of Insanity, which were filmed at the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland. The outside part of the cave in Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince was filmed there too. The cliffs are tall and stretch a long way out into the ocean. From afar, you can see the waves crashing against them so hard that spray actually comes over the top to water the plants! There is a tower on top which you can climb and get a better view. It was extremely windy when we went. I don't know if that's how it always is, but it was so windy for us that you could lean into the wind completely and not fall over.  Inside there is an exhibition about sea life and geology.

Castles in Ireland

We visited two castles while in Ireland. One of them had been transformed into a hotel and the other was a restored, medieval castle. At Dromoland castle (the hotel) we wandered around the grounds and attempted to lose Bridget and throw Audrey off a tower. Bunratty Castle was rated number two on our list of awesome castles. It has been fully furnished to look like it did in the medieval times. It had numerous towers and Bridget and I almost got blown off the roof because it was so windy. It had a medieval village around the castle so we got to see what traditional cottages and shops looked like in Ireland several hundred years ago.

Carcassonne

Carcassonne was definitely one of the more amazing chateaux/castles that we've visited so far. It has been almost completely restored and looks kind of like one of the castles that you see in fairy tales, although it is probably a lot more defensible. Carcassonne got its name when the town and Chateau were under siege. The people of the town were starving and were just about ready to give themselves up to the French when one of the noble ladies of the chateau took their last pig and fed it with the last of their grain and then threw it over the battlements. When the French saw the pig they thought that the people of the town must have a lot more food if they were able to throw away their pigs and therefore they would not be able to starve them out. They lifted the siege and the noble lady became the lady of Carcassonne (carcass for pig carcass).

We checked into a hotel that had a view of the walls surrounding Carcassonne so that we could stare at them all night. The next morning we went into the town of Carcassonne and saw the chateau and went up on the battlements. The view was beautiful and had we not been on our way to Barcelona that day we might have stayed for a couple days to look around the city. As it was we took the chance to see it again on our way back.

Les Baux

Les Baux is an old town full of winding streets, and in it on top of a hill is an old fortress called Le Chateau Des Baux (inventive!). There was a lot of bauxite mined around it, which is how bauxite got its name. The fortress is really cool. It was ruined by the town voluntarily because it became a haven for rebels. Everything about it has a sort of feeling of time, of things destroyed. It would be the coolest thing if it was actually still whole because there are lots of floors and arches that are obvious, but there is no possible way to get to them. It's insanely huge, with absolutely magnificent views from the high watch towers. The place was virtually impregnable because of the height advantages. Just on the ground, you can see for miles and miles. The highest part was really windy, and the stairs were so worn that I was seriously afraid of falling. It's awesome to look down and see all the different patches of ground that belong to different people and are laid out so diversely. Occasionally they do exhibitions of the gigantic catapults on display outside. Unfortunately, we were not able to see them.There is a small church where they play a movie showing off the grounds from above. I stayed for the exciting part at the beginning when there were some of the catapults and fencing tournaments. The town is really cool and has lots of candy/touristy shops. It was the kind of town that made you want to go explore. Les Baux is a really cool place to visit, I'd say.

Andorra

Andorra, for those of you who don't know, is a small country between Spain and France. I had never heard of it, but it's there. We were driving back from Barcelona, and we decided to stop in Andorra just to see what it was like and to get a t-shirt. We were driving through a bunch of tunnels, and when we weren't in a tunnel, it was just grassy mountains and valleys on either side. Then suddenly we hit Andorra, and there were lots of security guards checking the cars. Because it's a part of the EU, you don't have to show your passport or change currency, which was nice. We ate lunch at a small place by an artificial duck pond. The menu was in four languages (Spanish, Catalan, French, and English) and our waiter appeared to be good with all of them. The ducks were free to come and go around the place, which was a little bit weird. Andorra has really low tax rates compared to Spain and France, so the entire place is filled with stores. As Mom put it, "It would be quicker and easier to buy a car than to find a place that sold touristy shirts. We did have a lot of trouble finding stuff, mostly because the Andorrans spend until three eating lunch. And I thought the Spanish and the French were slow. There wasn't much in the way of interesting historical sites, so we really didn't spend much time there. Everybody was pretty nice, but it didn't feel quite right. Every little bit reminded you of something from a place you'd already been, but it didn't really cohere. Nothing seemed to go together in a nice way. I suppose the ski lodges we saw on the way out wouldn't have been bad. It didn't make a very good impression on us, though. We had lunch and ice cream, bought shirts, and left pretty quickly. And that was that. Not even any pictures to help us remember how glorious it was.

Barcelona, Spain

We decided to go to Barcelona to get out of France for a while. It was nice although extremely confusing to hear spanish again. For awhile at the beginning we kept saying 'Merci' instead of 'Gracias'. The week before our lovely english teacher had us do research projects on the architecture of Barcelona, which, as much as I hate homework, made the trip more interesting. My project was on Antonio Gaudi, so we went and  visited some of his buildings, the most famous of which is the Sagrada Famillia, which is an incredible cathedral built with a lot of spires. It  looks like it should technically not be able to stay up. We also visited a couple of his apartment buildings which would be pretty cool to live in. We saw a housing complex he was going to build but never finished, which has been turned into a park and has a view of the whole of Barcelona.

I will remember:  having a good time eating lots of tapas and chorizo, going to the Barcelona beach, and trying to figure out how to tell a taxi driver where we wanted to go.