Our Second Spring Break!

Emily and I have been so blessed to be able to do some traveling while studying abroad this semester. This past week we had the chance to go to Ireland and Paris! I guess you could say we had a second spring break, because we didn't have any classes. This week is Feria in Sevilla, which is basically a big carnival and fair for a week. Women walk around in their huge, outrageous flamenco dresses or ride on horse carriages. There are a ton of tents with flamenco dancing inside them. No, we didn't bust out our dancing skills (mainly because we don't know how to dance flamenco style). 

Saturday we left for the amazing country of Ireland! People really aren't lying when they say Ireland has 47 shades of green. From the plane we could literally see every color of green. We met up with my relatives (my Grandad's brother, Sean and his wife, Olga) who we stayed with. They live in a town about a 30 minute train ride outside of Dublin called Dalkey. I was able to meet a lot of my extended family there. Everyone in Ireland is so helpful and talkative, and it's very nice that English is their first language : ) 

We took a day trip to Bray, a local town near Dalkey, and hiked a mountain. We got this amazing view:

We also went into Dublin for a day and walked around the city. We saw the "other" Trinity College. This one is just a tad bit bigger than our Trinity, haha. There is so much history and culture in Ireland. Every pub we walked by had such great Irish music playing. Ireland was such a wonderful country to visit and we had such amazing hosts that made us feel like we were just at home. 

Olga and Sean - my relatives

After our short visit in Ireland we were off to Paris! There were so many things that we knew we wanted to see, however we didn't want to pay for metra train tickets, so we sucked it up and walked all over Paris for 3 days (in the rain for two of those days!). Just some of the things we saw were the Arc de Triomph, the Opera, Palace of Luxenburg, the Panthion, the Eiffle Tower, the Louvre, Moulin Rouge and Notre Dame. We were quite tired at the end of the day from walking to see all of this! But it was still great to be able to see everything!  

Emily and part of the Louvre 

Las dos chicas aventureras :) 

People always say that Paris is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and I think we would definitely agree! There are so many ancient beautiful buildings that everyone needs to see! Whenever we travel, Emily and I are so amazed to see the glory of God in every country He has made. 

We have less than two weeks left in Sevilla. We're going to try and soak up these last 12 days in Spain as much as possible and enjoy them to the fullest!