Spring travels: Dublin and Galway

After our 1 day stay in Tallinn we were off to Dublin to meet up with more friends and enjoy another few days of freedom before having to go back to revision.

Of course, when in Ireland you have to try all the typical Irish activities, such as going to Temple bar for a pint of Guinness, listening to live Irish music, trying Irish  coffee and so on. So we did. That and so much more. 

After arriving and finally finding our hostel which I should call ultra mega hostel, which was really something different, differing completely from the cosy little one we stayed in in Tallinn, complete with it's own cafe, bar,   shower complex and multiple floors, we started to plan our trip (not like we had plenty of time to plan stuff before actually arriving in this country...). We decided to take a day trip to see the Cliffs of Moher and then stay the night in Galway, which was a good call. The cliffs were magnificent and Galway completely charming. Took a 'free' walking tour (they say free, but ask for a donation casually mentioning the amount it would cost to take a paid tour and slightly guilt tripping you into paying that amount) and learnt quite a lot about Ireland's history as well as Claddagh rings. These are cool as their position on your finger and depending on which hand you wear them on, lets others know if you are single, in a relationship, engaged or married. Two of my friends even bought ones for themselves, which I have to say are pretty cool souvenirs. The hostel we stayed in while there was... interesting... even had another LT guy staying there (told ya we're taking over the world) who had taught the other guests a bit of Lithuanian.

On the edge of the world

Back in Dublin we moved onto doing all those things on our 'must be dine in Ireland' list. Went on another walking tour and were practically brought to tears by the guide when she spoke of the famine in such an emotional way you'd think she was an actress. Had our Guinness on multiple occasions to the point that I didn't even want the free one they give you when you take the tour of the brewery. We also went on a pub-crawl where we were treated with an Irish dance by one of the bartenders, I tried an appletini (was delicious, J.D. was so right!) for the first time and had a great time (even with a bit of drama).

Irish coffee: nice to look at, not so much to drink...

The normal people and the crazies

One night we decided to just stay in and this predicted quite night turned out to be quite exciting, with long talks in the halls of the hostel in the early ours of the night and new acquaintances forming.

All in all, Ireland was complete with a mixture of experiences and time well spent with good friends. 

Photos by I. Cesnulaiyte

Spring travels: Tallinn

The journey back to the UK was a pretty exciting one. Unlike normal people, instead of going directly back we decided to make the most out of our holidays and take the long way round visiting Tallinn and then flying to Ireland for 4 days. 

To save some time we took the night bus to Tallinn meaning we were there at 6 am cold (still -2 there ant this point) and hungry (not to worry, we had enough food packed for a small feast). As we were in money saving mode, walking to old town seemed to be the only option so we did, passing through what could only be described as a ghost city with its inhabitants still sleeping. We finally made it to the old town walls and as we passed though what used to be one of the gates to the city, we were there- a calm, cozy old town of Estonia's capital city.

Happy little penguins

We made our way to the hostel and were pleasantly surprised that a Lithuanian girl was working there (what are the chances!), Lithuanians are clearly taking over the world. Leaving our stuff behind we left to explore the town. As we walked around the smell of freshly baked cinnamon buns caught our attention and so surely we had no choice but to follow it to a small bakery/cafe - 'Matilda', where we ordered those delectable pastries and tea.

Fresh cinnamon buns and tea, the perfect... well... end to our morning :P 

We spent the rest of the day wondering around, going to museums, galleries, the basic touristy things and finished our night at an Estonian bar, where we sat at a table in what was made to be a giant beer glass while having a beer (beerception right there) and watched traditional dancing + live music which was quite a traditional end to our day.

Photography museum

Beerception

The next morning we were treated to pancakes, an excellent feature the Knight house hostel offers. We took a final stroll around town, climbing a defensive wall tower which seemed to be invaded with pigeons (like sneaky chameleons, pretty hard to spot if you're not looking for them) and finished our stay in Tallinn as we started, with a lovely walk (you know, for consistency) all the way to the airport this time. Had never walked to an airport so some experience points right there! :P

Made it to the sea!

All in all, enjoyed Tallinn, would recommend to visit for a couple of days as you do your Baltic tour ;)

Photos by Ieva Cesnulaityte.

Flashbacks: Glass slippers and pumpkins

What girl doesn't love dressing up and going to a fancy dinner, dance or in my case both combined into a lovely ball. I haven't been to many and each experience till date has been very different, fun and exciting. But I guess it all goes down to the people you're with and because I was there with a wonderful guy who made me feel like the belle of the ball that night is one I will never forget. 

After the somewhat strange experience of being served dinner the way I had been serving people all of first term at my part time job, the evening was pretty eventful. From trying to get an After Eight from my forehead to my mouth without using hands in a game, to attempting a few ballroom dances and somehow surviving extreme Macarena in heels. What's more, the DJ played a mix of songs from practically every stage of my life from kindergarten to this date which really took me down memory lane. So I think it goes without saying that I had an amazing time. The ball ended in a very Cinderella fashion, finishing just after midnight, luckily my carriage didn't turn into a pumpkin and I got home as quick as one can when you are trying to get a taxi on the last day of term.

Green xp

When being vegetarian and even vegan isn't enough, the next step is a raw food diet. This is when everything you eat has been made without using a higher temperature than 40 deg. Celsius. So basically, fruit, veg, nuts, seeds and anything you can muster up from those products. 

While I wouldn't have the will power to live on it even for only one week most probably, I have been very interested in trying something from that kind of menu (and no, not just a salad :P). And so opportunity came knocking when my mum suggested we go try out this raw food cafe 'Raw42' in old town the other day. And so we went, taking my Grandmother who apparently has been aching to try this interesting cuisine for a while now. 

I was anxious to try everything, the green cocktails, the peculiar salads, soups and main dishes. The benefit of not going alone was that I had that opportunity as we tried each of the dishes we ordered along with our special drinks. All in all, it was a good experience, is something I would recommend to try if you're looking for new and interesting meals. Would not recommend if you're a complete carnivore and can't survive without meat as there won't be any for m... eters? It's old town, probably a cafe next door has all those usual LT meat dishes if that's your thing ;)

Green cocktails. I chose to go for a berry almond milk (centre)

White salad

Carrot soup

Sushi! no rice though :P

'Lasagna'- letuce, tomatoe, seed spread, courgettes, tomatoe spread and seedlings

Getting hungry from looking at these photos, lunch break it is! :)

Home for Easter

Being at home for the holidays is always nice, the traditions, the atmosphere, the food...

Preparations started the night before with egg painting using wax. As this is the first time I've hosted such an event and didn't have any necessary equipment, we had to be quite inventive. The biggest challenge we had to face was improvising a container in which we would melt the wax and keep it from becoming solid. But with the ingenuity of my cousin we succeeded in our mission. Spending a quiet evening with close friends preparing for Easter is just one of those things that really put you in a holiday mood. 

Our amazing contraption

On the day we must have spent over 3 hours at the table trying all the various dishes, competing for the best egg and chatting. As it was the first time my brother couldn't join us, we made an effort to have a skype conference with him before we sat down to eat. The day ended with a family viewing of The Hobbit, an Easter classic :P

I'm glad I decided to come home for Easter, being with the family on this day is just one of those little things that can put things into perspective.

Spring travels: First stop - Leeds

Another uni term has ended, no more lectures until 2014 *Gasp. So, time to break free before exams and travel. First destination - Lithuania. But what fun is taking a direct flight when you can take the long way round :) Therefore another travel season has just been opened with a small trip to Leeds from which we were to catch a flight to LT through Germany.

Upon arrival in Leeds we were fairly hungry after a 3 hour coach ride to get there. We had packed 3 burgers for such a situation and went in search of shelter where we could consume our food away from the cold. As we needed the fine resource of the internet to check our next destination we set our sites on a place that would offer free wifi. Walking by we spotted the ultimate destination that was to suit all our needs - a busy McDonald's with wifi - a perfect place where we could eat our food without getting looks as who could tell the difference between burgers anyway :P

After our cheeky lunch break we made way round the city centre admiring the architecture and the little things such as street musicians whose jazz music made the walk all the more merry. Then headed over to this new shopping centre where we had to meet up with someone who was going to put us up for the night and receive a city map from them. And boy was it busy, had to wait in a line to get to the escalator and you could just see the masses flow as a current. Even though this was a shopping centre it proved to be quite impressive  being practically outside with a glass roof and connections between different buildings which might not be the best thing with all the cold weather, but looks cool so oh well. Had some interesting sculptures that caught our eye such as this one of a horse:

Photo by Ieva Cesnulaityte

After walking the highly commercial streets we decided to make our way to the outskirts of the centre and ended up in this building which we though would be a museum or something along those lines but ended up to be another shopping bazaar, but this time filled with specialty stores and hosting a vinyl record market that day. After looking through the selection I picked out a few records to bring back as gifts:

Another little shop - 'Candy Candy' caught our eyes. It sold handmade scented soaps and other bath products which smelled of beautiful summer dreams :) It took us a while to chose the perfect ones, but I finally set my mind on these two:

The last one we went into was this small bead store, had a chat with the owner and bought some beads for our future handmade jewelry. A lovely experience and now just need to all meet up for a crafty afternoon with the girls :)

Photo by Ieva Cesnulaityte

Photo by Ieva Cesnulaityte

After walking around a couple more arcades (seriously, Leeds is such a shopping city) we headed off to our temporary residence where we ended up spending about 4 hours lounged in some incredibly comfortable sofas, eating our typical student dinner - pasta, in 3 goes as the the only pot we had to use was only big enough for one portion to be cooked at a time. We then spent an interesting evening keeping people company at their pre-drinks as we were not keen on going out before our 6am wake up the next day...

Photo by Ieva Cesnulaityte

Photo by Agota Mockute

Photo by Ieva Cesnulaityte

We left Leeds in a hurry the next morning rushing out to catch our bus to the airport not realizing that we can't actually open the automatic gate to leave... so we did what anyone would do, we climbed over the gate and hurried off as there was no time to wake up anyone to let us out as decent people. Oh well, this way is much more fun anyway :D

Songs to learn

End of term is just around the corner. With no more lectures to go to, I have a bit more time to spend on the little things I enjoy doing like playing the guitar, spinning poi and hopefully writing more in this blog (hoping to write a big post on the dance show I was in last week when I get some photos ^^). 

The guitar never leaves my mind though, when I'm not learning new songs, I think about ones I want to learn when I'm not so extremely busy, because let's face it, while in uni I'm running around like crazy every day, going to event after event, societies, talks, econ experiments (my only source of extra income at the moment :P ) etc. I don't have much time to dedicate to learning new music. So, I have put together a short list of songs I would love to learn now that I have that little bit of free time :)

1.  KT Tunstall - Black Horse and the Cherry Tree.

Love the looping woohoos and the beat, a bit of scratching that could be a new easy technique to learn. Also, a bit more upbeat than most songs from my repertoire.


2. Jack Johnson - Sitting, Waiting, Wishing. 

More suitable for an acoustic guitar (even though most of my songs are...) so maybe learn this one while at home :)


3. Extreme - More Than Words.

Love, love, love this song, the feeling in it, already know how to sing it and it has similar plucking patterns to a song I already know how to play, but can't seem to get past the first few beats. Maybe learn this one over the summer, it requires dedication.

Can't wait to be able to play any of these and sing along! :) Can already imagine those camp-fires,  sitting in a circle of close friends and just playing into the night...