Dublin to Rome

Random side note: We left for Rome on Pentecost Sunday. So after many readings and a homily on how the Holy Spirit inspired the Apostles to evangelize Rome, Greece, etc... we head over there to witness the fruits of their labor. How awesome is that?
Anywho...

After a loooooong 16 hours of traveling, I finally made it to Rome!! The long travel, though, was broken up by a nice stop in Dublin.

Churches were everywhere along the main street.

We made a stop at the Guinness Brewery.

St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland!

From the park where St. Patrick baptized many Catholics.

We had a 7 hour layover in Dublin, so Marissa and I took a bus to the city. What do we do first? Stop at a Starbucks... to get ourselves oriented of course! It was well worth it because we were able to fit a lot into the 3 hours we had in the city. We first stopped by the Liffey River for a nice view and then we headed down the main road to see the Guinness Brewery (which is apparently called the "storehouse" in Dublin). After that, we headed over to St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was so awesome seeing a Church with so much history. I am not used to seeing churches built in the 11th century. I better get used to it now that I am in Europe, though! I bought my Irish cross there and Marissa and I relaxed a bit before heading back to the airport.

As we head back to the airport, we are super exhausted (it is 6am Central time!), and I am wondering what happened with the NBA finals. But with no internet, we take off for Rome and try to get some rest before meeting our hosts that night.

After getting into Rome, we were excited to finally get to our place, so we very diligently followed the instructions our host gave us. Well, we weren't exactly sure of some of the steps, so we went from of buying the train tickets, to thinking we needed to take the bus instead and trying to scalp the tickets, to figuring out the train was correct and rushing to catch it, to catching the wrong transfer train after congratulating ourselves as to how well we were making it on our own. By the grace of God, though, a man we shall call Mo Green and a priest we shall call Fr. Kenya found us lost totally saved the night! It turns out the correct train stopped running at 9pm (and it was like 9:05, gah!), so they directed us to the bus route that would take us directly to our stop! After speaking to several Italian-only speaking locals, it was a miracle that these men found us and directed us where to go.

So now we are here in Rome, staying with Anna and her flatmates who are awesome hosts!