Lunch in the North End with the Family!

Hello! I hope that everyone had a great Father's Day. My grandfather flew down from New Jersey Saturday morning and is staying until Thursday. We picked up my grandfather (Nonno, which is grandfather in Italian) and headed to the North End. As you may have guessed the North End is one of our favorite neighborhoods in Boston. We were planning on going to Quattro (which Mom and I went to last summer), but there was an hour wait. The five of us then walked down the block to Ristorante Fiore, which we had never been to. We sat on the roof deck and browsed through the menu.

Mom and I chose to split an arugula salad with lemon juice and shaved parmesan. It was a perfect light start to a carb based meal. 

Both Dad and Nonno got the arancini (rice balls) stuffed with sausage and cheese. They both loved it, and I was happy to sample some of Dad's!

While we waited for our entrées to arrive (which took longer than we had anticipated) we discussed some of the work that Mom and I have been doing tracing our family tree. We have since worked on it, and now the tree has 140 people on it dating back to 1837. It has been a lot of fun and I can't wait to find out more about our family!

Emma ate spaghetti and meatballs! Classic and delicious.

I chose the Maccaroni al Forno. An amazing mixture of rigatoni pasta with spicy sausage and goat cheese. It was huge and I could not finish it all!

Mom got the Penne al Pollo, which had artichoke hearts, chicken, cherry tomatoes, in a light cream sauce. Like mine it was huge and she could not finish it, but she loved it nonetheless.

Lastly, Dad and Nonno got the gnocchi with sausage and mushrooms. I'm not a big fan of either gnocchi or mushrooms, but I got to say that it was pretty good! Not something that I would order for myself. 

Even after all of that we could not say no to dessert! Mom, Nonno, and I got cappuccino, while Dad got his usual double espresso. We got two tiramisus to split between the four of us (Emma does not like tiramisu) and it was so good! I love tiramisu. I have made it many times and I have had it at many restaurants. My french host mother even made me a speculoos tiramisu! Out of all of those tiramisus, this one is in the top five. It had a really good coffee flavor, that can be lost with the mascarpone filling and chocolate.

We then walked by the harbor before heading back home! All in all another very successful meal in the North End.

See you next time,

Kara

Northern Ireland Day Two: Queen's University and Crumlin Road Gaol

Day two was the beginning of our scholarly journey in Northern Ireland. We started the day bright and early as we headed to Queen's University Belfast to speak with Dean Tony Gallagher. The campus is beautiful and reminded me of Hogwarts. I would love to go to school there.

Dean Gallagher's presentation gave us some new information about the education system to think about. It was a great start to the research part of the trip.

After finding a place for lunch and eating there, we walked from our hotel to Crumlin Road Gaol. This is where prisoners from the Troubles and other criminals were jailed. The gaol opened in 1845 and closed in 1996 because it was too expensive to maintain. 17 men were executed there and we got to go into the execution cell where they have a noose hanging from the ceiling. I admit that it was pretty scary. It took me a while to fall asleep that night.

The old court house across from the gaol

We were served tea and scones!!!

Where prisoners were brought upon arrival

Rooms where prisoners were kept before being led to the court house

Tunnel to the court house

First of the many creepy statues in the gaol.

The padded cell. Creepy.

The education room.

The bathroom.

The outside of the gaol.

After that we took a bus back to city centre. My friend and I went to Primark and New Look for a look around. I did not get any clothing, but I did buy a cute sign to hang up in my room. It says: "good friends are like diamonds . . . precious and rare."

We then went to Fratelli's near the hotel. It is a cute Italian restaurant and I had pasta with shrimp. I posted a photo of it on Instagram. Here it is:

You can follow me on Instagram @thekschiap. Soon I will post about my third day in Northern Ireland when we went to Stormont, where the Northern Irish government is housed. 

Until then,

Kara

Washington, D.C. Day Three and Four | College and Georgetown

Bienvenue! On Monday and Tuesday I had college orientation. We listened to presentations about living in dorms, the community, getting involved, and meeting fellow students. It was a long two days, but a lot of fun. I am excited, but nervous, about the upcoming year. I’m scared that I won’t be able to make friends quickly, I’m afraid that I’ll get really homesick, I’m afraid that the classes will be too hard and I’m afraid that I won’t have any “alone time.” But I’m also excited for the new experiences, decorating my dorm, meeting new people, learning new things and starting my adult life. I don’t know what I want to major in, but I’m thinking something to do with media and maybe French. This semester I’ll be taking general education courses in writing, business, justice, literature and media. It’ll be an exciting semester and I hope that I’m still writing this in six months when my first semester at college is over.

After coming back to the hotel after the second day of orientation, I planned on napping for ten minutes. As you could expect, that ten minutes turned into forty minutes. Since I had done that, we had to rush to get ready for dinner. We went into Georgetown to find a restaurant that wasn’t too fancy or expensive. We ended up going to J. Paul’s where we were able to watch Russia-South Korea match from our table. They served us pretzels straight away (YES!) and then we ordered our entrées. I got the seafood pasta with scallops, shrimp and clams, and Emma got the BBQ Ribs. Again, I did not think that she would finish it but she got close.

Yes, a ten-year-old girl ate most of this! 

After dinner we wandered around the town before we got a little something-something for dessert. Emma got frozen yogurt from Pinkberry, and Dad and I got cookies from Dean & Deluca. I got a raspberry window and hazelnut sandwich. Dad got a football cookie in honor of the World Cup (which we are watching right now as I type).

  

One last post about D.C. will be uploaded tomorrow, and I haven’t planned what I want to post afterwards. Anyone have any ideas? Anyways, thanks for reading about fears and hopes for college. Until tomorrow . . .

Food, Biking, and TFIOS

Sorry that I haven’t posted lately . . . I was busy and I wasn’t motivated to blog. I need to find more motivation to do this. But enough with this, on with what I did last week!

On Tuesday I was supposed to go on a photography tour of Beacon Hill, but it was canceled. Instead I stayed at home and watched Game of Thrones, which I am obsessed with now. Mom came home early and we decided to go down to Boston to take a walk and eat dinner. We walked around the Greenway from Faneuil Hall, pass the Aquarium and to the end.

Then we went to the North End for dinner. When Mom and I go to the North End, we always try to go to new restaurants. This time we went to Parla, a new restaurant on Hanover Street. The menu has really interesting choices and I would really recommend it. It was intimate and unique and yummy.

For an appetizer, we had the boar meatballs with tomato sauce.

My entrée was quail egg carbonara and Mom got the striped bass with Israeli couscous.

On Wednesday I did a bike tour with Urban AdvenTours. The tour I did was the City View tour, which was about three hours long and covered ten miles. We went from the North End to Beacon Hill to Fenway Park to the MFA to the Aquarium. It was a lot of fun and a good way to get out of the house. Our guide was really knowledgeable and I want to do other bike tours in other cities.

After that, I met up with Mom at Quincy Market and we went to Wagamama for dinner. I have loved Wagamama since I went their location in Convent Garden in London last year. It’s fast, yummy, healthy Japanese food. We got the steamed dumplings to share, and then I got the miso beef ramen and Mom got the Crunchy Mango Salmon. All of them were great!

Thursday night I went to see The Fault in Our Stars during the special “Night Before Our Stars” event. I got a special poster and bracelet, and after the movie there was a live-streamed Q&A with the writer of the novel (John Green), the stars (Shaliene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, and Nat Wolff), the producer (Wyck Godfrey) and the director (Josh Boone). The movie itself was beautiful, heart breaking and hilarious. The book is amazing and I recommend that you read it before watching the film adaptation. It is about cancer, but it is not a cancer book/film.

Friday was spent recovering from getting home after midnight the night before. I slept in and watched more Game of Thrones and made a quesadilla. When Mom came home from work, we decided to make some homemade lobster rolls using cooked lobster, mayonnaise, celery, green onions, and tarragon. I didn’t take any pictures because I was too hungry that night to take any! It was so good and satisfying!

Thanks for reading! I’ll be back tomorrow with my weekend adventure!