Here is my generalized comparison of Italy and France (bear in mind I was only there for 4 months and only here in France for 2 weeks so far):
Italy pros:
Its easy and cheap to travel from city to city
BICI!!! (Bikes! at least in Ferrara) convenient, cheap, independent (as in I dont risk missing them or getting stuck in real traffic)
amazing incredible tremendous delicious food. cappellacci. lasagna. eggplant parm. anything with parm. anyhing with balsamic vinegar. anyt food in italy.
gelato (yes, this deserves its own private category)
Great host family
A program which didnt discourage drinking and had really no travelling restrictions
Group dinners with unlimited wine
Wonderful friends who I miss terribly!!!
Cool architecture everywhere, and which is different from city to city.
Being familiar with everything after having been there for 4 months (booking hostels, travelling, speaking, typing on their keyboards etc)
Italy cons:
All females wear high heels
All females who dont wear high heels everyday are stared at until they succomb and buy a pair to wear everyday. Then they stare at you for whatever else youre not wearing
Men stare unabashedly and think a conversation is "whats your name? whats your phone number? Do you want to get a coffee with me?" basta.
You cant leave the house with your hair wet, OR go to sleep with your hair wet
There is no such thing as "your own space" not even your own bedroom
If it is the middle of the day, thursday afternoon, sunday, or raining, nothing is open
the postal system
Everyone smokes
France Pros:
Food. Not AS great as in Italy, but still great. Plus I get dessert every night :)
Crepes
Guys dont stare as much and dont seem to be as tunnel-visioned
Having 4 siblings in my host family!!!
People seem more human here, though unhumanly skinny
Still cool architecture, plus it feels more open here than in Italy
Carrefour and Monoprix (like walmart or target)
Things are open at normal hours and in most types of weather. I cant comment on hurricanes, blizzards, or heat-waves, but we've had thunderstorms and everything is still open
My family sings grace at dinner, and they can actually sing!
Its not as expensive to ship things home
University lunch is only 2,90 euro and we have a student kitchen at IES
My host mom does my laundry (im not actually allowed to) but otherwise stays out of my room
France cons:
Everyone still smokes
I have entirely too much free time (aka I wish I could be getting more than 3 credits)
Im still not used to this stupid keyboard with all its re-arranged buttons
I have to take a bus everywhere and the night bus only runs until 12:30
Our program is very anti-alcohol...despite the fact that most of us are legal even in the states
We have Fridays off but mandatory excursions on two saturdays. Thus, we have 3 weekends to freely travel, but two are before midterm and finals week.
Its not as easy or cheap to travel here as it was in italy
Theres no gelato or cappellacci
That said, I love both France and Italy but I think I would prefer to stay in France for an extended period of time (aka teaching assistantship program) and visit Italy when I can. OK...next post will be a detailed storyline of my life in France...maybe I'll do that tomorrow.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
last days in ferrara
The last week in Ferrara without classes would have been an optimal time to explore the city, visit some close cities (like Modena and Ravenna) or have some picnics out in the parks. But good 'old mother nature was not on our side. I ended up spending a lot of time at the apartments or at the house because it was too miserable to ride my bike anywhere let alone try to travel elsewhere. I did manage to see the castle on Thursday with Caitie before our final dinner. We got accosted at the top by a very nice, very verbose man who wanted to know our real american opinions about Obama and the oil spill and health insurance without letting us have a word in edgewise. As we were walking around the tower there were blue skies north of the city and dark ominous ones to the south. Guess where the weather comes from in Ferrara. Ill give you a hint: three minutes into our tour it started torrentially downpouring.
We finished the tour of the castle then got our bikes and went back to her place. If there is a silver lining to this story its the fact that I was exasperated enough to try riding my bike and holding the umbrella again and this time I succeeded and had no near-death colissions with italian motorists. Score!
We stayed at Caities until the final dinner and I went early to play soccer. A lot of you probably know how "well" I play soccer and for those of you who dont Ill just say that the game began with me getting hit in the face with the ball as I tried to stop it from getting into the goal (unsuccessfully) and ended with me tripping over the ball and falling in slow-motion into a split position the colapsing on the ground completely. Basically, Ricardo (one of our italian directors) beat all of us single-handedly. But it was really fun :)
Also fun was the showering situation afterwards because there were at least 6 of us who wanted showers, guys ang girls, and the shower stalls didnt have curtains. But we figured it out and made it to dinner on time. Dinner was amazing. We had an anti pasta of meats and yummy cheeses (who ever thought you would hear me say THAT) and little carmelized onions and sundried tomatoes. Then we had one of the best cappellacci dishes i can remember. It was made the Mantova way, so the pumpkin and parmesean were mixed with a sweet almond flavoring and the sauce was creamy and sweet like a dessert. Jenna and I ate a TON because Derek doesnt really eat and AJ didnt like them. Then we had a meat course, but the cappellacci was the most memorable part. Everyone had submitted their best photos and we all got a copy of a disk with everyones pics and the slideshow was playing throughout dinner. There was a photocontest at the end and I won for "La Dolce Vita3 categorie with my pic of Keester at the 4 hour sicily lunch stuffing her face with pasta.
Afterwards we went to the piazza and to the apartments for awhile and made it back to the house by 5am after taking Catie and Andrea home on our bikes. The next day was pretty low key but I did eat a delicious caprese pizza for lunch, gelato from K2 afterwards, and said a final goodbye to our directors. For dinner Clara made lasagna alla bolognese and we all took pictures together after the dessert of fresh ferrara strawberries with sugar. Teresa and I gave Clara a frame with our picture in it and I gave Paolo the ciee shirt i had won for the photo contest. Then Paolo and Clara went to bed and Teresa and I went to the apartments and to the piazza one last time. It was a pretty chill night and Andrea and I fell asleep on one another for an hour or so. We all rode to Andreas and said goodbye there then went back to our house around 5 again. Teresa stayed up the whole night but I decided to take a couple-hour nap before my train/plane the next day. I didnt set my alarm right because Clara had to wake me up and I got ready really fast. She had made real toast for breakfast and everything but I couldnt really sit down and enjoy it because i got up so late :( I said goodbye to Clara, who said between tears, "I didnt want to come to the train station so I wouldnt cry!" And I was of course crying too. Paolo drove Teresa and I to the station and I said a less tearful goodbye to Paolo then Teresa helped me carry my stuff and get a ticket. FORTUNATELY I was on track one and didnt have to drag myself up and down stairs. Everyone was hurrying to get on the train so Teresa and I said a shorter goodbye than was necessary for a whole semester of sisterhood and she helped me onto the train. She left and the doors closed and I realized that a) this was a 2 level train so I would have to drag my stuff up or down 2 levels to have a seat and b) the train wasnt leaving for another 10 minutes. So I just sat down on the stairs and tried to get some zzzs
The ride to the airport was uneventful except that I didnt have to pay the bus ticket somehow. Then at the airport I found out that they werent even checking in for my 12:30 flight until 10:30 so I got there (the usual in America) 3 hours early for nothing. I talked to a sweet Italian couple who also got there 'on time' while we were waiting, and realized how much better my italian has gotten in the past semester. Not only did I have something to talk about with them, but I had a general understanding of where they said they were from and understood almost everything they said to me.
Around 10:45 they started checking us in and I got sent to another window to pay for my overweight bag then had to go back to get my boarding pass then through security. They didnt even make me take my liquids out at security and it took all of 30 seconds. I got a croissant and my final italian coffee for breakfast, which I realized later on the plane was a very stupid idea because I couldnt sleep. Idiot. And with that I end this post and will start a new one all about France!
We finished the tour of the castle then got our bikes and went back to her place. If there is a silver lining to this story its the fact that I was exasperated enough to try riding my bike and holding the umbrella again and this time I succeeded and had no near-death colissions with italian motorists. Score!
We stayed at Caities until the final dinner and I went early to play soccer. A lot of you probably know how "well" I play soccer and for those of you who dont Ill just say that the game began with me getting hit in the face with the ball as I tried to stop it from getting into the goal (unsuccessfully) and ended with me tripping over the ball and falling in slow-motion into a split position the colapsing on the ground completely. Basically, Ricardo (one of our italian directors) beat all of us single-handedly. But it was really fun :)
Also fun was the showering situation afterwards because there were at least 6 of us who wanted showers, guys ang girls, and the shower stalls didnt have curtains. But we figured it out and made it to dinner on time. Dinner was amazing. We had an anti pasta of meats and yummy cheeses (who ever thought you would hear me say THAT) and little carmelized onions and sundried tomatoes. Then we had one of the best cappellacci dishes i can remember. It was made the Mantova way, so the pumpkin and parmesean were mixed with a sweet almond flavoring and the sauce was creamy and sweet like a dessert. Jenna and I ate a TON because Derek doesnt really eat and AJ didnt like them. Then we had a meat course, but the cappellacci was the most memorable part. Everyone had submitted their best photos and we all got a copy of a disk with everyones pics and the slideshow was playing throughout dinner. There was a photocontest at the end and I won for "La Dolce Vita3 categorie with my pic of Keester at the 4 hour sicily lunch stuffing her face with pasta.
Afterwards we went to the piazza and to the apartments for awhile and made it back to the house by 5am after taking Catie and Andrea home on our bikes. The next day was pretty low key but I did eat a delicious caprese pizza for lunch, gelato from K2 afterwards, and said a final goodbye to our directors. For dinner Clara made lasagna alla bolognese and we all took pictures together after the dessert of fresh ferrara strawberries with sugar. Teresa and I gave Clara a frame with our picture in it and I gave Paolo the ciee shirt i had won for the photo contest. Then Paolo and Clara went to bed and Teresa and I went to the apartments and to the piazza one last time. It was a pretty chill night and Andrea and I fell asleep on one another for an hour or so. We all rode to Andreas and said goodbye there then went back to our house around 5 again. Teresa stayed up the whole night but I decided to take a couple-hour nap before my train/plane the next day. I didnt set my alarm right because Clara had to wake me up and I got ready really fast. She had made real toast for breakfast and everything but I couldnt really sit down and enjoy it because i got up so late :( I said goodbye to Clara, who said between tears, "I didnt want to come to the train station so I wouldnt cry!" And I was of course crying too. Paolo drove Teresa and I to the station and I said a less tearful goodbye to Paolo then Teresa helped me carry my stuff and get a ticket. FORTUNATELY I was on track one and didnt have to drag myself up and down stairs. Everyone was hurrying to get on the train so Teresa and I said a shorter goodbye than was necessary for a whole semester of sisterhood and she helped me onto the train. She left and the doors closed and I realized that a) this was a 2 level train so I would have to drag my stuff up or down 2 levels to have a seat and b) the train wasnt leaving for another 10 minutes. So I just sat down on the stairs and tried to get some zzzs
The ride to the airport was uneventful except that I didnt have to pay the bus ticket somehow. Then at the airport I found out that they werent even checking in for my 12:30 flight until 10:30 so I got there (the usual in America) 3 hours early for nothing. I talked to a sweet Italian couple who also got there 'on time' while we were waiting, and realized how much better my italian has gotten in the past semester. Not only did I have something to talk about with them, but I had a general understanding of where they said they were from and understood almost everything they said to me.
Around 10:45 they started checking us in and I got sent to another window to pay for my overweight bag then had to go back to get my boarding pass then through security. They didnt even make me take my liquids out at security and it took all of 30 seconds. I got a croissant and my final italian coffee for breakfast, which I realized later on the plane was a very stupid idea because I couldnt sleep. Idiot. And with that I end this post and will start a new one all about France!
rain rain rain
Rain. Thats what my last post ended with and thats what this one begins with. Essentiall it rained for the last few weeks with a few days of sunshine. I was determined to go to Florence and Siena and wanted to do a whole trip including Volterra and Lucca too but by the time we booked the hostels, Siena was booked and Volterra was really out of the way if we werent going to Siena. So the new plan became Florence, Pisa, and Lucca. I went with Sam and Lauren then we met Kristi in Lucca. Laurens friend studying in Florence was our guide and taught us all about the duomo and the medicis and the ponte vecchio. We also saw David in the Accademia but I wasnt very impressed by the rest of the stuff there. We walked around with her the first day then on the second day, Lauren and I accomplished A LOT. We climbed Brunelleschi's big dome, ate bagels for the first time since January (seriously, Florence is the only place in Italy you can find bagels), went shopping at the huge outdoor market, then went to Pisa and took pictres with the leaning tower, then went to Lucca and met up with Kristi and Sam. It was quite the adventure. We walked around the city and had a delicious dinner. It was a lot like Ferrara but with more tourists and less bikes.
The next day we woke up to rain again. it had been overcast the whole weekend but the rain came down big-time that day. Lauren and I were kind of tired mentally and sick of the rain so we just climbed the tower and left. And that was Florence; Pisa, and Lucca.
The next day we woke up to rain again. it had been overcast the whole weekend but the rain came down big-time that day. Lauren and I were kind of tired mentally and sick of the rain so we just climbed the tower and left. And that was Florence; Pisa, and Lucca.
semi-surrender
ok...so its pretty clear that i am enormously behind on writing this blog and theres not much chance of catching up with as much detail as i was using before...therefore this will be a very condensed version of the rest of italy and how i got to france. (im also writing this without my journal so i dont remember exactly what happened when but ill do my best)
After spring break my goals were the following: study enough to not fail the final exams or 2000 word papers, go to cinque terre, go to florence, siena, volterra, lucca, go to either ravenna or mantova, and study french before getting there. Oh. and see the castle, cemetary, and a good percentage of churches in ferrara.
In chronological order, the papers were first. My history paper about the resistance to the Nazis in Germany was due on a Wednesday and the Art history one about an obscure painting done by an obscure artist was due on thursday. fortunately i had already done the research for the history one; otherwise it would have been nearly impossible to use the dinosaur computer at our house to do it considering it took 45 minutes just to start the computer and get on the internet. But it was a fine word processor. I digress. I started the history paper around 5 on Monday and had a small shot of espress after dinner because i forgot to add the filter and sprayed coffee all over the kitchen when i pressed the button. That kept me up long enough to finish the paper (till about 1:30a) complete with 2,000 words and a good organization.
The art history one was a lot more fun. Lets just say that after the third week of renaissance art I found out that I didnt really give a damn about who was influenced by whom and where they were from and what stupid museum stole the painting and has it today. I could look at individual paintings and recognize things like prospective, classical architecture, expressive faces, and realistic clothing, but I couldnt tell you who did it when or why. Thus, the paper on Niccolo Pisano's (the unknown painter not the Pisa guy) "St. Sebastian and a bunch of other saints and people who paid for the painting" only made it to about 1400 words even after a way-too-big glass of espresso which kept me up until 5:30am and the repetition of the same ideas which were repeated in all 3 of my sources. BUT I finished it and left the next day for CINQUE TERRE!
This might have been my favorite trip so far. I left on Thursday with Sam (because I didnt have an afternoon class and he decided to skip his) and we made it there by late afternoon. On the train from La Spezia to Monterosso we met an american family and sang happy birthday to their grandmother over the phone in italian. We got to Monterosso and settled into our hostel then got dinner by the water and did some grocery shopping. There isnt much of a night life in Monterosso so we just went back to the hostel but ended up playing card games with our 3 Aussie roommates until we all crashed.
The next day we took the blue (easy, along the water) trail from MR to Vernazza then from there to Corniglia we went inland and hiked through peoples vineyards and did more stairs than i thought was humanly possible. For those of you who don't know, Cinque Terre (5 lands) is one of the coolest most beautiful places I've ever seen. There are 5 little towns along the coast line and there are hiking/biking trails in between all of them. Google image it and youll understand. Not only was there ocean, hiking, pesto, and gorgeousness all around us, the weather couldnt have been better while we were there. On our way back to Monterosso (easy trail the whole way this time) I recognised this girl and it turns out she and her friend go to Pitt and we did our study abroad meeting together. its such a small world sometimes. When we got back to the train station, Teresa, Caitie, and Nikki were there waiting for us and we all hiked up to our second hostel together. There were at least 10 flights of stairs between the station and the hostel room but the view was by far one of the best i had seen. We did some grocery shopping then went out to the rocks off the beach and partook in some wine and music. Once we were well hydrated and safetly off the rocks (not nearly as easy in the dark but we all managed) we got dinner at a cheap restaurant and then had crepes and gelato.
The next day we took the train to the farthest city and walked back on the blue trail. The blue trail between the last 3 cities is not nearly as easy as between the first 2 and it was really exhausting but wonderful. (I swear Ill put pictures on facebook soon!!!) We had met up with a girl from California and hung out with her on the trails. Back in Monterosso we got hung out at the beach until it got dark then had dinner at the cheap place again and then went back to the beach area and hung out with the other americans, canadians, aussies, and italians. it was nice for a change talking to these particular italians because they spoke back in italian and they werent as pushy as the ones in ferrara (ie no one asked me for my number or to get coffee repeatedly).
For Sunday, we all had our goals--I wanted to see the church on the hill opposite us which you could see from all of the other towns, Teresa and Caitie wanted to hike more and I think Nikki wanted to join them or spend another day at the beach. Either way, none of us succeeded because the next morning we work up to rain. Thus begins the story of my life for the majority of the remaining days in Italy. So we went home :( But it did give me a lot of reason to come back because i have a lot of unfinished business.
After spring break my goals were the following: study enough to not fail the final exams or 2000 word papers, go to cinque terre, go to florence, siena, volterra, lucca, go to either ravenna or mantova, and study french before getting there. Oh. and see the castle, cemetary, and a good percentage of churches in ferrara.
In chronological order, the papers were first. My history paper about the resistance to the Nazis in Germany was due on a Wednesday and the Art history one about an obscure painting done by an obscure artist was due on thursday. fortunately i had already done the research for the history one; otherwise it would have been nearly impossible to use the dinosaur computer at our house to do it considering it took 45 minutes just to start the computer and get on the internet. But it was a fine word processor. I digress. I started the history paper around 5 on Monday and had a small shot of espress after dinner because i forgot to add the filter and sprayed coffee all over the kitchen when i pressed the button. That kept me up long enough to finish the paper (till about 1:30a) complete with 2,000 words and a good organization.
The art history one was a lot more fun. Lets just say that after the third week of renaissance art I found out that I didnt really give a damn about who was influenced by whom and where they were from and what stupid museum stole the painting and has it today. I could look at individual paintings and recognize things like prospective, classical architecture, expressive faces, and realistic clothing, but I couldnt tell you who did it when or why. Thus, the paper on Niccolo Pisano's (the unknown painter not the Pisa guy) "St. Sebastian and a bunch of other saints and people who paid for the painting" only made it to about 1400 words even after a way-too-big glass of espresso which kept me up until 5:30am and the repetition of the same ideas which were repeated in all 3 of my sources. BUT I finished it and left the next day for CINQUE TERRE!
This might have been my favorite trip so far. I left on Thursday with Sam (because I didnt have an afternoon class and he decided to skip his) and we made it there by late afternoon. On the train from La Spezia to Monterosso we met an american family and sang happy birthday to their grandmother over the phone in italian. We got to Monterosso and settled into our hostel then got dinner by the water and did some grocery shopping. There isnt much of a night life in Monterosso so we just went back to the hostel but ended up playing card games with our 3 Aussie roommates until we all crashed.
The next day we took the blue (easy, along the water) trail from MR to Vernazza then from there to Corniglia we went inland and hiked through peoples vineyards and did more stairs than i thought was humanly possible. For those of you who don't know, Cinque Terre (5 lands) is one of the coolest most beautiful places I've ever seen. There are 5 little towns along the coast line and there are hiking/biking trails in between all of them. Google image it and youll understand. Not only was there ocean, hiking, pesto, and gorgeousness all around us, the weather couldnt have been better while we were there. On our way back to Monterosso (easy trail the whole way this time) I recognised this girl and it turns out she and her friend go to Pitt and we did our study abroad meeting together. its such a small world sometimes. When we got back to the train station, Teresa, Caitie, and Nikki were there waiting for us and we all hiked up to our second hostel together. There were at least 10 flights of stairs between the station and the hostel room but the view was by far one of the best i had seen. We did some grocery shopping then went out to the rocks off the beach and partook in some wine and music. Once we were well hydrated and safetly off the rocks (not nearly as easy in the dark but we all managed) we got dinner at a cheap restaurant and then had crepes and gelato.
The next day we took the train to the farthest city and walked back on the blue trail. The blue trail between the last 3 cities is not nearly as easy as between the first 2 and it was really exhausting but wonderful. (I swear Ill put pictures on facebook soon!!!) We had met up with a girl from California and hung out with her on the trails. Back in Monterosso we got hung out at the beach until it got dark then had dinner at the cheap place again and then went back to the beach area and hung out with the other americans, canadians, aussies, and italians. it was nice for a change talking to these particular italians because they spoke back in italian and they werent as pushy as the ones in ferrara (ie no one asked me for my number or to get coffee repeatedly).
For Sunday, we all had our goals--I wanted to see the church on the hill opposite us which you could see from all of the other towns, Teresa and Caitie wanted to hike more and I think Nikki wanted to join them or spend another day at the beach. Either way, none of us succeeded because the next morning we work up to rain. Thus begins the story of my life for the majority of the remaining days in Italy. So we went home :( But it did give me a lot of reason to come back because i have a lot of unfinished business.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
spring break 2010
I spent my spring break with a guy from our program because we both wanted to go to London and Dublin and figured we should just travel together. We flew Ryan Air which is the Wal-Mart of airlines (copyright, Andrea, I think). They have strict baggage restrictions, pack you on the planes like sardines, and have flights at really weird times of day. BUT they get you where you need to go cheaply.
London was a very cool, very enormous city. In order to get from the Stanstead airport to London central, you need to do your research and we hadn’t. It cost us 19 pounds each for the train but it could have been 26 for a 2-way ticket, 10 for a regular bus, or 2 for ezbus, but we didn’t know about any of those other options. Once we got to London central and found out that the underground is 4£ each way too, we decided to try and walk to our hostel. After getting lunch, getting lost, and finally arriving to the Steam Engine Pub (the hostel was the 2nd floor) we got our stuff organized and picked some things we wanted to do while we were here in London. The first thing that caught our attention was a ‘grip reaper’s’ tour and we decided to go to the next tour offered that day. We made it, but barely and were just in time to hear about the spot of executions and where we get the phrase ‘laughing your head off.’ The simplified version is that there was a guy about to be executed and because this was a spectator-friendly event, risers had been set up all around to watch this poor man’s death. Just as the axe was about to fall, one of the risers collapsed, killing 20 people. Now, death and destruction are not generally all that funny to me, but I can see the irony in the situation. The prisoner found it rather hilarious and laughed until the axe man finally did his job and cut his head right off. Thus the phrase. We also went to the tower of London and listened to ghost stories from outside, followed the path of Jack the Ripper and heard lots of gruesome details about those murders, and got to stand over the corpses of 80,000 plague victims. That was probably the grossest part, but we ended with Jack the Rippers last and most mutilated victim and by this point we were in the East End of London at night and had to get back to the hostel. So we bit the bullet and took the underground.
The next day we did a free city tour with a girl in our hostel room and one of her friends from her Milan study abroad program. We saw Green Park, Buckingham palace, St. James’s Palace, Trafalgar square, number ten downing street, Horse Guards Road, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and the houses of Parliament. A few of the notable things that I learned were:
There was a drunken Irishman who broke into Buckingham palace and managed to sit on the throne, eat from the kitchens, wander through the halls, and have a full conversation with the queen before getting caught.
There used to be so many pigeons in Trafalgar square that the government had to do something about it. You can exactly slaughter pigeons in a public square, or make people stop feeding them (especially when people don’t even mean to feed them) so instead they made a special type of bread with a contraceptive in it and fed it to them. I guess it worked sort of…there were pigeons but not a ton.
The sand volleyball matches in the next Olympics will be held at the big area in Horse Guards Road. Where the changing of the guard will take place, I don’t know.
The word ‘stiff drink’ comes from a rather morbid event involving a pompus naval captain. He was giving a speech or something and got himself shot and killed. His crew had to bring his body back to shore but they were weeks away and decided to put the corpse in a barrel of rum to pickle it and keep it from stinking. The rest of the rum on the ship ran out during the journey, and when they got back to shore and opened the corpse barrel, they found a good portion of the rum mission. I’ll let you fill in the rest, but let’s just say I didn’t realize how serious the Brits are about their rum.
After the tour and lunch, James, Mila (girl from the hostel) and I went to Harrods. Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much crazy-expensive stuff in my life, not to mention stuff in general. 5 floors of everything from designer clothes, to tea, to food, to sporting goods, to books, to toys, to chocolate. I bought the 3rd HP book in British English (my regular one is missing 20 pages anyway) but that was it. The man who rang me up was named Dean T. I kept the receipt After dinner we crossed Vauxhall Bridge Road, (hint: forget the bridge part and think TM Riddle), then went back to the hostel and spent the night watching karaoke with a Brazilian guy who was a rather good singer. I learned that cider mixed with black currant is delicious, and that cider mixed with beer is called a ‘snake bite.’
The next day we went to King’s Cross to see Platform 9 ¾ and take pictures pushing the trolley into the wall. I was rather disappointed when we asked the man at the train station where platform 9 ¾ was and he told us. Seriously. If you work there, you should really know that the proper response is to deny knowing anything about the platform, ask the lost traveller where he/she is going, then tell said passenger to stop bothering him/her since said passenger doesn’t even know where Hogwarts is. But I digress…
After pictures, we went to the British Museum and spent the rest of the day there. There were 5 floors of incredible stuff like an Easter Island head, Cleopatra’s mummy, a massive sculpted beetle (I’d like to see Brendan Frasier tackle one of those, the real Rosetta stone and a copy of it to take pictures with, sculptures from the Pantheon, and part of the code of Hammurabi. We skipped the Roman and Greek art part, since we’ve seen enough of that in Italy, but saw the rest. Souvenir shopping. Cream egg McFlurry from McD’s. Piccadilly Circus. Oxford St. Dinner. Then we went out on the town. Be @ 1 was a cool bar with mixed drink specials, good music, and fun people. We met some nice London girls who were really fun, and they took us to a club after the bar shut down. It was a BLAST. We danced, met cool British and Irish people, danced some more, then got a ride back to the hostel from a friend of Lucy and Henrietta’s around 3 am. Good night.
Next day I finally got a shower (the water wouldn’t get hot until that day, so I had been washing my hair in the sink. Good thing it was cold outside most of the time), then we headed to the globe theatre. We decided it was too expensive to go in, so we crossed the Millennium Bridge (the one that gets destroyed in HP6) and went to St. Pauls. Also too expensive to go inside, so we walked around it, then had lunch and wandered around in the general direction of Liverpool station to find out about getting a bus to the airport the next night. On the way we found a cool egg-shaped building we had seen coming into the city and checked it out up close. There was another weird building nearby which reminded me of the Exterminator at Kennywood, and a sign for a planned building that looks super cool. After finding out at the station that buses run all night and you can buy your tickets when you get there, we just picked a general direction and followed it. Good decision. We found a group of cool buildings on the Jubilee Walkway and then the Museum of London. I need to come back there someday with my future children. There was a ton of hands-on stuff and you could try on hats and clothes from different periods, and they are adding a whole new section within the next year about life in London after the Great Fire of London (which is where the tour ended). The Great Fire is a very interesting topic and I was shocked by the fat that it destroyed 4/5 of the city, left 100,000 people homeless, and had to be stopped by blowing up buildings so there was nowhere for the fire to spread. The Museum closed, so we walked around, had dinner, and headed back to the hostel.
I took a nap, then came down to the bar and chatted with Rodrigo) from Brazil, then with 3 guys from Colorado who James had met earlier and introduced me to. They were on a 3 week European adventure and had already seen Roma, Florence, Barcelona, Prague, and a few other cities. How do three college kids pay for such an adventure? By selling weed, that’s how. Sure makes you want to spend hours applying for scholarships, doesn’t it?
Our final morning in London was spent at the National Gallery where I got to see a bunch of the paintings I had studied this semester in real life. Afterwards, w checked for cheap theatre tickets but Wicked was sold out, Avenue Q only had really really bad cheap-seats left, and SOMEONE didn’t want to see Jersey Boys because they had never heard of Franki Valli and the Four Seasons. (Enter: Parker’s wrath unleashed) In hindsight, I really should have gone by myself. Ugh. Hopefully it comes to Pittsburgh when I get back.
. Lunch was a big, juicy, delicious hamburger with barbeque sauce on it. Mmmm. I waited a little bit, then got my coffee liqueur which I had been wanting to try since day one. Shopping next…Regent Street, Oxford Street, and hours in Top Shop. I bought a purse (which I actually needed since my green bag was being used as my suitcase back at the hostel) and a pair of key-earrings. I sat and waited for awhile, then went to find James who needed me to say ‘no’ to a pair of hideous sunglasses, and didn’t wait for me before buying 3 pairs of…well…let’s just say…ok, I’ll say it…ugly…shoes. Let’s also bear in mind here that we were flying Ryan Air, which has a very strict luggage policy. (ahem, foreshadowing). Next stop was Abercrombie and Fitch, where some of the most beautiful-looking people I have ever seen were “working” there, standing in the entrance and dancing on the balcony.
We got to Westminster Abbey right on time to attend Evensong and get into the church for free. This was a pretty cool service where the choir sang hymns and I tried to follow along but couldn’t help staring at all of the cool architecture and stained glass around me and James fell asleep. We were running out of money so we went to Chinatown for dinner and had delicious Thai food (second lunch in Oakland after Chipotle=Thai vendor on Bigelow). Back to the hostel slowly because I had massive blisters and we had a lot of time to kill. On our way we ran into a filming of Law and Order UK and stopped to watch for awhile. At the hostel we watched Barcelona beat Arsenal, then played Presidents and Assholes with our Colorado dealers…I mean acquaintances (sto scherzando!) At midnight, we got our stuff and walked to Liverpool station. Missed the 12:40 bus and had to catch the 1:10 one. At the airport we found a lot more people than expected already camped out and sleeping. Needless to say, we had to pull up a patch of tile and try our best to get some zzzs.
I managed to sleep a bit and wake up decently rested. Despite being at the airport 6 hours early for our flight, James nearly missed the plane. I’ll just say it had something to do with overweight baggage and the incompetent Ryan Air personnel who didn’t know where to send someone who has to check a bag unexpectedly. I slept all the way through take-off and woke up right before we landed. It was really cool in the airport seeing everything in both English and Gaelic. Took a train to Dublin central and walked to our hostel. It was a million and one times better than the one in London--not only was there a kitchen, a hang-out room with a TV, and a perfect location along the river, but the guys working the front desk were very friendly and VERY attractive. Abigal’s hostel, I’ll be back.
It was still pretty early in the morning, so we ate breakfast at the hostel, stored our stuff, and picked out some pamphlets about what to do in London. First thing on the agenda was Trinity College because it was close and simple to see. Being on a campus was the closest to feeling at home that I have since coming to Italy…there were big patches of grass, student dorms, a quad, and a that general, wonderful feeling that comes from being on a college campus. Plus there were blue skies and cherry blossoms. Essentially I was in heaven.
We decided to move on once we had both had our fill of student bliss, heading to Temple Bar and the Dublin Caslte area. Then back to the hostel to put our stuff in our rooms and have a quick lunch of pasta and marinara. The shower in my room was also a little slice of heaven—spacious, clean, had shelf space, and above all, HOT WATER. I may have taken an hour long shower there. But it was necessary.
I chatted with a nice Irish girl in my room then took a much-needed nap. When I woke up, there was another girl in the room who I tried to talk to in English but then found out she was Italian and we talked in Italian for the rest of the time. I didn’t realize how much I had missed Italian until that moment, or how much more fluid my speech was compared to the beginning of the semester. I went downstairs and we made dinner again (Dublin isn’t really known for its cuisine and it was all expensive), then I signed up for a day-trip to the Cliffs of Moher for the next day. I also asked the extremely cute Irish guy at the desk (whose name is Andrew) about what there is to do at night and he pointed out some places on the map and then we chatted for awhile before he jumped over the counter, swept me off my feet and took me to the most beautiful place in the city to watch the sunset and we cuddled there until the stars came out. OK…that story may only be true until the chatting part. But a girl can dream, right?
Finding a place to go out was a complete FAIL, but being exhausted and blistered didn’t make me try very hard. Back at the hostel, James introduced me to two American girls from his room (Danielle and Kristi) who were teaching English in France and we talked with them until about midnight when we were all falling asleep and decided to call it a night.
The next day I took the bus to the Cliffs of Moher and we stopped along the way at an Abbey, a Druid burial site, and an Irish pub for lunch. I met a girl from GA studying in Dublin and we talked most of the way. When we got to the cliffs, I met another lone travelling girl and we ended up hanging for the rest of the time there. The Cliff of Moher were simultaneously breathtakingly beautiful, terrifying, and amazing. We hopped the fence to the part that was off-limits and took a ton of pictures and talked a lot. Svetya is from Germany, but is an au père in London and was on vacation in Ireland for awhile. We also met a few girls from Salt Lake City and had fun taking jumping pictures with them. I learned later that some scenes from HP6 were also filmed there…
Back at the hostel, I crashed immediately. Danielle woke me up the next morning to go on another tour, but we found out at the tourist office that we had to pre-book. So we pre-booked for the next day and spent the day in Dublin. We checked out some souvenir shops, took a tour of Trinity College (with a good-looking and entertaining tour-guide), saw the book of Kells (the real one!!!), had lunch, got invited to have a coffee with French rugby-nuts but declined, went to St. Patrick’s cathedral, then finally to Kilmainhal Gail (Jail) where we learned a ton about Irish history and the issues between Northern and Southern Ireland and England. After dinner in the hostel, we went to an Irish singing and dancing show and spoke in French almost the whole time. The show was REALLY good and I loved the music and all of the cool jumps and spins and stepping.
The next day was somewhat of a disaster. Danielle, Kristi, and I were ready to leave by 8:30, but they went to the tourist center while I waited for James. While I was waiting, I went to put my stuff in the luggage room and got locked in. I got out then decided to go to the bathroom quickly but also got locked in there. When I got to the front desk, James was waiting. We got lost on the way to the tourist center trying to take a short cut and should have arrived on time, but couldn’t find the bus. We asked the next driver with the same tour company about our bus and he said they had waited for us for 20 mins then left. He let us on his bus though, and we got to see Sally Gap, Glendalaugh, and have a phenomenal lunch of Irish stew. We got back to the hostel and found Danielle and Kristi there, and they told us they were waiting…around the corner from the tour center where we would have come if not for that stupid “short-cut.” UGH. I looked at their pictures and was glad we got to go on our tour instead because I had really enjoyed the nature…though their company would have been nice. They had to leave for their plane to Scotland, but we exchanged facebook names and I plan on meeting up with Danielle in France. We hung out at the hostel until it was time to catch the bus to the airport, then there we were able to secure seats to sleep on instead of the floor. I didn’t get much sleep, but it was ok because the next day I spent the entire day reading HP3 and sleeping in the London airport while James went into town on his own. It was much needed because I was starting to feel sick and I was able to reserve enough bench space for us to both sleep semi-comfortably that night.
The next day I got back to Ferrara and it was a wonderful feeling to be “home” and I ate lunch with my host family, then had to get down to business with my presentation due the next day. Phew…more later, but I swear it will be more concise. I want to finish this Italy blog before I leave for France.
London was a very cool, very enormous city. In order to get from the Stanstead airport to London central, you need to do your research and we hadn’t. It cost us 19 pounds each for the train but it could have been 26 for a 2-way ticket, 10 for a regular bus, or 2 for ezbus, but we didn’t know about any of those other options. Once we got to London central and found out that the underground is 4£ each way too, we decided to try and walk to our hostel. After getting lunch, getting lost, and finally arriving to the Steam Engine Pub (the hostel was the 2nd floor) we got our stuff organized and picked some things we wanted to do while we were here in London. The first thing that caught our attention was a ‘grip reaper’s’ tour and we decided to go to the next tour offered that day. We made it, but barely and were just in time to hear about the spot of executions and where we get the phrase ‘laughing your head off.’ The simplified version is that there was a guy about to be executed and because this was a spectator-friendly event, risers had been set up all around to watch this poor man’s death. Just as the axe was about to fall, one of the risers collapsed, killing 20 people. Now, death and destruction are not generally all that funny to me, but I can see the irony in the situation. The prisoner found it rather hilarious and laughed until the axe man finally did his job and cut his head right off. Thus the phrase. We also went to the tower of London and listened to ghost stories from outside, followed the path of Jack the Ripper and heard lots of gruesome details about those murders, and got to stand over the corpses of 80,000 plague victims. That was probably the grossest part, but we ended with Jack the Rippers last and most mutilated victim and by this point we were in the East End of London at night and had to get back to the hostel. So we bit the bullet and took the underground.
The next day we did a free city tour with a girl in our hostel room and one of her friends from her Milan study abroad program. We saw Green Park, Buckingham palace, St. James’s Palace, Trafalgar square, number ten downing street, Horse Guards Road, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and the houses of Parliament. A few of the notable things that I learned were:
There was a drunken Irishman who broke into Buckingham palace and managed to sit on the throne, eat from the kitchens, wander through the halls, and have a full conversation with the queen before getting caught.
There used to be so many pigeons in Trafalgar square that the government had to do something about it. You can exactly slaughter pigeons in a public square, or make people stop feeding them (especially when people don’t even mean to feed them) so instead they made a special type of bread with a contraceptive in it and fed it to them. I guess it worked sort of…there were pigeons but not a ton.
The sand volleyball matches in the next Olympics will be held at the big area in Horse Guards Road. Where the changing of the guard will take place, I don’t know.
The word ‘stiff drink’ comes from a rather morbid event involving a pompus naval captain. He was giving a speech or something and got himself shot and killed. His crew had to bring his body back to shore but they were weeks away and decided to put the corpse in a barrel of rum to pickle it and keep it from stinking. The rest of the rum on the ship ran out during the journey, and when they got back to shore and opened the corpse barrel, they found a good portion of the rum mission. I’ll let you fill in the rest, but let’s just say I didn’t realize how serious the Brits are about their rum.
After the tour and lunch, James, Mila (girl from the hostel) and I went to Harrods. Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much crazy-expensive stuff in my life, not to mention stuff in general. 5 floors of everything from designer clothes, to tea, to food, to sporting goods, to books, to toys, to chocolate. I bought the 3rd HP book in British English (my regular one is missing 20 pages anyway) but that was it. The man who rang me up was named Dean T. I kept the receipt After dinner we crossed Vauxhall Bridge Road, (hint: forget the bridge part and think TM Riddle), then went back to the hostel and spent the night watching karaoke with a Brazilian guy who was a rather good singer. I learned that cider mixed with black currant is delicious, and that cider mixed with beer is called a ‘snake bite.’
The next day we went to King’s Cross to see Platform 9 ¾ and take pictures pushing the trolley into the wall. I was rather disappointed when we asked the man at the train station where platform 9 ¾ was and he told us. Seriously. If you work there, you should really know that the proper response is to deny knowing anything about the platform, ask the lost traveller where he/she is going, then tell said passenger to stop bothering him/her since said passenger doesn’t even know where Hogwarts is. But I digress…
After pictures, we went to the British Museum and spent the rest of the day there. There were 5 floors of incredible stuff like an Easter Island head, Cleopatra’s mummy, a massive sculpted beetle (I’d like to see Brendan Frasier tackle one of those, the real Rosetta stone and a copy of it to take pictures with, sculptures from the Pantheon, and part of the code of Hammurabi. We skipped the Roman and Greek art part, since we’ve seen enough of that in Italy, but saw the rest. Souvenir shopping. Cream egg McFlurry from McD’s. Piccadilly Circus. Oxford St. Dinner. Then we went out on the town. Be @ 1 was a cool bar with mixed drink specials, good music, and fun people. We met some nice London girls who were really fun, and they took us to a club after the bar shut down. It was a BLAST. We danced, met cool British and Irish people, danced some more, then got a ride back to the hostel from a friend of Lucy and Henrietta’s around 3 am. Good night.
Next day I finally got a shower (the water wouldn’t get hot until that day, so I had been washing my hair in the sink. Good thing it was cold outside most of the time), then we headed to the globe theatre. We decided it was too expensive to go in, so we crossed the Millennium Bridge (the one that gets destroyed in HP6) and went to St. Pauls. Also too expensive to go inside, so we walked around it, then had lunch and wandered around in the general direction of Liverpool station to find out about getting a bus to the airport the next night. On the way we found a cool egg-shaped building we had seen coming into the city and checked it out up close. There was another weird building nearby which reminded me of the Exterminator at Kennywood, and a sign for a planned building that looks super cool. After finding out at the station that buses run all night and you can buy your tickets when you get there, we just picked a general direction and followed it. Good decision. We found a group of cool buildings on the Jubilee Walkway and then the Museum of London. I need to come back there someday with my future children. There was a ton of hands-on stuff and you could try on hats and clothes from different periods, and they are adding a whole new section within the next year about life in London after the Great Fire of London (which is where the tour ended). The Great Fire is a very interesting topic and I was shocked by the fat that it destroyed 4/5 of the city, left 100,000 people homeless, and had to be stopped by blowing up buildings so there was nowhere for the fire to spread. The Museum closed, so we walked around, had dinner, and headed back to the hostel.
I took a nap, then came down to the bar and chatted with Rodrigo) from Brazil, then with 3 guys from Colorado who James had met earlier and introduced me to. They were on a 3 week European adventure and had already seen Roma, Florence, Barcelona, Prague, and a few other cities. How do three college kids pay for such an adventure? By selling weed, that’s how. Sure makes you want to spend hours applying for scholarships, doesn’t it?
Our final morning in London was spent at the National Gallery where I got to see a bunch of the paintings I had studied this semester in real life. Afterwards, w checked for cheap theatre tickets but Wicked was sold out, Avenue Q only had really really bad cheap-seats left, and SOMEONE didn’t want to see Jersey Boys because they had never heard of Franki Valli and the Four Seasons. (Enter: Parker’s wrath unleashed) In hindsight, I really should have gone by myself. Ugh. Hopefully it comes to Pittsburgh when I get back.
. Lunch was a big, juicy, delicious hamburger with barbeque sauce on it. Mmmm. I waited a little bit, then got my coffee liqueur which I had been wanting to try since day one. Shopping next…Regent Street, Oxford Street, and hours in Top Shop. I bought a purse (which I actually needed since my green bag was being used as my suitcase back at the hostel) and a pair of key-earrings. I sat and waited for awhile, then went to find James who needed me to say ‘no’ to a pair of hideous sunglasses, and didn’t wait for me before buying 3 pairs of…well…let’s just say…ok, I’ll say it…ugly…shoes. Let’s also bear in mind here that we were flying Ryan Air, which has a very strict luggage policy. (ahem, foreshadowing). Next stop was Abercrombie and Fitch, where some of the most beautiful-looking people I have ever seen were “working” there, standing in the entrance and dancing on the balcony.
We got to Westminster Abbey right on time to attend Evensong and get into the church for free. This was a pretty cool service where the choir sang hymns and I tried to follow along but couldn’t help staring at all of the cool architecture and stained glass around me and James fell asleep. We were running out of money so we went to Chinatown for dinner and had delicious Thai food (second lunch in Oakland after Chipotle=Thai vendor on Bigelow). Back to the hostel slowly because I had massive blisters and we had a lot of time to kill. On our way we ran into a filming of Law and Order UK and stopped to watch for awhile. At the hostel we watched Barcelona beat Arsenal, then played Presidents and Assholes with our Colorado dealers…I mean acquaintances (sto scherzando!) At midnight, we got our stuff and walked to Liverpool station. Missed the 12:40 bus and had to catch the 1:10 one. At the airport we found a lot more people than expected already camped out and sleeping. Needless to say, we had to pull up a patch of tile and try our best to get some zzzs.
I managed to sleep a bit and wake up decently rested. Despite being at the airport 6 hours early for our flight, James nearly missed the plane. I’ll just say it had something to do with overweight baggage and the incompetent Ryan Air personnel who didn’t know where to send someone who has to check a bag unexpectedly. I slept all the way through take-off and woke up right before we landed. It was really cool in the airport seeing everything in both English and Gaelic. Took a train to Dublin central and walked to our hostel. It was a million and one times better than the one in London--not only was there a kitchen, a hang-out room with a TV, and a perfect location along the river, but the guys working the front desk were very friendly and VERY attractive. Abigal’s hostel, I’ll be back.
It was still pretty early in the morning, so we ate breakfast at the hostel, stored our stuff, and picked out some pamphlets about what to do in London. First thing on the agenda was Trinity College because it was close and simple to see. Being on a campus was the closest to feeling at home that I have since coming to Italy…there were big patches of grass, student dorms, a quad, and a that general, wonderful feeling that comes from being on a college campus. Plus there were blue skies and cherry blossoms. Essentially I was in heaven.
We decided to move on once we had both had our fill of student bliss, heading to Temple Bar and the Dublin Caslte area. Then back to the hostel to put our stuff in our rooms and have a quick lunch of pasta and marinara. The shower in my room was also a little slice of heaven—spacious, clean, had shelf space, and above all, HOT WATER. I may have taken an hour long shower there. But it was necessary.
I chatted with a nice Irish girl in my room then took a much-needed nap. When I woke up, there was another girl in the room who I tried to talk to in English but then found out she was Italian and we talked in Italian for the rest of the time. I didn’t realize how much I had missed Italian until that moment, or how much more fluid my speech was compared to the beginning of the semester. I went downstairs and we made dinner again (Dublin isn’t really known for its cuisine and it was all expensive), then I signed up for a day-trip to the Cliffs of Moher for the next day. I also asked the extremely cute Irish guy at the desk (whose name is Andrew) about what there is to do at night and he pointed out some places on the map and then we chatted for awhile before he jumped over the counter, swept me off my feet and took me to the most beautiful place in the city to watch the sunset and we cuddled there until the stars came out. OK…that story may only be true until the chatting part. But a girl can dream, right?
Finding a place to go out was a complete FAIL, but being exhausted and blistered didn’t make me try very hard. Back at the hostel, James introduced me to two American girls from his room (Danielle and Kristi) who were teaching English in France and we talked with them until about midnight when we were all falling asleep and decided to call it a night.
The next day I took the bus to the Cliffs of Moher and we stopped along the way at an Abbey, a Druid burial site, and an Irish pub for lunch. I met a girl from GA studying in Dublin and we talked most of the way. When we got to the cliffs, I met another lone travelling girl and we ended up hanging for the rest of the time there. The Cliff of Moher were simultaneously breathtakingly beautiful, terrifying, and amazing. We hopped the fence to the part that was off-limits and took a ton of pictures and talked a lot. Svetya is from Germany, but is an au père in London and was on vacation in Ireland for awhile. We also met a few girls from Salt Lake City and had fun taking jumping pictures with them. I learned later that some scenes from HP6 were also filmed there…
Back at the hostel, I crashed immediately. Danielle woke me up the next morning to go on another tour, but we found out at the tourist office that we had to pre-book. So we pre-booked for the next day and spent the day in Dublin. We checked out some souvenir shops, took a tour of Trinity College (with a good-looking and entertaining tour-guide), saw the book of Kells (the real one!!!), had lunch, got invited to have a coffee with French rugby-nuts but declined, went to St. Patrick’s cathedral, then finally to Kilmainhal Gail (Jail) where we learned a ton about Irish history and the issues between Northern and Southern Ireland and England. After dinner in the hostel, we went to an Irish singing and dancing show and spoke in French almost the whole time. The show was REALLY good and I loved the music and all of the cool jumps and spins and stepping.
The next day was somewhat of a disaster. Danielle, Kristi, and I were ready to leave by 8:30, but they went to the tourist center while I waited for James. While I was waiting, I went to put my stuff in the luggage room and got locked in. I got out then decided to go to the bathroom quickly but also got locked in there. When I got to the front desk, James was waiting. We got lost on the way to the tourist center trying to take a short cut and should have arrived on time, but couldn’t find the bus. We asked the next driver with the same tour company about our bus and he said they had waited for us for 20 mins then left. He let us on his bus though, and we got to see Sally Gap, Glendalaugh, and have a phenomenal lunch of Irish stew. We got back to the hostel and found Danielle and Kristi there, and they told us they were waiting…around the corner from the tour center where we would have come if not for that stupid “short-cut.” UGH. I looked at their pictures and was glad we got to go on our tour instead because I had really enjoyed the nature…though their company would have been nice. They had to leave for their plane to Scotland, but we exchanged facebook names and I plan on meeting up with Danielle in France. We hung out at the hostel until it was time to catch the bus to the airport, then there we were able to secure seats to sleep on instead of the floor. I didn’t get much sleep, but it was ok because the next day I spent the entire day reading HP3 and sleeping in the London airport while James went into town on his own. It was much needed because I was starting to feel sick and I was able to reserve enough bench space for us to both sleep semi-comfortably that night.
The next day I got back to Ferrara and it was a wonderful feeling to be “home” and I ate lunch with my host family, then had to get down to business with my presentation due the next day. Phew…more later, but I swear it will be more concise. I want to finish this Italy blog before I leave for France.
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