When in Rome...(Not Bangladesh)

Oh man, I'm really falling behind. Time to play catch up.

We flew into Rome Ciampino early the next day. First and foremost, we went to a little marketplace outside and bought me some Italian underwear. I needed some, because all my wash was still soaking wet back in my room in Bristol! So now I have two pairs of quite uncomfortable Italian boxers called NaiGe.

Immediately there were problems. The metro wasn’t working, so we had to take a bus into Rome. Instead of taking 10-15 minutes and being right next to our hostel, it took about an hour and a half and dropped us off about a half hour walk away. Also, the bus was jam packed and But when life gave us lemons, we decided to go and get some pizza, because we were hungry.

Our first pizza was possibly the best. It didn’t have any sauce, but it had mushrooms and sausage instead, which more than made up for it. After a couple of slices and a short rest, we got back on the road to check into our hostel.

It took a few wrong turns and a lot of walking before we finally made it to the hostel. We were a bit tired, but we had many things to see, so we freshened up and headed for the Coliseum:

The ruins around the Colosseo, called the "Foro Romano" (Roman forum), were quite impressive as well:

The Arco di Costantino.

The Palantine is also right next door, where the emperor used to live. I think the coolest thing about this area is that nothing is really roped off: you can just go ahead and sit down on ruins from the B.C. era! I swear I could see Marcus Vorenus (from the HBO series Rome) cutting people's heads off in the distance.

We wanted to go inside the Coliseum, but if we bought the ticket we would have only had a half hour or so inside as it was getting late, so regrettably, we had to skip that. But we walked down the street and saw a few more really old Roman buildings, and the Piazza Venezia, which is an absolutely gigantic monument. I took a couple of blurry pictures of it, but they didn't turn out because my camera is rubbish. Also somewhere along the way, we had our first gelatos, which we indulged in quite a few times for such a short trip...

From there, I believe we took a taxi over to look at the Trevi Fountain:

Of course we were obligated to throw coins over our shoulders into the fountain - so now we'll be sure to come back. After a long sit at the fountain, we headed back towards the hostel for dinner. Dinner was absolutely delicious. I had a little house wine and eggplant parmigiana (which was super cheesy delicious), and Mom had lasagna. The lasagna had no tomato sauce in it, and we joked that she'd been in Italy almost a full day without eating something with tomato sauce! We both had grilled chicken for the second course. Dessert was tiramisu for me, and some kind of delicious custard thing for Mom. I wasn't prepared for the coffee, which was quite strong. After dinner, we headed back for the hostel. Along the way we bought ourselves some cannolis from a bakery for the next day. Just in case anyone was wondering, I think between my mom's cooking, Gelatos/pizza in Rome, and pastries in Paris, i gained about 5 pounds in a week.

The hostel in Italy was quite nice - I think it's my favorite that I've been in so far. We had 6 other people in our room, all of whom were quite nice and friendly. One was a girl from Australia, one was a guy from Ireland, one was a guy from Singapore, and there was a guy from Montreal as well. The only problem was one of the workers when we were checking out - his English wasn't very good, and he thought he was supposed to keep my 10 euro deposit for the lockers. But we got that all sorted.

The next day we had the free hostel breakfast, which was pretty much rubbish, and the cannolis for breakfast. I think I'm aspiring to be a big fat Italian man that eats cannolis and pasta all day. And in Rome, I did pretty much just that.

We took the metro to the Vatican. We woke up late and took our time getting ready to go, but little did we know that we would be just in time to see the Pope giving mass! He was speaking in Italian, so we didn't understand a word he said, but it was still awesome. Here he is in the Popemobile:

Here's a better view of St. Peter's Basilica:

As you can see, it was quite packed. After the Pope was done talking, we got in line for what a few different people told us was the queue for the Sistine Chapel. We found out that it was actually the line for the inside of St Peter's though, so I went searching for the Sistine Chapel while my Mom stayed in line. But when I found out where to go and came back, they weren't letting anyone into the plaza! So we had to waste a bit of time looking for each other, but we eventually did. We took a break and got ourselves some pizza:

I forgot to mention that somewhere along the way, I had bought myself a Roma shirt for 5 euro. Probably the cheapest thing I bought on the whole vacation...

So once we were fueled up, we were ready to go and check out the Vatican Museum/Sistine chapel. Wow, do they have a lot of stuff. The thing about Rome is that there's just so much to see that it's overwhelming. When every few blocks there's beautiful statues and monuments, they start to become less interesting then they should be. Eventually, the Spanish Steps become just steps, and all the beautiful sculptures in the Vatican Museum become just ordinary. It's unfair, I think, but true nonetheless. Anyways, here's one of my favorite parts of the Museum:

I thought it was just as beautiful as the Sistine Chapel, but I'm pretty sure it didn't take 4 years of painting on your back, and the artists were certainly not Michelangelo. It's called the Gallery of Maps, because there's a bunch of maps painted on the sides, but I preferred the artwork on the ceilings.

After much more beautiful exhibits, we finally made it into the Sistine. It was very beautiful. They're very strict inside: you have to be quiet and you can't take pictures. But I did manage to sneak one in (Shhhhhhhhh!):

It turned out like crap because I was trying to be so sneaky, but you can tell it's the Creation of Adam. I got tsked by an Italian lady for taking this picture by the way. I felt ashamed when I saw her waving her finger at me, but not ashamed enough to delete it...

Afterwards we took the metro back to the Spanish Steps:

They were alright. It was under construction or renovation at the time, so that was kind of lame; also it was really crowded with tourists (ugh...touuuuuurists), and didn't quite compare to some of the other sights of Rome (at least I don't think it did). So we hung about on the steps for a little bit as a well deserved break, and then headed over to the nearby Pantheon:

It was originally a temple to the Roman gods, but was converted into a church. When we went in there was an orchestra playing, and it was really beautiful inside, despite a big hole in the ceiling:

Someone really ought to fix that.

After a walk around the Pantheon, we strolled over to the nearby Piazza Navona. A couple of things of note happened there. 1) A live band struck up a tune right next to us and 2) I was scammed into buying a piece of string for 3 euros. Here's a video of the band:

After watching them for a bit, I fell prey to a guy who wanted me to hold out my pinky. At first I said no, but I was quite intrigued, so he convinced me to. He wrapped up red, white, and green string using my pinky, all the while sweet-talking me and my mother. He told me that I have been drinking a little bit too much because I have a beer belly, and he said he thought my mom was my sister:

I told him he better not even try to tell me that this thing cost 20 euro, and he laughed and told me it was a million dollars. Then he tried to tell me it was 5 euros, and mom said no way. To which he replied "This is not Bangladesh, sweetheart. It costs 5 euros for a cup of coffee." So after a bit of bargaining, I got a piece of string for 3 euro. I'm going to keep wearing it until it falls off. I think it was worth the 3 euro just for the story, and the realization that we weren't in Bangladesh.

The Italians as a people weren't really very friendly, but I don't blame them really. I don't like when summer tourists come to Brick, so I can understand why they'd be annoyed with us. That being said, there was no reason to be as rude as some of them were.

For dinner, we had fried mozzarella and pizza again! My pizza had prosciutto on it, Mom had spaghetti:

All of the Italian food we ate was quite delicious. We headed back to the hostel and watched a nature special with a bunch of the people staying there. It was about indigenous tribes of the Amazon, and this English guy who joins them for a couple weeks, it was funny.

We found out that the metro doesn't run late at night, and neither do buses, and we had to leave quite early for our flight the next day. So we had to reserve a taxi to drive us back to the airport, and it wasn't cheap. But that's ok, because we made it to Paris the next day, and we had a wonderful stay in Rome.

London's Calling

Me and Mom took a bus to London early Monday morning. The bus station is only about a block from my house, which is really nice. Easy access to all of Europe...


(That blue line is where we walked. The black dot is where we ate dinner, approximately.)

Two and a half hours and many short naps later, We were in Victoria Station in London. First and foremost, we needed some coffee. Mom wanted to go to Starbucks, but I refuse to go to American places while I'm here, so we went to some place called Pret instead. We had some yogurt, which was a lot sharper then American yogurt, and some macchiatos without the steamed milk. We went back up and asked for milk, and apparently they don't have any. What kind of coffee shop doesn't have milk?!?!?

From there we walked to Buckingham Palace, but alas there was no royalty to be seen. We did get to see the Royal Guard though:

And yes, we did get to see the Guards with the big poofy hats, but they were kind of far. There was no "Changing of the Guard" ceremony that day, for some reason - it was cancelled.

Me and Mom in front of Buckingham Palace. The dryers in my building are broken, so I only had one pullover to bring that wasn't soaking wet. So be prepared to see me wearing that sweater all throughout London, Rome, and Paris.

Afterwards we walked through a really nice park over to Big Ben, the Parliament and Westminster Abbey. All of them were quite impressive. We decided to take a "flight" on the London Eye, which is the big Ferris wheel. From there you can get a pretty impressive view of all of London. It takes about a half an hour to do the full thing, so you get plenty of time to take too many pictures, like I did:

Big Ben and Parliament.

After that, it was much more walking. We walked all the way down the River Thames, where there are quite a few famous bridges across. The most popular are London Bridge, which was not falling down, and of course Tower Bridge. But those were at the end of our walk.

After much walking, we took a side stop at St. Paul's Cathedral. I was quite impressed at the time, but I've seen a lot of Churches/Cathedrals/Basilicas on this trip, because they're all over Europe. It makes you realize how much of a part religion played in peoples lives. Oh, and it would have been nice if this guy didn't cut off the top of the cathedral:

We had booked a hostel in London, but we didn't bother going to it. First of all, it was kind of out of the way of where we were going - and also we had to catch our flight at 7, which means we had to be at the airport at 5am, and London Stansted is about an hour outside of London. So that explains why we were carrying our baggage around with us everywhere.

Shortly after the cathedral, we crossed the Thames and went to see Shakespeare's Globe theatre:

To quote the big man himself, "Parting is such sweet sorrow." But alas, we had more in London to see.

We stopped shortly afterwards for sandwiches, to keep us fueled up. We also passed by a prison museum, which looked kind of interesting, but we had to continue on if we wanted to see Tower Bridge in daylight:

After we took a few pictures at the bridge and talked to an Indian couple that were sightseeing as well, we decided to take the metro over to Piccadilly Circus. London has the nicest Metro system I've seen so far. But I think part of that is it costs 4 pounds just for tickets! Also, if you lose your ticket, you can't leave. Maybe.

Piccadilly Circus is the London equivalent of NYC's Times Square, except not nearly as good. We sat around a fountain for a while, so we could nursed our aching feet and watch some big television screens tell us what to buy:

We were pretty hungry again by this point. We found a little pub on a quieter side street that only had a 10 or so minute wait. While we waited, I went downstairs and got a pint. The bartender gave me some advice on his favorite ales, and let me sample a summer ale versus the winter one that I bought. Big difference!

We had a very long meal next to some girls - we were trying to decide for a while what language they were speaking, I'm pretty sure it was Italian. (After my trip to Rome I'm a lot better at identifying Italian.) I ordered the "Toad in the Hole", and my mom got the Steak and Ale pie:

This Toad in the Hole is a big square Yorkshire Pudding (which is kind of like doughy bread), with veggies, mashed potatoes, and most importantly, sausage! Toad in the Hole in general just means sausage in a pudding, but this one was quite good.

Mom's Steak and Ale pie. Who says the British don't know how to cook?

After a long time eating at the pub, we left for an internet cafe for a couple hours, to kill some time before we went to the airport. I should have just posted this then! Afterwards, we took the bus back to Victoria coach station, then we took the bus from there to Stansted, which took forever but I slept most of the time. My mom was worried we wouldn't be able to sit at the airport so long, but it was no problem because there was at least a hundred people sleeping! I joined them shortly afterwards:

And naturally, I slept on the plane to Rome as well. It was a long day though, and I needed to rest up for two days in Rome! I'll post about that and Paris tomorrow probably, because I have to go to Tesco for some groceries, and class soon afterwards.

10/7 - 10/14 and Stonehenge

Note: I wrote this last week but never posted it.

I think I'll make this one a little quick, because I have to wake up early tomorrow.

I actually went to modules (classes) this week. They're not too bad. I have Linear Algebra + Calculus A (one module) this semester, which is just a cakewalk for me, because I've taken through Calc C. I have an independent study with my advisor, Tony Solomonides, for another math module. My other two classes are: Britain in the long 18th century and Intro to Visual Culture. I have both of those classes with John. My history teacher is actually from America, but she moved 35 years ago. We had a field trip around Bristol this week, which was pretty boring actually. But we met a guy in our class from Scotland, and had a couple of pints with him. His parents work in Dubai, and he was telling us all about the man-made islands shaped like the countries of the world and the indoor ski hills they have there - it sounds crazy. I'd like to go someday, I think.

I think Monday night was Nick's birthday - he didn't tell us until late in the afternoon that day. We brought our flatmates, Vidar, and Marta along,(everyone else had to be up early) and took him out to some place called Revolution for drinks and shots. Naturally we tried to give him the most random assortment of shots possible to get him to hurl. But Nick held up, and the bar closed before we could get him over the edge. I went with him to get cheesy fries, while everyone else went to bed a little early.

Tuesday I went out to Academy with Dali, Sud, John, Marta, Vidar, Nick, and probably one or two more I'm forgetting. They had a stage show that involved naughty nurses, which I'm not going to explain any further. This week, Vanilla Ice is going to be there, and no I'm not kidding. Unfortunately, I'm going away for the week and I'm going to miss it.

Wednesday night we played football again, and we have a growing crowd: Ed and Mikey came, some English guys, along with J.B. and Ben and everyone from last week. Mikey is a skater kid, and he's really good at football. Ed is kind of overzealous and wierd, but really nice. He sucks at football though. My team had all 3 Americans and Ed on it somehow, and we ended up losing 10-1 or something crazy. Tanj knocked me over on one play, and I scraped up my knee nice and pretty. Afterwards I cleaned up and we played a poker tournament in Ed's flat. I was doing quite well until Vidar took all of my chips in one hand. At least there were free chocolate pretzels, which was well worth losing the 5 pounds (kind of). I spent the rest of the night learning these 3 Indian girls names that I kept forgetting: there's Aanchel (on chell), Shreya, and Sehar (say hair).

Thursday evening my Mom showed up! She's here until next Monday. She just popped in for a little bit with Julie, and stayed at her hotel that night. She came again Friday morning, but I had to leave her alone for a little while because I had Calculus. When I got back, we explored around Bristol a little bit, went to Tesco and bought loads of food, and then went to "King William's Ale House" for some steak and ale pie. I left her alone for a little bit to go eat some Vladimir pizza down in flat 22. I ended up burning my hand pretty bad cutting one of the pies. I feel bad for my Mom, she must think I'm getting injured all the time over here.

Saturday morning Mom made French toast. I made the joke that it would just be regular toast for Mai-lys, and it turns out she hadn't heard of it before! She did a little research later, and it turns out its actually called "pain perdu" in France. And Americans actually used to call it German toast until the first world war, when it was changed due to anti-German sentiment. She left all of this in a note for me under my door. Mai-lys, your so smart.

So anyway, we all feasted on French Toast, and my mom made a pumpkin spice cake. It's nice to have some real food for once! We lounged about most of the day Saturday, because we have big plans: Monday morning we go to London, Tuesday morning we leave for Rome, and Thursday morning we leave for Paris! We get back on Friday. I wish we had a little more time in each city, but it'll have to do.

Saturday evening was the Rugby game! All the international students met up at a pub named O'Neills to watch. Lora put French flags on my face in fingerpaint, which in retrospect was a really bad idea on my part. Don't go to a English pub with French flags on your cheeks. You have to wait at least 15 minutes longer to get your drink at the bar first of all, and you spend that 15 minutes getting hassled by drunk English people. One guy kept giving me trouble, but eventually we hugged it out. France lost in the last few minutes thanks to the wonder leg of Johnny Wilkinson. All the French were miserable, which of course made the Brits even more cheerful. Mai-lys said she was going to go to Clifton suspension bridge and jump.

So we had a somewhat humiliating walk home, considering our losing teams colors were painted on our face and people were celebrating in the streets. After we went back to flat 22, where i showed off my supreme arm-wrestling skills and gave some flowers that weren't mine to Aanchel.

Sunday Mom and I went to Bath. We got there a little early so we could do a little sightseeing before we went on our guided tour to Stonehenge. It turns out I missed pretty much everything my first time there. I got to see a lot more Roman architecture, which was great. I got a Cornish pasty on top of Pulteney Bridge - I found out that it's pronounced past e, as in rhyming with nasty, which is just silly. Here's me in front of the bridge:
I also walked around in this little maze thing in a nearby park, and then we went to the King's and Queen's baths. There was some half-naked acrobats outside - my mom was more interested in that then I was. We also bought some fudge at some place that claimed it was the World's Best Fudge. It was too sweet - I've definitely had better fudge.

We left on our tour at 1 o'clock - there were about 15 other people in the bus I would say. The guide gave us all kinds of interesting info about the landscape on the way to Stonehenge, and we saw some cute little houses with thatched roofs on the way. Stonehenge itself was amazing. I didn't think we'd be able to get as close as we did. Everyone says it's just a pile of rocks, but it's much more really:

No one knows why they built it...my mom says it must be aliens. They gave us a free audio tour thing, and it explained how it was built. They used wood pile-ons to lift up the stones on top, which weigh...quite a lot. Slowly they would put wood underneath each side until it reached the top. That's your history/engineering lesson for today.

After taking about 200 pictures of stones, our tour moved on to a little village called Lacock. Lacock has a total of four streets, I counted. There was a cottage that had flowers outside, so I stuck some money through their post slip and got some flowers for Marta. The whole village can best be described as quaint. They filmed a couple of films there, including Harry Potter. We also got some ice cream from an ice cream truck.

After we got back to Bath, we took the bus back and called it an early night. We left the next day for London/Rome/Paris in a 5 day extravaganza that was amazing! I'll update on that soon.

Double your money

The Giants just won, awesome. Now I have some updating to do:

Ok so the last time I posted was last Friday. Since then, a lot went on, but nothing much happened, if you catch my drift. Friday and Saturdays, Hannah and Dali and all of them go home because the locals are all out clogging the pubs/clubs on their nights off. So we tend to stay in Nelson House and hang out with our international and English cohorts.

Friday night, we went to a pub to watch the English rugby match. Johnny Wilkinson and company beat up on some team that I don't remember anymore. I met this kid Philip, who's originally from Hong Kong but has been living here for 3 or four years now. I just had a couple Guinness' (which is much better here then at home), but he drank far too much. He told me that I should never, ever say sorry in the UK. He insisted that you only get 3 points when you score in rugby, even though I watched England score 5. He also raved on about some other things I've since forgotten. But after the game, we went to his flat for a little while to celebrate.

I think it was that night that I made my pact to wrestle Vidar at some point this semester. He's a big boy:
That's my roommate, Pilla, on the left, and Vidar on the right. He's going down. He don't even know. (We're good buddies, it's just in fun)

Phillip proceeded to make all of us laugh the rest of the night. He tackled Lora, Vladimir's girlfriend, and begged her for a kiss. He stole a bite of Donner Kebab right off of Vladimir's fork. When Vladimir went to get him back by putting a dollop of mayonnaise on his face, he licked it right off his finger (ugh). He's lucky Vladimir's a peaceful guy, because he's very big:

That's me and Marta on the left, while Vladimir enjoys some of my fine American hip-hop music (these pictures are from last night, which i'll get to).

So after a while, Phillips alcohol consumption caught up to him, so he had to throw up, and then he had to go to bed. We kept right on hanging out in his flat though, hahaha. Eventually one of his English flatmates came home to find us, and asked if we wanted to go upstairs to hang out with more people. Me and J.B. went, but everyone else went to bed.

Up in 092 were some new English people who's names I've entirely forgotten. They were very nice though, we talked about America, and how every last one of us eats McDonald's everyday and carries guns, and loves George Bush. It was funny.

The last time I posted on this blog, I didn't know my last flatmates name. Her name is Maï-lys (my lease), from France. Mai-lys is a very nice girl. She drew me a picture, and she made us quiche one night, which was scrumptious. Her and John hadn't seen the Clifton suspension bridge, so on Saturday me and Nick walked with them, all around town. Again. It was a nice day though, and I wanted to walk, so it was nice. We also ruthlessly degraded the wonderful statues of Bristol:

Take that, pirate beetle that makes no sense!


On the walk home, I got to take a picture of a piece of graffiti by a man named Banksy. I forgot to mention him last post. Banksy is an anonymous man from Bristol who travels around the world and puts graffiti art everywhere, including the Israel West Bank barrier. They are usually satirical messages. He's recently become very famous, his canvas works selling to the likes of Angelina Jolie for hundreds of thousands of dollars. He has two pieces in Bristol that I know about. I like the other one better then this one:

But this one is posted on the side of a sexual health clinic, which is pretty funny. The people of Bristol voted to have it stay, rather than be removed.

After a long day of walking, we hung out in Ben's flat the floor below. Vladimir made some of the most delicious pizza I've ever tasted. He used eggs and mushrooms on one, and it was actually really really good. He said he's going to open his own pizza business one day, and I told him I'd buy stock in that. He's going to make pizzas for us one night also, hopefully.

On Sunday we went to campus to watch the French vs. Georgia rugby game. (We watch a lot of rugby, it's the world cup so we have to.) The French won 63-7 or something ridiculous like that, it was really funny to watch.

I think Sunday night we met Dali's dad at a pub. He seems like a pretty nice guy, and he works in computer security, so I told him about my internship this summer. When Mai-lys ordered a round of beers, they gave them to her warm for some reason. She asked them for new ones, and they refused saying they warned her, so she said "I don't speak English!" Eventually they gave us a bucket of ice, and we drank our lukewarm beers.

The week was pretty tame. On Monday we went in, and me and John had a bit of a row with our advisers. They told us originally that we could take history classes, but when we came in they said that we couldn't. Eventually John got his Mom involved, and she put her two cents in. Moms fix everything. So now we can take history classes, but it took almost all week.

I had my first class on Friday with John, which was Intro to Visual Culture. The lecture itself was pretty good, our professor is quite intelligent. We learned about art and how technology throughout the ages helped art expand, basically. After a short break, we had a second half of the class, with a tutor. This was much more boring, because the guy just carried on forever and actually said little to nothing.

Art classes are on a separate campus, and everyone there is dressed like...art students. They all wear crazy clothes and have wacky haircuts, and there's me and John, the engineering/math degrees, dressed like lazy Americans. Me and John both fell in love with a girl with dredlocks and a miniskirt. Like dredlocks, she's on top of the rasta.

We've been playing wii bowling and other games at Dali's flat. John's so good at boxing, he doesn't even have to look at the screen, he just throws his fists while he sits and talks to us. Eventually, the opponent gets knocked out. Amazing.

One of the nights early in the week we tried to go out to Oceana, but it was kind of late and the bouncer didn't like the look of me, or something. So I was going to just walk back to Nelson House, but Nick and John left and got me. We Americans stick together. I feel so loved <3. size="3">Żubrówka (zoo brohf kah), which is "Bison Grass Vodka" from Poland. Marta brought that. It comes with a blade of grass inside the bottle, which is like a classy version of the worm at the bottom of tequila bottles. Naturally, I ate the grass once we finished the bottle. It tasted like...grass.

A good time was had by all. Even Pilla joined in!


Jean Baptiste had a little too much to drink and threw up on our carpet, and all in the girls bathroom. Poor guy, it's not his fault - his country is going to win the Rugby Cup! Luckily he didn't let that get him down, as you can see:
Phew, finally done! I have a headache now from all that writing. The things I do to keep good memories...