Amster-damn!

I leave for Barcelona in about 12 hours, so I'm trying to bang this out before I leave.

Ok, so John got a call on Wednesday night from Dali and Hannah saying that we were gonna sleep over Dali's house and leave for the airport the next morning. So I had about 20 minutes to shower and pack, and it was a little hectic, but I managed to pack everything I needed.

On the way to Dali's, we went through "The Magic Roundabout," which is the biggest tourist attraction in Swindon, haha. It's 5 circles all attached together. No one has any idea how to navigate it, so they just drive through it pretty much.

We ate take-out Indian food at Dali's house, which was delicious. Unfortunately I got a little Indian food on my sweatshirt, which I was planning to use as a jacket for the next 3 days! Dali took pity on me, and gave me an old jacket of his to wear for the weekend. The jacket has German flag patches on the sleeves, so I jokingly referred to myself as Hans throughout the trip. I should also note that the Indian food stain is still in my sweatshirt, despite several washings. The lesson: don't spill Indian food on yourself!

Dali's father made us a delicious English breakfast next morning. While we were cleaning up, we noticed that Dali's next door neighbors have a few trailers in the back of their house:

It turns out Dali lives next to real life pikies! (aka gypsies) And according to Dali and Hannah, they speak exactly like Brad Pitt does in Snatch. I asked if their neighbors liked "dags", but they weren't sure. They said they were very nice people though.

So we drove into London Gatwick, which is an absolutely gigantic airport. We finally got into Amsterdam some time in the late afternoon. The first thing we saw was a crazy couple playing songs for everyone walking by. Then we checked in to our hostels. Dali and Hannah, and Katelyn and John got hotel rooms, but I stayed in the hostel where most of the guys from TCNJ were staying. I didn't know any of them well before hand, but I do now!

We ran into them on the way to checking into my hostel. There's Kip, Sandro, Justin, Salge, Jason, and Connor. They all came on their fall break, and went to Dublin and Prague beforehand. Also, there's Nicole (also from TCNJ) and Ashley, who both study with Katelyn in Italy, and Rachel, who lives in Newcastle, but studied at TCNJ for a semester last year. There were also some German folks who joined us later - I remember Alex's name, who studied abroad at TCNJ, but the rest escape me. I think that's just about everyone - so we had quite a big crew of people.

After I checked in, first on the list of priorities was food. I had a hamburger:

It was more like a big mess on a plate, but it was a delicious mess. I forgot the Dutch put mayonnaise on everything.

It was already dark by the time we left the restaurant, so we left the sightseeing for Friday and Saturday. We ended up going to a coffee shop for a while, which had this delicious juice called Looza, and then we walked down the red light district.

The red light district is a crazy place...everywhere there are prostitutes standing in windows, beckoning for you to come in. It's sad. There's live sex shows everywhere, along with sex museums, shops, and anything else you can think of. It's the kind of place you feel dirty after coming out of.

The next day was a lot of sight seeing. I was nervous I was going to lose everyone, because I was staying in a different room of the hostel, so I woke up very early. I should mention that the hostel was quite dirtier then other ones I had stayed at. The "locker" that I rented was a big barrel, like the kinds you see that hold toxic waste. No matter how quiet you tried to be, you always were waking people up when you came in at night, because there was 18 people to a room and the barrels were loud. Also, the bathrooms were pretty gross.

I managed to meet up with Ashley and Nicole, and we were going to try to meet up with everyone, but we got split up because Ashley needed coffee. We went to Dam square to meet with everyone, but everyone had already left without us! We managed to find John and Katelyn, and later Dali and Hannah. We made our way to the Heineken Experience:

Inside is a magical place. Interspersed between giant kegs of Heineken, Heineken drumsets, vintage Heineken advertisements, Heineken virtual ridesand Heineken gift shops are Heineken bars. For the price of admission, you get 3 free drinks and a bottle opener.


After a while at the Heineken Experience, we went looking for a good place to eat lunch. We found a place named after me:


There we tried a traditional dutch food called Bitterballen, which was meat and cheese deep fried in a ball. I also had this delicious beer called Grimbergen:

Afterwards, we went to the Van Gogh museum, who spent much of his life in Amsterdam. His paintings were beautiful - Starry Night was in another museum, but some of his sunflower paintings were there, and Wheat Field with Crows, which was his last work. One of my favorites was the Potato Eaters, which was a depressing view of life in a peasant family. It took us quite a while to get through the museum, which had an extensive collection. At the end, they had the piece of his ear that he cut off on display, in a glass box. (Just kidding)

Afterwards, we went to a coffee shop. The TCNJ guys split off to go to Anne Frank house, which we ended up doing the next day. At night, we went for traditional Dutch food:

steak, pork, chicken, I think they even threw some fish in there: it had everything. It was all salty delicious!

After dinner, we met back up with the TCNJ gang and went to another coffee shop:

I'd say approximately 50% of shops in Amsterdam have a cat. The one in this coffee shop had a stare down with me:

I swear that cat was giving me the evil eye.

The next day we went to the Anne Frank house. It was quite depressing, but good nonetheless. It was actually a warehouse, and they managed to stay undetected in the upper levels for two years before they were betrayed. No one knows who betrayed them.

The two couples rented bicycles and rode them around. In Amsterdam, everyone rides bicycles, and every road has separate paths for bicycles, trams, and cars. It makes it very nerve-wracking to cross the road! Also, the train stations are surrounded with racks upon racks of bicycles...they say if you keep a bike in Amsterdam for longer then a year, you are very fortunate.

I stayed with Ashley and Nicole, and we walked to a coffee shop, which was probably the highlight of my trip. A British man showed us how to roll cigarettes properly, using only your hands (so that you could do it standing up). We sat and talked to him around some couches, where we met the craziest person in the world:


I asked him what his name was, and he told me his name was James Bond 007. I asked him where he was from, because we couldn't figure out his accent, but he would only say "Happyville." Happy was his favorite word, and he used it often. He didn't know many other English words, I don't think.

If you didn't notice, you can write anything anywhere in that coffee shop. If any of my friends from Brick are reading this, don't worry: we are now represented in Amsterdam. Happy lent me a marker, and I put "BTBD" down on the coffee table. Happy.

Happy kept giving the girls strange items from his magic knapsack (he told us it was magic; he also told us English is a magical language). When we asked him to take a picture, he gave me his magic knapsack, and started to walk away. Ashley thought he was bartering with us and was going to walk off with her camera, but he was just trying to find the best angle:


Great job 007. Happy.

After a while, we regrettably had to leave 007 behind. We had other business to attend to.

We had a big group dinner at a Mexican restaurant. It was good, but I was a little disappointed with the portions. We took a group picture outside:

It was Dali's 22nd birthday! We went for drinks, and to a nearby coffee shop. We sat outside, and had a good chat with a guy who was kind of like the bouncer, I suppose. He said that we were so much fun, that it was like a commercial for people to come inside and join. We tried to get him to join us, but he politely refused. After a long while, we headed back, but not before getting some delicious Chipsy King.

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of me with my Chipsy King, so I've posted this one of Katelyn just to illustrate the sheer magnitude. Also, please try to note the mayonnaise AND ketchup on top, making a mixture of sheer fried bliss.

The next morning was a sad goodbye to our Tcnj friends, who had to return home for classes. After seeing them off to the airport, we decided to go to a nearby sex museum, which was quite risque:

The one with the eyes farts at unsuspecting passerbys. After a walk around, we headed over to a riverboat to do a canal tour. Amsterdam is famous for its canals. I forget how many bridges the tourguide said there were in Amsterdam, but I'm pretty sure it was somewhere in the 200+ range. Here's one of the more scenic ones:


After our tour, we went back to a coffee shop for a bit. They had a very sarcastic menu (you'll probably have to click it in order to read it):

They also had an interesting poster of Ronald Reagen:

After the coffee shop, we headed for one last trip down the red light district:

And then we headed to the airport. Me, John, Hannah, Dali, and Rachel all flew into Cardiff on the same flight, but Connor had to spend a night in Schiphol airport:

I'm not sure how that's pronounced, but I assume it's like Sheeple. Everyone follows people around in there; no one makes a decision for themselves.

And that was that for Amsterdam. Dali's sister picked us up at the airport, and we all packed into her car and made it back to Bristol bleary-eyed and tired.

Paris, C'est la vie

Maï-lys is going to be looking at this post very carefully, so I have to be careful what I say.

Paris was a bit colder then Rome, because a cold front came in that morning. That's ok though, I was comfortable in my sweater that was starting to get just a little smelly. The first thing we did when we got to Paris was eat pastries:

Seriously, how can anyone walk by that and not order something? We both got the pastries in the top left, which were kind of like delicious apple pies.

My guidebook said that Parisians were not nice to tourists, and recommended asking French people if they speak English in French before talking with them. "Parlez-vous l'anglais ?" got committed to my memory, but I don't think it was really necessary. When we ordered the sweets and I said it, the baker laughed and said, "Of course!"

I was worried we would have a bad reception in France, but every French person I met was quite nice and tried to help us as much as they could. They were much kinder than the Italians we encountered. The baker gave us directions to the Arc de Triomphe, which was only a few blocks away, and we were off!

I'm not sure which I preferred, the arch in Rome or the arch in France. The French one, I suppose. It's so big that some guy flew a plane through it once! Crazy French. Underneath the arch there's a tomb for an unknown soldier, and an everlasting flame that never goes out. Wow, actually I was just looking on wikipedia, and it turns out that it did go out once:

"On June 30, 1998, the flame was extinguished when a drunken fan of the Mexican national football team urinated on the flame. He was subsequently charged with public intoxication."

Amazing. So anyways, The Arc de Triomphe marks the beginning (or end, depending how you look at it) of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées:

Kind of hard to get a good picture of it, because there's so many cars. For those that don't know, Champs-Élysées is where you go shopping for Prada, Louis Vitton, etc. And I know you're worried, but don't be, because there's also a Disney store. There's also really nice and expensive restaurants, bakeries, etc. But that wasn't exactly in our budget, so we just walked along it.

the 8e Arr is short for 8^e arrondissement, or the 8th district. Paris is split up into 20 arrondissements.

Toward the end of Champs-Élysées there are more gardens, and a Ferris Wheel, which marks the beginning of the Place de la Concorde. This is where King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and many other notables were guillotined. But it's not all bad; it also has a neat little obelisk, and some lovely fountains:

Just east of the Place is Tuileries Garden, which has a bunch of artsy statues, but we didn't end up going there until a little later. We were eager to see the Eiffel Tower!

The walk to the Tour Eiffel was good because it was along the Seine, and we saw many beautiful bridges along the way. We struggled to get good pictures of the tower because it was cloudy. After waiting patiently, we finally got break in the clouds and took pictures like maniacs:

The white balls in the tower and next to it are rugby balls. France was hosting the World Cup Rugby games, unfortunately France was already eliminated by this point.

We stopped and got crepes nearby, because that's what you do when you're in Paris. I got mine with ham, egg, and cheese; mom got hers with apricot jam, I think. I liked hers better; the dough he used was different. Heres a short video of how a crepe is made (my mother insisted I take the video):

The crepe maker was a pretty funny guy: when I asked for a coke, he made a snorting motion with his nose, and said: Coke? I didn't want any cocaine though, not while mom was around anyway. (Just kidding Mom) When we were done eating, Mom tried to get action shots of birds taking little pieces of crepe right out of my hand, but she had no luck. The crepe maker didn't like the birds; he took out some machine that made a loud ringing noise to scare them away, but it did absolutely nothing. Hunger is more important then avoiding loud noises apparently.

After the crepes we went underneath the tower. After taking pictures of the Tower from every angle possible, we took a taxi over to the Notre Dame:

Notre Dame was stunning. Inside was beautiful as well:

We both looked hard, but we couldn't find any hunchbacks inside. Mom lit a candle though, and we also bought one to bring back to Grandma. After a while, we decided to walk over to the Louvre.

The Louvre (pronounced Loov) is a famous art museum that houses the Mona Lisa, along with many other famous works. Unfortunately, the Louvre was closed because of the transport strike - which didn't really make much sense to me, but whatever. At least we got pictures of the glass pyramids:

Da Vinci code style. We had to rest our tired feet for a while after we walked there, because four days of long walking was starting to take a toll on our tired feet. We tried to find a taxi to our hostel. It took quite a bit of effort. Both the Metro and buses weren't running, so taxis were overloaded with people needing rides. We walked through the Tuileries Garden on the way to find a better place to get taxis, and encountered some pretty crazy art:

Big boots!

I call this Tricky Fountain, because the water wasn't really that deep so to cover the streetlights...also that wouldn't make sense because the truck isn't covered. And why is there a chandelier in the back of it? Crazy French.

And here is a ball of metal objects. Ok, enough of the crazy art now. So we tried getting in a huge line for taxis, but no taxis were stopping. So we walked a little towards the hostel and tried at a less crowded one, and after 15 minutes or so of waving at taxis we were able to get a ride over to Place de la République, which was just 2 blocks away from our hostel.

The hostel was overall pretty good. The receptionist was very helpful, and the 4 bed room was pretty nice. We had our own bathroom, which was great. One of our roommates was headed home to Australia the next day after a year of traveling abroad. She gave me a lot of advice about where to stay in Istanbul and Amsterdam that I immediately forgot. After me and Mom took showers, we went out for dinner.

I promised Maï-lys I would have a doner kebab in France, because she swears they are much better. They are quite different then they are in Britain:

Kebabs in France are kind of like a cheesesteak without the cheese. I personally like the British version better. The meat is in bigger pieces here. It's delicious.

After our kebabs, we walked around for a little while, and headed over to another pastry place. I can't remember the name of what we had, but it was good:

It's kind of hard to see, but mine has music notes on it. It was pretty, almost too pretty to eat. Almost.

After dessert we returned to the hostel and went to sleep. We had to get up at about 6 I think. This is when our transportation woes began. We tried to have our receptionist call for a taxi, but there were no free taxis in three different companies that he tried!

We tried the metro, which was partially running now, just to go somewhere else and try to catch a bus. After 20 minutes of waiting, we decided to walk over to Gare du Nord, where our roommate told us there was a free shuttle to the airport. It was a bit of a walk. Maï-lys tells me that Gare du Nord is where all the gangsters are, but I didn't encounter any. All we encountered was a big confusing mess.

Gare du Nord is a huge bus/train station that no one can understand. We asked about 20 different people how to get to our airport, and we got 20 different answers. We tried to catch a taxi, and some guy scammed us out of a couple euro because he told us he would take us but it turns out he was just carrying our bags to the taxi line. Which of course wasn't moving.

We tried the metro, buses, everything, for at least an hour and a half. The crazy French, they don't even know their own train station! Eventually we found a free train over to Charles de Gaulle airport, which I think is what our roommate was talking about. If your reading this, thanks roommate! Sorry that I forgot your name.

The shuttle was fun, because I tried to guess how to pronounce the names of the stops before the lady on the intercom said them. I started to get pretty good: the key is to cut off about 3 letters off the end of any french word. We were quite anxious though, because we though for sure that we were going to miss our flight and have to pay for new ones...

We made it to the airport about 15 minutes before our flight was supposed to leave. After much begging (s'il vous plait, s'il vous plait, please, please) she let us go! We ran through customs and the security checks and got on line, deliriously happy we weren't going to have to waste any money. It was a great ending to a great trip. Our flight was slightly delayed because of some problem at Bristol Airport, it turns out, which was more than likely our saving grace. Our plane was fairly empty - it seemed like other people were having problems as well getting to the airport, and didn't get as lucky as us.

C'est la vie.

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...