Stonehenge and Bath

Hey ya'll!! Just writing for a quick update! I went to Stonehenge and Bath on Friday, we woke up at 4:30 because our bus was picking us up at 5:30! We had to leave early because we had to get there before it was open to the public so that we could go behind the ropes, which was totally worth it.

"No admittance"....pretty cool!

Roommates at Stonehenge :-)

It was about 2.5 hrs away near Salisbury, England and it was beautiful weather! I don't think it's rained since we've been back from Paris, which is unbelievable, I am SO grateful for this wonderful weather!! After Stonehenge we went to Bath, which I think is probably my favorite city in England. We got to drive through the English country-side and it was beautiful!

We took a tour of the Roman Baths which were awesome, they are still being filled by the hot springs below the earth, which I thought was really cool.

We got to walk around the town for a little while and it was such a cute place, we ate at a little fish and chips shop for lunch and then headed back to London. I picked up Chelsea from the airport on Saturday morning and I am SO glad she is here, I've been her tour guide for the past few days and we went to see Wicked last night(shout out alex lowe :-) ) which was AMAZING!! I cannot tell you how excited I was to see the show, we went to the box office the day of the show in the morning because they release 24 front row seats for 25 pounds each at 10:00 when they open and so we tried to get there by 8:30 but there was some emergency in the tube station and so they shut it down and we had to walk, but we still got there around 8:45 or so. Anyways I don't know what else to say other then the show was amazing and I promise that Elphaba sang directly to me several times, no big deal. Haha anyway, I'm having a wonderful week, I hope all you Chapel Hill-ers are having a great spring break and that the rest of you are having a good week, I'm going to Dublin early Friday morning and I'll be back on Monday! Miss you all very much and I'm praying for you guys, Shoutout to all the CCP: I'm keeping ya'lls support in my prayers, I know it's been hard but know that you are being prayed for and that God is a God of provision, love you guys!

"This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have what we asked of him."1 John 5:14-15

Je t'aime Paris!

Hey Ya'll! Hope everyone is having a great week, I've been super busy this week but this afternoon things have finally started to slow down, so I wanted to tell you guys about my trip to Paris! We left very early Friday morning, we took a cab at 3:00am, then a bus to the airport and our flight was supposed to be at 6:05, but it was delayed an hour and so we ate breakfast in the airport and then waited by our gate. The flight was only an hour long and with the time change we got into Paris around 9:30 and then took a train to our hostel, which was really cool, it was called St. Christopher's and there are a lot of them all over Europe.

We had a 10 person room and there were 5 of us so we made 5 new friends haha. It was interesting to say the least, but we did meet some really cool people. We met a guy from Brazil and another guy that goes to Loyola but was studying abroad in Scotland and we met some girls from Australia, it was a lot of fun. Once we got there we just walked around a lot, we walked all along Champs Elysees and we saw the Arc de Triomphe and climbed up it and then we went back to the Louvre around dinner time because it was free for students and that was really awesome.

Me, Ellie and Mary Katherine at the Louvre!

The Mona Lisa

The Arc de Triomphe, we climbed all the way up it...

It was a VERY long way up!

But the view was definitely worth it :-)

By the end of the day we were exhausted and so we just had dinner at the hostel and hung out in the restaurant/bar downstairs. On Saturday we had a walking tour that was free, and I wasn't sure how much I was gonna like it but it was amazing! Our tour guide was a girl from Australia who was so enthusiastic and funny, and we went just about everywhere, the tour lasted almost 4 hours, which was super long, but it was so much fun and we got to see a lot of cool stuff, we started over near Notre Dame and worked our way back towards the Eiffel Tower.

Notre Dame! We visited on a Sunday during Mass which was kind of cool

Us with the really scary Hunchback of Notre Dame haha

We went back to Notre Dame on Sunday during Mass which was pretty cool

I don't know if you can tell in this picture, but he is holding a massive gun, and these guys are all over the place in Paris! They were really scary

We ended by the Eiffel Tower and so we got tickets to go up, we took the stairs to the second level and then took an elevator the rest of the way up, it was so amazing and since it was getting dark we stayed until all of the lights came on, which was awesome!

At the top!

We went to Versailles on Sunday, it was just a short train ride from Paris and we went on a tour of the Palace, and luckily since we are students in the UK we got in for free! The Palace was huge and beautiful! Just as an example...

There were a ton of huge fire places

The Hall of Mirrors....

Paris was also really pretty at night...

We just hung out in the bar that night and watched the hockey game, which was a lot of fun even though we lost :-(

On Monday me and Mary Katherine went back to the Eiffel Tower again...

We just walked around and then we went to Montmarte and saw the Moulin Rouge which was pretty cool and then we went to the Musee de l'Orangerie, which had Monet's Water Lilies and it was a pretty small museum which is one of the reasons why it was my favorite haha. Our flight was at 9:45 that night and the flight was fine but when we took the bus home, there was an accident on the highway and they shut it down so we were stuck for a while until the police told us to back down the highway and turn around because our bus was at the back of all of the traffic, so that was an interesting experience, but we got home faster that way and so we got home around 1:00am. That is the abridged version of my trip, I have plenty of great stories (ask me about the lady on the subway) but not enough time to type all of them out haha.

I have a really busy week this week too, last night we went to go see A Midsummer's Night Dream with Judi Dench (She was M in a lot of the James Bond movies...) and it was SO GREAT, it was hilarious, I don't think I stopped laughing the entire time. Today I had a midterm and tomorrow we're going to see another play and then on Friday we're going to Stonehenge at 5:30am, so we can get underneath the ropes before it's open to the public which will be pretty cool and then Chelsea will be here on Saturday, I can't wait :-)

Hope ya'll had a great week and weekend! And I know a lot of ya'll are about to have spring break so I hope you have fun wherever you're going even if it is just home, and that it's restful and relaxing, I know you all deserve it after midterms :-)

Scotland!

Hey ya'll! Sorry I'm being such a slacker about updating and then writing really long posts haha. I'll give a brief overview of what I did last week....

I went to see Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which was really great, James Earl Jones (voice of Mufasa/Darth Vader) was the main character "Big Daddy" and he was really good. And in Art we went to "The Real Van Gogh" which was really cool and then this past Thursday we went to the National Gallery and saw a lot of Western European art including a lot of Monet, Renoir and a few by Van Gogh. We were supposed to go to a soccer game on Tuesday but it got rained out which was a bummer, but we're going to go to a different one, I'm not sure when yet but I'll let you know when I find out!

Alright so my trip to Scotland was amazing! It went by so fast and I am now exhausted but I had so much fun and it is absolutely stunning there. I literally felt like I was in a movie the entire time. We took an overnight bus there and back, so Thursday night we went to this Radio Show in London at the Globe Theater (which was hilarious, it was like an old time-y show where they make all of the noises and tell stories and it is actually on the radio in London). And after the show we went back to our flat and got our bags and took the tube to Victoria Coach Station (the bus station). I only took my bookbag for the 3 days we would be there, I was very impressed that I fit everything into one bag! Our bus left the station at 11:00pm and we got to the station kind of late so we all had to sit next to different random people on the bus, I sat next to a girl from China named Gogo (well im assuming that is how it is spelled haha) We talked a little bit but mostly she just slept and listened to music, unfortunately for me I couldn't fall asleep on the 8 hour bus ride, so I just listened to music the whole way there. We got to Edinburgh around 7am and we walked to our hostel which wasn't too far away from the bus station. When we got there we went to check in and I found out that I was in a separate room from everyone else in my group. We booked separately and we didn't think there would be a problem putting us into one room, but I guess they couldn't change anything around so I stayed in a room with 5 people I didn't know and it was a mixed dorm, meaning that there were 2 scottish men and 1 french guy and 2 other french girls, needless to say it was quite an interesting stay. If you want to hear more about it, just ask haha,I have plenty of good stories. I took a shower and got some coffee at the bar and then we headed out into Edinburgh for the day. The first thing we did was tour the Edinburgh Castle, which is built on volcanic rock, it was really cool.

At 1:00pm everyday they fire a shot from the castle across Edinburgh and so we stayed to see that and we also saw the Crown Jewels and old Prisoner of War chambers underneath the castle.

There was a really great view from the top! :-)

Afterwards we walked down the Royal mile which is the road that leads from the top of the road when the castle is, down through historic Edinburgh. We stopped in a few stores and a church and slowly made our way down the rest of the Royal Mile. When we got to the bottom we decided that we wanted to climb "Arthurs Seat" which is supposedly the best view in Edinburgh and I definitely would say that held true. It was formed from an extinct volcano and then was eroded by glaciers.

This is before we decided to climb it

The View!

After we did that we went to a place call The Worlds End for dinner, I had fish and chips (for the first time since I've been in Europe) and it was so good. We were all exhausted from the long day of traveling (I was going on about 36 hours of no sleep) and so we headed back to the hostel.

On Saturday morning we got up early because we were taking a bus tour to Loch Ness and the Highlands. Our bus drivers name was Gary and he liked to tell corny jokes and play lots of Scottish bagpipe music haha including this song...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frCt63-v-9Y

But it was so much fun, we stopped at a place for coffee about an hour into the trip and saw a Highland Cow named Hamish, and it was his birthday.

Hamish :-)

And then we headed up into the highlands which were absolutely beautiful, there are a couple of pictures for you guys to see, but I really don't think they do it justice. We traveled through Stirling and saw where William Wallace (Braveheart anyone?) fought in the Battle of Stirling Bridge. We went to a ton of different places so I'll spare you the time it would take to write about all of it and just hit the highlights.

You can't tell in this picture but there are tears streaming down my face because it was so cold haha

We also went to Loch Ness and took a boat ride, it was really cool, unfortunately though I did not see the Loch Ness monster.

Picture from the boat on Loch Ness

We stopped at dinner in a really small scottish town, and the restaurant we ate dinner in all of the waiters were wearing kilts! That night when we got back into Edinburgh we went to a pub called "The Globe" which was a lot of fun, and we got to watch some of the Olympics which was fun. I have a funny story about when I got back to the hostel that night, but I don't feel like typing the entire thing out on here, so ask me about it if you want to hear it haha. Sunday morning we checked out of our hostel and went back into Edinburgh for our last day of touring. We visited Calton Hill which included the old National Monument that was supposed to look like the Parthenon from Athens, but they never finished it, so its just a half finished building.

If you can see in the picture on the right side along the bottom of the National Monument there is a little hill and it was very muddy and I slid and fell all the way down it,it was funny at the time, but my pants were muddy for the rest of the day, including the 8 hour bus ride back to London and I'm kind of sore from it haha.

Great view from the top of Calton Hill

After we went to Calton Hill we ate lunch and then went to Holyrood Palace, which is where the Queen stays during the summer, it was really cool and definitely worth visiting.

Holyrood Castle

Afterwards we got some coffee and did some souvenir shopping, I got a plaid scarf and a bunch of postcards! Then we went to dinner at a place called Monster Mash and had dinner, two of the people on the trip got Haggis and I tried a little bit of it, it wasn't too bad! You don't really want to know what's in it though. Afterwards we had a little bit of time left before we had to go to the bus station, so we went to The Elephant House and had dessert, which is where J.K Rowling wrote Harry Potter.

It was a really cute restaurant with a great view of Edinburgh Castle and we just hung out there until we caught our bus back to London. Our bus left around 10p.m and we got into London around 6:45 this morning. Oh and no trip to Scotland would be complete without a picture of one of the MANY men playing bagpipes on the street...

I took a long nap today but I'm still pretty tired, I'll try and add some more pictures and stuff later but I wanted to write about the trip before I forgot everything! I miss everyone so much and hope you had a great weekend!

Tea Time and Venice

Sorry I haven't updated in a week! I've been super busy, and this is going to be a very long update so brace yourself now, or if you want the abbreviated version you can just scroll through and look at the pictures instead of actually reading the entire thing! :-)

Ok so I'm gonna start with last weekend. It was sunny for 3 days in a row, which I think is a record so far haha. I went running everyday to Regents Park, which was so nice! It was a pretty laid back which was a nice change. On Monday I got to go to High Tea at the Ritz with my two roommates, it was so much fun! I felt like I was in a movie, they were playing the piano and served lots of little sandwiches, scones and desserts. I think I probably drank an entire pot of English Tea on my own and had about 10 scones, I was extremely full by the end of Tea Time haha.

This is a picture of us at our table

This is me with my tea!

This is the room that we had tea in, very fancy

And this is just a picture of some of the desserts and sandwiches and stuff

I had my first paper due for class on Thursday and I was trying to get that done so I didn't get very much sleep Wednesday night and then I had to pack for Venice because we were leaving right after class on Thursday. We left from class around 3:45 and rushed home and took the tube to the train station and then took a train to the airport. The train ride was about an hour long and then once we got to the airport we checked in and went to our gate. Our flight left around 7:30 and it was about a 2 hour flight to Italy. Once we got there we took a 30 minute shuttle ride to our hostel which was a little bit outside of Venice. The lady who was driving our shuttle was really sweet, and she had good taste in music, she was playing a CD with Ricky Martin and Michael Jackson on it. The hostel was actually a pretty nice place...

This is a picture of the lobby, we became good friends with Nenad, the guy who worked at the desk by the end of the trip haha. So once we got there we just got something to eat at the restaurant by the hostel, I got bruschetta and it was SO GOOD! The next day we woke up and got a shuttle into Venice around 10 and got some coffee and a little card that allowed us to use the Water taxi's while we were there because that is basically the only way to get around Venice. The first day (Friday) wasn't the best weather, it was pretty rainy all day long but we got to see a lot of cool stuff. We took the water taxi to a couple of the islands off the coast of Venice. We went to Murano first, which is famous for glass blowing and we saw a demonstration of how they blow the glass, it was awesome.

This is a picture from one of the main streets in Murano, where we also ate lunch (I had pizza and it was wonderful)

This is a picture of one of the guys who makes the glass.

I also bought a mask on Murano because it was Carnivale in Italy when we went, which is a really big deal and everyone dresses up and wears costumes/masks. But I'll talk about that more in a little bit. After Murano, we went to Burano, which was about two water taxi stops away and we got some coffee and walked around for a little while.

They are famous for all of their rainbow colored houses!

The last island we went to was Torcello, which only has 16 people that live on it, however there are still a lot of tourists that visit because of the church that is there,the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta it was built in the 600's.

Here's a picture of the church, we were almost the only people there.

We went back to the hostel afterwards because we were soaking wet and freezing, only to find out that the gas was broken, so there was no heat or hot water. Haha and so we had club sandwiches at the restaurant for dinner because it was the only thing they could make without needing the gas.

The second day (Saturday), we woke up and headed over to Venice to actually go into the City, we took a vaparetto (water taxi) to San Marco Square and went inside of San Marco Basilica, which was amazing

This is a picture of the inside of the Basilica

This is a picture from the outside

The entire square was full of people dressed up and wearing masks, and all of the little kids had confetti, so if they liked your mask or costume, they would throw confetti at you.

This is just an example of how extravagant all of the costumes were haha. I did not wear a dress like that, just a mask, sorry to disappoint.

Afterwards, we went to a little restaurant for lunch, and I had chicken and pasta. Later in the day we went to an art museum The Royal Academy Museum, and then got gelato afterwards. I got cherry, but don't worry I also got about 5 other kinds throughout the rest of the trip :-)

Then we rested in a little cafe, until it got closer to the opening ceremony for Carnivale. We went back to San Marco Square to wait for the show to start, it was really crowded in the square and definitely not what I expected for the start of Carnivale. They had music and then this play that was about an 80 minutes long, that apparently was very funny, however since I don't speak Italian I had no idea what was going on. But it was a lot of fun to see so many people dressed up in costumes and masks and there were lights strung all around the sqaure. We headed home after the ceremony and thankfully our heat was fixed!

On Sunday ( I know this is long, bear with me) we took the vaperatto, to San Marco again to see the Angel Flight, which was basically a lady on a zipline from the bell tower into the center of the square and it was quite possibly the most crowded place I have ever been in my life, even moreso then Franklin St. after the National Championship! On the way to the sqaure our water taxi got held up because there was a huge parade down the Grand Canal, which consisted of tons of gondolas with people dressed up and playing music, it was full of interesting characters, I saw one guy dressed up in a red onesie wearing a Goofy hat.

After that we spent a good amount of time trying to get out of the crowd, we escaped to another island for a while where we took a gondola ride, we went down parts of the Grand Canal and through some of the more narrow canals, it was beautiful.

This is me with our gondolier, Alessandro, he was so sweet haha

After our gondola ride we went to another church, Santa Maria della Salute and then we took a boat over to the Rialto Bridge where we had dinner and hung out for the rest of the night.

Rialto Bridge

Monday, we woke up and checked out of our hostel and spent most of the day on the island of Lido, we walked on the beach there

Me and my roommates on the beach!

and got lunch (I had pizza again) and then we went back towards San Marco and hung out there until it was time for us to head back. We met the shuttle at our hostel and got a ride to the airport, we ate gelato in the waiting area for about 2 hours until it was time for our flight to be board around 9:30pm but after we went through the Passport checking area, we realized that our flight was delayed, so we sat on the floor of the airport for about 2 more hours and played about 50 games of hangman. Our flight was delayed even further, so we didn't actually leave Italy until about 12:30am. This was a problem for many reasons, #1 being that both the tube closed after 12:30, as did the train that we were supposed to use to get to the tube station. When we arrived in London around 2:30 Italy time, 1:30 London time, we found a bus that came at 2:00 and took about an hour bus ride into the city and we got a cab the rest of the way home. I think I probably went to bed around 3:30 or 4, it was definitely an adventure to get home from Italy. Overall I had so much fun, I am still recovering from all of the traveling but I'm so glad that I got to go.

This week isn't as busy as last week, but I went on a tour of Parliament yesterday and I'm going to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof tonight, James Earl Jones (aka: the voice of Mufasa in the Lion King) is in the cast , so that should be fun! I miss you all very much hope everyone had a great week/weekend!