on sunshine and warmth and days in the park

Another short little catch-up blog because I'm in writing mode now and need a break from academic work.

On the fine and beautiful Friday before our Saturday Oxford trip, Nicolle, Kayla, Felicia and I decided to take advantage of the gorgeous weather and go have a picnic lunch in Hyde Park.  For those of you who are totally clueless about London geography, Hyde Park is London's version of Central Park...huge and beautiful and open and full of room and green space.  I love it.

We journeyed home from our Images class's trip to tour the National Theatre and put together our own little picnic...I brought a baguette with jam, Nutella, brie, Boursin, hummus and honey.  Exactly the lunch I ate every day in Paris...not that you would know that since I still haven't finished blogging about Paris...

the day went something like this:

pretty striped chairs

us girls in bright-colored tights

watching the world floating by on the Serpentine

and enjoying daffodils and blooming trees.

all in all, an absolutely perfect day :)

a day in the City of Dreaming Spires

Wikipedia on Oxford:

Oxford (pronounced /ˈɒksfərd/) is a city, and the county town of Oxfordshire, in Southeast England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 151,000 living within the district boundary. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through Oxford and meet south of the city centre. For a distance of some 10 miles (16 km) along the river, in the vicinity of Oxford, the Thames is known as The Isis.

Buildings in Oxford demonstrate an example of every British architectural period since the arrival of the Saxons, including the iconic, mid-18th century Radcliffe Camera. Oxford is known as the "city of dreaming spires", a term coined by poet Matthew Arnold in reference to the harmonious architecture of Oxford's university buildings. The University of Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world.

Lovely London Ladies @ Christ Church College

My thoughts on Oxford: 

We visited the city for a day trip with the Program in connection to the Archaeology and Ethics class.  Which I am not in.  The students in the class were expected to visit two different museums, the Ashmolean and the Pitt Rivers, and evaluate lots of archaeological and ethical things.  I clearly did not have the knowledge base or inclination to do that.  Nor did the majority of our group.  

When we arrived at the Ashmolean at around 10:30 am, we quickly realized that we were going to get next-to-nothing out of the trip when we saw copies of various marble statues and busts we had just seen the originals of in Rome.  Yup.  We booked it straight to the Ashmolean Café, where we gobbled down croissants and chugged cappuccinos before ditching that museum like a bad prom date.  

Instead of lingering at the Museum of Bad Copies of Awesome Art We Saw In Rome, a big group of us headed to Christ Church College, which is really famous for a lot of reasons, but most importantly (for this blog anyway) for being used in the filming of the Harry Potter movies.  We all nerded out pretty intensely over things like Harry's dining hall, the staircase ascended by the first-years before they're Sorted, various campus locations we recognized as sites of Harry-Ron-Hermione interactions, and other more obscure but exciting Harry-related locales.  Kayla and I also had a wand-fight in the dining hall.  Because we're cool like that...

Expelliarmus!  Dueling in the dining hall.

After playing and having endless fun at Christ Church, we headed through their beautiful cathedral...burial place of John Locke, famous philosopher, and home to a lot of pretty beautiful architecture.  I loved it, and decided to challenge myself by reading the cathedral guide in French instead of English.  It was kinda fun...I love that this semester has enabled me to use so much more French.  Then...we went shopping.  

Outside the cathedral.  Isaac=pimpin'

We hit up the Alice in Wonderland store (Lewis Carroll was an inhabitant of Oxford!), then grabbed some traditional Cornish pasties for lunch at the Botanic Gardens.  This was the best best best part of the day because...

MY FAVORITE!

The entire gardens' ground was BRIMMING with DAFFODILS.  I went postal.  I was in heaven.  I went completely kindergarten on everybody and started jumping around like a little child.  It was a beautiful 65 degree day in England with abundant sunshine and I was having a picnic in a FIELD of my favorite flowers.  It was, in a word, perfect.  

That's the face of Lizzie Schwegman in BLISS.

I may or may not have even made a crown of daffodils as the world floated by in punts and paddle-boats along the river.  (We all did.  It wasn't just psycho me.  I promise!)

"And if you wrap yourself in daffodils..." -Counting Crows

We turned on some Beatles music and read some books and talked among great friends.  It was a pretty beautiful way to spend an afternoon.  After watching (and laughing with, and talking to) punters and passersby for nearly two and a half hours, we headed back to the buses to return to London.  It was, all in all, the best way to escape from the hectic crush of the city.  Oxford is so picturesque, quaint and incredibly beautiful.  I had the best day ever!!  

PS: if anybody from the Botanic Gardens ever asks, those daffodils were just lying on the ground, and we definitely would never have picked them.  Ever.  :)  

ECIII: Buona Pasqua!

Okay now I'm caught up through to Easter Sunday, when I arose at the buttcrack of dawn (6:30am!) to get ready to go to Easter Mass at the Vatican, presided over by my new favorite guy ever, Il Papa...The Pope!  :)  We set out around 7:30 to stop for espresso and croissants at a little café across from our hostel, then joined the hordes of people waiting to get into St. Peter's Square.  Think airport security, only more religious...

Once inside the square, Phil, Mike, Courtney and I proceeded to our seats, obtained courtesy of Notre Dame (our group had a block of tickets, yeeeah!).  Almost as soon as we sat down it started obnoxiously on-and-off raining, drizzling, misting...call it what you will, but I left London to get away from it, not to sit through four hours of Mass and blessings in it.  We soon figured out that all our umbrellas open at once in a row just meant we all got dripped on by each other...so Phil and I pioneered a very innovative system where his umbrella covered our heads and mine covered his knees...Mike and Courtney shared on my other side, and we all stayed moderately dry for the Mass.

Again, Mass felt more like a giant circus than a holy service, especially with crazy Asians with golf umbrellas standing on their chairs to snap pictures of the Pope.  (I was guilty of mucho photo-taking too, but I didn't stand on my chair to do it.  So there, Asia.)  The square was absolutely filled with people, which was a really fantastic sight.  Poetically, the rain stopped just in time for Communion, and it was a mad rush to get the Eucharist...I ended up being one of the last people in our group who did before they ran out.  That's right, the Vatican ran out of Communion.  So much for planning ahead?...

After Mass, the Pope did the "Urbis et Orbis," blessing the crowd in about 30 different languages and proclaiming that Christ has risen.  It was a beautiful thing to witness, even though I couldn't understand his English at all in the crowd...everybody got really excited when they heard their language called, and Benedict was pretty impressive on his fancy balcony.  All in all, my Easter Sunday experience made me glad to be Catholic, and was just overall really humbling/staggering/mindblowing.  I felt so lucky to be there...celebrating the holiday that our religion is founded upon, in the center of that religion, under the eye of the leader of that religion.  So amazing. :)

After Mass, some of the lovely Rome band girls offered to make Easter Brunch at their apartment, so we headed back there to dry off, warm up and have an Easter feast!  The food was simple, delicious and filling, the company was wonderful, and the time to catch up was much appreciated.  As weird as it was to spend an Easter away from my family, spending it with my band family was the next best thing, as cheesy as that sounds.  Mike also taught us a really fun Italian card game called "scuppa."  I kicked ass.  

After brunch and a bit of cleanup, the Fabulous Foursome (Phil, Mike, Courtney and myself) headed to the Coliseum for a damp afternoon of gladiator-style fun!  Pictures really don't do the sheer size of the Coliseum justice...mostly because you can't get the whole Coliseum IN a picture.  It was really cool.  I nerded out pretty hardcore over the exhibits of gladiatorial armor and weaponry with the guys, then we went out into the main amphitheater where we walked around a lot, took A LOT of touristy pictures, and may or may not have staged an epic gladiator battle, where Mike redeemed himself after his loss in the Circus Maximus.  Then we also may or may not have climbed all over ruined statue pedestals.  The Coliseum, in short, was a really good time had by all.  :)

Post-Coliseum, we got Courtney's hostel situation sorted out and moved her into mine...because any hostel, no matter the price, is better than a sketchy night sleeping in an airport.  Then we started having epic dinner adventures, trying to find a place to go that was a: open on Easter evening, b: reasonably priced, and c: not a total tourist trap.  We succeeded on all counts, finally stumbling onto a cute little restaurant near the Campio di Fiori, a big bar district.  Dinner was awesome because:

1. it was really, really good.  I had seafood ravioli in pink sauce that was a revelation and the menfolk had really great lamb.

2. the wine was really, really good.  

3. the waiter was really, really drunk. No, not kidding.  Like really drunk.  He poured the wine so haphazardly that I was afraid it would spill...and he DID spill our after-dinner grappa.  And he kept hitting on Courtney.  Hilariously so.

4. Grappa.  Oh wow.  He recommended the strongest version of this super-distilled after-dinner wine, calling it "grappa for the men...and power women," indicating me.  Great.  Now I'm a power-woman, and can drink like a man.  Baha.  Anyway, it was about as pleasant as drinking straight rubbing alcohol...not to mention you're supposed to get about a shot's worth and he gave us entire champagne flutes full.  We lingered over our grappa for a VERY long time...and my sniffly, stuffy nose was completely cleared by the end of my drink.  Bahaha.  Such fun.

After a thoroughly excellent dinner full of laughter, drunkenness (on others' parts) and catching up, I had just been reaffirmed in the belief that I have the best friends in the world, and that I miss all my campus friends like nobody's business.  Can't wait to see all of you this Senior Week.  :D  We were very full and very tired at this point so we wandered through Campio di Fiori for a little while then headed home, agreeing to rendezvous for our last day together at a decent hour of the morning...more sleep, MMM.  

10 Morals of my Easter Sunday:

1. Always be prepared for the elements.  That umbrella saved my LIFE.

2. If you want to be Pope, you better be fluent in a bunch of languages, and able to pretend to know a bunch more.

3. Asian tourists.  Grrrrr.

4. Grappa is better used as cold medicine than as alcohol drunk for pleasure.

5. Gladiator fights and statue pictures are ALWAYS a good idea.

6. Brunch is an under-appreciated meal.

7. Drunk waiters are better than sober waiters.

8. ND can get whatever it wants.

9. The Coliseum is really really big.  Huge, in fact.

10. I have the best friends ever.

ECII: Uscita lato…destro?

Saturday in Rome dawned bright and beautiful…I have never been so excited about nice weather before in my whole entire life!  (That’s a lie.  I’m always excited about nice weather.)  Still, this was particularly novel after months of London fog, rain and cloud-cover.  Sun! 

Since we had toured the Vatican Museums on Friday, Phil, Mike, Courtney and I were all able to sleep in a bit more than the rest of the ND “pilgrims,” who had an 8am entry time for the Vatican Museum tour.  GROSS!  Instead, we met up at 10am at Cipro, Mike’s Metro stop, to adventure to the top of the cupola (dome) of St. Peter’s!

That's right.  We were going up there.  Yup.

We got there, and the line was massive…wrapped all the way around St. Peter’s Square.  So we did what every self-respecting American college-student/tourist would do…cut in line. Very subtly, very neatly and not drawing any attention to ourselves.  Still, some stinky tour guide took it upon herself to harangue us for cutting the line…after we’d been in line about 10 minutes.  Needless to say I was NOT going to the back of the queue, so I firmly explained that we had been in line just as long as she had…and that she had just missed seeing us because we were on the other side of the (very wide) queue from her.  She shut up and left us alone…haha.  I was proud of myself for sticking to my guns, even if we were sort of kind of maybe in the wrong. 

Anyway, we waited an hour and a half in all to begin the climb up the Cupola.  It was a fun wait in which we talked a lot, caught up, got squished a whole bunch against other pushy-shovy tourists, and discovered the Italian Jay Leno.  Much fun.  We finally started the ascent, which actually freaked me out a bit…you are REALLY high up even when you’re only like…halfway up.  We climbed some annoying spiraly ramp stairs, then came out on the roof of the Basilica which was really cool.  Then we went inside the Dome…Cupola…whatever the technical name is…and had a fantastic birds-eye view of the interior of St. Peter’s…

We were SO high up!

Then it was time to climb inside the actual dome itself.  I was a tiny bit freaking.  A lot, actually.  Thanks Mike, for talking to met he whole time…you kept me sane, buddy :)  The weirdest part was when the walls and stairs started to slant to the side following the curve of the dome…it was so bizarre and felt like something kooky out of Alice in Wonderland, haha!  At any rate, we finally got to the top…and oh, my god…was it ever worth it. 

Yours truly with St. Peter's Square and Rome in the background!

We spent a long time atop the Cupola appreciating the beautiful views of the Vatican and Rome spread out underneath us, then started the trek DOWN the cupola…which was actually harder (I fell.  Boo.)…then we toured the actual Basilica.  SO huge.  SO remarkable.  SO incredibly gorgeous.  We saw Michelangelo’s “Pieta,” which was staggeringly beautiful, and the tombs of many popes, and just the general architecture and atmosphere of the church.  I loved it!  After we finished the interior of the Basilica di San Pietro, we went DOWN into the Papal Tombs, which are under the Basilica itself.  I saw John Paul II’s tomb and words can’t describe.  Not to mention the even cooler experience of seeing the entry to St. Peter’s tomb, which is down in the Scavi even further beneath the Basilica.  It was such a trip walking over the rock upon which the Catholic Church is built…aaaagh. 

the interior of St. Peter's...pretty unbelievable, huh?

Now for my imbecile moment…being the sleep-deprived traveler I was, I elected to give up breakfast for the more important benefit of an extra 20 minutes of sleep.  As we had eaten an early-ish dinner at Mike’s, and as the Cupola/St. Peter’s/Popes’ tombs took a REALLY, REALLY long time, it was approaching 2:30 by the time we even got out of the Vatican.  I was absolutely famished…almost 20 hours without eating is a REALLY poor life choice.  Phil is doing the McDonald’s Challenge (eating Mickey D’s in every country), so we took some lovely public transit (uscita lado…d’estro? is the Italian equivalent of “mind the gap!”) over to the first McDonald’s in Italy, conveniently located near the Spanish Steps, another destination I had to hit.  By the time we had navigated the public transit and absolutely insane lines at McD’s, it was 3:30 and I was getting really hungry, bitchy and insufferable…needless to say, my friends were really happy when I finally had some food in me and was nicer.  :)

After McD’s, we blitzed through the following essential tourist destinations:

1. Spanish Steps: super super crowded, super beautiful, lots of flowers and sun and fountains. 

"Those damn Spanish Steps!" -Grandma Lois 

2. Designer District: I saw a woman wearing the same Valentino ensemble that Valentino was currently displaying in their window.  Then I laughed.

3. Trevi Fountain: We threw our coins in!  One for Roma, two for love.  :)  I hope they both come true!

Fontana di Trevi!  

4. The Pantheon: It’s huge.  And there’s a hole in top.  And it was so crowded we couldn’t even get to the other side.  I still thought it was awesome, though.

The Pantheon!  An architectural miracle!

5. The Circus Maximus: Home to ancient Rome’s foot races and chariot races (I think) and stuff, Mike and Phil had their own spring race.  Phil won, which means Mike gets fed to the lions later.  Kidding…

After all this touristy running around Rome, we booked it to the Roman Forum and Palatine, which is where ancient Roman emperors and politicians lived, played and worshiped.  IT WAS SO COOL.  I was being such a total dork over the awesomeness of the ruins.  One of the emperors, Nero, had a private indoor island, moat and made a 35-foot statue to himself.  The whole imperial house complex was gigantic and made me reconsider my desire to be a French princess at Versailles…or marry into the house of Windsor…maybe I should go back in time and be an empress in the Roman Empire ;) 

Ruins of the Imperial Forum.  Pretty bad-ass!

The big part of the Forum, the old ruined temples, was my favorite.  Mike knew a ton about the ruins and who each temple was dedicated to, and we had a really good time playing in ruins and making generally touristy fools of ourselves. 

The Forum ruins at sunset.  Amazing.

By the time we finished the Forum, we were starving again (surprise, surprise) so Mike took us to Trastevere (what he called “real Rome”) for a great, great 3-hour Italian dinner at Tony’s…yes that is the real name of the restaurant, haha!  I had chicken parmigiana that was seriously the best chicken parm I’ve ever had ever.  Mmmm I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.  After we killed a bottle of the house wine, we also got limoncello on the house…really yum.  I was a fan.  Our waiter recommended a gelato place 30 feet up the road, so we got gelato (another theme of my time in Rome) and walked down to the Tiber Island.

The gang's all here...dinner at Tony's!

 After finishing our gelato on the banks of the Tiber watching the world go by, we headed out to the island itself.  Had some fun exploring the island, accidentally interrupting romantic trysts, and making “Angels and Demons” jokes…the island is the one that Robert Langdon “washed up on” at the end of the book.  I was thinking about my papa bear all weekend :)  We ended up all grabbing some ground on a pretty little hill and just spending an hour talking and talking and talking (and stargazing!  It’s been so long since I’ve seen real stars!)…I can’t even explain how much it felt like coming home to be spending time with some of my favorite people in the world.  We actually talked a ton about all the people back on campus and how much we miss them…so if you’re on campus and you’re reading this, we missed you then and miss you now.  Then we headed back home again, and I passed out in bed sleeping like a BABY.  Early Easter morning awaited us!

catch up part 1: London Life Lately!

Hi...and oops.  This has taken me way too long to write because work (school and otherwise) still occasionally happens here in London, and this week has been a prime example of that...This update will be a random potpourri of London over the weekend, and then I'll get to that fabled post about Paris...I promise.

As I said on Friday, I had to meet with the internship program director, Cornelius, about BBDO and how things are going there.  He was interested in everything I've been doing, especially in office interaction (one of the major goals of internships in the ND program is to expose students to "real Brits"...yes, they do exist!).  I was extremely positive about the BBDO experience I've had, because it has been, in a word, superlative.  We ended up digressing onto a series of discussions on the London Program in general, which got two thumbs way, way up from me...so weird to think that I only have a little over a month left in this amazing, amazing city!!  :(

After Cornelius and I finished up, I downloaded almost a hundred different piano songs on sheet music blogs and played piano at the London Centre while it poured rain outside, hoping I could wait out the storm (I still hadn't replaced my beloved yellow J.Crew umbrella after spring break!!).  After about an hour and a half of piano time (really, the first time I've played piano extensively since last December...felt AMAZING), the storm had blown over and I set out into a beautiful sunny, rain-washed London.  The sky was absolutely riveting...think black storm clouds and blinding sunlight mixing to turn the whole city into this sparkling wet gorgeously brilliant place.  You couldn't have helped but be happy to be alive.  :)

Of course, I realized that I couldn't hope to get through five more weeks in London without encountering rain, so I stopped at a corner stand in Leicester Square and bought a really cute hot-pink and white striped umbrella...for the low, low price of three quid!  I was excited, even though it's a total piece of crap that will for sure not survive its first real thunderstorm.  Feeling on top of the world, I stopped at Ben and Jerry's for a kiddie scoop of cookie dough ice cream in a sugar cone and practically skipped home, loving the sound of all the different languages (I remember counting at least seven...), traffic and general London hustle-bustle.

Along the way, we always pass the Grey's Inn Gardens, which are surrounded by beautiful red-brick buildings and filled with gravel paths, benches, and absolute fields of daffodils...my absolute favorite.  The problem is, the gardens are fenced off and the gate is usually shut and locked.  Serendipitously though, it was open on Friday and I decided to take a ramble...I ended up off the paths just wandering through daffodils that came up to my knees.  Needless to say, I was absolutely in heaven...I spend 45 minutes there before going home and got my shoes, socks, and jeans soaking wet in the flowers...so worth it!!

Friday night was a letdown.  Think: really drunk college students trying to find a bar pretty far from the flats, without determining if that bar has a 10-pound cover on the weekends due to concerts.  Then think: aforementioned college students discover aforementioned cover, get really upset (irrationally) and instead dive into the first dive bar they find.  Then think: aforementioned dive bar is really gross and skeevy, and aforementioned college students are so weirded out they just go home without ever determining the name of aforementioned dive bar.  That's basically our night in a nutshell.  yupp.

Saturday dawned bright, sunny, warm and...homework-laden.  I've got a big accounting paper due tomorrow night that required quite a bit of researching and background work before it could be written, so I hit the ground running with that and spent hours (literally) reading fascinating (not-so-literally) articles about fair-value accounting and its role in the financial crisis.  Woo!  Then I NEEDED a break so I went for a walk down Farringdon to St. Paul's Cathedral...just a 15-minute walk away for some beautiful architecture and views.  I spent some time there just walking around, enjoying the sunshine, and ruminating on London and life in general.  Then I went home and did more accounting until it was party time!

I mentioned that in Montpellier we met three other American girls: two of them were Laurens who were students at Syracuse and one of them, Lauren L, had already planned to celebrate her 21st at the London Syracuse program.  Once we all connected over Facebook she invited us to join her, so Peter, Kate and I headed to the Syracuse flats near the British Museum for a night of good old-fashioned American fun...beer pong and flip cup followed by a night of clubbing!  We met lots of really cool people from Syracuse, Maryland, Brandeis...and got to reconnect with our fellow Montpellier survivors, which was hilarious.  We entered the party and were instantly famous as "the people who saved the Laurens in Montpellier," which was kinda cool :)  I played a few games of beer pong before getting wiped out by two total hustlers, then enjoyed the rest of the party before skipping out of clubbing to go home and sleep.  Mmm, sleep.

Sunday: Nicolle, Joanie and I decided to try to adventure to find a different church than the one we usually attend.  Unfortunately, we still suck at getting around London even after two and a half months here, and wandered around the area where the church was supposed to be for like twenty minutes before we just gave up and decided we had ultimate-failed but God would love us anyway for trying really hard.  Nicolle headed off to Brick Lane and Joanie and I started home.  We were just casually walking along when all of a sudden I looked up and spotted a familiar tousled head of dark hair and some very familiar man-capris............

I immediately squawked out, "Oh my god...Steph!"  That's right folks, I had just encountered the one and only Stephan Claridge IN THE REAL WORLD.  (Steph=my "handler" and absolute favorite favorite person ever at BBDO, duh.)  He was taken aback at first, I'm sure wondering "who the hell is this crazy girl talking to me" but as soon as he realized it was ME IN THE REAL WORLD we both got really excited and said a lot about "oh my god, it's a small world!" He then pointed out his flats...literally 25 yards from where we were standing...and I promised I wasn't a stalker.  After a few laughs and small talk, we parted ways.  I felt like SUCH A GROWN-UP.  I ran into a work friend in real life, and even cooler, he introduced me to his friend as "his colleague at BBDO."  That's right.  I am officially a COLLEAGUE.  Hahahahaha.  :D

The rest of Sunday was uneventful...some work, some catch-up on cleaning and laundry, and of course Mr. Martin Colianni's 21st birthday celebration!! Homemade chocolate torte by Kayla, profiteroles and cream tarts from Tesco...aaah wait there IS a story left.  And then this epic blog will be done.

I got asked out by the checkout boy at Tesco.  (This is the part where you laugh...)

Tesco is a very ubiquitous, very cheap supermarket and we ND students are pretty well-known at our local Tesco because it is convenient, in our price range, and sells Lambrini, the 1.50 pound wine we all love and drink like water.  I went in around 9 on Sunday night and was the only person in the store so the staff chatted me up a bit while I picked up sundry essentials.  One guy, an Indian teenager who couldn't have been older than 18, was especially friendly, asking about my weekend and being generally helpful.  He went to the register to check me out and when I gave him my card to charge the items, he commented, "Elizabeth, a lovely name...like the Queen!"  I was sort of like, "Yeah, haha, it's nice..." and thought to myself, "Weird, but whatever, sweet."  Then he looked at me and asked, "I get off work at ten, do you fancy having dinner with me?"  I seriously was like... "Whaaaaat?" in my head and spent ten seconds wondering if he was serious, completely dumbfounded and amused by the situation...and then I was very polite and said I had a birthday party to attend and left.  It was just very funny and ironic and amusing, and makes for a funny anecdote that is much better relayed in person.

Okay, now I'm done, because even I am bored of this blog at this point and I just need to stop writing it.  If you finished this whole entire post, you need to go make yourself a cup of tea and have a few Cadbury eggs to celebrate.  :)  Much love and happy Tuesday to all of you!!

amsterblog!

**This blog is dedicated to Brian, who was mad that my blog posts have dwindled to zero.  Brian, enjoy the voluminousness of this post!**

Okay...Amsterdam post time, quickly...I'm on my lunch break right now and it is dwindling rapidly as I stuff my face with pb&j and BBDO chips :)

Martin and I left on Friday afternoon for Stansted, which is an adventure of a train ride away.  We got there way too early, so we ended up spending three hours goofing around in the airport, having fun in duty-free stores and playing with toys (meant for children, not Martin and me).  Finally, after several delays and three gate changes, we were on our flight and Amsterdam-bound!

Once we landed, we boarded what we thought was the correct train from Schiphol, the Amsterdam airport (which sounds like "shithole" when they say it out loud!), to Amsterdam Centraal, the train station.  Turns out we got on a train to Utrecht Centraal instead by mistake...oops!  Luckily, our mistake meant we meant an amazing guy named Rico...he was a 42-year old professor of English in Slovakia who gave us so many amazing travel tips and a lot of good advice about what to do and see in Amsterdam.  He also told us snippets of his life story, which was fascinating.  I love meeting people traveling!

After we found our Christian fundamentalist hostel, which [ironically] was in the heart of the Red Light District, we headed up Zeedijkracht (pronounced "zie-dick-crack") to find some food, and happened to stumble into the oldest gay bar in Amsterdam, Café t'Mandje.  We got some amazing dark artisan beer and admired the ambiance...hundreds of photos, postcards, newspaper clippings, and random pieces of memorabilia covered the walls, and cut neckties were draped over every rafter...such a cool place!  Martin kept getting hit on by the gay guys, and I talked to two lovely middle-aged lesbians about places to go at night (all they recommended were other gay bars.  We didn't go.).  We were home and in bed by about 1:30 am, totally exhausted and ready for sleep...but I didn't get to bed until three because...

IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL!  My hostel room for four people was populated by me and three junior girls at Miami-Ohio, who a: were in marching band b: knew people in the ND marching band (!!!!!!!!) and c: were VERY excited about all our mutual connections.  We stayed up talking about the awesomeness of marching band and comparing notes on who knew who through whom for almost an hour and a half.  So much fun, and it was such a pleasant surprise to find people even so far away who knew some of the people who I love dearly.  :)

In the morning we got up early in time for the hostel's free breakfast and headed immediately out to the Anne Frank House.  Though we thought we were going to make it there quickly, we took a circuitous route, weaving up and down canals and streets exploring the area, so we didn't get there until about 11.  Amsterdam is a beautiful city, even in pouring rain (which is what it did all weekend!).  Not so beautiful, though, when you're freezing your ass off waiting in an hour-long line to get in the Anne Frank House.  Still, it was so worth it...I got a bit shivery and sad when I realized that I was actually standing in the Secret Annex, behind the hidden bookcase, in a room where Anne herself had lived and hid and written and read and dreamed.  So surreal.  The furniture had all been confiscated by the Nazis after the Franks were discovered, but Anne's bedroom walls were still covered with her newspaper and magazine pictures of film stars and celebrities, her only decoration for two years in hiding.  What a mind-blowing, eye-opening experience.  

After Anne Frank House, we went to a market on the Prinsengraacht (Prince's Canal), one of the biggest canals in Amsterdam.  The best part?  Free samples of amazing food!  We tried goat-liver sausage, soft and delicious Amsterdam cheese, different kinds of spiced ham and meats, and several different kinds of spreads and dips for rye bread...pesto, tomato, artichoke, etc.  A great snack mid-day!  We also explored old book-stands and poked through some of the antiques.  What a cool little market.  

Then we started walking around the city a bit more...we crossed canals, went in the Holland opera-house, visited another market that Rico had recommended, and popped in our first coffee-house.  For those who don't know, coffee isn't on the menu in Amsterdam coffee-houses...instead, they sell marijuana and alcohol, and nothing but.  The stench of pot was so pervasive in Amsterdam that by the end of the day Saturday smelling it literally made me nauseous.  We were in there for about five minutes watching and seeing everything before I needed to leave...gross.  We then headed through the Rembrandtsplein, or Rembrandt Square, which is Clubbing Central for Amsterdam.  We got hot chocolate at a Heineken bar...random but fun.  Martin also caused a huge pedestrian-bicyclist accident...he stepped out into a bike lane, which in Amsterdam are wider than the sidewalks, and knocked a girl a few years older than us off her bike!  She was livid and gave us a lecture on how inappropriate and inconsiderate we were and we went off chastised and embarrassed, but admittedly amused.  

By now we were freezing cold, soaking wet, and really exhausted, so we popped into a mock Irish pub to watch the last few minutes of the England-Ireland rugby match!  Amsterdamians were cheering for both teams, which makes me question how much they actually knew or understood of the game...hmm.  Still, they got really excited when Ireland won, and we departed to the sounds of the entire bar singing "Danny Boy."  Our last day-visit was to the Bloemenmarkt, a floating flower market on the canals.  It was beautiful!  Amsterdam, famous for its tulips, outdid itself with a flower market the length of a few city blocks.  I loved it…and it smelled absolutely heavenly in the rain!

One of the places recommended to us by Rico was a music center on the other side of the main canal called the Muziekostergraacht or something…I don’t remember at present…which housed a jazz bar called Bimhuis.  We decided this sounded awesome, so we went.  You have to cross the canal on a giant suspension bridge, which is kind of freaky, and the Bimuis part of the whole complex sticks out of the building like a giant tumor…unsupported, really, and a bit scary to look at.  We got our tickets (discounted drastically because I said I was a music student, haha!) and sat down for two hours of some very experimental and odd but cool jazz piano and sax. 

Midway through the show I realized I didn’t just feel like crap because I was exhausted and hungry…I was running a pretty extreme fever.  Spent the rest of the evening exploring the Red Light District at night with Martin…this deserves a few words.  I was expecting the Red Light District to be really scary and sketchy and disgusting and, in a way, it was…but it was very different than I expected.  I would call it culture shock in the extreme.  You literally walk down a street and there are dozens of women standing in full-length windows in their underwear waiting for customers.  I kept having crises of guilt where if I looked I immediately freaked out a bit inside, averted my eyes, and felt like a sinner.  By the end of the weekend though it just made me sad…although it was still a huge shock to see it.  I can’t imagine anything like it anywhere else in the world.

Sunday: we got up early and went to Dutch Mass at Sanctje Nicklauskerk, or St. Nicholas’s church.  St. Nick is the patron saint of children prostitutes, sailors and Amsterdam, so it was cool to go to his church in his patron city.  We happened to run into a few more ND students there, which was cool…and just proved again that it is such a small world. 

After Mass, which we understood about 0% of, but still really enjoyed, we took a canalboat tour on our way to the Van Gogh Museum.  If you are going to Amsterdam, DO NOT DO THIS.  It is a RIPOFF and you can experience the canals by walking just as effectively for free.  Still, it was pouring rain and we enjoyed being warm and dry on the covered boats for a while. 

The Van Gogh museum, for lack of description, is utterly amazing and worth every penny you pay to get in.  I so enjoyed working my way through his paintings in chronological order, as they are displayed there…it was such a wonderful way to see his evolution as an artist.  I am freshly obsessed with Van Gogh all over again…what a character and what a gifted artist!  The paintings just made me want to touch them with their texture and color.  Aaah.  My favorites were “Sunflowers,” “Almond Trees,” and his self-portrait for the big names, and his series of orchards and hay fields painted in Arles for less well-known ones.  

After Van Gogh (where we spent 4 hours!) it was time to head back to Shithole…I mean, Schiphol…to catch our flight home.  Of course, Easyjet sucks and our flight was delayed.  Which meant another three-to-four-hour hang out in a European airport.  I feel like this is going to be the story of our lives on Spring Break…grr…Long story short, we met up with the other ND students on our flight in the airport, played around, and finally got airborne and home in one piece. 

Random notes on Amsterdam:

-I never want to smell pot smoke ever again.

-Hostels are really not THAT bad.

-Canal water is filthy and would NOT be fun to swim in.

-Any street name or place name in Amsterdam can somehow be pronounced dirtily.

-If offered advice by locals or experienced travelers, TAKE it.  It will be so much cooler than all the touristy shit. 

-Pack extra socks.  Dry feet are worth it.

-Watch out for bicyclists when walking around an unfamiliar city!

-It IS possible to survive an entire weekend on a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter.  Not advisable…but possible. 

Lunch break=over and so does this blog.  Ciao, loves.  I’ll try to write once more before spring break but if not, sorry and I’ll talk to you on the flipside!

another little delay and big apology...

My first trip out of the UK this past weekend, to Amsterdam, was a rousing success!  I'm exhausted and in the midst of being more than a little sick, though, so I'm going to forgo blogging the trip until I've a: caught up on a bit of sleep and b: written that philo paper that's lurking in my next few days...

Also, Phil, one of my closest friends from Notre Dame, arrives tomorrow which means blog posts may be short and inconsistent.  Then it's SPRING BREAK!  

Gah.  Maybe I should just declare the next two weeks a vacation from the blogosphere.  

I'll do my best to blog Amsterdam in the next 24 hours, and keep you all posted on Phil and Lizzie's Epic Adventures in Londontown!  Til next time!

ps: it was BEAUTIFUL here today.  i love sunshine.  :)

Umbrella Etiquette 101

Hello lovely blog-readers,
Just a quick little random post before I go cook dinner...today was SUPER eventful and will require more attention than I can give on my empty stomach and short attention span.

As the weather forecast for London looks like this for the next week...

...I thought now would be a good time to write a brief summary of the unspoken but oh-so-important etiquette governing the use of an umbrella on the bustling streets of Londontown.  

First, if you wish to blend in at all with the locals, you will invest in a sturdy, practical and utterly dull plain black umbrella with a serviceable, collapsible handle.  I am clearly failing from the start, as my umbrella looks like this:

Yes my friends, it is bright sunny cheerful yellow with a plethora of orange, pink, navy and white polka dots.  Oh-so-fun and delightful to look at on a dreary rainy day, but definitively NOT British-y at all.

When carrying an umbrella, British people must pay very close and careful attention to the proper times to open and close it.
-Upon immediate entrance to a Tube station staircase the umbrella must be closed.  This means you will get rained on for about 15 seconds while descending said staircase.
-An umbrella may not be opened until you have reached street level and fully exited a Tube station.  You WILL get mean dirty looks from angry people.
-If walking under a covered walkway for construction the umbrella must be closed, as space is very constricted.  If you do not close your umbrella, even if it means you will get dripped on through the construction scaffolding, you will also be the recipient of dirty looks, and may actually poke somebody's ear, shoulder, or scalp (depending on their height).

This brings me to the important point of negotiating height differences with umbrellas.  As I am a very short 5'4", my umbrella's natural height is on par with most people's eye levels.  Others, such as the 6'5" businessmen who tower over everybody, will hold their umbrellas either very high above everybody's heads to avoid impaling people, or very low and tight to their heads.  For the shorties like moi, carrying an umbrella means constant lifting, lowering, and angling of the umbrella forward, backward or extreme-to-one-side to avoid hitting people, letting your runoff go down their coat collars, or edging them off the sidewalk with your bright yellow polka-dotted weapon of mass destruction.

Once indoors, the umbrella must immediately be folded and fastened shut and put away, despite the fact that it is probably slowly creating its own small lake on the floor of whatever facility you have entered.  This may mean that one side of your not-waterproofed backpack may become wet, meaning it is logical to remove all critical documents (like essays you have due the next day) from said backpack.

And the number one most valuable lesson I can provide any future London-goers about use of an umbrella, with all its risks, hazards, and potential for inflicting injury upon others:
The word "Sorry!" is your ABSOLUTE BEST FRIEND.

to bring sunshine to your rainy day...

Thoughts on a rainy day in London

So, it's absolutely pouring here today for the first time since we've been here, and I feel woefully not up to it.  All of our colds (and by "all of our," I mean literally about half the program) are peaking and I woke up this morning feeling like a sniffly, snotty, soggy mess with a throat that could replace sandpaper.  Needless to say, the walk to school in the deluge was less than pleasant.  I felt like the line in "Pride and Prejudice," when Caroline Bingley berates Elizabeth Bennett for walking to Netherfield... "Did you see her hems?!  Six inches deep in mud!"  Well, my pants weren't six inches deep in mud, but they were certainly six inches soaked with water.  "Rain, rain, go away, come again once we've left in May!" will be my rallying cry for the day.

After Images this morning, which was utterly mind-numbingly facile and easy, I decided the combination of the weather (shitty) and my health (also shitty) necessitated a trip to Caffé Nero for hot chocolate and a raspberry muffin.  While there, my inner strategic management-student went CRAZY...here's why:

At Caffé Neros, you place your order with one of two baristas working.  That barista then writes your order down, goes to the espresso machine and makes your order, then returns, asks if you want any pastry items, and if you do, goes and gets those while your coffee sits on the counter getting cold.  That barista then rings you up, swipes your card, stamps your Caffé Nero Loyalty Card (get your 10th drink FREE!), and ONLY then may you drink your coffee.  American coffee houses, on the other hand, have two baristas, sometimes three...one of whom is the designated cashier and the other (two) who prepares the drinks.  So much more efficient!  Think of the throughput time that could be saved at Caffé Neros everywhere if they would only divide the labor more effectively among the personnel on staff!!  It would certainly have cut down the 15-minute line that I had to stand in.  

Anyway, done rambling for now.  I'm going to go eat my muffin, take some Tylenol Day, and hope that Little Orphan Annie was right and the sun will come out tomorrow.  Cheerio!

birthday :)

I know I complained like all get-out in my last post about how crap my birthday eve morning was, but thanks to the wonderful friends and people I've been lucky enough to meet and know here, I had the best 21st birthday I could possibly have asked for!

Wednesday was just a crap, struggly day all around.  I was not focused in class, my foot was excruciatingly painful and I was feeling very homesick and far away from my friends and family.  After Charlie and Kate ID'd my problem as a likely case of plantar fasciitis (something to do with ligaments and tendons that sounds really gross and unpleasant), I hobbled across Trafalgar Square to a Boots pharmacy and bought some awesomely old-lady orthopedic shoe inserts, then took the Tube to Chancery Lane.  This still left me with about a 10-15 minute walk back to the flats, and at that point I was in sheer misery...I completely lost it and burst into tears walking down the street just down-in-the-dumps about EVERYTHING in general.  So as I'm walking along bawling like a baby, this lovely, lovely Englishwoman fell in beside me and talked to me about how "everyone has those utterly rubbishy days" and "nothing can be all that bad, love," and she cheered me up a bit.  As did Colin Firth (!!) in the delightfully long A&E miniseries of "Pride and Prejudice," which I immediately parked myself in front of when I got home.

After I had talked to my WONDERFUL AMAZING MOM (love you!) for way too long on a 26¢-a-minute line, Nicole asked me if I wanted to go to Isaac's flat to watch a movie.  It sounded like just the thing to make a bad day better, so we headed over there.  Turns out it was a surprise birthday-eve party!!  I was so excited and...duh, surprised, to see so many of my friends in the London Program had come over to celebrate as the clock turned midnight and I turned 21.  We had some delicious chocolate cake, and of course the ubiquitous Lambrini 1.50 pound wine and some Strongbow Cider!  I was a much happier camper by the time I went to bed.

Thursday morning I woke up to the most brilliant sunshine streaming into my room and my vaseful of daffodils blooming on my nightstand...my birthday was the sunniest, prettiest day I've seen yet in England, which seems appropriate ;)  I got dressed and opened all my birthday cards from my parents, Grandma Marsh, and Cait, and took the bus with the lovely Kate Gardner to the London Centre.  After a stop in Café Canova for an almond croissant (YUM), I was surprised at the Centre by some absolutely gorgeous flowers from somebody special :D which made my morning a very happy one.  Looking for a good way to celebrate a birthday lunch, some of us headed for the ultimate cliché destination: McDonalds.  It was an excellent little taste of home, as awful as it is.

Work came next, because interns can't get the day off for something so small as a birthday...but BBDO and the lovely Helen, the CFO's PA, had planned a surprise birthday tea for me!  There was amazing chocolate cake with those little sparkly silver things on top and white-chocolate stars, truffles that melted in your mouth, awesomely good tea (BBDO makes the best cup of tea I've found yet in London), and a birthday card signed by everyone in the office.  I was so surprised and it was so much fun to get a bit of celebration with all my new friends at the office...what a special and memorable thing for them to do :)

A few of the girls in the Program came to meet me after work for fish and chips dinner at The Golden Hind.  Amazing food again, and a really funny story: we were in the more private room in the basement and were being moderately loud and silly and exuberant (because, duh, it was my birthday!) and this old man who was also down there with a younger woman got really angry at us for being too loud.  We were cut off mid-laugh by his extremely vehement exclamation of "DO you MIND?!" and his companion's bitchy "You're being exceedingly LOUD!"  We all were ashamed for about 30 seconds, then got angry that he had been so rude with so little provocation (we weren't being anywhere near completely obnoxious...because, clearly, American girls can be VERY completely obnoxious if we try!).  Thankfully, we had finished eating and were able to head out quickly...what a party pooper!  We went and did a little tipsy shopping of H&M and I got a great deal on a really fun dress to wear later that night for my party!

Birthday partying happened at O'Neills, the most cliché-ly American of all bars in London, masquerading as an Irish pub.  With a live band on Thursday nights, it's THE destination for London Program-ers.  This was my first time so we had double-fun!  I danced a lot, drank a lot of delicious "snakebites," which are a combination of hard cider and beer and taste delightful, and got wished "Happy Birthday" more times than I could possibly count...it seemed like the whole program was there! Although I was celebrating this biggest-of-all-birthdays in England, where the legal age is 18, I had a very American-y night, which was actually really fun for a 21st birthday.  The other nice perk of being the birthday girl?  You drink for free.  Best night EVER.  :)

Long story short, although this is already ridiculously extensive and if you made it this far you're a winner...I am so grateful to everybody who texted, called, Facebooked, emailed, sent a card and most of all celebrated here in London with me over the past few days.  I was nervous that turning 21 would be a letdown celebrating far from home without all my closest friends, especially since it's a totally anticlimactic age to turn here...but everybody made it so amazing and special and memorable that I had the best possible of all birthdays!

the weekend update: issue #1

**WARNING: EXTREMELY LONG POST.  READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.**

My last blog was Friday afternoon, so I'll start with what happened after that: registering for classes! I'm taking fifteen of what will probably (hopefully?) be the easiest credits ever...if not, oh well!  My internship counts as a class, and then I am taking macroeconomics, Philosophy of Law, Images of Britain Through The Arts (a required course for every student here!), and Accountancy in the UK, which is a five-session program run by PriceWaterhouseCooper Britain.  So excited!  After registering I went exploring a bit between our classroom centre and our flats, got groceries with the roommates, and we made grilled cheese and couscous (very gourmet) for dinner.  Friday night was Ember night...Ember is a bar that is actually really close to where we live, although we got so lost trying to find it that you would never have known!  Best mojitos I've ever had, and we accidentally crashed a private party in the basement that was being thrown by Jay-Sean's sister...random.

Saturday was another day of acclimation and preparation for the semester.  It was pouring rain all day, and freezing cold (by London standards, NOT Minnesota or South Bend!), so we spent as much of the day as possible trying to stay dry and warm.  Highlights:
-The British Museum!! It's imposingly enormous and utterly beautiful...it takes up an entire city block and has exhibits on every major ancient region and society, from Egypt to Greece and Rome to China and Japan and everything in between.  We only spent about an hour and a half there, and covered maybe a tenth of the museum, seeing lots of amazing things...the mummies (of humans and animals, weird) were super cool but creeped me out a bit.
-Lunch in Chinatown: London's Chinatown district is on our way to school and has a huge variety of very CHEAP restaurants (our favorite).  I had chicken and fried rice that was amazing, and we learned that restaurants in Europe don't bring your check until you ask for it...after about an hour of waiting for it!
-Covent Garden: We got really lost coming home from Chinatown and stumbled upon the Covent Garden Market on the way.  It was a huge partially-indoor market of art, fruit and vegetables, clothing and accessories, etc. with live music and street performers.  So lively and exciting! We watched a street performer whose schtick was that she could juggle butcher knives while hanging upside down from a trapeze...I almost died of fright/awe.
-WE FOUND DRURY LANE. I know where the Muffin Man lives.  He's done well for himself.
-The first Minerva 3/4 dinner party! The lovely gentlemen who live across the hall from us in Minerva 3 offered to pay for the groceries it would take to make a "family" dinner, if the ladies of Minerva 4 would cook it.  We made amazing sweet-chili chicken and vegetable stir-fry, and had some wine and cheese before dinner.  Highlight was the amazing sticky-toffee pudding cakes we had for dessert...and Katie eating an entire one all by herself.  Definitely a tradition we will be continuing!
-Lexington Bar: our first real London bar experience.  Much more mixing with the locals and tasting of more unique ales and lagers.  The bar itself was like clubbing in your grandma's living room...weird but very pretty/cool.

Today: EPIC TOURISTING!
We got up to find that the temperature had gone WAY up and the sun was shining beautifully...the perfect day to do the cliché tourist stuff.
-We went to Trafalgar Square and explored the environs that will be our between-class playplace...SO pretty, especially with the sunshine streaming down.
-Then we walked down the National Mall from Trafalgar to Buckingham Palace!!  So pretty and an excellent route to run, which will be happening this semester for sure.  The Mall is where a lot of high-powered people live, including Prince Charles and Camilla.  Buckingham was sooo gorgeous in the sun with all the gold trimming on the gates and fountain.  We took pictures and generally made touristy fools out of ourselves, especially jumping in for random photos with the bicycle emergency response crews :) 
-After Buckingham, off to BIG BEN and Parliament!  Right on the Thames...perfect day to do it.  The walk there is through a beautiful, historic, government and military district, and we passed so many places I'd read about in my nerdy historical-fiction books...Whitehall Palace is stunning.  Big Ben is...well, big.  And gold.  And incredibly exhilarating.  I took about 139847287564 pictures...Parliament is also beautiful...the building is just so imposing and impressive, fronting right on the river; I just stood there thinking WOW for about five minutes before I even started looking around.
-The obligatory phone-booth photoshoot totally happened today.  Don't judge me.
-Mass at the oldest continuously-existing Catholic church in London...very old, very pretty, very comforting.  Our program chaplain is the cutest old man, every time I see him I just get the urge to hug him.
-Got epically lost with Isaac in the LEGAL district...it was totally deserted and creepy but I am going to go back when it's light out (and populated!) to see it in action, it looked really expansive and interesting.
-Pub dinner at Knights Templar...great traditional British food and the coolest bathrooms ever, no joke.
-Vikings-Cowboys game at The City Pride, which I think is rapidly becoming our local pub.  I was the only Vikes fan in a large group of Cowboys-lovers, and we taught the Brits in attendance all about the intricacies of each team, including the epic saga of Brett Favre.  They all thought he was "a tosser" for being so flip-floppy.  I laughed.

That's all for now folks, you may officially breathe a sigh of relief.  If you made it through this epic blogathon, you deserve a pat on the back :)  I'm absolutely exhausted and have to get some sleep before I start my internship (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) tomorrow...I promise I'll update sooner and more concisely next time!  Goodnight! :)