Italy, Part 3 (Rome): How Many of These Ruins are Actually Schools?

Once again, we had to stop at a rest area on the way to Rome.  And once again, there were no toilet seats on the toilets.  That really is annoying!  We got to our hotel in Rome around 5 and got right into our rooms to drop our stuff off.  Then a big group of us went across the street to the train station to get our Roma Passes, which are passes that get you three days of free public transportation and into your first two museums/archaeological sites free and a discounted ticket at most other ones (excluding the Vatican Museum).  Christine and Mike had already bought their tickets online, so we eventually lost them as they tried to find where they had to go to get them.  So though I highly recommend buying the Roma Pass, I don't recommend buying them ahead of time!  Our group then split further as we disagreed over where to go for dinner.  My part of the group (6 of us) went to a little fast pizza place and got some pretty good pizza.  Then we hopped on the metro and headed over to the Spanish Steps, which were absolutely beautiful.  There were all these flowers!  Gorgeous.  And I made everyone climb all the way to the top of course.  It was really cool.  Then we walked over to the Trevi Fountain and threw some coins into it and took pictures.  We were actually there when the lights came on!  It's really pretty all light up like that.  We got some gelato (chocolate) which was really good and took the metro back to the hotel.

The next day Christine, Mike, Rachel, Rachel's friend Abigail, and I headed over to the Colosseum to start our day.  We were really far up in line so we got right in before it got crowded and were able to get some good pictures without lots of people in them.  It was really cool to see the Colosseum and walk around on it and see the underground area where all the slaves and gladiators and animals were kept before being led up to the arena!  Probably my second favorite thing that we did in Rome.  Right next to the Colosseum is a big arch that we stopped and took pictures of.  I know it has some significance, but I don't remember what Mike said about it.  Then we headed right across the way to the Roman Forum, which is absolutely massive!  We spent a good long while walking around in there.  It was really cool to see, especially when Mike or Rachel (who have studied it) told us the simple version of what things were.  Plus they kept looking at the ground for pottery and licking it to see if it was pottery or just dirt/clay.  Apparently it's something that you do a lot at a dig site.  We split up after the Forum, Rachel and Abigail leaving to do something else, while Christine, Mike and I stayed together.  We just ate something from one of the vendors, which wasn't very good, quickly before heading off to try to find Trajan's Market/Forum/Column.  It was pretty cool to see, Mike explained some stuff to us and we got some cool pictures.  After that we headed to Circus Maximus, which is where they used to do the chariot racing.  It's just green-space now.  We did see some Harlaxton independent travelers though, which was fun to sit for a bit and talk with them about what we had all done.  We then walked to the Bocca della Verita (The Mouth of Truth).  It's featured in (I think I have the movie right) Roman Holiday.  The legend is that if you stick your hand in the mouth and it's chopped off or whatever you're a liar.  We're all ok!  Then we walked to the Caracalla Baths, which were absolutely massive!  So incredibly tall!  And I really liked walking around them.  After that we took the metro back to the hotel and I grabbed some food from a market and went back to the room while the two of them went to find another bath that Mike wanted to see.  When Christine came back, we turned on the TV for a bit and watched infomercials and took a nap before going out to dinner.  We went to this cafeteria place down the road, which was alright, but it took forever to get the check!

The next day we took the metro to the Vatican and waited in line for the Vatican Museum.  We spent hours inside the museum!  It was awesome!  My favorite thing in Rome!  There was so much stuff!  And paintings everywhere!  We got to see the Sistine Chapel too, which was cool.  We were really hungry by the time we finished the permanent collection in the museum, so even though we would've liked to see the Fabergé eggs and the Aboriginal collection, we left the museum and went across the street to a restaurant for lunch.  The fettuccine alfredo was absolutely amazing!  We then proceeded to circumnavigate Vatican City when we went the wrong way to find the plaza that everyone knows as the Vatican.  We eventually found it and took plenty of pictures of it and all the things out for the Beatification of Pope John Paul II, which was going to take place on May 1, hence the 3 million Polish people that were arriving in Rome while we were there.  We got in line to go into St. Peter's Basilica and Mike and I got into a fight with a Spanish guy when he cut us in line and proceeded to let 20 kids in front of him.  The basilica is absolutely amazing.  Once we walked in there, we instantly understood why people hate Catholics.  It is so elaborate and the wealth is so evident!  We spent a fair bit of time walking around in there and looking at everything.  By then, we were pretty Vatican-ed out, so we left and started walking to the next set of Roman spots on Mike's list.  The first was the castle that houses Hadrian's Tomb.  We didn't go in, just walked past it and took some pictures.  We then crossed the river and walked to the glass building that houses the Ara Pacis (Arch of Peace) and took pictures of it through the windows.  Then it was a walk down to the Pantheon, which we did go inside.  It's a basilica now, so the inside looks different than it originally did.  But it was really cool to see nonetheless!  The hole in the top is really neat.  We then walked to Piazza Navona to see the Fountain of the Four Rivers (and the Egyptian obelisk located in it).  Mike wanted to see it because of the obelisk.  I wanted to see it because the fountain features in Dan Brown's Angels & Demons, which was exciting!  We then walked to the Spanish Steps, in part because they hadn't seen them yet, and partly because that's where the nearest metro station was.  We took the metro back to the hotel for a rest.  Christine and I watched MTV in Italian.  We went out to dinner at a restaurant near the Trevi Fountain.  I had some really good 4-cheese gnocchi and we had a bottle of white wine.  We were about to ask for the check because we had finished the wine and water off when the waiter brought an opened bottle of wine over and poured us each another glass!  We're guessing they just needed to get rid of it, because he didn't charge us for it!  We left him an extra tip because he was really nice. We ended up having to walk all the way back to the hotel because the metro line stopped running at 9.  Good thing we had a map!

Our last day in Rome, we attempted to go out to Tivoli to this villa and gardens that Christine really wanted to see.  So we took the metro out to one of the last stops and got on a bus to Tivoli.  After we were on the bus for awhile, another set of tourists asked us if we knew where to get off, and we didn't exactly and an old Italian man behind us heard our conversation and told us to get off at the next stop.  So we did and walked a mile or so to where we though we were supposed to go.  Once we got inside we realized that it wasn't where we wanted to go, but Hadrian's Villa instead.  The old guy had apparently misunderstood where we had wanted to go.  Although a little disappointed, we stayed there anyways.  I didn't really care, so I still thoroughly enjoyed it there!  It was really cool because it was really big and we actually were able to walk on some of the ruins, which you don't always get to do.  And Mike was able to tell us stories about Hadrian and his Greek lover boy, which was interesting.  We had to walk over a mile back to the main road and find a bus stop and wait for the bus.  The bus eventually took us to a metro station and we got to get on that and go back to our hotel stop.  We immediately went across the street to a restaurant and got pizza (which was really good!) and gelato (chocolate and yummy) because it was 2 and we were starving!  Then we walked back to the hotel and sat in the lobby and watched the highlights of the Royal Wedding, laughing every time they showed a good shot of William's bald spot.  Around 5 we got all of our luggage and headed out to where the coach was going to pick us up.  We had to wait a bit, then we got on the coach and headed to the airport.  The plane was awesome!  For some reason we had really roomy seats and we could just not get over this fact!  Our plane got into Heathrow around 10 and we finally got through customs, got our bags, and made the transfer to terminal 3 around 11.  Our luggage from Harlaxton arrived around 11:30 and we formed a line to get if off the van faster.  Then Alana, Anna, and I shared a van to the hotel that we were all staying at and I checked in and got some much needed sleep before my flight back to the States the next morning.  And gelato count for Rome=3, Italy=14.  Definitely got a lot of that stuff!  And since Hogwarts looks like ruins to Muggles, I wonder how many of those Roman ruins that I visited were actually wizarding schools!

So, obviously, I am now back in the States.  And I am glad to be home!  I absolutely loved my semester at Harlaxton College and would recommend it to anybody and everybody.  Studying abroad is an amazing experience and I think everyone should try to find a way to do it, if not for a semester, then at least for a summer.  As I am home now, this is my last post.  I hope you all enjoyed sharing my experiences abroad!  I certainly enjoyed sharing them with you!

Italy, Part 2 (Florence): These Men Were Wizards

Picking up where my last post on Venice left off, the next morning we all checked out of the hotel and walked back to the bus station, across the bridge.  Once there we waited for nearly half an hour before Ian figured out that the coach that we were waiting for had been there the whole time!  (In case I haven’t mentioned, Ian was my Marketing professor this semester and he and his wife were our trip couriers, the best couriers ever!!)  Apparently the coach didn’t look like the one the company had told Ian to look for and neither he nor the coach driver thought anything of a coach sitting there empty for that long/a huge group of people just standing on the sidewalk for that long.  Ah well, we got on the coach eventually!  Then it was just a 3 hourish drive to Florence, in Tuscany.  We had to stop halfway through at a rest stop, which are way more intense than ours in the States!  They have toilets and a café and a place to buy food and it’s all huge!  For some reason though, they decided that we don’t need toilet seats in the restrooms in order to go to the bathroom.  That’s always interesting to try to work out.  It seemed to be like this at half of the places I went to in Italy.  Really annoying!  We eventually got to the hotel, which was the nicest one of the trip and at first they told us that the rooms weren’t ready for us.  About 5 minutes later though they told us that they were and we got to go put our stuff in our rooms rather than have it chilling in a lobby area in the hotel.  Although a nice room, it was really funny because there were three of us staying in there and the beds were almost pushed all the way together because there almost wasn’t enough room for all the beds!  But they were all singles so we were fine.  =)  After dropping all of our stuff off, 8 of us headed out together and got some lunch at a restaurant that’s on the way to the center of town.  I had some good pasta, but I was so hungry that it didn’t fill me all the way up!  After lunch Christine and Mike headed off because they had a date with David and the rest of us headed off to the Duomo.  The Duomo is a huge basilica made with beautiful white, green, and redish pink marble, with lots of mosaics.  There’s a baptistery in front of it and a huge bell tower to the side.  We waited in the fast-moving line to go inside and it was just as cool on the inside as on the outside.  And it was Catholic, so I actually really knew what everything was in there and what it was used for and all of that, which was nice after being in England for so long, where most churches are Anglican, but they were originally Catholic, so they just look confusing!  After leaving the Duomo, we all got gelato, because I mean, we’re in Italy and we’re hungry, so of course we’re going to get gelato!  I got chocolate, which is decidedly my favorite.  The guys all headed back to the hotel after that, but Rachel and I chose to walk through the markets surrounding the Duomo and look around.  I really wish I had a 100+ euro to spare so I could’ve gotten a leather jacket!  Some of them were beautiful!  I did buy my first scarf though!  It’s cream and really pretty and should look good with lots of stuff.  We got our fill of the markets for the day and headed back to the hotel and took advantage of the free internet in the hotel (which is when I wrote the Venice post).  Later, Christine, Mike, Rachel, Tim, and I went out to get some dinner and found a nice restaurant.  I got a good margarita pizza and we shared the white house wine, which was really good!  Probably one of my favorites in Italy.  We got gelato on the way back, cookies this time.  Thought I’d go for something different.  It was quite good.  =)


The next day was Easter Sunday, so after breakfast Rachel and I headed back to the Duomo to get good spots for the traditional Explosion of the Cart.  It started with a procession of people dressed in medieval clothing, from guards in suits of armour to pages and drummers to nobility.  Then the cart came in, pulled by oxen (I think, something of that sort at least).  The cart is massive!  Then came a random little cart pulled by a donkey and a cart pulled by two women in more peasant-type clothing full of flowers, which they passed out to the crowds.  We had to wait awhile while they finished setting up the cart, but entertainment was provided by the drums and trumpets and the flags, who twirled their flags much like guards, but it was really cool!  Finally, the cart was ready.  A dove on fire (paper of course) flew out of the open doors of the Duomo and ran into the cart, starting the explosion, which went on for a good 15 minutes or so.  It was really cool because everything was timed!  They went off in layers around the cart (firecrackers and fireworks).  Sometimes it literally sounded like a battle was raging, with the screaming fireworks and the staccato-fire ones, which was a bit unnerving (probably because I spend most of my time studying wars!) but overall the Explosion of the Cart was really cool and definitely worth going to see!  The guys who orchestrated it were wizards, getting everything to go off when it was supposed to and not before!  After the explosions were over, Rachel and I grabbed some pizza at a shop on the piazza, then walked over to the plaza where the fake David is located.  We had fun taking pictures of all the statues located in that plaza and got a little happy with all of the lions there (well, they were our mascot at Harlaxton!).  Then we walked over to the Ponte Vecchio, which is a bridge with shops along either side and another bridge on top of the shops for the Vecchio family could walk from their palace across the river to wherever they were going without being seen by the commoners.  (If you remember, I think I mentioned in my Bath blog that they had a bridge that was modeled after the Ponte Vecchio, just without the second bridge on top of the shop one).  Now, the shops on the bridge are all expensive jewelery stores, but it was still fun to walk across it.  I did grab some gelato on one end of the bridge (chocolate again, and yes, I was using the I have a cold and the gelato helps my sore throat excuse.)  We walked back across the bridge and through the markets around the Duomo again.  I bought Allison an awesome gift there.  We stopped at the train station and bought tickets for Pisa for the next day, then headed back to the hotel.  Christine and Mike were in the room when we got back, so Christine and I watched The Lizzie MacGuire Movie, because we had to watch it before we got to Rome!  While Mike and Christine went to mass, I wrote the Venice blog, then Rachel and I went to the Duomo to meet them and go to dinner.  Tim and Jim were there too, so all six of us went over to the plaza with the fake David to have dinner on the patio of one of the restaurants there.  I had a gnocchi and we split some red house wine, which was all really good!  After dinner we walked back to the Duomo and got some gelato at one of the places around there (triple chocolate) and walked back to the hotel.


On Monday, Rachel, Anna, Alana, Betsy, and I took the train to Pisa, where Betsy, Alana, and I were annoyed by some kids the entire way.  Once we got to Pisa, we took a bus over to the basilica and bell tower (aka the Leaning Tower of Pisa).  The Tower is a lot smaller than we all thought it would be but it was still really cool to see!  We spent lots of time taking fun, cheesy, tourist pictures of the tower.  We chose not to pay 15 euros to climb it, even though it would have been really cool to do.  It was just too much money!  They had a little tourist market in the square area, so we walked around that a bit, and some people bought some stuff, then we took the bus back to the train station.  We just got some quick food and ate it on some benches outside the station, sitting in the sun.  And we took the next train back to Florence.  Once back in Florence, Rachel and I went to go to the Archaeology Museum, but once we got there, we found out that it was closed on Mondays!  With that option out, we walked back to the wine store I had found by the Duomo on the first day and I bought some wine I had liked and shipped it home (it should be here soon!).  We got some gelato (chocolate again) and walked back to the hotel (we didn't really have anything else to do.)  At the hotel, we looked up things to do in Rome and how much things cost and when they were open.  So it was pretty productive.  We went back to the fake David plaza for dinner and I had a really nice gnocchi for dinner.  We got more gelato on the way back (stratechella), we sure do love that stuff! and headed back to the hotel.  The Italy 1 group was in the hotel that night as well, so I went over and hung out with Lyndsey, Gretchen, Sarah, and Jordan for a bit, which was a lot of fun.  And it was nice to see them all one last time before we all went home.  (they all live in Wisconsin.)  I then had the joy of completely repacking my suitcase, as we were leaving the next afternoon for Rome.


This last day is going to be split into two posts, since I was in two different cities this day.  In the morning, Rachel and I stored our stuff in the hotel and headed over to the Archaeology Museum, because it was open today!  It was a really cool place!  There were tons of Greek, Etruscan (where the word Tuscany comes from, as Mike told us many times), Roman, and Egyptian (mummies!!!!) stuff.  Everything from pots to armour to dead people (my morbidity comes out when I say the dead people were my favorite. =] )  We had extra time after we left the museum, so we sat on the Duomo steps for awhile, just watching people, before starting to meander back to the hotel, stopping in Accesorize (definitely love that store!) for a while and browsing and finding a cafe to eat lunch at.  The chicken sandwich was really good!  We had to wait a bit for the coach to get to the hotel, but once it was there, we got ourselves and all our stuff on it and we were off to Roma!  (Roma=Rome, Firenze=Florence, Vinezia=Venice)  Oh, gelato count=6 for Florence, 11 for Italy.

Italy, Part 1 (Venice): Apparating Would've Been Nice

Yes, I am still in Italy, Florence in fact.  However, there is free internet access at the hotel and time to kill until dinner so I thought I'd write about my first Italian stop this trip: Venice.

I'll start off by telling you about my last day at Harlaxton.  (I know, it's crazy it went by that fast, right?!)  We all had to sit our last exam, British Studies, that morning.  Then people started leaving.  Alayna headed off for Heathrow and a flight home the next day at 4:30.  The Italy 1 trip left at 2 am on Thursday, taking with it Lyndsey, Gretchen, Sarah, and Jordan, my Eau Claire friends.  Loads of people left in between.  We were the last 30 students in the manor when we left at 2:30 am.  It was crazy how fast everyone left and you could feel the emotion in the buildings.  Everyone made some really good friends from other schools this semester and it's hard leaving them and not knowing when you'll ever get to see them again.  So I slept for about an hour in the Pearson Room before the early breakfast (my last cereal and toast in the manor!) and checking out.  Then it was just waiting until it was time to load the coach and be off to Gatwick.  We were all so tired!  We got a 3 hour nap on the coach, then Ian woke us up and made us get off and check our bags and go through security.  We got there and still had time to kill, so off to Cafe Nero Rachel, Christine, Mike, and I went for some caffine and food!  Then it was back to the waiting area until they showed which gate our flight was going to be at.  (I hate how they don't just tell you on your ticket!)  We finally got it and went off to the terminal, got on the plane, and left England a little after 7 am.  It was a 2.5 hour or so flight and we landed in Venice around 11 am (they're one hour ahead).  Then we had to go through customs (my stamp bearly showed up!) and get our luggage.  And we were out to find our coach in the parking lot, after which it was a 20 minute ride to the bus station area in Venice.  Once there we had to get off the coach and walk to our hotel, which involved a bridge with lots of steps!  (There are no vehicles in Venice other than boats.  It's a walking city.)  That walk took us about 15 minutes and then we were standing in the little street/alley that our hotel is in, waiting for Ian to figure out our rooms and it turns out that they wouldn't be ready till 2!  There was a place to store our luggage though, so that was good.  Turned out to be Rachel's room, as we later found out!  Whew!  Apparating would've been so much easier than all of that!  We would've gotten a full night's sleep and wouldn't still be trying to make up for it now.

Christine, Mike, Rachel, and I proceeded to get lunch of pizza, followed by gelato (chocolate for me).  Then we hit the town.  After gettting a little lost, our first stop was the Rialto Bridge and Market.  It was really cool!  There were all these stands selling everything from novelty souviners (I got my keychain) to Murano glass.  And the bridge has shop buildings on it, so unless you go to the outside, you don't even really realize you're on a bridge.  We walked this way on the way back as well, and (other than my Italy keychain) I picked up this cute glass owl and a present for Allison (I sold her original present of a Claddagh ring when she bought one in Boston over her Spring Break.  Oh well!).  After Rialto Bridge, we went to Plaza San Marco, which was awesome.  The Basilica San Marco is there, which is absolutely gorgeous.  It built out of pink and green and grey/white stone and has these awesome horses sitting on top and is awesomely decorated and everything.  And that's just the outside!  There's also this really old clock in the Plaza that has the hour in Roman Numerals.  And there are lions everywhere in Venice (it's their symbol).  There's also Doge's Palace, which we proceeded to go into.  We went at a great time because there actually wasn't any line and it wasn't really crowded!  The Doge was the president-type figure of the Venice city-state, so we got to see his appartaments and the council chambers, which were all really elaborate and had amazing paintings all over the walls and ceilings.  It was a bit overwhelming, how skilled and beautiful it all was.  And there was this map room, with paintings of maps covering the walls (of the entire world!) and two ginormous globes in the middle of the room.  It was awesome.  We sat in there looking at them for some time.  We also got to go into the prisons, which were dark and a bit dank.  Basically how you would expect a medieval prison to feel like.  It was still really cool though, because I didn't really get that feel whenever I visited castles in the Uk as much.  The last thing we did in Doge's Palace was walk across the Bridge of Sighs.  It's a really famous bridge and it's called the Bridge of Sighs because it was the bridge that prisoners would walk across on their way to being executed and you get a great view of Venice from the windows and it's said that they would all sigh at their last site of the city.  After we finished getting our money's worth walking through the Doge's Palace, we retraced our steps back to the hotel.  Once we checked in, we all headed to our rooms for a 2 hour nap.  We needed it in order to be able to go out to dinner that night!  We met down in the lobby after our nap (minus Rachel, who was still asleep and didn't hear Mike knocking at her door) and we headed out and down the road to find a restaurant.  We found this really nice one where we got to sit outside.  We ordered the house wine (red), which was really good and they gave us bread and olive oil and parmesan cheese to eat while we waited for our food.  I had a 4-cheese gnocchi, which was absolutely amazing.  I loved it!  So good!  After taking our time over dinner and wine (which was hard because we were so hungry!) we went and got gelato (Kit-Kat) and walked around the Grand Canal a bit.  Then it was back to the hotel for an earlier bed.

The next day, Christine, Mike, and I headed back to Plaza San Marco because we wanted to go inside the Basilica San Marco, since it was so gorgeous from the outside.  We got there before it opened, but there was still a huge line.  Luckily, there was a guide asking if people wanted an English tour, so we took advantage of that and hopped to the front of the line!  The tour was totally worth it too.  She not only told us about the Basilica, but also about Venice itself.  For example, Venice is a group of islands (which we already knew), over 100 of them (I didn't know that!), connected by over 400 bridges (wow!).  The islands are protected by a lagoon, which is why they don't have any walls, they don't need them because the lagoon does the protecting for them!  The ground wasn't solid enough to build on, so they shored it up with wood, which has petrified over time, becoming stronger.  That doesn't mean that buildings don't still sink every now and again (which accounts for the undulating floors in some buildings), but they fix that with concrete injections now.  The Basilica is the resting place for St. Mark, the writer of one of the gospels.  At least according to Venicians.  If you ask anyone from Alexandria they'll say he's located there.  But Venician merchants smuggled his body into Venice and buried him where the main alter in the church now is.  That's why the basilica is named after him!  Inside the Basilica the upper walls/ceilings are absolutely covered in mosaics!  (easier to keep good in a humid climate and Venice just happens to have plenty of what you need to make glass: sand!)  The background is gold, so there is a ton of gold mosaic tiles that glitter in the light!  The mosaics tell stories from the bible and were created either 800 years ago or 400 years ago, depending on which one you're looking at.  It was totally worth going in there and looking at everything.  It was just as beautiful inside as it was outside!  We left the Basilica and walked around the Doge's Palace to take a picture of the Bridge of Sighs, since we didn't do that yesterday.  It was funny because I think they're doing something to the outside of the palace and so to hide the scaffolding they let Toyota put up a massive ad!  Which is why there's all this blue in my pictures where stone should be!  We also got to see loads of gondolas while we were there (but we didn't feel like paying 80 euro between the three of us to go on one).  We left Plaza San Marco on a mission, to find the Indiana Jones Church for Mike.  Apparently the outside of it was used in the third movie as the outside of a library or something (Mike or whoever can correct me if I'm wrong, I'm going off what I remember them telling me).  I had gotten a cold the night before and my throat was hurting, so I decided to use that as a legitimate excuse to get me a gelato on the way (an excuse I'm still able to use!)  (and it was chocolate again).  After much map-pulling out we found the church!  Once Mike realized we were there he got so excited!  It was cute.  I imagine it was how I look with Harry Potter stuff.  After he took his pictures, we headed back towards our hotel, stopping for some pizza on the way.  We dropped some stuff off at the hotel and then headed back out.  Our first stop was the gelato place on the corner (strawberry this time!).  Then we bought our tickets for the water bus out to Murano, the Island of Glass.  (aka, where they make all their glass because way back when the buildings were all made out of wood, the Venicians were afraid of fire from glass-making and made all the glass-makers move out to the island of Murano so the city would be safer.)  The boat ride was really cool.  We got to see Venice from a different point of view on the canals and then looking at it from the island was really cool as well.  The island itself is pretty neat.  We got to watch them make cups, which is always fun to do.  And there were loads of glass shops there!  We went into a ton!  I bought a really cute giraffe in one of them.  After taking our time looking at all the glass on Murano, we took another water bus back to our hotel and proceeded to take another short nap (in our defence, we were still catching up from our night of no sleep and both Mike and I have colds).  We met up in the lobby again around 7 and headed out to dinner, this time at a lovely restaurant right on the Grand Canal.  We sat outside again and watched the boats and gondolas go by, watching out for some of the guys (they weren't on any of the gondolas that passed).  I had an amazing 4-cheese pizza.  AFter dinner we got some wine and drank it on the terrace at the hotel.  Then we proceeded to go out for gelato again (this time I got Nutella, which was really good!).  We walked along the canal again and then went back to hour hotel.  Before we got there though, Mike wanted another gelato and the same server helped him and she laughed out loud when she saw him back again within half an hour!  Once we got back to the hotel, we had to pack because we were leaving Venice for Florence the next day.  Venice is honestly one of the best cities I have been to this semester and I wish we had another day there!

So my gelato count for Venice was: 5.  I feel like I should keep track, so you'll know how much I had over the entire trip!  I probably won't get to write about Florence until I get back to the States because I believe that we have to pay for internet in Rome.  If I prove incorrect though, you may just see a post within the next few days!

Nottingham and Tonight's Excitement: Angry Wizards, Magic, and the Yule Ball

So today my friend Christine and I took a quick trip to Nottingham.  Basically all we wanted to do was go shopping at Primark and find the Robin Hood statue.  Primark is this massive store where you can buy cheaply made clothes really cheap (like 5 pound dresses, no joke).  They may not be the best made stuff, but when you're on a budget and you'd like something a little cooler for your impending Italy trip, it's always a good option to go there!  Christine and I spent forever in the store, picking up all sorts of things.  She was lucky and found some stuff, I was not.  Nothing looked right!  I did buy a 2 pound pair of aviators though (silver) because I left my own in my car in the States, thinking that I wouldn't really need them in England and I'd be ok for 9 days in Italy.  Thanks to this wonderful warm, sunny weather we've been having in here (thanks, African winds!) I've rethought my need for sunglasses and bought a pair.  When we were checking out, a group of protesters came in and were yelling into megaphones about something or other (I couldn't understand them).  With all those bobbys (police) around those must've been some angry wizards!  After Primark we went off in search of food and ended up at this awesome shake place where they made me a yummy oreo and fudge shake and Christine a shake with real strawberry cheesecake!  After sitting in the sun enjoying those, it was off to find Robin Hood and a shop Chloe told us about that was on the way.  We literally walked about 2 store fronts down before we saw the shop she had told us about, Chocolate Utopia.  They make the most amazing hot chocolate.  It's just like magic!  They steam the milk and then pour that and melted chocolate (yeah, like from a fountain except not as glamorous) into a mug and mix it up.  And you get a free chocolate with the hot chocolate!  I got a chocolate truffle and it was amazing.  A very good stop and very worthwhile!  We easily found the Robin Hood statue, which is right next to the castle (we didn't go in, just creeped on the gardens through a fence).  We took our picture next to the statue, read a bit about Robin, then headed off back to the train station to go back to Grantham.

The afternoon passed uneventfully enough (though I did get to see some intense horse racing!  Lots of fences and falling down and Chloe's friend Laura's horse she bet on won the race!).  Then it was time to get ready for the Costume Ball (better known as the Easter-time Yule Ball).  There was dinner and dancing and costumes and it was great fun!  Chloe was Minnie Mouse and I was Mickey.  Alayna was Mystery Peacock (we have one randomly roaming on the grounds).  Christine was a Zebra.  Alana was a flapper.  Lyndsey, Gretchen, Jordan, and Sarah were the Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Craig/Patrick was Edward Cullen.  And there were loads of other awesome costumes as well!  As in high school, the getting ready was almost more fun than the dancing.  And, as in high school, they played a lot of the same songs (a crazy-weird version of the Cha-Cha, Macarena, Soulja Boy, Spice Girls, etc.).  It was still fun though.

Alright, so I think the next time I post I will actually be State-side!  Italy is a 9 day trip that starts in a week and a half!  I'll probably split it into three different posts by city to keep them shorter.

Northern Ireland: Here there be Giants! (need I say more?)

This past weekend I picked my self up and out of the manor and headed off to Northern Ireland (yes, by myself.  no, I wasn't nervous.  and no, I don't regret it.)  I left Friday morning (early!) and took the trains to London Stanstead Airport, then hopped on a plane to Belfast.  Once I got to Belfast, I took the bus into the city center and went off looking around.  I ended up at City Hall.  In the lawn in front they have this cool exhibition of pictures (and explanations) of the building of the Titanic, since it's the 100th Anniversary this year and it was built in Belfast.  It was cool to see those pictures and learn more about how they built it and get a sense of the scale of it!  City Hall also had free tours, so I went in there and got myself one.  Their city hall is really ornate.  The guide told us not only about the building itself, but also about the history that took place in the building and Belfast itself.  It was really interesting!  After the tour I walked around the city centre a bit, picking up something fluffy for Mindy and grabbing a quick bite to eat for dinner.  Then it was off to find my hostel.  It seemed pretty easy to get to, but mapquest didn't take into account the fact that Europeans have a love for not posting street signs!  When I ended up at the other end of the university by the park, I knew I had gone too far, so I sat down on a bench and pulled out my various maps and figured out what I had to do to get there.  I was only a block or two away, so that wasn't a big deal.  However, once I got to the street, I walked right past it!  Still not entirely sure how I did that with the massive signs they have in the windows (one of which was mine) but I did.  I figured out what I did wrong though and got there eventually.  =)  The hostel was great.  The owner and employees are really nice and friendly and it was really clean and everything.  Breakfast was included in the price!  And they had a single room for me (I had to share a bathroom, but let's face it, I'm in college so I'm always sharing bathrooms with random people I don't know!).  I spent the evening in my room, watching a movie and such.  It was nice and relaxing, especially since I didn't have anyone to go out with or feel like I had to interact with (for a change of pace).

The next day I took a Paddywagon tour of Northern Ireland.  I got to the place they were picking us up and had to wait a long time for the bright green coach to roll up (I had overestimated the time).  As I found out throughout the day, I was apparently the only one in the entire group of 40-some people who was alone!  That made it a little lonely at times, but overall it was good.  =)  Our first stop on the tour was Carrick-a-rede Rope Bridge, which goes from the mainland to a little island (cliff to cliff) and was built by salmon fishers according to our guide.  It was about a km hike/walk from the car park to the bridge, but it was absolutely gorgeous, so you didn't even notice!  And yes, I did go across.  I was scared as heck going across and stared straight ahead the entire time and had a firm grasp on both sides of the bridge, but I made it across and back! And it was worth it.  The bridge isn't as long as I thought it was before seeing it in person, which made it better, and you got some amazing views of the coast from the island (and the birds!).  Our next stop was the Giant's Causeway, which is this little stretch of coast that has all these rock formations on it that look like carved stones, as if it's the ruins of something.  The story goes that the giant Fionn McCool had gotten tired of yelling obscenities across the sea to the Scottish giant Benandonner and wanted to go over there and fight him instead.  So Fionn carved all these stones by hand and built a causeway over to Scotland (on a related note, you can see Scotland from both the Giant's Causeway and the rope bridge).  Once Fionn got over there and saw Benandonner, he realized that the Scot was 3x's his size and hightailed it back across the causeway!  He ran to his wife for help, because he knew the Scot would come looking for him now and she told him to get into the bed and dress up like a baby.  The Scot did come over and Mrs. McCool invited him in for a cuppa tea, saying that Fionn would be out until 5.  While the Scot was drinking tea he noticed Fionn and asked Mrs. McCool who that was, to which she replied, why that's Fionn's baby.  Now the Scot got nervous, thinking, if that's how big Fionn's baby is, how big is Fionn?  So the Scot ran back across the causeway, tearing it up as he went so that Fionn couldn't follow him across!  Now, the geologists say that the Giant's causeway was made from an ancient volcanic eruption, but personally, I like to think that some of Hagrid's ancestors were involved.  The walk to the causeway was about a km again, but it was still beautiful to look around, so you wouldn't get bored on the walk!  And it was awesome to come around the corner and see the Giant's Causeway!  This is the reason that I made the trip!  It's amazing how the rocks look!  Because they really do look like some giant sat down and carved each and every one individually!  I really enjoyed clambering up and around on them as well.  It was quite a lot of fun.  I was getting hungry though, so eventually I made my way back up to the car park and the hotel where I got some lunch (which was pretty good).  While I was eating, the four Welsh gentlemen that were on the tour came in for their lunch and asked me if I was all by myself.  When I answered yes, they started talking to me and for the rest of the trip made sure I was on the coach and on the tour and everything!  It was so cute!  And apparently (because my name's Caitlin) I should tell people that I'm the daughter of some famous Welsh poet and was named after my mother (his wife, whose name was apparently Caitlin as well, though I didn't ask how she spelled it.  I had a feeling they'd be disappointed if I told them it was different.).  Anyways, it was fun to meet them and have their random comments the rest of the day!  Our last stop on the tour was Derry (also known as Londonderry).  The city has the most complete city walls in the United Kingdom and had a lot of IRA activity during the Troubles.  I chose to take the walking tour of Derry, and throughly enjoyed it!  We had a guide who grew up in Derry, so he knew about everything first-hand, which was really interesting.  We got to learn about the older history of the city, like the fact that the London guild built the city walls, which is why they added London to the name of the town officially, and about the more recent history of the Troubles.  Murals and things like that are still up and it was interesting to hear the stories behind them and everything.  I'd really like to learn more about the more recent history on the island, picking up where my Irish history course left off last semester.  After Derry, it was the coach trip back to Belfast, where I picked up some food on the way back to the hostel for dinner.  I spent the evening in my room, happily eating and chatting and watching a show and went to go get ready for bed early-ish since I had to be up so early the next morning in order to catch the bus to the airport and get my flight.  However, that didn't happen because as I was walking back to my room after brushing my teeth, the owner and one of the employees nabbed me and the owner wouldn't let me go to bed until I had stayed up and talked with them awhile!  It turned out to be fun and I got to learn a lot of stuff, but I certainly regretted it in the morning when I only had 5 hours of sleep!  The employee was really nice though and offered to make me toast in the morning before I left, even though it wasn't breakfast time (and I took advantage of that!).

Sunday morning it was simply breakfast, a walk to the bus centre, a bus to the airport, a flight to Stanstead, a train to a station, the underground to King's Cross, and a train back to Grantham.  There, Chloe met me and her mum cooked us (Alayna too) a lovely Sunday roast dinner for Mother's Day!  It was really nice!  And yummy!  I really appreciated it.  It was so good to have homecooked food again!

So, I think I have one more post for next week, when Christine and I go find Robin Hood, then nothing for a couple of weeks until Italy (and I'll actually be back in the states when I write them!).

France: Beauxbatons and Wizard Soldiers

This past week we had a long weekend here at Harlaxton and headed off to Paris, France.  Although entirely practical, I think that the fact that we took a coach to the Grantham train station funny.  From there we took a train into London King's Cross, then walked across the street to St. Pancreas International where we went through French Boarder Control.  Yes, I got my passport stamped for France while I was in London!  Then we sat around and waited for our platform to be announced so we could go get on the Eurostar.  While waiting I finally found an English keychain!  (not British, English!)  That definitely made my day.  I've been searching for one ever since I got here!  We took the Chunnel to France (which I didn't even realize we were in because we were in so many tunnels on the way there!  It was a little over 2 hour trip.  Then we all (50ish of us) had to hop on the metro and take that to the hotel.  Little did we know when we got on that our station was closed!  So we had to go down one more and get off there.  It wasn't a long walk, so it was fine.  It was funny to see Kingsley walk off on his own in order to make sure he knew where we were though!  So we eventually got to the hotel and (after some problems) got our room keys to work and dropped our stuff off and headed back downstairs to find dinner.  Kingsley recommended a restaurant to us, so we headed there and had some good food!  By the time we finished dinner, it was 11, so we went back to the hotel and went to bed, that way we would be ready to go come tomorrow morning!

Thursday started off with some amazing croissants for breakfast (yes, you will be hearing about all my food because it was so good!) and then I headed off with Sarah, Jordan, and Christina to the Eiffel Tower.  We too so many pictures!!!  It was absolutely beautiful.  The sun was shining and made for some awesome pictures.  Plus it was warm!  (like, t-shirt warm with just the perfect amount of breeze so you don't sweat.)  We then proceeded to climb!  (that's right, climb) up the Eiffel Tower!  It was scary as heck climbing up, but totally worth it.  I can now say that I have climbed up the Eiffel Tower.  You can only climb to the 2nd level, then you have to take a lift if you want to go to the very top, which we did after taking loads of pictures on the first two levels.  It was really cool at the top because they showed you which direction to look for all these countries capitals!  And, if you wanted to pay 10 euro (I didn't) you could have champagne at the top!  Back down on the second level, I picked up a couple of souviners and waited for them to come back down, then we climbed back down to the first level and Christina and I got a waffle with chocolate/nutella and I wrote a couple of postcards (well, I had to send some from the Eiffel Tower!).  Then we went back down to ground level (well, I ran and got there a good 5 minutes before everyone else!  It's even scarier going down for me!). Then we took some more pictures and headed off in search of food and one of the Statues of Liberty.  We found this take-away place near the Seine, where I had this amazing hot dog!  I know, a hot dog in Paris?.  But let me tell you about this hot dog.  It was in a baguette and had white cheese melted on top.  It was sooo good!  We ate in this little green area on the Seine, then continued on our way to the Statue of Liberty, stopping to watch a wedding on the way. =)  The Statue of Liberty in the Seine is a lot smaller than the real one in New York (obviously) but it was still really cool to see!  After that, we headed to a metro station and then to the Arc de Triomphe and Champs Elysees.  We didn't go up in the Arc, because we had just gone up the Eiffel Tower, but it was cool to see it!  We didn't walk down Champs Elysees either, because someone had told us that more affordable stores were on this street next to it so we went down that one instead (there weren't).  We did find a grocery store though and bought some baguettes and nutella and chocolate-covered waffles for dinner though!  I loved it.  Noming on a baguette is probably one of my new favorite things to do. =)  We also found a souvenir shop where I found something awesome for my sister!  We went back to the hotel around 6 and just chilled the rest of the night.  My feet hurt!

Friday Jordan, Christine, Meredith, and I were off to Normandy!  We had some problems getting our e-tickets for the train, but we eventually got them and headed off to Bayeaux! (a 2+ hour train ride.)  Once we got to Bayeux, we had about 40 minutes to kill before our tour picked us up from the train station, so Jordan and I pulled out the food we stole from breakfast that morning for lunch, and Christina and Meredith grabbed some food out of the vending machine.  Our tour group consisted of our guide who learned to speak English from watching Seinfeld, 2 retired men from Columbus, Ohio, a teacher working on her masters from New York City, and a middle-aged Texan man.  Our first stop of the day was Pointe du Hoc, which was a German outpost on the bluffs between Utah and Omaha beaches (the two U.S. beaches).  It was really cool to hear the story of how the Ranger had to scale the bluffs and take out all of the Germans in the bunkers and they found the guns that were hidden in a field about 500 meters away and destroyed those too.  There must've been some wizards among them!  And it was amazing to see the bunkers, which we could go into, and look out over the sea and see what the Germans would have seen in 1944.  Plus, there were all these craters from bombs all over the place there!  They were massive!  And they've naturally filled in over the years, so they were almost twice as deep in 1944!!!  I kind of scampered around on my own most of the time we were on the tour, because I tend to just start wandering to wherever I feel like going and look around me 5 minutes later and realize that no one that I came with is there anymore!  But that's fine with me, because I get to see what I want to see.  Our next stop on the tour was Omaha Beach.  It was high tide unfortunately, so it was hard to imagine the sea 500 meters farther out and how far they would've had to run and dodge and they didn't have any shelter except German defenses to hide behind because all of the bombs landed too far inland, on the bluffs, so the guns were still working when the engineers and soldiers landed on D-Day.  They do still have some of the gun bunkers there though.  One still has a gun in it and there is a memorial to the U.S. National Guard on top of it.  It was really cool because all the words were in both French and English.  While at Omaha, we also saw the memorial to the first American Cemetery in France from WWII, which was right off the beach.  All of the bodies were later moved when the American Cemetery opened up in 1954.  Speaking of the cemetery, that was our next stop!  The American Cemetery is absolutely overwhelming!  When you first walk into it, you walk into a memorial for all the soldiers whose bodies have never been recovered or identified.  Each name is listed on a massive wall.  If there is a black dot next to the name on the wall, it means that the body of that soldier was found after the wall was built.  It was good to see some of those dots.  After you pass through the memorial, you are in the cemetery proper.  It is absolutely massive!  There are almost 10,000 bodies buried there, with around 900 unknown soldiers and 600 or so Jewish soldiers, who have a Star of David gravestone rather than a cross.  Just walking through the cemetery made the sacrifice that these men (and women) made so much more real and the numbers made so much more sense.  The cemetery is located on top of a bluff, overlooking Omaha beach, where many of them died.  The requirement to be buried there is that they had to die in Normandy.  Recently, they've started a program with the families in the area where they each get a soldier in the cemetery and bring flowers to put on the grave at least once a year.  This tradition will be passed on through the generations.  It's a way of remembering the soldiers and all that they did for the people of Normandy and France.  On a slightly happier note, I was on American soil!  France gave that land to America, so it's technically American soil, so I was home last Saturday!  It felt so good to be back. =)  We were able to be there for the lowering of the American flags and the playing of taps, which was really cool to see.  We also kind of followed the Ohioans around at first because one of them had brought flowers to honor the soldiers and we wanted to see where he would put them.  He chose to put them on the grave of a soldier who died on D-Day.  He thought it was appropriate.  The last stop of the day was Longues-sur-Mer, another German outpost located on a bluff, this time between U.S. beach Omaha and British beach Gold.  This one is really cool because all of the original guns are still in the bunkers!  So I actually got to touch a German gun!  I really liked walking around there and seeing all of this stuff.  It really made the war more realistic and I can imagine things better because I've actually seen some stuff!  We were dropped off back at the train station and grabbed some food out of the vending machine to eat while we waited for our train to take us back to Paris.  My original plan was to go see the Eiffel Tower light show that night, but by the time we got to the metro station it had already started and I didn't want to wait until 11 to go see it, so I just headed back to the hotel, stopping at a grocery store on the way to pick up another baguette (which was even better than last night's one!).

Saturday, Hilary, Lyndsay, Meredith, and I headed off to Versailles (or, as I see that this could be completely plausible, Beauxbatons).  We took the metro to the RER station and bought tickets to take us out to Versailles and back.  The RER took about 40 minutes or so, but walking out and seeing the palace was so cool!  Versailles is so ornate!  And crowded.  All of the rooms were absolutely gorgeous, but it was so crowded that you couldn't really just stand in the rooms and look around, you were kind of pushed from room to room.  But that's ok, because I still got to say I was there and I have some awesome pictures and memories to show for it!  We went out to look at the gardens, but we didn't really get to walk around them because it was our last full day in Paris and we all still had stuff we wanted to see back in Paris proper.  So we made sure we were heading back on the RER around noon (or as soon as it actually left the station after 12).  Meredith and Lyndsay got off to go see the Eiffel Tower, while Hilary and I got off at the same stop and then parted ways, she went to meet some friends at the Opera House, while I headed off to Notre Dame.  Notre Dame was absolutely gorgeous.  I love all the detail in the stone!  And the stained glass windows were beautiful.  I was so glad that I went there!  I didn't go up and see the gargoyles,because the line was long, but I did walk around the outside and get some great pictures!  I also stopped at a souvenir shop and bought some prints of paintings, which are really pretty!  I next attempted to walk to the Louvre, but got lost and ended up just finding the nearest metro station and taking the metro there (it's hard to find your way around when street names randomly change, not all of them are on the map, and there's no signs pointing in the direction of the Louvre!).  My original intention was just to take pictures of the Louvre, but after doing that, I decided that I actually wanted to go in!  So I got my ticket and headed off to see the Mona Lisa, which was cool to see in person, but there was a crowd there, so you couldn't just stand there and look at it really.  After that I just wandered, ending up in the Oriental and Egyptian sections of the museum instead of the painting sections.  Which was fine because that was more history type stuff, so I'm sure I enjoyed that more than I would've enjoyed the paintings!  I actually ended up getting lost in the Louvre and it took me half an hour to find the exit!  I finally found it though and made my way to the souvenir shop and bought a couple magnets and a gift for a friend.  Then I went to the cafe and got some dinner (another hot dog, a really good pastry with chocolate in the middle!, and apple juice, which was really good.)  I was then planning on going out of the Louvre through the pyramid and walking through the garden to the obelisk at the other end, but it was raining!  So I stayed inside and walked around the mall instead, stopping to get some really good dark chocolate gelato!  By that time, it was about time to go meet Meredith and Lyndsay at the Eiffel Tower, so I hopped on the metro and headed off to that stop.  Since it had just stopped raining, there were some great pictures to be taken of the Tower!  And WWF was there doing something on the terrace, so that was really cool to see.  I almost stole one of their pandas, but I don't think they would've appreciated that too much.  Our plan was to see the lights on the Eiffel Tower, but they never came on!  I thought since it was dusk it would be fine and they would come on but they didn't!  I was (and still am) so mad!!!!!  That was one of two things that I wanted to do in Paris, climb up the Eiffel Tower during the day and see the light show at night!  And I didn't get to see the lights!  We couldn't go back later, because the three of us were going on a pub crawl that we had booked.  Sad, I gave up and we went back to the hotel to drop stuff off before heading over to Moulin Rouge (the group was meeting right across the street from it, so we got some cool pictures before the pub crawl started).  The pub crawl was a lot of fun!  We went to 4 different pubs before we left (we weren't sure whether there was another one to go to or not, but we were tired by that point in time, so we just left).  And we got drink discounts at every pub too because we were on the tour!  We met people from all over the world, so that was pretty fun.  Then, on the metro home, we met a Canadian girl who is a au pair over there!  It was fun talking to her and everyone else.  We got back to the hotel really late, so we crashed.

Sunday, we packed, and took the metro, Eurostar, train, and coach back to Harlaxton.  It was a really fun weekend, even if I didn't get to see the Eiffel Tower at night.  Guess that just means I'll have to go back sometime!  School's almost done here.  I can't believe it went by this fast.  My last real weekend trip is this coming weekend when I head off to Northern Ireland!

London Field Trip: I Saw the Bridge and This is What Scrimegour's Offices Must've Looked Like!

Yesterday was our third (and last) British Studies field trip, this time to London.  The four coaches taking our college to London were supposed to depart at 8 a.m.  Two of them did.  One waited a while before leaving.  While we were left waiting for an hour before the last bus (which had broken down on the way here) got to Harlaxton to pick us up.  It turned out to be a double-decker bus, at which point I pulled out more motion sickness medicine to take and offer my friends.  We weren't able to sit in the bottom, so we got as close to the front as we could at the top, which made it a lot better!  It actually wasn't too bad on the almost 3 hour drive down there.

Our bus (as well as one other) went to St. Paul's Cathedral for the first half of the field trip.  I shot off the bus with about half of the other people and went to find a toilet, but it took so long that by the time I got back up there and was about to go looking for Taylor, who was leading my group around, Bujak stopped me and told me to go with that group down there!  So I went around the cathedral with Welsh's group instead.  St. Paul's is the first truly Anglican cathedral built in England (because all the others were originally Catholic from before the Reformation).  It was built after the Great Fire in London in 1666 destroyed the original St. Paul's by Christopher Wren.  We started out in the crypt, which had lots of memorials to different people, including Montgomery, Slim, and Wren.  The two main tombs down there are Arthur, Duke of Wellington's (he was the one who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo) and Horatio Nelson (who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Trafalgar).  They are both massive!  Wellington's actually had to be lowered through the ceiling in order to be installed.  Interesting story about Nelson's: it was originally made for Cardinal Wolsey, but when he fell from grace and King Henry VIII confiscated all of his property and Wolsey died on the way to prison, he wasn't buried in it.  Instead it went into storage until they decided that Nelson would be buried in it.  The matching candelabras are upstairs on either side of the high alter.  The cathedral itself is gorgeous!  The Victorians added beautiful mosaics on the ceiling (they were in Wren's original design, but the London Elders or whatever wouldn't let him put them in).  And you can see the entire way up the dome, which is really cool.  In the cathedral, there are more memorials to a lot of people, including big ones to Wellington and Nelson.  There is also a memorial to the fire brigade that was in charge of putting out the fires that were started by the German's incendiary bombs during the Blitz in WWII.  They are responsible for helping St. Paul's escape nearly unscathed, and St. Paul's became an emblem of hope for the people since the Germans couldn't seem to destroy it (even when they do hit it [a bomb fell on the high alter, but it didn't explode, making the impact decidedly less] ).  Behind the high alter, at the back of the cathedral, is a big memorial to the American soldiers that served in the Second World War, from the British People.  It's a really nice memorial and has a book with all the American soldiers who died in Europe, and, significantly, those who died on the crossing to go fight due to German U-boats.  Also important, this memorial was built entirely from donations from the British People, not the Government, so it really is a sincere thank-you for all they did.  At the end of the tour, we had the opportunity to go up into the dome, which I took full advantage of.  The first stop is the Whispering Gallery, which looks down into the cathedral, and is really cool to see everything from that view.  The next stop is outside, which offers some great views of London (even when rainy).  I got an awesome picture of the Millennium Bridge from here (yes, the one from the beginning of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince).  Apparently there was a third stop, but I couldn't find the stairs, someone told me about it on the bus on the way home.  After making it back down all those spiral stairs, and with legs shaking, I met up with Kathryn, Annie Rose, Jon, and Matt and off we went into the rain to try to find the nearest underground station.

The five of us had decided that, instead of going to the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery, our time would better be spent by going to the Churchill War Rooms (yes, I started this because I didn't get to go to them last weekend =) ).  And the War Rooms were awesome!  Everything was set up (largely behind glass) as it would have been when Churchill was fighting WWII out of it.  There were even creepy mannequins that we half expected to start moving in many of the rooms.  They had some awesome original papers hanging up and maps with all these pins in them showing where everyone was.  It was really cool to see.  I could totally see Scrimegour having rooms like these to fight the war against the Death Eaters and Voldy (you know, if he hadn't tragically died before an underground government military movement could be launched).  I took a ton of pictures in there.  I wish I could've spent a bit more time in the war rooms, and we somehow managed to skip the little museum that was in there as well.  But it was still fun and interesting!

After that, we were all hungry, so we set off in search as a McDonald's (don't judge, we were really hungry and craving fries!).  We ended up walking nearly to Trafalgar Square before we found one, but it was so good and we were so happy that it was totally worth walking by a protest for Libya for it!  After that, Annie Rose was still hungry (because she can't eat meat on Fridays, it being Lent and all) so we stopped at a little convenience store so she could get a sandwich.  While she's getting a sandwich, the rest of us find the Krispy Kreme's in there and each get one!  I got a Kookie and Kreme one (chocolate doughnut with white icing and cookie crumbs on top) which was absolutely amazing and I'm pretty sure we don't have it at home!  We were all in heaven they were so good!

Since we were already there, we walked across the street to Trafalgar Square and took some pictures and looked around.  Kathryn had us all make a wish and throw a penny into the fountain.  Then Annie Rose decided to try out her waterproof digital camera in the fountain.  It worked!  That was really cool.  In the square, they have an awesome countdown to the 2012 Olympic and Paraolympic Games.  They also have a really random massive ship in a bottle, which is actually really cool.  After spending some time here, we had to head back to St. Paul's so that Kathryn could meet up with Jessica, since they're staying the night in London.  Once we got there, I met up with Hope and we went to Pizza Express for dinner.  We split a really good garlic bread and cheese pizza.  Then we got back on the bus and talked until it was time for the bus to leave at 7 and take us back to the manor.  On the way back, the coach driver took us by the Olympic Village, which looks like it's going to be so cool!  I want to make it back here so badly for that!

Next week I have a long weekend in Paris, so be looking out for that!  I can't believe that there's only 4 or 5 weeks of the semester left!