Where ARE we???

I forgot to mention in my last post about Italy that I really love Italians. They are just like the movies! They all have that fun accent and we even heard a man say "Mammamia!" They are just great. And everyone calls the girls "bella" - "Pizza for you bella! Ciao bella! Grazi bella!" Every girl is "bella" - I like that habit of telling a girl when she is beautiful. Italians got it right. And they never say it in a degrading way or in a threatening way - they genuinely just want you to know that they think you are "bella!" They were also so helpful - we had so many people as soon as we got there who were asking where we were trying to go and giving us directions (we were all pretty suspicious at first, looking around to see if they had friends who were robbing us while they pretended to be nice...but they were all just genuinely helpful!) So I love Italians.

Ok I promised I would finish my Italy story, so here it is.
Kara, Daley and I got up early, left Tavarnelle and took a train from Florence to Carrara train station. I had always heard that the main station in Cinque Terre was La Spezia, but I just assumed that there must be another station there (never assume anything). So we met up with the other groups at Carrara who had been there for a while, but had not been able to find out anything about how to get to our hostel. The map we had said that buses ran near our hostel, but we couldn't figure out where to take a bus to since our map only covered the 3 blocks around our hostel. We walked a little ways and then asked a friendly bus driver (he should know, right?) and he told us that we were too close to ride a bus, all we had to do was cross the roundabout by the supermarket and then we'd be in the village...so we kept walking. We walked for about 20 more minutes and nothing was looking familiar at all, so we started trying to find someone to ask. Finally, a man named Paolo who appeared to be delivering mail, was able to tell us where we needed to go...and that we were very far away from it. So, being the nice Italian man he was, he offered us a ride! There were 8 of us, and he had a very small car, so he had to make 2 trips (don't worry, mom, the guys split up so the girls weren't alone). Paolo started driving and driving, and then pointed at a sign that indicated we were entering a diffferent county....and we kept driving. All the while, we were trying to stay positive and just hope that Paolo actually knew where he was taking us - he was our only hope. We started driving up the mountain and we were getting further and further from any civilization, and we stopped. We were in the middle of nowhere, no idea what city we had ended up in (only Paolo knew and his English was...well...he tried.) So Paolo left to go get through the other group (I'm sure they thought Paolo had killed us and was never coming back - it was a long ride) and we made our way up to check out the "bungalows" we had rented. The place had been advertised as having a swimming pool, a restaurant and fully furnished kitchens, and was also used for weddings. well, maybe in 1984. Our bungalows weren't bad, but the pool was greenish brown, the restaurant was "out of season" according to the owner (he laughed at us and wanted to know where we get food - that was our first sign that things weren't going to be like we planned). There were no grocery stores or anywhere to buy food for miles. We were stuck.
The place was beautiful - I'll give it that. We were up in the mountains surrounded by trees, with a great view of the town below (civilization was just out of our reach) and we could even see the ocean...we just couldn't get to it. We spent a while wallowing in our hunger (I hadn't eaten anything that day) and then we just started laughing uncontrollably because it all seemed like a joke or a weird dream. But it was real. Very real. The other group finally got there and we explained what was going on. We managed to get the owner to agree to take one of us to the store to buy food, so we sent Grant with all the cash we could come up with (there are no ATMs in the middle of nowhere...) and a list of cheap food (pasta!) Then we went out to lay on the (out of season) restaurant patio and just enjoyed the sunshine for a while and tried to ignore our hunger. It was awesome to be able to lay outside and be really warm and actually get a little bit tan (i have a great tan line from my leggings...)
Grant finally made it back so we went to check out what he got - we had just enough pasta and sandwich stuff for 3 meals (we could sleep through one of them) so we were encouraged. We had spaghetti for dinner and then went to bed early (SO nice to sleep).
The next morning, we woke up to rain. It rained all day. Our great plans of laying out in the sun were changed to sitting inside. I read all of Harry Potter 6, took lots of great naps with the rain (my favorite) and we had lots of time to get to know each other. Us girls played various games including the "Ha!" game where you lay on each others' stomachs and say "Ha" in a circle until everyone starts laughing...we had nothing better to do! Jessalyn also taught us how to sound ridiculous while laughing. She's a pro. We had our sandwiches for brunch and then we ate the rest of the spaghetti that afternoon - Kara and Daley had gone on a walk the night before and found a great pizzeria not too far away, so we decided we could do that for dinner the second night...so we ate all of our food. Bad plan. We're just dumb college kids, but we should have known that if we ate all our food with plans to go to a restaurant, the restaurant would naturally be closed that night. It was Monday. Who closes on a Monday night? I don't know. But we were hungry (again) and had no food (again). So the boys decided to be heroic and they went into emergency-mode and went to look for food. The girls didn't even try to interfere - they needed to feel important, so we stayed home and told stupid stories from our lives. It was great bonding! About an hour and a half later, the boys returned with all the food they could find - one loaf of bread, one small bag of pasta, and one big chunk of cheese. They made us a delicious dinner, but I've never felt so much like an orphan in my life. All 8 of us sat in one bed and ate our handful of pasta, slice of fresh bread and chunk of cheese. We looked pitiful, but that was the best bread and cheese I've ever had!
The next morning we got up super early, praying that our taxis would actually show up on time (we asked the owner to order 2 taxis for 6:45am, but we had no real way of knowing if he really understood). At about 6:47 we were all silently nervous, standing in the rain, but they showed up! So we loaded into our taxis and went to the train station, where our train ended up being about 30 minutes late. We had a gorgeous train ride, right on the coast all the way to Genova/Genoa. We got to the Genoa train station and then had to wait about an hour for a bus to the airport, but we got some real food and it was awesome! We finally caught the bus to the airport and checked in, and once we all had our boarding passes, we could breathe again! It felt so good to know where we were going and to know where we were! Our plane ended up being delayed about 45 minutes (to go along with everything else that day!) but we made it to London and I've never been so glad to be at Stansted. Our bus was (of course) an hour late, so we didn't get back to Oxford til 9:30pm, at which point we had been travelling for about 15 hours! We were exhausted from a long, fun week, and we were SO glad to be home in Oxford!

Bella Italia!

For our week-long break, I got to take an excursion across Italy! We started in Rome - we arrived late Wednesday night. Thursday, we did the best, most efficient "Rome-in-a-Day" I've ever seen (not to mention the only one...) In one day, we managed to see the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, the Spanish steps, the ancient Roman ruins, St. Peter's Cathedral, the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel, and of course, the Coliseum. It was a full day, but it was beautiful and warm and perfect for walking all over Rome!
We started out at St. Peter's Cathedral (we were a bit confused and thought that Sistine Chapel was somewhere in there). It was neat to see a very Catholic Cathedral and to be able to tell the differences from all of the Protestant, Church of England cathedrals I have seen this semester. The artwork, the architecture and the way it was set up as a form of worship was very different but beautiful. Then we made our way to the Vatican (I was not aware that Vatican City is its own country!) and walked through seemingly hundreds of rooms to get to the Sistine Chapel. I have never ever seen such an ornately designed building in all my life. Every room we walked through was an incredibly detailed work of art - the walls, windows, door frames, ceilings and decorations were all intricately painted or carved with scenes from the Bible or just beautiful scenery and designs. Finally, we reached the Sistine Chapel and it was incredible. It's interesting to me that the most famous part of the Sistine Chapel is the painting of God and Adam reaching towards each other - this painting is no bigger than the rest, it's not even more emphasized than the other scenes (it took me a while to even find it in the midst of all the artwork on the ceiling).
After that, we walked through Rome, stopping at the Pantheon (lots of martyrs are buried inside), the Spanish steps (the boys thought it would be a good idea to race up the steps through hundreds of people - it was entertaining to say the least), the Trevi fountain (I want one of these in my backyard. How awesome would that be!!!), and finally the Roman ruins leading up to the Coliseum. The ruins were really incredible to see, just thinking about how many people walked in that very place back in the time of the apostles. We actually got to walk on an original ancient stone walkway where Peter and Paul supposedly walked, right next to the Coliseum. The Coliseum itself was incredible - it was SO huge! After reading the Mark of the Lion series (by Francine Rivers - go read it, it's amazing.) the Coliseum meant so much more to me - just thinking about what went on there thousands of years ago is really humbling. We also went back later that night so we could see it all lit up - it was even more beautiful!
The next morning we woke up to bright WARM sunshine! It was awesome to wear skirts and flipflops all week and be so comfortable! We didn't have much time Friday morning because we all had trains to catch, so we just enjoyed walking around various markets (my favorite way to find out about local culture) and just soaking up the sunshine! I even wore my sunglasses for probably the first time since last summer!
Kara, Daley and I caught our train to Florence while the boys went to Venice and Casey and Jessalyn went to Cinque Terre. We got to Florence and then had to take a bus to the little town where our hostel was - turns out, that was about an hour away, but it was a gorgeous bus ride! That was probably the best way to see all of Florence and the beautiful countryside around it! Our hostel was in a little town called Tavarnelle val di Pesa - right in the heart of Tuscany. It was a precious, very Italian little town. The restaurant we ate at (both nights) was a tiny family-owned and operated place where we could see into the kitchen where there were 2 grandmas switching off kitchen and baby duty, and the woman serving us was carrying the baby around on her hip. They didn't speak even a little bit of english, so it was quite an adventure ordering, but the food was fresh and delicious and definitely real home-cooked Italian! Saturday morning we woke up and went on a walk that Molly and Jill had discovered (we met them at the hostel for the 2 days we were there) and walked through the hills and valleys full of vineyards. I felt like I was in the movie "Under the Tuscan Sun" - it was so picturesque! We had a little picnic lunch up on one of the hills as we were walking. Then we headed back down to the town to catch a bus into Florence, but it turns out the schedule we were given was only for weekdays and the Saturday bus didn't come for a long time. So, we took advantage of yet another beautiful sunny day and we took a nap on the benches in the little town square in Tavarnelle. Late in the afternoon (feeling good with our sunburned cheeks!) we finally made it into Florence and I got to do some good shopping in the open markets! I bought lots of nice leather things - my favorites are the journals - every color you can imagine! The leather smells so good! We didn't get to stay in Florence very long because the last bus was leaving, but we had a good few hours there (it was incredibly crowed, so I was fine with the short trip) and then we headed back to Tavarnelle for the night.
Sunday morning we woke up bright and early to catch a train to go to Cinque Terre...or so we thought. That is a huge long story in itself, so I'll have to save that for my next post. Be looking forward to the story of 8 college kids lost somewhere in Italy...we still haven't quite figured out where we were. To be continued...

For Momma

My mom requested that I put a few pictures of Oxford on here, so when I went for a stroll around town last week I took a few pictures - here is Oxford in the Spring!This is a close-up of one of the many beautiful tulip trees that are in full-bloom right now. This particular one is in the main quad of New College.





Here is the whole tree - so pretty!
















Here is a view of some of the chapel windows through the tulip tree.













The Bridge of Sighs on New College Lane.

















Mom liked the spires that you could see down almost every street in Oxford.











This is some sort of sun-dial, but I have no idea how you would tell time on that thing. It's also at New College
















Here is yet another spire.









I will try to take some more Oxford pictures in these last couple of weeks and post them for y'all to see!

Bienvenue a Paris!

So I'm not really a "big-city" kinda person when it comes to Europe - I tend to like the smaller, rural areas...but I loved Paris! It was so beautiful! It was different from all the other big cities I've been to in Europe and I really enjoyed it. We took the EuroStar (under the English Channel) into Paris Saturday morning, got settled into our hotel, and then took the long walk down to the Eiffel Tower - it took us about an hour and a half to get there (we stopped a few times on the way). I was completely enthralled with the tower - I just felt giddy looking at it! I have way too many pictures of it, but I figured it was necessary. We were lucky enough for the big rain clouds to blow away just as we got to the tower so we had perfect blue skies and sunshine for our pictures. We looked around there for a while, grabbed a little something to eat, and then met up for the Fat Tire Bike Tour. I had heard only great things about this tour from people I know who have done it, but I never imagined that it would end up being the best night of my semester! I had so much fun on that tour! It was a four-hour tour all around Paris with stops at major historic places and at an awesome ice-cream stand (it was like velvet ice-cream....so good!) It was so neat to be able to see Paris at night, and riding bikes was so much quicker and easier than trying to walk all over the place. We were pretty entertaining to watch, I'm sure, as most of us had not been on a bike since elementary school and our skills were a little out of practice. We were also trying to fight against the busses and taxis that we were supposed to share a lane with (whose idea was it to put little, inexperienced bikers in the same land as huge busses - we called them "sharks" - and angry taxis...?) Towards the end of the tour, we took a cruise up and down the Seine River so that we could see everything right along the River, including the Eiffel Tower and all the main bridges. That was such a fun night! Sunday, we got up and went to Notre Dame to go to a service, but the times were off and there were all kinds of tourists just walking through the service, so we decided not to stay. We went to the L'Ourve for a while (a short while...) where I saw the Mona Lisa and many famous sculptures. I'm not much of a museum person, so we didn't stay long, but it was neat to see those pieces of art I've seen all my life. Then a few of us went back to Notre Dame to climb the tower to the top - 400 stairs. We were pretty worn out, but it was an awesome view - definitely worth it. Monday, we found out that the Olympic Torch was going to be at the Eiffel Tower around lunchtime, so of course, we had to go. Well, apparently the French are infamous for their rebellious nature, and they tend to protest a lot. So, naturally, there were huge groups of protesters at the Olympic Torch run - they were supporting the freedom of Tibet, and since they don't like China, and the Olympics are in China, they weren't too happy. I've never seen so many police in my life - I think I heard that there were 3,000 there, and the Torch was put out 3 times by protesters in Paris alone - it was pretty crazy. We had a great view of people getting tackled by police and some innocent, very excited Chinese people who probably had nothing to do with Tibet, but they were still the subject of a bit of harassment. After all the chaos, we went to a chinese restaurant (in honor of the upcoming Olympics) called "Chez Tang" - I thought that was a great combination of French and Chinese! After that, we went back and rested for a while and then went to dinner. Tuesday morning we went shopping/sight-seeing on some streets near our hotel - I finished up my gift-buying (get excited girls!) and bought a few souvenirs for myself including a bag and some paintings. After lunch (probably nutella banana crepes - I had a few of those while I was in Paris) we went to the Musee D'Orsay. Unfortunately we were a few minutes late and missed our group going in, but we werent about to give up, so after trying to talk to about 6 different French people at the museum, we finally managed to convince one of them to let us in to go find our group - I was so proud of us! I got to see a lot of French Impressionism there which was neat, because a lot of it was familiar to me. Monet is still my favorite and they had lots of his work there, along with Van Gogh, Degas and Renoir. After we were done in the museum, we went back over to the Eiffel Tower to go to the top! It was a long ride up (thank goodness we didn't have to climb the stairs), but it was an awesome view of Paris! It's so neat to look at pictures of the tower now and think, "I've been on the top of that!" Then a few of us girls decided we wanted to have a nice, French dinner, so we found a nice cafe near the tower and had some awesome French food. I had an omelette with ham and cheese, and the best creme brulee of my life for dessert! Finally, on Wednesday, after a long, tiring week in France, we did some last minute shopping and walking around, got some last pastries and one last nutella banana crepe, and headed back home. We got back to Oxford last night, exhausted and excited to see our familiar beds.

Only a wee bit o' rain!

I went to Scotland and I loved it! We were so blessed with the weather - the forecast before we left predicted rain every day, but we had sunshine! It did rain a little bit, but only at times when we were heading into pubs for a meal or going into a museum for a while! It was perfect. We took the (6 hour) train ride Thursday afternoon and got to our hostel late Thursday night. Friday we went and got some breakfast rolls (a Scottish thing - pretty good!) and then looked in a few gift shops as we made our way to the meeting point for our free tour of Edinburgh! It was a 3-hour tour (...yes, a 3-hour tour...Gilligan's Island anyone?) that took us to all the main points of Edinburgh (the castle, the Royal Mile, some significant pubs, the school that inspired J.K. Rowling to write about Hogwarts, graveyards, churches, etc.) It was a really neat tour and our tour guide was great - she was actually from South Africa, but she knew a lot about Scotland. After that tour, we went shopping on the Royal Mile (the main street through Edinburgh that runs from the castle to Holyrood Park, where Arthur's Seat is located) and saw lots of kilt shops and tartan factories that sold lamb's wool scarves in all the different plaids from all the different Scottish clans. Then we went and had tea at The Elephant House, where the first Harry Potter book was actually written! We sat in the same window that J.K. Rowling would sit in and look out the window to the castle and write about the magical land of Harry! It made me feel like I was in some kind of magical place myself! It really was a great little cafe - it had elephants everywhere - statues, chairs, posters, figurines, coffee mugs...everything! After that, we went back for another tour (we found out that the same company was giving a free tour of 'the darker side of Edinburgh' at night) that took us into graveyards and through obviously-blocked-off roads through the hills outside of the town (yes, I willingly went into a graveyard at night in one of the most haunted cities in Europe - not my proudest accomplishment) Anyway, it could have been much scarier (thank goodness - I don't handle that stuff well...) but we got a great view of the city at night! After that, we were very hungry because we hadn't eaten dinner before the tour, but, true to the European way, almost every restaurant stops serving food by 9pm. So we searched for any place at all that would give us some food, and finally found a "Mexican" restaurant. Being the Texan that I am, I was severely disappointed in the food, but more so in my own silly mind for thinking that any European "Mexican" restaurant could satisfy me. Daley and I shared some "quesadillas" (2 little things about the size of my ipod with some strange cheese inside) and some chips and salsa dip - for some reason, when we entered this mexican food establishment, we assumed that we also exited the United Kingdom, but that was not true. Even in a Mexican restaurant, if you're in the UK, "chips" still means french fries. Duh. So, our "chips and salsa dip" turned out to be skinny little french fries and some (spicy?) ketchup. We were disappointed to say the least. but now we laugh at our ignorance. Saturday we got up to go climb Arthur's seat - I had no idea what I was in for. The weather could not have been better, considering that we were planning for the coldest, rainiest hike of our lives. We did have to stop quite a few times on the way up (it was STEEP!) but the view was great so I was glad to have an excuse to just stand still and see how far I could see. We were basically surrounded by the North Sea on all sides - it was gorgeous. We finally made it to the top where we experienced the strongest winds of our lives - the puddles had whitecaps, I'm not kidding. It was intense, knock-a-grown-man-down kind of wind! But it was awesome and so worth the long hike up! We climbed around for a while up there and then headed back down for lunch - we went to a cafe to experience haggis. "What's haggis?" you're probably wondering. Let me just tell you. I have heard rumors that this food is illegal in the states. I'm serious. Haggis is what they make out of all the parts of the lamb that nobody wants - after they sell all the good meat, they take everything else, mash it together, stuff it in the stomach of the lamb with some veggies and lots of spices, and cook it. It wasn't that bad, but I probably won't ever ask for it again - I just had to since that's basically the only place in the world to get it. (It's illegal in the states because apparently they cook the heart....i don't want to think about that). So there's your little lesson in the Scottish culinary arts. After lunch, we took a quick power nap (Arthur's seat wore us out) and then headed over to the National Gallery of Scotland to see some art - I've seen more beautiful artwork this semester than I've ever seen in my life. I just sat in one room for the longest time on a couch just enjoying being surrounded by real art. (this was one of the times when it started pouring rain just after we came inside - God was watching out for us!) After the National Gallery, we headed to the Hogshead (a local pub) to have dinner and watch the Manchester United game (european football - one of the greatest teams and one of my new favorite English hobbies). We enjoyed the excitement of everyone who was also there to watch the game, and some good, cheap pub food! Sunday morning we went to the Edinburgh Castle and spent about 2 hours looking around there (in the great halls, the dungeons, the prison cells, the towers, the chapels, the graveyards - it was huge and awesome!) and then we had to head to the train station to come home to Oxford - that was probably the most beautiful train ride of my life. We got out of Edinburgh and the rain clouds disappeared and the blue sky shone through. We rode right by the coast - I could see the waves hitting the rocks - and saw pastures and meadows full of sheep and their new baby lambs! It was a great (long) ride home! Scotland was one of my favorite trips I've been on - I really enjoyed it! And yes, people really do wear kilts and play bagpipes there. It's not a lie. And Mel Gibson is famous there - they love him almost as much as William Wallace himself. Scotland is great!