A Long Overdue Post ...and A Long Post Indeed

Alright, so this if officially the longest gap in all of my blogging, of course because I’ve been SO busy over here in Europe. I know, that sounds so miserable to all of you readers out there (basically just my family) but at the same time, I’m going to flashback and recount for all the days I missed in this episode, so don’t worry. The thing is, I’ve been keeping a nice little personal journal for myself of my excursions, and then transposing most of it all to the web for the public to read, and/or not read, so here’s the breakdown of my life since my trip to Greece, almost a month ago…Cheers!

Alright I left off on Thursday, Nov. 13th, which was the night I took a trip out to Heathrow airport and flew to Athens, Greece. I was heading to the Greek Islands to meet up with my friend Kat, who as you may know from previous posts, has visited/run into me in Europe on several other excursions, so this was going to be a nice little get-away with my best friend, and a good opportunity to relax before school and internship stuff really kicked off hard at the end of the semester. So I arrived in the airport sometime around 11pm, and Kat landed soon after. We then proceeded to run to the nearest train, and caught the very last train that left the central station to get into the city before we’d get stranded. We checked into our hostel, the “Athens Backpackers” around 12-12:30, and went to grab a small late night snack before hitting the hay and an exciting weekend would begin.

Kat and I were up early on Friday for breakfast. It consisted of toast, and hardboiled eggs. This was actually quite filling, in a Rocky-esk sort of way, and it wasn’t until Sunday, that I definitely feel that I’ve had my share of hardboiled eggs for quite some time. Anyhow, after breakfast, we started off our Greek experience by taking a really cheap 2-3 hour walking tour that was provided by our hostel. So we toured the entire city of Athens in an overview sort of way right in the first few hours of even being there. We saw the Parthenon/the Acropolis, saw the very first theater ever created, followed by the Roman Theater, one of the pinnacles of the city where Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato used to speak to the people, watched the changing of the guard at Greek Parliament, strolled through the national gardens, and even ended up at the Olympic stadium. Some tour huh? Even after that, on our way back, we passed the temple of Zeus, and by that time, I was starving, and so Kat and I found our way to a café and devoured some amazing sandwiches for lunch.

By this time it was early in the afternoon still, so Kat and I decided to further explore on our own around the city. We started with the Acropolis, since our hostel was basically at the base of it, and miraculously enough, our student ID’s that we had from our schools, got us in for FREE! That’s right, absolutely free, just showed it to the attendants and they waved us on through. It turns out that this worked EVERYWHERE in Greece, and it was the first time my student ID had actually come to good use for sure, so that was thoroughly exciting for me and a way to save a bit of change. So anyhow, we walked atop the Acropolis, stood at the foot of the Parthenon (and the temple of Athena), and got a great view of the entire city of Athens, from the Mediterranean to the mountains, all exactly where the greatest minds of all time used to stay. It was such a humbling experience to be in the exact spot that I’ve always dreamed to visit (and have studied quite a lot in school), and just stand in front of it all, and take in the view. It’s incredible. Needless to say we stayed up there for a little while taking pictures, and of course, while we’re doing so, I took a candid quick one in my Pi Kappa Phi shirt, just as a nice little Greek gimmick. However, when I started to put my coat back on and switch shirts, a guy to the left of me asked “Excuse me, do you go to Elon University?” Of course, I confirmed that I did, and he started to ask me about people that went to school there. Turns out that he knew a friend that goes to Elon, that happens to be one of Katherine’s sorority sisters, and a friend of mine as well. NOT only that, but it turns out that the guy was studying in Greece for the semester and goes to school at Bridgewater College, the same university a block from my old high school! Small world? Nope, it gets better. Then I finished putting on my coat, which was my Roanoke Star Soccer one, and he said, “NO WAY!” Because, he actually lives in Roanoke, played soccer there, and he worked as a waiter at this little restaurant named Anthony’s, which is where Dad and I used to stop and eat all the time on the way home from practices! It was surreal.

Anyhow, after I got over all this excitement, I dragged Kat onto the metro, and we went to the north of the city to climb the mountain that sits in the middle of Athens, which is the tallest point, and has the greatest view. Despite our huffing and puffing the two of us finally reached the summit for a beautiful view of the city at sunset, followed by watching the lights of Athens come to life. It was a great end to an awesome day. We climbed down and headed back to our hostel, where we then changed and went to dinner at this awesome place called “God’s Restaurant.” I had a traditional Greek meal of Pork Slouvaki, which was absolutely epic, and Kat had the same. Then Kat decided to get some rest, and I went out for a while with some of the people at our hostel for the “pub crawl” which lasted a few hours, and I ended up coming home early because it really was very crowded, and not all that exciting.

Saturday the 14th of course brought on quite the long day as well though, as we woke up early, again had our hardboiled eggs, and then headed off to see the Temple of Zeus up close. The ruins don’t seem like much, if you’ve seen the pictures, but the size of them is just gargantuan. It’s wild how all of these temples and ancient structures were so massive, with technology seeming so primitive then, and is definitely why I’m so intrigued I guess. Anyhow, I dragged Kat all around those ruins for a while, and then we took a bus ride all along the Greek coast to a place called Suonio, which is at like the southern-most tip of Greece, to see the Temple of Poseidon. The views along the coastline of Greece are spectacular, and I took a number of pictures for Mom, since they probably will remind her of Mamma Mia or something, but either way the views were incredible. Once we got to Suonio, we basically spent the afternoon there. There isn’t a lot in this small little town, except the temple and a restaurant, so Kat and I split a sandwich and Greek Salads (SOOOO good), since we’re cheap college kids, but we had a great view of the Mediterranean, and got to catch up some more on each others lives. After the bus-ride back, we actually made a second stop at God’s Restaurant for another amazing meal, this time I tried some of their fish, which again, so epic, and then we just basically had a night in to ourselves. We played some cards, talked with our new roommates in our hostel, and caught up on some much needed sleep. Traveling is very physically demanding.

Sunday brought about my last day of hardboiled eggs, and a trip to the northern and busy part of the city, through the marketplaces, to the Archaeological Museum. Kat and I actually witnessed the a large protest while we were trying to enter the museum as well, which was very interesting to see, lots of rallies and political activism in the streets seem to be quite prevalent in Europe, it just seems so much more predominant than in the states. Anyways, the museum was alright, there’s a large controversy between Britain/Greece about who should own the Greek artifacts, since most are in the British Museum, but either way, I got to see them in both places, so I didn’t particularly mind. After that, we grabbed our first authentic Greek Gyros, which were scrumptious and then we headed toward the airport to catch our planes, it was a wonderful Greek-Filled weekend with a friend, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Now of course I’ll do the quickest run-down of the next week possible. Monday, Nov. 17th I was back for another “typical” day at Xtreme Info, so I was working quite a lot. That night I went with my theater class to a showing of Shakespeare’s Othello but it was a modern adaptation, and to be honest, I wasn’t a huge fan of it. The acting was a big over the top, the stage was very weird, and there were random modern dance numbers, that didn’t exactly make sense (sorry Kelsey) Anyhow, that brings me to Tuesday, where I had classes, and then I did the typical errands, cleaning, and getting my life back together in the post-traveling time of a weekend. Wednesday the 18th, I was back in my office chair at Xtreme trucking away on our newest edition of The Reel, and scouting out new ads for the guys. That night I decided to spur of the moment go to a production of Les Miserables with a few of my peers on the trip, which was absolutely stunning, and completely made up for the terrible performance of Othello I saw on the previous Monday. It was my dream once again to see Les Miserables on the London stage, and I absolutely am in love with the show as it is, so it was a great and awesome way to see my last big production of my semester. By Thursday, we had class and were starting to wind down the semester into the home stretch, we had a lot of presentations by students, and also were one class closer to the finale for us, so that was exciting to get through with. That evening, all the guys in the flat decided to have a guys night, so my friend Mack Gilmor (a fraternity brother of mine, also from Elon – and studying in London) came over to hang out with the guys and we all just shared stories and a few drinks and hung out for the evening. It was nice to see another familiar face I hadn’t previously seen on my trip, and always nice to have a new guest in the penthouse too.

Friday the 21st, we all slept in a bit but then James and I decided to be really cultural, so we both went to the Tower of London. This was probably one of my favorite sites to actually see in the heart of London, and the two of us spent a good solid three hours visiting it. Essentially, in addition to being the home of England’s Crown Jewels, the Tower of London, is a fortress along the Thames that used to be the residence of royalty and also a prison as well. It’s so ancient, has so much to see, I could literally get lost there for hours on end and love every minute of it. James and I of course took pictures with everything, in armor, and all the sites, and did audio tours too, just like complete nerds, and talked to the “beef-eaters” or security guards in the Tower, as well for a while, and then headed back home. Friday night we got a lot of homework done (since the next week of the semester would be the hardest-work-load-wise) and got some sleep.

Saturday the 22nd, James, Carver, and myself all decided to go hit up another cultural site, so we all visited St. Pauls Cathedral for the afternoon. It is spectacular, and the artwork, architecture, and history are all very rich. We climbed to the top to see the incredible view over the city, and also spent some time in the tombs as well. Since it gets dark in London around 4:30pm these days, it’s hard to do a ton of tourist-like things if you don’t start early, but we got to catch the sunset from the top of St. Pauls, and that was all worth it. That night, the guys and I went out to one of our favorite places, Sports Café, and had a another fun guys night out, that ended in getting late night food and coming home in the morning hours.

Sunday was our day to finish a lot of the work for the upcoming week and I spent a majority of that time finishing the papers for the next few days I needed to get done.

That brings me to Monday the 24th of November, which was another full day at Xtreme Information. I did some of the usual work, worked a little bit with digital imaging, and called it a day there as well. That night I went with the theater class to our last production of the semester, entitled “In a Dark Dark House” which was about two brothers, in adulthood, who had been both beaten and sexually abused as children, and how they live their lives as adults. It was quite a morbid way to end the theater class, but it was still a decent show, and I think I only actually rather appreciated it the next day when I had to let all of it sink in a bit, since it is a little bit unsettling. Tuesday morning I went to classes, and James and I played Chess at a local pub in between our class time which was a fun change of pace of something to do while we had a bit of time to spare. I stayed up really late on Tuesday night to finish all of my unfinished homework, and so that meant that by Wednesday, I was quite tired at Xtreme.

After work at Xtreme on my “official” last day, I was quite beat, because I worked in a new department for the afternoon, and spent most of my time reading, interpreting, and recomposing financial data, which was really boring and almost put me to sleep, but I made it through nonetheless, and it just reconfirmed that no matter what, I’m not going to be an accountant (sorry dad). That night Carver and I went to the pub to celebrate our work being done, and came home early to get some rest, since Thursday morning was the day of my presentation for classes and my last true day of having lots of work to turn in.

Thursday, was Thanksgiving Day, and I went to class like normal. I gave an epic presentation with my roommate Nick on Chinese Culture in London, and then after I was done with class, I headed straight back to the penthouse to begin cooking our Thanksgiving meal. The Penthouse decided to have a full-out Thanksgiving dinner for our flat, and I cooked an entire turkey breast, baked potatoes, and corn, while my friend James made us homemade macaroni and cheese. The four of us ate for about an hour or so straight, were completely stuffed in a food-coma and took short naps afterwards. It was crazy celebrating Thanksgiving in London, but we definitely brought in the holiday with a bang, and had tons of leftovers to spare, which we all thoroughly enjoyed as well. Everyone hung out in our flat for the evening of Thanksgiving celebrations after our amazing dinner and we all called it a night relatively early, well at least I did, because in the morning, I had to fly to Amsterdam with my friend Katie.

So Friday the 28th, I was up early in the morning, caught the Heathrow Express train, and was airborne by about 8:45am, and was landing safely in Amsterdam by 11am their time. First off, the Netherlands, are COLD this time of year. I didn’t anticipate that, and so many times during the weekend my ears were very pink, as well as my nose, and I wore my coat pretty tightly wrapped and lots of layers as well. Other than not anticipating the cold and windy weather of Amsterdam, it’s quite a beautiful and eclectic city. Katie and I checked into our hostel right away, the Youth Hostel Meeting Point, and decided to go touring the city for a bit. We made our way down toward New Markt, which is essentially the market place of the town, and I found a supermarket there (I always locate food once I arrive in a city), and also passed Amsterdam’s Chinatown, which was also exciting to see, since it seems to be a tourist attraction in every major city on the planet. Katie and I saw some of the coffee shops, and I was hungry, so we ate McDonalds (always a plus) and we also ate Kebabs later in the day…which is another one of my favorite delicacies on this side of the pond. We explored some more in the cold, although we couldn’t bear to stay outside for too long of periods at a time, and we walked in the daytime through the Red Light District as well. I’ll explain more about this below. But either way, it is a very interesting city that’s quite liberal, but also quite quiet, calm, and relaxed. There aren’t many cars at all in Amsterdam, there’s public transportation, and a lot of bikes, that was also a nice change from busy and loud London-town. After we did a loop around most of the inner-city for the day, we grabbed dinner, and actually called it an early night in our hostel. I was wiped out from traveling, my busy week of school, and exhausted from staying up so late earlier in the week that sleep was much appreciated by the time I actually passed out.

However, I was up early the next morning, grabbed a bit to eat, and Katie and I decided to do a walking tour of the entire city, with the free walking tour provided by a hostel recommendation. The 3-hour tour of the city took us to all the major sites. It showed us part of the Amsterdam Historical Museum, through the Red Light District, to New Markt, to some of the oldest churches and Jewish quarter, and ended at the Anne Frank house too! Not only that, it was thoroughly informational, and all free! After the walking tour, I dragged Katie to the Van Gogh museum, which was actually a bit of a bummer to tell you the truth. I looked at all 200+ pieces of Van Gogh’s art, and frankly, although he lived an impressive and depressing life too, they didn’t even have some of his most famous artwork! So I was a bit upset about how much we paid for that, versus the overall outcome, but oh well. Even so, it gets dark in Amsterdam very fast, just like in London, so by the time we’d done an afternoon walking tour, gone all the way to Van Gogh, and got back toward our hostel it was night time. Katie went back to the hostel to take a nap, and I decided to go on a guided tour of the Red Light District, since the same tour guide that we had earlier, was doing another tour later that evening, and she was so awesome and knowledgeable.

This of course is where I learned the history of prostitution, the reason Amsterdam legalized it, the way that the whole institution operates, and frankly, it was a very very interesting and intellectually stimulating experience. Now this may seem like a complete crack if you haven’t been there, but there are many many misconceptions that people have about prostitution and also the way that it occurs in Amsterdam. I don’t believe I’m whole heartedly in favor of it, but frankly, it works for The Netherlands, so it’s fine. Anyhow, just some random facts about prostitution there in Amsterdam, first off, all of the prostitutes in Amsterdam work for themselves. It is illegal to pimp, or sell women, or practice prostitution on the streets whatsoever. The Red Light District is heavily enforced by police, and is a very safe place to walk around at night. All of the prostitutes, in addition to being self-employed, pay taxes, get tested twice a week, and rent out a window-space for 150 euros for an eight hour time slot as well. All of them are anonymous, they do not want anyone to know their identities, they are just working for a living like everyone else in society there. Last few facts: there are definitely strict legal rules about prostitution in Amsterdam, involving the use of contraceptives, and many regulations on privacy, as well as safety for these women and such. None of them are required to do what they do, nor are they forced to do anything they don’t want to, it’s just an occupation of choice. Additionally, Amsterdam has a very strong sex-education program in their school systems, the lowest rate of teenage pregnancies in Europe, and also prostitutes in Amsterdam as well as youth in Amsterdam have a 17% sexually transmitted disease rate, so prostitution doesn’t increase this percentage whatsoever, and vice versa…all of these are common misconceptions.

Anyhow, I learned more about the history and such, but most people won’t believe anything I’ve written anyways, needless to say, I was actually surprised by a lot of the things I learned in Amsterdam, and it was an interesting comparison to for instance the states, where sex, and youth, and all of those other issues are far more controversial, than the way that it’s treated in the Netherlands. But anyhow, after that tour, I left and found a pub near our hostel that had a live cover band that played oldies, rock and roll, and new singles, so I listened to them for about two hours before going back to the hostel, and calling it a night.

Sunday, I woke up early again and Katie and I wandered through the blistering cold to the Anne Frank museum, which was probably the highlight of my Amsterdam experience overall. I’m a huge history nerd, so walking through the same house that Anne and her family hid in, and seeing the hidden bookcase, and listening to the documentary accounts of the people that helped them hide was just mind-blowing. I saw her original diary in the last exhibit of the room, and also stood in each and everyone of the rooms that housed the secret lives of Anne and her family. I never formally red Anne Frank’s diary when I was younger, but it is definitely something I’d be interested in reading nowadays after touring the place, because their story, and the occupation of Nazi-Netherlands in the second World War is just fascinating. To be in the same places as all of these great people in history has been such an experience and honor as well, that I can’t really imagine what it would have been like to live during the times of others hard struggles of the past.

After the tour of the museum, we basically headed back to the Grand Central train station and caught a train back to the airport. We flew back to London by dinner time, and I was back safe and sound in the Penthouse by 7pm. It was nice to have a relaxing weekend away after my tough week in November, and was nice to sleep in my bed again for sure.

Monday the 31st was another fun day at Xtreme, where I finished up work with the financial news of the previous week, and that night I had one final paper to write of my semester, so I was up late doing that for quite some time. After we finished our work, Carver took me down the street with Nick to the local Thai restaurant to have a pint and recap our coursework. After a late night grocery run, we finally called it a night and prepared for one of our last days of class on Tuesday.

Tuesday was the last day official classes, so it was pretty amazing. I went to GST class, watched some student presentations, then got lunch with Brett and James at a Fish/Chips joint (we had burgers) and then my Theater Class was kinda cool because we had a guest speaker who is both a professional actor and director, and did lots of work with Shakespeare (he even knew of the Blackfriars in Staunton, VA!) so we talked to him for quite a while about acting, styles, and directing, which was all intriguing to me as well. Of course after that, I headed back to the Penthouse to clean up a bit because in the afternoon, everyone came over and we had a big party and dinner to celebrate the end of the semester. So all of the guys from the downstairs flat came up and hung out with us for a while, and some of our other Elon mates came too, that was a lot of fun. Later we all went to our usual hangout spot on Tuesday nights, which was Sports Café, and we came home late. Great success.
Wednesday morning I went into Xtreme Information again. Of course, Monday/Wednesday (the 30th, and 3rd) were both overtime for me, but I just enjoyed working so much, that they didn’t mind having me around. So anyways, I did my usual thing, but then my boss, David, took me out to lunch with all of my co-workers to a noodle-bar called “Wagamama” here, and they gave me gifts and bonus for working so hard this semester and bought me lunch. It was a very thoughtful and much appreciated gesture. The co-workers even got me an authentic England soccer jersey, which I’ll of course wear with pride too. After work, my other co-workers Jamie, James, and Chris, all took me out to have a pint at their favorite pub, and that was a hilarious time, because we all just shared funny stories, and talked forever about working, and “the real world” and such. Later, Jamie and Chris and I all went to dinner at this place called Bodeans, which is a UK attempt at like southern cooking, but it’s basically just a lot of meat. I had an enormous meal of pork bbq, chicken, ribs, and such, which was epic, and then after that Chris and Jamie took me to their favorite place on earth, which was called the Kareoke Box, and we stayed out late singing Christmas Kareoke tunes among other songs until about 12:30am, when we finally called it a night since we all had to commute home. That was a wonderful closing chapter to my experience at Xtreme Information, and will be a night that I’ll always remember from my trip.

Thursday the 4th rolled around soon after and I was up and decided to travel to Oxford with James, Carver, and my friend Melanie. So we took a train and go to Oxford by lunch time and ate at an authentic pub there, as well as booked an afternoon walking tour of the city. The tour took us in and out of a number of the colleges that make up the entire university, all of which were absolutely stunning and gorgeous, and we also saw many of the locations where Harry Potter was filmed, or at least got the ideas to film a replica of. That was for Kelsey, of course. But on a more serious and nerdy note, it was incredible to hear about all the many details of Oxford and its rich heritage. For instance, aside from having many great famous people graduating from the walls of the University (Tolkien, Christopher Wren, Hugh Grant :-P), I saw the original wall that used to surround the city of Oxford when it was fortified, learned that Hitler didn’t bomb Oxford in WWII because he was originally going to use it for his intelligence base when he took over England, and learned that every year, one of the largest libraries there that houses a copy of every book ever made in the UK has to build 2.5 miles of bookshelf just to hold all of the texts!

Needless to say, I was thoroughly engaged and at the front of the pack with our tour guide, rambling off questions. Anyhow, Oxford was an exciting adventure, we even saw some of their museum of science, which was also cool because I saw an original manuscript written by Sir Isaac Newton, and also some famous astronomer’s instruments too.

Friday the 5th, brought on Carver’s favorite part of the trip, which was the Fuller’s Beer Factory tour. We took a group of 12 Elon students to the Beer factory out in suburban London to tour the facility and talk to locals. This of course lasted a number of hours, we did a beer tasting of all the types of beers that Fuller’s produces, and I even got a picture behind the bar counter as a “bar tender,” which I thought was pretty sweet. After that we all headed back to the flats and I ended up getting sleep on a Friday night, because I was exhausted from tourism, if you can even imagine that.

Saturday though was pretty exciting because I took a train with a group of Elon kids again and we traveled to Greenwich, England for the afternoon. Greenwich is a small town in outer suburban London that has a beautiful park and scenery, and of course is famous because it houses one of the greatest imaginary lines in history…the Prime Meridian. There’s a huge amount of hype over an invisible and made up line, but I’m going to be honest, it was pretty dang cool though, no doubt. Anyhow, so the 5-6 of us spent plenty of time getting our pictures standing in two hemispheres at once, as well as touring the many museums that are on top of the hill in the middle of the park. I personally found the Royal Observatory to be one of my favorites, because we actually got to see Halley’s grave (as in the Halley comet), and learn about the history of longitude, based on star mapping, and all those fun and exciting details too. After that, we had one last fiesta in the penthouse for all of our mates that were getting ready to leave and called it a night. My friends from Elon time in London was winding down, and it was definitely evident for sure.

Sunday the 7th was a day spent mostly packing. But, we did take a quick excursion out of the flats to get some fresh air. The weekend was a big shopping weekend for the holidays, since London has been decorated for Christmas for a number of months now, and there were people everywhere walking around and shopping. I saw plenty of people playing Christmas music in the streets, got a picture with Po from Kung Fu Panda since they were trying to sell the DVD in a store, and even found a few great deals on some souvenirs and such too. After this, I spent most of the day, just like the rest of my flat mates, packing and getting ready for departure, as everyone else was supposed to leave on Monday morning, and I was still going to be traveling around. We ended Sunday evening with a great big dinner at the local Thai restaurant and shared lots of stories about the previous semester and my friend Jon Mahlandt from Elon (in Scotland for the semester) was in town for the weekend, so he even joined us for a great meal and some good stories too. We got some sleep and called it a night, and I must say, it was a great picture-esk way to end our semester here in London.

Monday morning I was up pretty early. I was able to wave goodbye to a few of my friends before they left (even if I was half asleep) and I even finished packing up my last bag so that I could be ready to move out. James had a later flight, so he and I went and got a second round of Thai food, and played some chess at the local pub/restaurant on our street, and then I eventually helped him get his bags onto the tube, and off and on his way toward the airport. After that, I made my way to the Natural History Museum, and explored for a number of hours, which was pretty remarkable, because the British exhibits on the dinosaurs are absolutely incredible. I felt like a little kid roaming in a big colossal prehistoric age, but that’s okay, I enjoy interactive museums way too much.

After that, I took some of my bags over to my friend Mack’s place since I’d be staying with him the next night, and I got some sleep after trying to plan my trip for the next ten days. All of my friends from Elon had gone home, but I still have 10 days ahead to explore and travel, so I’m trying to make the best of it.

When today rolled, around, yes, finally, 5,000 words later, you’ve finally caught up to me today, Tuesday, December 9th, I got up and was mobile and out of my flat by 11am. I said goodbye to the penthouse and Clifton Gardens and Little Venice one last time, and I headed out with my laptop bag over one shoulder and my giant over-stuffed backpack on my back. I headed straight for more museums today, first stopping for 2-3 hours at the Imperial War Museum, and then later to the Victoria-Albert museum. The War museum is a must-see in my opinion, if you ever visit London, only because the WWI, WWII, and Holocaust Exhibits are absolutely spectacular. In addition to reading so much information about tactics, history, weaponry, and the scenes of those times, the struggles that the people have to go through in wartime is so immense. They even have a real life trench scenario to get a feel for what it must have been like in trench-warfare, so I was in heaven for quite some time. The Holocaust museum was very humbling, and once again, is another reason why I think I’m so intrigued by history, and so amazed about people’s triumph stories, and horrified by the terrorizing ones. It’s just a crazy and indescribable feeling overall, but I was blown away by the exhibits and thoroughly enjoyed them too. As for the Victoria-Albert museum, which is more or less a museum full of artifacts of royalty and history, I was indecisive overall. The musical instrument section was cool, as well as the cast section, where there were many different replicas and some originals of large monuments and sculptures created over time. I did also get to see one of Raphael’s most famous paintings…”The Meeting in Athens?” maybe something like that, I forget the name, I better look it up, but this is getting way too long, anyways, even so I saw lots more paintings, sculptures, artwork, and other artifacts to my heart’s content that I left, and called it a day. I later went out to dinner with my friend Mack from Elon and his girlfriend Becky, to an amazing chicken-grill restaurant, where I ate my fair share of food, and then am crashing on Mack’s floor for the evening. I’m lucky to have friends in the area that are willing to give up some floors pace for me, that’s for sure.

Anyhow, the next 10 days are up in the air. I’m going to Brighton tomorrow and the next day to crash on my friend Weezy’s floor/couch and see the sights there. I’ll probably try to come back to London, because I want to take a day trip out to Hampton Courts, and possibly Bath too if I get the chance, if not, I may try to visit Wales for a few days and stay in a hostel there, but on Monday the 15th, I’m flying to Dublin with all my gear to stay in Ireland for a couple of days until Wednesday the 18th, where I’ll be heading back to the states. As for now, that’s all of the wrapping up you’ll ever need to keep up to speed on my life. I’m excited to be traveling and adventuring on my own, and my backpack, although heavy, has served me very well. I’ll try to keep you posted, but if not, I’m sure I’ll see everyone back on the state-side soon. Take care, miss you all lots, love you too, and above all else, check out the pictures if you can. Most are up on Facebook, and I’ll try to put some up on my picasa site, but if I don’t I’ll show them to you in full on my return! Until next time…Cheers!

My New Haircut, The Red Army, & Livin' Large

Wow! It’s been exactly two weeks since I’ve updated my blog for you all, so I apologize for the delay, but I’ve been absolutely jam-packed with events, schoolwork, interning, travelling, and experiencing Europe to the fullest, so here’s going to be another long and drawn-out play-by-play of my adventures from my side of the pond.

Let’s pick up where we left off last. On Thursday, Nov. 6th, I was back in my culture class to cover the election and catch up on the time that we had off from break and such. It was a beautiful day in London, so we got to spend a little time outside instead of being cooped up all day. That was nice. After grabbing a quick lunch, I went down to Soho to get a haircut. I found this small little barber shop that was recommended to me by a friend that has £5 haircuts. A little Greek man runs the shop, there are two chairs, and he and his partner in crime just shove customers in and out in rapid succession to get the job done, snip snip. Regardless, I’ll take a 6 pound haircut any day.

That evening, one of my flatmates, James, was having his brother come into town for a number of days, so when he got into town we made dinner and decided to have people over to our flat to hang out for the evening. On Friday morning, we got up early and took the tube to the outskirts of London where we went to the Fullers Beer Factory for a factory tour. It was only 8 of the guys from our trip (including James’ brother John) to show up at the factory at 11am for our tour. Our tour guide, Tim, a British War Vet, was the long time building manager of the Fullers Factory and now that he has retired, he is a full-time tour guide for the factory. He was great. I’d never actually seen anything like this factory before, much less actually knew the entire process of making beer, so it was actually quite an educational experience, because many of the old machinery is still there, just placed beside all of the hi-tech stuff, so it was cool to see both the old and the new and how it all came together. It’s interesting too, because there is only one Fullers Beer factory in the entire world, and everything made by Fullers, must come through their London location. They make something outrageous like a few million pints of beer per day, and all of it is essentially made, for a month from now, because of the fermentation process. That’s just unreal. Anyhow, after the tour, we hung out with Tim a bit, asked more questions, tried the different types of Fullers products, and then started our trek back home after visiting the gift shop. We picked up a quick stop at a Chinese restaurant for lunch and headed back home to the flats. In the evening, we decided to take John out in London to see the nightlife, so we went to a club for a little while and then called it an early night. I’m not much of a great London clubber, but at least he got to see what it was all about.

Saturday, we went down to the local pub around lunch time to watch the Manchester United versus Arsenal football match. It was a great game, and in our small little pub, it was standing room only because of all the locals. We only get 4 and a half channels in the penthouse, so we obviously have to go elsewhere to catch any good matches, but it’s a very cool experience to be in a room full of working class Brits that are all yelling and screaming at the tele over something like a throw-in. Classic. After the game, John, James, Mike and I all grabbed McDonalds for lunch, and went grocery shopping for the upcoming week. After that I headed down to the South Bank of the Thames to see the tail end of the Lord Mayor’s festival, which is essentially a large firework show, and a parade because it’s already time for the celebration of Christmas in London, so the lights come on pretty early. I missed the actual fireworks, but went with a few of the girls from my program to dinner and caught up for a few before heading back to the Penthouse to meet up with the guys. Later that evening, we hosted people over to the Penthouse from the building to hang out for the night. Some of the other students that aren’t from our Elon program also share our living facilities with us. They are from Balls State University in Indiana, and we haven’t had many opportunities to hang out with them, so it was nice to see some newer faces and get to know new people. That was essentially the end to our Saturday though, since we decided it was too pricey to actually go out on the town for the night.

Sunday morning was a day I used to get back into the swing of preparing for the upcoming week. In addition to the typical laundry and cleaning chores, I got a bit of work done and had a relaxing low key day. Not too much excitement, but that all came on Monday.

Monday morning (this was Nov. 10th); I went to work early and worked with both the AMMO team and The Reel team at Xtreme. I’ve done a lot of different tasks over the course of my semester, for instance, I updated a database for the AMMO people, by calling over 200 some companies, and confirming or changing their contact details just so that we’d have verbal confirmation that our information was correct in our system. Additionally, when I worked at The Reel, I’d do my typical crediting of ads in our program, but I’d also do some things such as work in Adobe InDesign, to help format our newest brochure/DVD product in it’s latest stages, do write-ups for currently featured ads that would be posted on our website, all while hanging out with my awesome co-workers. It’s nice to be in a low-key, very productive, but friendly and exciting work-atmosphere. If anything, it’s the most encouraging and best atmosphere I enjoy working in too.

However, the fun didn’t just stop at work on Monday, because Monday night, I was invited by the Reel guys to go to the London International Festival Awards in the heart of London. So, I suited up, took the tube and met the guys (Jamie, Chris, and Nick) at Leicester Square near the West End of London, where we all went to the Hippodrome which is where the event was held. We walked up to the entrance, talked to the bouncers and were smoothly through the door as Press participants. Immediately after checking in our coats in the cloak room, we were met by ushers all serving complimentary drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Everything from jumbo shrimp, fish and chips, a delicacy that we titled “jenga chips” (because they were stacked atop each other), and squid were all just bites to eat along the way. Of course, Chris and I were the champions of eating…a lot. So we stuffed our faces on snacks and drinks before the show even started.

After that, we found our way to our table, which was in the balcony, in our own little section that overlooked the entire stage and ceremony. We were frequently visited by more servers, carrying rice, bite-sized chicken/beef burgers, and bringing us bottles of wine. The four of us dined like kings while we watched the best in advertisements, photography, and shorts receive awards throughout the evening. Now there’s something I must say about the London International Awards ceremony, because according to my co-workers, this entire event, really doesn’t mean a lot to individuals working in the media business much in the UK, but internationally, this thing is supposed to be like a huge deal. Therefore, lots of individuals from around the globe were there and very excited to be there, so it was at least good for the atmosphere for sure. Now the awards primarily focused on Media Agencies, and production companies, not so much like directors or famous people, so contrary to popular belief, I didn’t see any like “huge stars” or anything throughout the event, just got a lot of free food, and felt really important. Haha. Anyways, after the actual awards ceremony stopped, the Hippodrome staff cleared out the entire bottom floor of tables, people and chairs, and opened up a dance floor. The songs ranged from oldies and rock n’ roll (mainly ABBA and Thriller) to a few contemporary hits too. Regardless, the dance floor filled up with all the guests who decided to dance the night away.

I hung with my co-workers a bit longer before most of them needed to leave. Everyone in the place was at least two times my age, so I did feel quite young to be at such an event, but even so I got a few pictures of myself on the Awards stage, and even snagged a picture with one of the awards themselves, which was pretty cool. I had a seat at the bar to talk with a few Media Agency people about their jobs, and what exactly they were involved with in the corporate world, and a woman sat down beside me and we struck up a conversation. I asked her what agency she was with, but it turns out she was the actual owner of the Hippodrome. Crazy huh? So I talked with her about how her club/venue works for a few, and then met her husband, Peter, the other owner of the place. I think I made a pretty good impression, and it makes for a good story either way. Nevertheless, it was just another outrageous Monday night in London.

Tuesday the 11th was another day of classes and catching up. In the afternoon, I stayed at school to use the free internet access to book my newest flights back to the states. Our semester is supposed to end around December 2nd or 4th, and students are supposed to fly home the 8th, however, I decided to extend my stay in Europe to do a bit more travelling and adventuring, so my official date back to hit US soil is now set for December 18th. I will be flying out of Dublin and getting home in the afternoon, just in time for the holidays.

In the evening of the 11th though was where I got my first big shot at seeing something else monumental, a real live action football match. Our flat and a number of our friends from school here got tickets to the Arsenal versus Wigan match at Emirates Stadium in East London and we all went to the game to watch the thrilling 3-0 shutout that Arsenal played. It was epic. The crowd was crazy and intense, filled with chants, shouting, and cheers, and even when the game ended and thousands of people flooded the streets of suburban London everyone was still making noise. We had to catch a tube down to central London, and we went into a McDonalds for a late night snack, and even in our suits and Arsenal colors, we still encountered fans chanting “Red Army” (Arsenal’s team name) and asking about the final result. It was definitely an experience I’m glad I got to have.

Wednesday of course was another day back in the office. I was working with the Reel again and did a little bit of different work because I was assigned to find new adverts, shorts, and virals for The Reel product. So I skimmed and viewed some 30-50 ads and picked out what I thought to be the most innovative ones and found the credits for them, so that we could further investigate them later. This was awesome because I’ve now worked on more or less the entire assembly-line process of making “The Reel” product, from start to finish, which is incredible as an intern. Following work, Wednesday night was low key for me because John left our flat and I had to get ready for my trip to Athens that I was going to be taking the next day. I hung out with a few of the flat mates and other guys from the building and called it a night so that I was rested up for my excursion. Thursday morning I spent packing and getting ready for the airport before my flight to Athens, Greece where I planned to spend the weekend at with my friend Kat.

I’m going to stop my blog real quick at this point in time at this rather cliff-hanger moment, only because I’m going to do a full blog entry all about Greece, and my amazing experience there. That should be up soon and ready for reading, hopefully by the time you can digest this. Sorry for the delay once again in my blogging, but as my semester is slowly winding down, I’ve been jam-packing my time with adventuring, and I wouldn’t imagine it any other way. Keep in touch, stay classy, and keep the updates coming. Cheers!

Old Friends, My Museum, and More Stars!

Greetings again from across the pond! I hope everyone voted, is in good health, and good spirits as well, because it’s a pretty grey day in London, but it’s still an awesome place to be!

Here’s the quick update on the most recent events of my life over the past few days, just to keep everyone on their toes. On Thursday, Oct. 30th, our flat hosted one of my great friends from back in middle school, Jason Lericos. He’s currently studying in Sussex which is about 45 minutes south of London by train, and he was coming up for the weekend to visit with his program, and decided to pop in a night early for another chance to catch up and hang out. It was great seeing an old friend again, and sharing some more funny stories, having him meet my flat mates, and showing him around London a bit more.

Friday was of course Halloween, which isn’t hugely celebrated in the UK, but there are always people interested in dressing up though, so during the day I caught up on my normal everyday things like laundry and such, but I also took Jason to Westminster Abbey (we went inside, which is really gorgeous, and has a lot of famous people buried there – Mary Queen of Scots, Oliver Cromwell…etc) but we also had some time to walk along the Thames and we saw tons of living statues and street performers that were all dancing around, acting about, juggling things, all for the little kids that happened to be dressed up for Halloween, so that was fun as well.

Friday night I called it early actually, because I was originally supposed to go to with one of my co-workers to a huge Halloween bash that had live bands playing, but unfortunately it didn’t work out. I’ve also never been a hardcore Halloween celebrator, so I didn’t feel like I missed out on a ton or anything though, besides, I needed sleep.

Saturday morning brought on the first of November, and it was chilly here for sure. By the way, I must thank my grandmother for the wonderful scarf that she gave me before I came over here, because, although I’m not normally a typical scarf kinda guy, I’ve sure adopted the metropolitan look recently and man is it warm! I frequently get lots of compliments on its quality and attractive nature, so that’s always a plus, so once again, Gram Star…thanks a lot! Needless to say, Saturday had pretty dull weather, it rained most of the day and was rather gross, so I didn’t get really any cultural excursions in or anything, but I did go get a pair of jeans, since I ripped a hole in my other ones that I wore almost daily, so I guess that was rather exciting.

Sunday brought better weather, we hung out for part of the morning with some Elon friends who came from Paris to visit us for the weekend, and then I decided that in addition to errands, I’d get some culture out of my Sunday afternoon, so I went to the Tate Modern (naturally, because it’s my name), which is the Modern Art Gallery in London, and spent some time on my own checking out the newest contemporary art. I must say, I don’t really get any of it, and frankly, some of it confuses me, but I’m sure it all took a great deal of time to do, so I guess I can respect that for sure…needless to say, I feel as though I may be able to be a contemporary artist if all of my other career endeavours fall through and I buy some finger paint.

Anyhow, now is the boring part of my blog because on Monday morning I woke up sick. I didn’t end up going to work for the first time this semester, and I slept quite a lot, ate soup, and took lots of meds for my cold that I got. I’m lucky to have survived this long though to be honest, because most of the people in the office I work in, have been sick sometime over the last month, so I guess I caught the tail end of that. Oh well.

Needless to say, Monday night I went out with the Theater class to a production of WarHorse, which was originally a children’s novel (a rather dark one at that though) that was turned into a stage production. It’s a story about a horse (obviously) and the book is told through the perspective of this horse, named Joey, who eventually is sold to the War (WWI) and traded many times between the British, then captured by the Germans, then eventually finds the British again, and in the end, is reunited with his original owner, a young boy named Albert. It’s cute, not gonna lie. However, the play itself…took forever. It was something like 3ish hours long, and also had an almost like 30 minute interval, plus, they had technical difficulties as well in the middle of a scene, which was unfortunate and that set the play back a while too. It was very cool how they portrayed the story though, because they used giant, puppet horses, manned by 3 men each, of which two puppeteers were actually inside the horse…hard to actually picture, I know, but it was a unique way of portraying horse-like movements and such, so that was something I was impressed with.

Tuesday of course brought on class, and that wasn’t too shabby, and I also met a few of my flatmates at the local pub near school, to talk history with their history professor. That was very awesome, because I’m not taking a history course while I’m over here, so any opportunity to talk history is always something I look forward to. After that, I headed home to cook a quick pasta dinner and got ready again, because we had a second play to see this week last night in the West End.

Last night’s show was an adaptation of Chekov’s Ivanov which is the story about a depressed man named Ivanov (played by Kenneth Branagh – he’s the guy that played Lockhart in Harry Potter) who deals with a lot of gossiping neighbours, bad funds, and a dying wife, and is just kinda stuck in a giant conundrum. It’s actually a really really compelling show, I enjoyed it a lot, and it had a stellar cast too! It also featured Kevin McNally, who played Mr. Gibbs in Pirates of the Carribean (my friends got a picture with him, which is kinda cool too), and I really enjoyed the show all around. So it was an enjoyable evening.

Additionally, it was of course, election night, so most of my flatmates and other peers stayed up to the wee hours of the morning to watch all of the BBC’s election coverage of the Presidential Race. So despite the fact that the US election went until about 5AM in the morning UK-Time, most all of my friends survived the entire thing, just to see the final results. I must say, that I went to bed around 2:30 London Time, as I assumed (because all of my friends here are like political analysts) that Virginia would go Democrat for the first time in forever, and I was awake for Obama to win Ohio, which was also pretty monumental, so I went to bed after that.

Nevertheless, it’s a grey Wednesday in London town and I’m back at work at Xtreme Info. Feeling alright and still on the road to speedy recovery and looking forward to the weekend. I’m finishing up school work, still trying to do cultural things around London and the greater area, since I still need to complete those sort of things before the end of my adventures here, and I’m looking forward to my few trips that I have planned already for the month of November. Here’s the rundown of expeditions that will take me across the continent.

From Nov 14-16: I’ll be meeting my friend from Elon (Kat) in Athens, Greece
From Nov 28-30: I’ll be in Amsterdam, Netherlands for the weekend, reuniting with friends from Barcelona, and meeting new ones too I hope

I am also looking to plan a trip to Switzerland before I head back across the pond, and also extend my visit in Europe beyond the semester’s end as well.

I hope that you’ll email me updates and let me know what’s new in the US, aside from the presidency, because I’m kinda burnt out on all of that, but either way, I miss you all and can’t wait to see you soon enough…of course, after I tour more of the world  Cheers!! Bye!

When in Rome...ITALIA - Fall Break Part II

ROME DAY 4
So Brett and I hopped a plane in the early afternoon for Rome. We were up in Barcelona early in the morning and out the door from our wonderful hostel toward the airport, no problemo. Basically, airport food is expensive…I’m sure everyone already knew this, but when you are on the go a lot, sometimes it’s the only alternative though. So whether it was a sandwich here, a coke there, basically I was replenished enough, and we boarded our plane, wrote in our journals, and caught an hour shut eye, then touched down in the Roma Fucimini airport by about 4ish.

We took a train to the central station in Rome, and walked 4-5 blocks, and checked in at the Yellow Hostel, and Brett and I straight away decided we were going to get authentic Italian food. So by about 5 or 6 o’clock, we walked all the way down the stairs and next door to a pizzeria and I ordered the lasagna. It was scrumptulescent. Afterwards, Brett and I decided that we had a little time to do some explore for our first night, so we walked about 20 minutes through new Rome down to the Coliseum to see it at night. That was epic. It’s gorgeous at night, and people just drive by it along the road, as if it’s in their way to their destination, that’s crazy, it’s the freakin’ Coliseum we’re talking about here, a huge chunk of history, centuries old, and it’s just another right turn for the crazy Italian drivers…oh well, as a history buff and true tourist, I can appreciate it for what it is though.

Anyhow, we were wiped out for sure, so we caught a metro back to our hostel and called it an early night, we had to get up early for our adventures in the next few days for sure!

ROME/FLORENCE DAY 5
Up early again, Brett and I got ready, and we checked out of the Yellow Hostel. We caught a metro to the Vatican City, and were going to climb to the top of St. Pauls Basilica, but there was a huge crowd of a thousand or so there, and the church was closed, so we decided to go see the Vatican Museum instead, and the Sistine Chapel, but oh wait, of course, long line there too. So Brett and I were in a conundrum…what to do? So we walked back into the crowd of 1000 some people in the center of Vatican City, pushed our way to the front of the crowd, and find some chairs. We randomly run into our friend Jen Scotto, who’s actually studying with us in London from Elon, but she happened to be in Italia, and Rome at the same time as us, so that was crazy to see a familiar face without planning it ahead of time, but it was still very comforting…small world eh?

Well the reason of course there was a crowd…in case you haven’t seen the photos already, was because the POPE was speaking! Crazy right? Basically three times a week, the Pope speaks, and delivers a short sermon to all of the pilgrims that travel to see him there. He speaks 5 different languages fluently, and it’s pretty incredible, not gonna lie. Even if you’re not very religious, it’s still pretty cool to be that close to someone who is titled “his holiness.” Anyhow, when he enters the city, he rides in this car, something like the Pope-Mobile or something, and gets to get close to the crowd. Of course Brett, Jen, and I all jumped on our chairs, moved forward, and were about 10 feet from the guy, so that was at least a once in a lifetime experience I suppose, not bad for a group of 3 poor college kids who got in and somehow found front row seats.

Anyhow, after the Pope’s speech in English (I got it all on tape)…Brett and I grabbed paninis on the go, and bolted for the train station.

We hopped a train for Florence, and journaled some more along the way, it’s a great time to write in your journal if you normally aren’t the “journaling” type like myself, but anyhow, the Italian countryside is so scenic and beautiful, it’s quite the trip. But I’ll fast forward you into our first steps in Florence itself.

Welcome to the birthplace of the Renaissance, Florence, Italy. Artists thrive here, photographers envy it, and sculpters…well they do whatever they do best. Regardless, Brett and I wandered the streets with all our bags for quite some time looking for our hostel that was called “the Eurostudent Hostel”…fitting eh? Anyways, we walk past this restaurant that is supposed to be next door to our place, and we find this small little door, by itself, with a number of buzzers on the side of it. One small buzzer says “Eurostudent” and I look at Brett, and wonder what kinda place we actually set ourselves up with, but either way, we climb 5 flights of stairs, and a guy opens the door to the Eurostudent, he’s short, very Italian, has a half buttoned shirt with a super hairy chest, and introduces himself with a thick accent as “Franco.” Little did I know this character was probably going to be one of the best parts of my experience for Fall Break.

The Eurostudent was actually an amazing hostel, it was small and intimate, but the rooms were large, each with about 6-7 beds, and we had a nice bathroom, and kitchen area as well. Franco checked us in, gave us keys, and then pointed out all the places to go in Florence if we only had one day to do so. It was awesome, we really lucked out by picking friendly places with a lot of very helpful people that owned them. So Brett and I decided to waste no time, so we threw our stuff down and peaced out down onto the Florence streets to explore. We first went to the museum where Michelangelo’s “David” is…which was 10 Euro ($15), but it was so worth it. Michelangelo had so much of an impact on Italy and all of its artwork, it was unreal, and David is actually like probably some 15ft tall, with the base included, and so perfectly sculpted. It sounds cliché to say something like that, but until you’re there, walking around the base and just admiring the fact that anyone could put so much detail into a depiction of someone, is incredible. So that was worth the cost. The other artwork in the museum wasn’t quite as extravagant as we expected, but seeing the David was so unbelievably great.

Next, we hit up the cathedral of Santa Maria (familiar right?) which is also known for its dome…or the “Duomo”. Brett and I took on the 436 some steps to the top (steps was also a very reoccurring theme for our trip) where we stayed for about 45 minutes to catch the sunset over Florence. Romantic huh? Haha, anyways, Florence is absolutely GORGEOUS. The capitals were necessary there because there really isn’t another way to describe the splendor of the city of Florence, from the mountain line on the horizon perfectly fading into the river that sinks into the middle of the city that sits still in a freeze frame of beauty. (That was probably a little overkill, but it sounded really good at the time). Even so, I’m not sure if my pictures will truly do it justice, but at sunset, the city just lights up. It’s so unlike other cities, where there is an older part from the past, and then an industrial side, everything in Florence has been kept the same, similar architecture, style, everything is just beautiful, and even that doesn’t do it complete justice. You really CAN understand why artists and sculptors fell in love with a place like Florence centuries ago.

So after that experience, Brett and I headed back to our hostel and the Eurostudent, and Franco was cooking the hostel dinner. It was included in our price, which was unreal, and Franco sent us on a trip to the store for wine, where he gave us 10 empty bottles, and told us to fill them up. In Italy, Florence especially, the wine is on tap from gargantuan bottles, I’d never seen something like that before, but it was a pretty cool site to see regardless. So the other guys that came with us, all took our bottles back to Franco, where he had finished cooking an amazing pasta dish in mozzarella with meatballs mixed in. It was absolutely epic. The food was so good and we tried Franco’s favorite wine, which was delicious as well. Then, Franco wanted to go out for a night on the town in Florence, so our entire hostel (mind you there were about 15 of us, crammed around one small dinner table designed for 6 getting to know each other and laughing and sharing stories) followed Franco and Tommy, the other owner of the Eurostudent to their favorite pub, and then later to a techno club.

I sat at the bar talking to Tommy, who was 50 years old, lived in Italy for 30 years and speaks 3 different languages. He was a native of Sweeden, and goes back every month to visit his family there, as he is still a bachelor in Florence. I’ve never met a more genuine person that was so thoroughly interested in hearing about me and my stories, and I was so amazed by a person who works in a hostel for a living, cooks for himself, is multilingual and just meets so many interesting characters for a living. It was great. So after a lot of laughs, jokes, and a little bit of the local football highlights, we headed to a club that had the typical light up dance floor and smoke machines, we met some more friends through our Australian roommates and we even ran into a few of our Elon friends that study with us in London, and happened to be in Florence for the night! How crazy is that? Once again, small world. Then we called it a night after a while, because of course, I still had quite the trip ahead of me.

FLORENCE/ROME DAY 6
Brett and I were up in the morning, and went adventuring through the rest of Florence, we went to Ponche Vechio (spelling?) which is essentially “Old Bridge” I’m pretty sure, because it’s one of the oldest and most beautiful bridges that goes through Florence. We hit a few more of the amazing plazas, saw more statues and art, and then we knew we needed to get back to Rome, so we were soon enough back on a train by lunch time toward Rome again. After our journal time, and a recap of our wonderful time with Franco and the gang we met at the Eurostudent (we got a photo-op with Franco, I’m sure you’ll be able to tell which one he is) we finally arrived back in Roma and were back checking in again at the Yellow Hostel.

We quickly dropped our bags, locked up our stuff and actually jumped back on the metro toward Vatican city again, because we still needed to conquer St. Paul’s Basilica. So, about 30 minutes later, and 500+ steps later (reoccurring theme remember?) we were at the top of the Basilica and overlooking the amazing site of Rome as it stands today, and guess what…another sunset to top it all off. The weather was absolutely impeccable our entire trip, we got super lucky. We took in the sites for a while, I got my typical 450 pictures I take every time we go anywhere with a view, and then we toured the inside of the church for a while as well. We saw more of Michelangelo’s sculptures, including the Virgin Mary and Jesus, which FUN FACT: that’s the only statue that he actually inscribed his name on…I think that’s cool. And at about six o’clock, we got some more paninis and headed back to the hostel to regroup.

That night, Brett and I met up at the Coliseum with two of our Elon friends from London, Chelsea Anderson and Tiffany Giannandrea for dinner (Brett and I just had this absolutely delicious dessert which was basically a waffle bowl, with crème/ice cream-esk stuff in it, and filled with strawberries…ahhhhhh so amazing) and then headed back to their flat for the night. Tiff and Chels, had this unreal Spanish-looking Flat to themselves that was very modern, but it overlooked the Coliseum!!!!! I was so jealous, but we just shared our life stories, talked about religion, life, politics, the whole shebang, and then Brett and I headed back to our hostel for the evening. It was a great low-key evening filled with friends, and we had a blast doing it.

ROME DAY 7
So Brett and I once again hit up Vatican City on our third official day in Rome. We still had to check off the Vatican Museum/Sistine Chapel from our list of tourist spots, so we were sped through the line and straight to the student ticket window within a matter of a few minutes. The Vatican museum is huge, it has plenty of galleries to look at, from a gallery of muses (basically mugshots, but statues and such), gallery of tapestries, and a gallery of ancient maps. Of course there are a ton of religious paintings and such, and I got the pleasure of seeing Rafael’s “Transfiguration” which was pretty incredible as well. (Kelsey: you can Wikipedia it to see what it looks like). After about 30 straight minutes of speed walking the place, we finally came to the end of the museum, which as a finale, is Michelangelo’s Sistine chapel. I don’t really know what I thought it was going to be like, but the actual place is incredible, it’s so intricate, detailed, and there’s definitely a reason it took Mikey 15 years to actually complete it. FUN FACT: Michelangelo was actually not originally supposed to be the painter of the Sistine Chapel, the Pope consulted Rafael and other top-notch painters of the day to do it, but they were all too busy with their own works that as a joke all of the painters suggested Michelangelo to do it…because they thought it would ruin his career, since he was a sculptor, and had never painted before, but if the Pope asked him to do something, he’d have to do it…Surprisingly enough, even though it took him 15 years, it’s obviously one of Michelangelo’s most famous works, all because of some stuck up other painters who tried to ruin him.

Anyways, after our trip to the Vatican for the final time (PS: the Vatican is actually is own country…governs itself and is recognized in Italy as a separate nation), Brett and I found a local sandwich shop and we had Pork and Herb paninis that were quite heavenly. Then we made our way to the Plaza Novella, which is where we were meeting up with our tour guide, to take a walking tour of Ancient Rome.

There was a student rally/protest outside one of the government buildings while we were eating our gelato ice cream and listening to street musicians and waiting on our tour, which was an interesting site to see, because it was something different, but there were lots of kids chanting and yelling and fighting for change, basically because I think the government had shifted power and were going to be putting a damper on Education policy.

Anyways, when our tour started, we definitely were in for a treat. Our tour guide started off taking us past of course all the major sites, but the amount of information she had was just unreal. For instance, the Plaza Novella that we started in, which is now a plaza with lots of stores, shops, restaurants etc, was actually in Ancient Rome, a giant stadium used for military training and entertainment as well, but later converted after ancient times, to the plaza that is now there today.

We then made our way through the streets of Rome, saw one of the intact column structures that used to hold up a temple, but now is partially the side of the Bank of Rome. It’s interesting to see how old and new collide, and how much history is preserved in the city that is so rich and has so many centuries of it all around. Of course, our first big stop, was absolutely crazy though, and was the Pantheon. Now, the Pantheon, in Ancient Rome was used as essentially a Universal Place of Worship, kinda like a non-denominational or universal church today. It was designed for people of all shapes, sizes, backgrounds, to freely come and worship whoever or whatever they wanted to. FUN FACT: Surprisingly enough, the Pantheon’s dome is actually larger than St. Paul’s Basilica, although it’s not as tall. The dimensions of the Pantheon are perfect. It is exactly 127 ft from each side of the dome to the other, and the dome is also perfectly 127ft from the floor to the top of the dome, making it a “perfect” sanctuary to worship the Gods in. It has a large hole in the ceiling as a window to the heavens and when it rains, it has holes in the floor that help to drain out the precipitation that comes in. Crazy stuff.

So after the Pantheon, we headed for Trevi fountain, which is the largest fountain in Rome, and one of its famous. It’s a tribute to Neptune, God of the Sea, and is absolutely HUGE! It is an urban legend that those who throw a coin in the fountain someday will return to Rome, so I did anyways. Plus Fun Fact: all the money that goes into the fountain a year (Trevi Fountain usually accumulates something crazy like 500,000 Euros (A million US dollars a year)) is actually donated to the Red Cross, so it’s a good cause regardless. Anyhow, after our photo-ops there, we passed the Church of the Apostles, which is where St. Philip and St. James are buried (underneath the main alter, before the church was constructed). Which was so cool for me because once again, I found myself in the precise spot that so much of ancient history just thrived centuries ago.

After that, we saw one of the oldest columns in Rome, which has a statue of St. Peter upon it, and we also saw another large monument, that tributes a number of the Gods, and is called by many different names, of which I can’t remember any right now, but it essentially looked like a bigger and a lot cooler version of the white house, except on an epic scale, and minus the fence. But on the backside of this monument, was one of my favorite of Michelangelo’s pieces, his statue of Marcus Aurelius. Who’s on horseback, and overlooking all of new Rome. Marcus Aurelius was Rome’s longest ruling emperor and Michelangelo actually had so much respect for this leader that he made him face toward what is now “new Rome” today, because he wanted him to always be remembered as the leader who truly ruled over all of Rome. (Don’t you just love my pointless anecdotes?)

Of course, I’m not getting to my favorite and most monumental part of the trip (as far as Rome’s concerned), because on the backside of Marcus Aurelius, was the view that stunned me, put me in a state of shock and awe, and also made my trip to Rome, so worthwhile. Essentially, right as you pass the steps behind Marcus Aurelius, you’re overlooking all of the ruins of Ancient Rome. It’s called the Roman Forum (The Roman word “Forum” meant “Market”), and it’s the remains of the oldest portion of ancient Rome, which is for the most part still completely intact like it was centuries ago.
The greatest part about all of this, was the fact that we had the opportunity to take our tour through the entire Roman Forum, and walk the same streets that Julius Caesar used during his reign. It’s unreal. The remnants and columns of the oldest temple in Rome date back to approximately 497 BC! That’s absolutely outrageous to me, and also extremely epic. We passed the old temple of Venus (now only a few pillars), built during Caesar’s rule, and even saw another temple that if I’m not mistaken has the oldest pair of bronze doors in the world that are completely still intact. Additionally, Fun Fact: The doors on the temple (green in the picture), were the first ever bronze doors built with a self-locking mechanism in them. AND, archeologists recovered the lock to the door, and key, all crafted in Roman times, and get this, the original key, and lock STILL WORK TODAY! That blows my mind.

Regardless, I stood on the place that was Julius Caesar’s final funeral pyre, after his assassination and when he was burned in front of his palace for all of Rome to see. I also saw the remnants of the floors and ruins of his palace, and it’s just so wild to imagine yourself really understanding how amazing of a place and how busy of a city it became in its day. After that, we saw the Arch of Titus (Arc Tito), which tributes Titus when he conquered Jerusalem, and it one of the first times that in Roman architecture a menorah is actually sculpted, because Judaism was still forming at that point in time. Another fun fact: the cobblestone used in the forum is worn on either side of many of the stones, that was due to the amount of carts that used to travel along the paths so frequently in Roman times. Our tour guide said that to have that much wear on large cobblestone rocks like the ones we were walking on, would have taken 10 million carts frequently traveling through back and forth. Pretty enormous numbers for even that day, but further reiterates the fact that Rome was really a centralized and travel oriented point in its time.

Of course, we had to tour the Coliseum for the conclusion of our tour, which was also unbelievable. We walked in, and stood right underneath the ruins of the Emperor’s box, which is just stunning to see the view. We climbed the large stairs to the second level, and spent some time here on our own, because Brett and I were still taking in all of the sites we’d just witnessed, and also the magnitude of the Coliseum inside itself. You can watch movies like Gladiator, or documentaries on the Romans, or anything of the like, but it’s truly amazing to stand on the dirt filled stones that started it all and just imagine what it would have been like to be a part of a culture so vivacious as the Roman one. Now I’m a super nerd and history buff, so I’m probably exaggerating a little too much for many of you, if you’ve even made it to this part of the blog, but either way, the view is unreal, and was the perfect closing ceremony for our adventure through Ancient Rome.

At last, we decided to catch the metro back to our hostel after grabbing a quick dinner at a local restaurant. We wished that we could have stayed longer, but it was time to get back and start preparing for the way home. In our hostel though we were rooming with two girls that actually were on our original flight from Barcelona to Rome on Tuesday, which was wild because they were also students studying abroad from the states (in Copenhagen though) and had been taking a similar fall break like Brett and I. So on our last evening, Brett and I played cards with these girls and few another friend we had met along the way, and once again, shared cool experiences from all the travels we’ve already had, plus the excitement of where we might go in the future portion of our time here in Europe. It’s always interesting to hear different points of view about studying abroad, and traveling, only because I feel that in America, it’s not as encouraged as it is in for instance the Australian culture, where individuals are expected to dive into the world and experience so many more different cultures and people before they come back home and have a better understanding of who they are and what they want to be. But we stayed up late talking, listening to music, laughing, and overall making some more new friends to hopefully run into later in life and have a moment where we can say…”remember in Rome…” I look forward to that for sure.

So it finally had come to Saturday, the last day of our trip, and we packed up and headed to the airport for our afternoon flight. We got on a British Airways flight at about 1pm, and started the journey home. I journaled a bit and recapped my past few days, and listened to music, just as lunch was being served by the flight attendants. However, right as it’s happening, I look out my window view to see our bird’s eye view of Europe from 34,000 feet up. I was overlooking the Alps as they towered through the cloud line in the afternoon sun and just can’t describe how beautiful this site was. I took some pictures from my window, of the lakes and snow from the peaks that you could see from our view, and how crazy it was to see the clouds just being sliced through by this enormous mountain range, but I must say, it was probably the perfect view to end my fall break experience on. I wanted to just freeze time, stop, and reflect on how gorgeous of a site I just got to experience.

I’m blown away by now at what I’ve seen. I started my fall break with a 30 minute sunset, ended with a view of the Alps, met so many people, had so much good food, had a great time, and had seven of the most sunny days to adventure in. Now, back in London Town, and in my routine, where the clouds seem to overcast the sun more often than not, I just think about how lucky I am to be here. I can’t really explain my gratitude, or like how fortunate I am to be able to talk about these experiences for a lifetime, but I’m excited to keep doing it, and finding new ways to explore and push forward, and maybe tell someone else one day about my time in the middle of nowhere in Florence, where Franco cooked the best food this side of Sicily and that’ll be a story worth telling over and over again.

To wrap up. Finally, you can breathe. Monday/Wednesday were Interning days at Xtreme Information. On one day, I called 200+ companies to verify their contact details and update an old database that hadn’t been touched since probably 1998, so I’m glad that my work is getting put to good use. On the other day, I worked on “The Reel” again, and edited, formatted, and resized hi-resolution photographs that will be used in next month’s edition of our product, as well as formatted the entire template of the brochure as well. It feels really really good to say that I’ve been published multiple times, just as a 20 year old intern with a bit of comm. Experience, and to have tangible results and love what I’m doing. Classes are going well, I’m looking to try to celebrate Halloween over here tomorrow, and although it’s not a huge holiday here, I think our group of Elon kids will make the best of it, if not I’ll dress up as something funny, and find some candy corn or something. I hope that everyone is doing well, will send me updates about their lives, and keep thinkin about me as I travel. It’s getting cold here in London, and snowed the other night, which was the first snow in October in London in about 10 years, so it’s been a monumental, record-breaking experience here thus far, I hope that continues for the duration of my trip for sure.

Next up in my travels include Athens, Greece, Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and I’m considering a trip into Switzerland/Germany as part of a backpacking expedition at the end of my semester. Guy Fawkes day is on November 5th here, which is a huge celebration, and just so everyone knows, on last Monday I sent in my absentee ballot through the overnight mail, so when I complain about politics, it’ll be justified, since I actually voted . Anyways, I’m off to get groceries, clean up the Penthouse, and am looking forward to a great weekend. Ciao, Adios, and Cheers! Peace!

Fall Break Phase I - Viva La Barcelona!

Hola! Ciao! And Hello from Jolly Ol’ London town!

I just touched down two days ago back in the great cloudy city of London, England, after a 7 day fall break adventure that took me through Barcelona, Spain, Florence and Rome in Italy, and kicked me back home here. I have so many stories and experience to share in the next blog, so what I decided to do was explain my experiences in a number of installments, broken down, so hopefully it’s easier to read and understand my rambling of the crazy time that I had the past week of my life.

BARCELONA SPAIN – FALL BREAK DAYS 1 – 3

Take off from London was around 5:30pm London-Time or so, and we were airborne out of Heathrow airport soon after. To give you an idea of my trip, basically my friend Brett Scuiletti and I were a dynamic duo of adventurers for 7 days and we started our trip off right. Right after we hit probably 20,000-30,000 feet, we were far above the cloud lines, and watching an immensely amazing sunset over Europe, as the sun traveled quickly over the horizon over the northern hemisphere for a good 30 minutes. I took my first pictures of the trip from the window-seat of the plane, because the view was absolutely incredible. I think you’ll find that many times, I’m going to run out of adjectives to describe the sites I’ve seen in the past 7 days, but the opening view of my trip over the European skyline was more than majestic for sure.

We arrived in Barcelona fairly late, probably around 7 or 8, and after we picked up Brett’s baggage, we went through immigration and took a train and then a quick metro ride to our hostel location, in the heart of the city. Our hostel, “The Sound” was about a 10 minute walk from the beach, and we had rooms that each had small Spanish balconies overlooking the busy streets of Barca. We met up with another Elon mate of ours, Scott Van Dorn, down in the basement lounge of the Sound, who introduced us to the friends he met during the day there since he arrived earlier than us. Brett and I got acquainted with a trio of Australians, two brothers – Eugene and Raoul Renard, and Chris, who were all on the “stereotypical” Aussie traveling experience throughout Europe. We also met a group of guys that live out in Seattle, Washington who had graduated and now work for Amazon.com, and who wanted to take a three week vacation in Europe. Additionally, a few girls that originally were studying in London also were at the table of travelers that Brett and I joined, so we all shared stories, played cards, and decided to go out for an official Barcelona fiesta experience. Our night started at about 12:00am, which is typical of Barcelona time, because everything there is about 4 hours later than other parts around the world, from lunch at 2-5pm, to dinner at 9-10, they’re on their own time: Barcelona-time.

So we went to a number of local pubs, met some more travelers along the way, and kept traveling until we finally reached the beach. Barcelona has many different night time clubs and bars, and because there were no cover charges for any of us, we decided to try as many as possible on Saturday night. So we covered I’d say somewhere between 10-15 clubs before we got tired of dancing (we went to clubs with old rock, techno, new school music, alternative, everything!) and decided to go sit on the beach for a while. So the 10 of us sat on the beach, continued our life talks, and figured it must have been something like 3am by now, when I looked at my watch though, turns out it was actually 6:00AM in the morning! Well, regardless, of the time, we were having such a great time getting to know all of our new friends, that we decided it was early, we hadn’t showered in a while, so we all decided to go swimming in the Mediterranean, right on the beach! It was hilarious, but a great closing moment of the evening for sure, and a nice kick off to our trip. I must say, I’ve never swam in the Mediterranean before, so I can now successfully check that off of things to do on my bucket list.

Anyways, we got back to our hostel at 7:30am, and all crashed, and woke up around 1:30 in the afternoon, this may seem crazy, but in Barcelona, this of course is nothing because the normal wake up time is about that early in the afternoon anyhow! So Brett, Scott, and myself all decided to get ready and we headed down to a local restaurant to try the authentic Spanish cuisine of Barcelona. I shared a giant plate of mixed seafood Paella with Scott, and Brett tried a huge dish of pork, sausage, and beans. The food was so good! It was a lot though for sure, so we had to take some back with us, but I got to also use some of my Spanish skills to converse with the waitress, so I felt good to be able to communicate effectively, especially since I haven’t taken a formal class in a foreign language in a number of semesters.

After lunch, our trio decided to get some serious site seeing done. We traveled up and down “La Rambla” which is the main street through Barcelona that has all of the main shops, stores, restaurants etc on it. Since it was a Sunday, there was a huge mass of people in the open market areas (much of Spain is Roman Catholic, so a lot of the smaller shops were closed for religious reasons). Of course, this also meant that there were hundreds of street performers everywhere, trying to make a living and entertain all the tourists and locals. Everything from living statues (I’ve never seen so many!), to artists, to musicians (we saw an Indian group playing native American music, a Spanish trio jamming, and a group of Australians playing didgeridoos too!), to guys juggling soccer balls on their heads for hours on end. I got plenty of pictures, video, and snapshots of these people, but also some of the major sites along La Rambla. We went to la Placa de Reial which is a major square in Barca, and we also saw one of the large open parks at the top of La Rambla as well. We walked up the streets more and saw a lot of the Gaudi architecture that is very prevalent in the city of Barcelona, and also very unique and crazy too! (I’m sure he was on a lot of drugs when he created his masterpieces, but the actual structures are pretty wild though)

After that, we continued to follow our map around the city. I was of course dubbed the map-holder/guide wherever we went somewhere, so that I guess I could be blamed if we got lost, but I didn’t mind, I spoke Spanish, which helped a lot. Additionally, (for my sister mainly), our map of Barcelona, was sponsored and made by McDonalds, so it noted every single Micky-D’s in the entire city of Barca, which was not only helpful, but whenever we got lost, it’s because we weren’t seeing a McD’s and too far out of reach for McFlurries.

Anyways, we saw La Temple de la Sangrada Familia, which is a huge unfinished temple/cathedral in the center of Barca, as well as the Cathedral of Barcelona itself too, which of course, is also unfinished. They really don’t like to finish many of their large religious structures I guess, but either way they were pretty darn impressive. Later we walked down to the marina overlooking Barcelona and Brett, Scott and I recapped our break so far. We got back to our hostel, and we went a picked up kebabs at a local kebab shop (they’re delicious in Europe) with the Aussies, and went to a local pub to talk to some more locals. I ended up talking with two of the guys from Seattle (Dave and Kinsley) about politics, the youth generation, and the election. Lol, I know very dull stuff I thought too, but it was a conversation nonetheless. Then for the most part we called it an early night in the city and got some shut eye for the next day.

The next morning, (Monday) I got up early, and decided to explore parts of the city I hadn’t yet on my own. I first traveled up La Rambla a bit more, and took a metro to the far north of the city to a park called “Parc Guell” which is a park that has tons of Gaudi architecture everywhere. I also climbed to the top of the peak here, to overlook the city toward the sea and saw all of the previous monuments I saw the day before towering above the city. There are pictures posted of the Gaudi works though which look kinda like ginger bread houses and very far out curvy and crazy buildings, those are all Guadi-style. It looks a lot like mosaics, but entire buildings made out of miniature pieces of ceramic tiles. There’s a picture of me as well with the famous salamander animal that is outside part of the park, which is a fountain, and also pretty cool.

After Parc Guell, I caught another metro south, and got out and walked to the Cathedral Santa Maria by the Sea (la Catedral Santa Maria del Mar), which is the oldest cathedral in Barcelona. It’s a small church in comparison to the other large temples I’d seen previously in the past two days, but it’s absolutely gorgeous inside, and a very humbling place to spend time in. I took some photos, and also realized how important religion is to the Roman Catholics in Spain, due to the many devout people taking time off of their lunch breaks to come and pray at the alters there. After I finished there, I traveled to another park, “Parc de la Ciutadella” which is another main hot spot and beautiful park on the side of the city with a luxurious fountain (also unfinished architecture) and a mammoth, and the local zoo, as well as the natural history museum. I wandered for a while, saw the Catalayan Parliament (because Barcelona is basically an autonomous area that governs itself inside of Spain), and then I headed back toward La Rambla, grabbed a pita to eat, and met up with my friend Kristy to go on a tour of a monastery outside Barcelona, but unfortunately tickets were sold out, so we decided to go on a cable car ride above Port Vell (the port on Barcelona’s ocean front) and we found Brett and Scott, so the four of us took the cable car across the top of Barcelona, overlooking the entire city, and ended up climbing the rest of the way up the mountain to overlook the city from the military museum/fortress at the pinnacle. It was great to have the four of us all together on top of Barcelona overlooking the city and just relaxing and taking in the sites, since it’s such a beautiful place.

After we got down the mountain, and walked back to our hostel, we took showers, got ready, and actually met up with some other Elon kids that visited us earlier in our semester in London. Our Perugia friends! Katherine Merrill, Emily Sanner, and Sharon Rice, were all on their respective Fall Breaks, and happened to be in Barcelona one of the same nights that we were. So we all went to a restaurant by the water, ate actually fairly American food (but it was a great deal), had tapas (Spanish appetizers), and burgers which were wonderful. Afterwards, we all went back to our hostels, met up with our Australian friends and once again went to a few local pubs to catch up and hang out for the evening. Overall, this was my Barcelona experience to the max, and in my next entry (hopefully posted sooner than this one…) I’ll explain my adventures with Brett to Italia, land of the Romans, birthplace of the Renaissance, and a site with exquisite cuisine!

Another Week Down in Londontown

Alright, so this is going to be my last post from London for a week or so, because I’m heading on my Fall Break tomorrow, and going to be traveling all over Europe, so hopefully my entries will be from Spain, or Italy etc. But anyways, let me go ahead and update you about this past week and catch you up to speed on my life.

Alright, Monday was another exciting day at Xtreme Information, and I finished doing my research early, and actually took a half day, because I had a number of projects and papers to complete. So, I wrote a paper for my theater class, finished a project for my culture class, grabbed a meal, and then I went to a show entitled “The Disappearing Number,” which is a traveling show that came back to London, which is loosely based off a true story, about an Indian man who essentially discovered much of the math and theories that led to quantum physics and string theory that we have today. I know what you’re thinking, that sounds like the most ridiculous and boring show you’ve ever heard of, but it was actually quite compelling. It had a love story in it, used a lot of very cool visual and special effects, and was actually very entertaining, I loved it. You really didn’t get caught up too much in the math, because it was crucial to the plot, but not so crucial that you understood it. Some of the main themes of the show revolved around the fact that the only thing real in the entire show, was the math, the rest was just entertainment. Anyways, cool idea and cool show.

So that brings me to Tuesday, where of course I went to class, heard a speaker on international journalism which was enlightening. Then went to theater class, talked about the show we saw the night before, and then of course, in between classes I ate lunch with Vic, because it was his last day in London, so that was very cool to be able to see him once more before he headed back to India. I made sure he had a facebook set up and go all his details once more so that we could stay in communication wherever we are in the world, which was definitely nice.

Tuesday night was a night of rest and recuperation from all the stress levels of assignments, and Wednesday was another full day working at Xtreme on all sorts of various tasks, from going to meetings, to administrative stuff, to just basically working on the next edition of The Reel, that will come out next month. Also! I saw the latest edition of The Reel that came out for last month, and I was even credited in the overall production, there’s a nice spot for my name at the bottom of the brochure, since all of my photos were used in the final product, so that was awesome to finally see all my work come together into a finished product.

Thursday was great because instead of class in our classroom, we did an officially guided walking tour of the lower parts of London. Mom, you would have absolutely loved our tour guide, he was an older man, who knew absolutely EVERYTHING about London literature. We spent time traveling to the places where Charles Dickens used to work, stand, find inspiration for, even the exact locations that he talks about in all his works. We stood at the original temple that was built by the Knights Templar before the Crusades, which is now a law school, but we saw the oldest church/building in all of London that dates back centuries ago. We talked about Shakespeare, saw the original location of where the Globe stood, saw the ally way that is supposedly the spot for where Sweeny Todd was based, and even had the opportunity to see the publishing house where Dickens first caught the eye of Dr. Johnson (I can’t remember his first name) but he’s the individual that wrote the first British dictionary, and the pub that they used to sit and drink at after work. Lastly, we saw the church that inspired the first “tiered” wedding cake, as we are so accustomed to today and much more, basically it was a great walk through literary history, as well as see some great side streets and back “off the beaten path” parts of the city.

That brings me to Friday, and boy do I have another awesome story! Friday morning I had the pleasure of getting up early, and traveling down to Leichester Square, which is more or less like your "Broadway" big area, or Times Square in New York. But I didn't go to see a musical this time, I actually got to see another private screening of a movie that won't hit the states until January of 2009. It was a Ron Howard film entitled "Frost/Nixon" and is a movie about David Frost, the British entertainer, and his monumental interviews with Former president Richard Nixon, and all of the struggles that it took to actually uncover and get Nixon to admit his faults with the Watergate scandal. The movie was absolutely amazing, breathtaking, phenomenal, it was absolutely awesome, if you get a chance in January to go see it, please do, I was so into it, and loved it quite a lot. The acting is great, (Kevin Bacon's in it), and Ron Howard is quite the genius of a director, so I give it a 5 stars, two thumbs up, gold medal on the Josh Tate movie-critic scale.

However, the rest of Friday I basically devoted my life to packing. I’m currently still in that process today, because I leave for fall break this afternoon. I’m going to be traveling over the next 7 days to Barcelona in Spain, as well as Rome and Florence in Italy, before returning to the great city of London. I’m super excited to have this experience, and opportunity to travel so much, and cannot wait to see the Coliseum and other great landmarks of the ancient world. I’m hopefully going to keep you posted as I go to these places, but if I don’t I’m sure you’ll understand and there will just be a ridiculously long blog entry next time I get around to it, but that’s normal, so what do you care? Anyhow, as always, I hope everyone is doing well, please keep the update emails coming to my inbox and make sure to take care of yourself. I will catch ya on the other side of the world, so Cheers, Hasta la Vista, and Ciao!

Sneak Peaks, Nobility, Kilts, Bagpipes, and of Course My Newest Accent

Wow! Just when you think my adventures can’t get anymore epic than the previous post…THEY DO! Haha, alright well that was a bit facetious, but either way, the point is, I can’t really still believe I’m here and all the many things I get myself into. Every day I’m here I have to wake up and pinch myself to make me realize that I’m actually experiencing life day by day, ups and downs, but the roller coaster that’s over here is absolutely a blast, and I’m always seeking new thrill rides.

So I know it’s been a week since I last posted, but to be honest, it’s only because I enjoy writing ridiculously long blog entries that take you forever to read, and it’s pretty accurate to having one of my signature heart-to-hearts, because they take hours on end, ramble on and on, and sometimes don’t really have a point. I’m just going for authenticity so that you think I’m still with you, even though I’m of course, doing a lot cooler things than you are right now :-P Haha, okay, so let me catch you up to speed on my life.

Basically, Tuesday the 7th was a bit of a drag, because of course I had class and from time to time, class definitely gets long, tedious, and redundant. I enjoyed my theatre class that I was in though, because we got to discuss our viewing of A Midsummer Night’s Dream which I of course absolutely loved, so that was fun to share vantage points on the production, but after class I’m sure I did something to the effect of getting groceries, going to the bank, doing the dishes, or something really really cultural like that (insert your laughter here). Anyways, that night our class went to a movie entitled “Brideshead Revisited” which was more or less this chick flick that our professor picked out for us to see (I would have definitely voted for the new James Bond Premiere, but who am I to judge good movies?) and it had an actor that we previously saw in a show this semester, but despite seeing a remotely familiar face, I thought the flick sucked. It wasn’t too exciting, kinda lame, very long, and oh, the only hilarious portion of the night, was that there were thirty of us in a giant group to go see it, and the theater was completely empty (no one wanted to see it, duh, cause it was terrible), but the crazy movie attendant lady made us all sit in the very back right of the theater, so that we were all together. So needless to say, it was a humorous time having to be squished all together in a completely vacant theater just to see a terrible movie, but whatever, it’s over. After the movie, a number of the guys and a few of our friends went to a place called the Sports Café (I may have mentioned it before) where Tuesday nights are Student Night, and so I got my groove on and got to know some people in my program a bit more, those times are always pretty hilarious and a good time for sure.

Wednesday the 8th was a great day in Josh’s history, because I worked again at Xtreme, always a great time of course, and not only that, but I worked with some of my favorite guys from the Xtreme Team, the guys from “The Reel.” I was in charge of editing up our blogsite for The Reel, and labeling it and making it more “searchable” if you will. After that, I took some new press releases and “Xtreme-ified” them, by more or less putting my creative flare on them and jazzing them up a bit so that we could post them on The Reel’s Blog itself. (I don’t have the site right on me, and couldn’t google it, but either way, it does exist lol) Of course, that wasn’t just the extent of work, I did some administrative stuff, accredited some companies in our database, and also did some minuscule tasks as well. BUT, that’s not the kicker of the day. In the afternoon, my co-worker Sam asked me if I wanted to go see some shorts, and no, I’m not talking about checking out a pair of good-looking knickers, but Film Shorts. The one huge perk that comes along with working in the Xtreme Information/Press industry is that you get press passes and VIP tickets to premiers and such. Well, because of this, Sam got me a ticket to the afternoon showing of the Raindance Film Festival’s short films series. Essentially the Raindance Film Festival is a play on words (mocked off of America’s “Sundance Film Festival”) but London’s biggest film festival every year, and of course, it’s going on right now! So Sam and I went to the cinema and watched some of the new short flicks that are going to be judged at this year’s festival, for…FREE! That was monumental, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Of course, that wasn’t the end of my Wednesday, that only takes you to about 6:30pm my time (1:30pm Eastern Standard Time), after that, I had my first authentic experience with a full meal at a London McDonalds and I must say, it’s a lot better than the states version of fast food. I had a big mac and fries, and there was virtually no grease on any of it! It ruled. Not that I endorse fast-food consumption, but I was in a hurry, and it appeared healthier than the State-side, version I grew up on. Anyways, after a quick bite, I was on the move again because my flatmate Mike and I went to the Palace Theater on Wednesday night to see SPAMALOT! If you don’t know, it’s of course the Monty Python and the Holy Grail inspired musical, and the British version was hilarious to say the least. I thoroughly enjoyed it and to be honest, if there was any show I could choose to ever perform in again, it’d probably be my pick without a doubt. Mike is also an avid Python follower, and I’m positive he loved it as well, and not only that, but we were second row on the first balcony, so we had exceptional seats for the whole show.

Of course, I’m sure you’re now asking yourself something to the effect of “Now Josh, how could you possibly top free tickets to the Raindance Film Festival, and Spamalot at all? Well, I was of course thinking the exact thing…until Thursday happened! Essentially, let me spell a few things out. First off, Thursday typically means, I have classes, life’s a little bland, and then I have to probably do laundry, because it’s almost the weekend and my underwear is running out. However, after classes on Thursday, which weren’t too bad because we had a late start time for class and I got to sleep in a bit, I went about my normal homework and daily routine, as well as slowly preparing myself for my trip to Scotland that I took during the weekend (more details to come momentarily) I then ended up heading to The Rex, which is a theater, to see the premier viewing of “All Together Now” which is a documentary released all about the creation of the brand new Cirque du Soleil performance of Love which is based all on The Beatles and their music. So, I’m sitting in the theater watching this amazing documentary, filled with great information, wonderful Beatles tracks, and not only that, but by the end of the film, I realize that Sir George Martin is sitting behind me. For anyone who isn’t familiar with Sir George himself (yeah we’re on first name basis lol) he’s the legendary composer that many times is known as “The Fifth Beatle” because he was the man attributed to discovering the Beatles, as well as producing many of their original works. After realizing this, and after the premiere finished afterwards, I tracked down Sir Martin and got a photo-op with a friend who happened to have a camera, right before he darted away with Mrs. Martin in their cab. Imagine that huh? Meeting not only an honorary Knight, but the original producer of a band I grew up listening to!!! I mean, sure, I kinda felt like a big deal, but that was definitely my first true experience meeting a celebrity for sure, and without a doubt, I was star-struck for the rest of the night.

But anyways, so Friday morning I got up at 4:30am or so, for my 4:45 taxi to Kings Cross Train Station. I was out and on my way, early morning, to the same station, that is “famous” thanks to Harry Potter, so at 5:30, I took pictures as Platform 9 and ¾, but unfortunately I didn’t go to Hogwarts, because I’m a muggle, contrary to popular belief. But I didn’t need to go Hogwarts anyways, because my destination was Edinburgh, Scotland, on a mission to experience bagpipes, kilts, and perfect my Scottish accent. This was also my first big experience with a train, so I was like a kid in a candy store getting on the train, cracked out, at 5:45am, before the sun even rose, and excited as ever. I caught up on my own journaling a bit, and was awake basically almost the entire ride, watched the sun rise over the UK, saw many towns north of London, and our train took us along the English coast, so I got to see a great view of the English Channel running into the North Sea in the inlet towns.

We arrived in Edinburgh at approximately 11am and hopped on a coach for a driving tour of the city with our very own blue badge tour guide. Rebbin, as he was called, was an authentic kilt-wearing, bagpipe playing, tour guide, who told us all about the history of Edinburgh since its founding (which started with Edinburgh castle) and all about the type of buildings, sites to see, and where to go. Despite already being awake for so many hours previously, I tried to take in as much information as possible, and really didn’t realize beforehand actually how historic Scotland really is. For instance, the real person that the Sherlock Holmes stories are based off of, was a Scotsman, and Alexander Graham Bell was Scottish too, but then moved to the states when he was a bit older, so much for my history classes in the past where I was preached he was an American. Anyways, after that, the girls and I (I forgot to mention I went traveling with five girls…Ashley Noval, Katie Burtzalaff, Andrea Smith, Jenny Cupero, and Kelsey Gwilt) went to get something to eat at a local pub and then headed straight to the heart of Edinburgh to explore.

We started with Edinburgh Castle, bought audio tours, and Ashley and I took our time exploring every nook of the historic landmark. The view over top of the city was incredible, and the weather held out just long enough for our tours to wrap us, allow us to see the “Scottish Honours” which are basically the Scottish “Crown Jewels” and head back down The Royal Mile (the main street in Edinburgh, it leads from the Castle down to the Hollyrood Palace, which is the residence of the Queen once a year, and also was the home of Mary Queen of Scots back in the day) to grab an early dinner as well. The rain picked up in the early evening during our dinner, but Ashley and I also tried the Scottish meal of Haddis, which essentially is minced lamb mixed with oatmeal, served with mashed potatoes and mashed swedes. Now, I must say, I’m a lamb fan, and the Haddis was amazing, as were the potatoes, but the swedes I’m not so sure about. I’m still not exactly positive what they were, but they had a mashed potato-like consistency but at the same time had chunks in them that had almost like a peanut-like crunchiness. Oh well, it was all worth it and part of the overall experience. However, since it wasn’t very late, Katie, Ashley and I went to another pub and talked to some of the locals until we decided to get a late night pizza from a middle-eastern restaurant called the Bodrum Express and call it a night. When I got back to our Bed & Breakfast, I got to know my two roommates for the weekend a bit better, Vic Raghunath (Vic for short), a 23 year old Indian guy who had been studying in the UK for a year, and Chaum, a student from Arizona State University, who was also studying abroad. After talking to them a few, I went to sleep because we had an early morning ahead of us.

Saturday I was up by 7:30am, and had breakfast at 7:45. The breakfast served was actually quite delicious, a mixture of lots of fruit, cereals, and croissants/breads, but still filling, no doubt. The whole group then hopped on our coach, and met our tour guide for the day, Fred Stuart (also an authentic kilt-wearing gent) who was going to be driving us to the Scottish Highlands and Loch Ness. So we traveled out of Edinburgh, I got about an hour of sleep extra on the coach, and we stopped first in the Scottish lowlands to make a pit stop and also see Hamish, the Highland Cow. Hamish is the most famous highland cow of them all, and has a very ginger orange coat, is very furry, and has large horns. He basically eats all day, drools, and poses for photo-ops, which of course, we took generously. Then after a bathroom break and coca-cola, I was back on the bus and we were off for the Highlands. Now the rest of this blog entry may get really redundant, only because I don’t have enough adjectives to properly describe the sights, but let me say, overall, the Scottish Highlands are by far, absolutely phenomenal, and incredible sights to behold. I’ve never seen scenery so beautiful in my lifetime. For an hour, I constantly glued to my window or behind my camera lens snapping pictures of the mountain tops, the lochs, and the surrounding areas. We stopped once more during the mid-morning for a quick photo-op at the Glencoe Mountains, but more informally known as “The Three Sisters” because of the three side-by-side peaks of the mountains. This was absolutely wonderful to see, and our weather was also gorgeous, so it was great to be able to fully take in the sights to the fullest degree. We only passed through a few small spots of rain throughout the journey through the highlands, but that actually created for a great time too, because I probably saw 20 some rainbows throughout my journey, they were always climbing a peak or falling into our lap as our cameras continually snapped, well at least mine did anyways.

Finally we arrived at the Urquhart Castle, which sits along Loch Ness. We had a chance to explore the ruins of the castle built in approximately the 1500-1600’s or before. Not only did we have a chance to climb around the towers, and courtyard areas, but additionally, it was in the early afternoon, and we were at a peak time for pictures, once again, so I got plenty of beautiful shots of the Scottish Highlands flanked by a castle on one side and the infamous Loch Ness on the other. We also took a quick ferry ride around the outside of the bank of the castle, and traveled across the Loch a further ways, to search for the Loch Ness Monster and also pick up some more fun facts about the Loch itself. Loch Ness is actually the largest body of fresh water in the world, and if Scotland had to rely solely on Loch Ness for the rest of its water supply, it could last 66 years without drawing from another source. There are many other boring and uninteresting facts that I learned, but I suppose I’ll spare you those details, since this is already a lengthy entry by far.

Nevertheless, when we returned by coach from the Loch, the sun had set and the moon had chosen it’s place in the sky by the time we reached Edinburgh’s lights. We of course, had to eat again, so we once again chose Bodrum Express as our place of choice, because of it’s amazing food selection (I got a chicken chili wrap…fabulous) and afterward it was about 9pm, so we headed to the local pub to celebrate our friend Ashley’s birthday. Of course, while we were there at the pub sharing stories and laughing, we ran into four Scotsmen in kilts and authentic garb. They had just got back from Scotland’s football (soccer) match which had resulted in a 0-0 tie, so they were just looking to have a fun Saturday night and meet people. Well it turns out, we were the right people to meet, because they carried on with us for a good few hours, and when all the girls were thinking about heading home to call it a night, Ashley wanted to continue her birthday in style, Scottish style that is, so Vic and myself decided we’d also accompany the merry band of Scotsmen to another pub to share more life stories and such. I found it truly remarkable too, because of the men, Andy, who is the head of his own Scottish tourism agency, is 36 and was having a heart to heart with Vic and I, and kept telling us how jealous he was of our youth, and that we had the incredible opportunity to travel to so many places at this age in our lives. We also all concluded that it was very remarkable that a young man from the Far East, (Vic being from India), and the Far West (myself), would somehow meet in Scotland, and enjoy themselves and get to be such good friends in literally 24 hours in the UK. Especially in such a connected world, it was epic to really find someone with so many similar values, thoughts, beliefs, and just experiences, despite being from half way around the other side of the world. So as Andy, Vic, and Andy I all shared stories of our pasts and lives, Ashley and the other guys continued to get to know each other, and we all ended up finding another pub to house our conversation, and then later went to a nightclub that had a live Scottish cover band that played everything from old rock ‘n roll, to new age music, so the six or so of us all sang our favorite tunes and had a grand ol’ time most of the evening. We ended up returning after a monumental evening at 5:30am to our B&B to call it a night, but as Andy said, “No matter what, twenty years from now, we’ll always remember the night that the far east and west met in one place and had the absolutely best night of our lives.” If there was one image I had in my head, of what I guess I wanted to get out of my study abroad experience, or what I wanted to experience while I was abroad, Saturday night summed up that for me. To not only meet locals, have an authentic cultural experience, but to meet a life-long friend in less than 24 hours and truly connect to someone in a way that I think only traveling can create for me.

Anyways, continuing on, I woke up by 8:30am, had another complimentary breakfast at the B&B and all the girls and Vic and I were on our way through Edinburgh again, but this time we were on a mission, and that mission was to climb to Arthurs Seat, which is the name given to the top of a mountain that is beside Edinburgh called the Sheffield Crags. So, by 9:30-10am, we were on our way ascending up this mountain, on at least a 2-3mile trek around and up, climbing until we reached the summit, 450ft above sea level, and were overlooking all of Edinburgh and Scotland. I can’t express how accomplished I felt to reach the pinnacle of Arthur’s Seat and gaze out in all directions across Scotland. The view was immense, clear, spanned for miles, and was absolutely gorgeous. I looked out across the North Sea, imagining the sights that Norway and Finland must provide from their side, and then I looked over the city of Edinburgh and saw the castle I stood in yesterday, and then in the other directions saw the port of Edinburgh, looked toward the Southern Side of the UK, and again to the Highlands in another direction. I took video, photos, sat on top of the mountain and just reflected on life. It was a tranquil and peaceful place at the summit of Arthur’s Seat, and was well worth the climb, and not to mention a nice little calf workout too! But regardless, after that, it was about 12 or so, and once I had taken enough documentation of the view (so much for a fear of heights anymore right?) we descended back down the mountain and got lunch at a local restaurant, and prepared for the train-ride back to London. We had a six hour train ride back, and had to switch lines on the way home, but it was nice to be back after so much travel. Either way, I must say that the time I spent in Edinburgh and Scotland was one of the most incredible experiences I’ve definitely had yet, and a must-see for anyone thinking about traveling to Europe at all.

I slept well on Sunday night, and Monday brought on internship time at Xtreme and a lot of homework to also catch up on. When all of that was finished and taken care of, I took care of some last minute preparations for this coming weekend, which is my fall break, and of course I’ll be spending a lot of that time traveling to many places in Europe as well. So hopefully I can blog a bit more frequently there or along the way for sure! I also saw a show on Monday night called “the Disappearing Number” which was loosely based off a true story about a mathematician who discovered countless theories and theorems that modern physics and math are based off of, but probably that no credit was ever truly given to him. It was a drama, and a lot of technology and special effects were used very artistically to create a great production. I know that’s not a lot of detail, but compared to the rest of my weekend, last night’s show, wasn’t in much comparison to the 700+ pictures that I took in Scotland (about 150 or something pictures are posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/taternater2046) and needless to say, I need to clear up some more space on my camera before I do anymore traveling.

Alrighty, well that’s going to sum up today’s entry, and I hope you enjoyed the full account of one of the best weekend’s I’ve experienced thus far in my abroad-time. I hope you’re all still trying to find a small bit of time to email me and update me on all of your lives because I want to hear all about them and keep the facebook posts/updates flowing, I truly miss you all and hope you’re doing well! Everyone take care, enjoy the photos and keep me posted on your lives!!! And as always…Cheers! (PS: I tried out my Scottish accent last weekend for Andy, Dave, Pete, and “Finney” – the four guys we hung out with…and they felt as though it was very authentic, believable and the funniest thing ever, so I’m fully immersing myself to whatever culture I get exposed to!)