Jenn Visits London

My mom came to London for a week from March 21-29.  It was her first time out of the country and I think her biggest challenge was crossing the street.  Now I'll admit when I first got here I was pretty confused about it too, but it's a wonder she ever got across the street here! haha :)

Mom and I with our butterbeer

The day she arrived we went to Kensington Palace, right across from my flat.  It was a gorgeous place and had very interesting decorations.  For dinner we of course had to go to a British pub, she got bangers and mash (I'll try a bite, that's all) and I got a pot pie-the best British food you can get.

That Friday was probably one of the best days of the semester.  With my program we went to........HARRY POTTER STUDIOS! Yes! I was in the very building where the films were shot.  I saw with my OWN EYES.  The props, costumes and sets of the greatest series every produced.  I teared up a little bit, I'll admit it.  It was just so amazing!  And it was great to share it with my mom, a fellow Harry Potter fan.  We also had a butterbeer, which is a non-alcoholic Wizard drink.  It's like root beer, but butterscotch flavored.  At the gift shop I bought a Quidditch tshirt, the first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Harry's wand-I could not resist.

Diagon Alley

Mom and I in front of Hogwarts

The week that my mom visited was one of the coldest yet, which was really awful!  It was almost too cold and windy to go out!  We went to all the tourist-y stuff: Westminster Abbey (cool, but boring-I know, I'm awful), Buckingham Palace and Abbey Road!  We had an amazing afternoon tea! Probably one of the highlights of her visit.  I had to go to the Churchill War Rooms for class, so my mom toured the museum as well.  It was very interesting!   I had no idea that Churchill had all of his offices underground during WWII and the Blitz.  I even got to see the map that divided Germany after WWII ended-the history nerd in me was ecstatic.

War Rooms exactly the way they were
when they closed after WWII

We also surprised her classroom and Skyped with them!  We had a great time while she was here, she's already planning on coming back-hopefully if/when I move here :)

During that week some of my flat mates and I went to Ice Bar, a bar where everything even the glasses are made of ice!  It was fun, but very very cold.

Chris Dupre visits London and a quick visit to Paris

March was a very busy month for me and I totally neglected my blog!  But now that we are no longer studying The Beatles in my Popular Culture class, I'll use this time to catch up.

My dad arrived on March 13, it was really great to see someone from home!  We left for Paris March 14 (Thursday) on the Eurostar train, which gets us there in about 3 hours.  The train was really nice and relaxing, and it gave me a chance to see parts of London and Paris outside the city.

It probably goes without saying, but Paris is amazing!  After we arrived we went to Cafe Central for a late lunch.  We both ordered a Stella and I had probably one of the best cheeseburgers on the planet (or maybe I was just really hungry).  We spent the rest of the afternoon strolling around the city.  My dad surprised me with the Eiffel Tower, I had no idea we were walking towards it until he told me not to turn my head until he said so.  And voilà there it was! It's amazing and I was in awe every time I saw it over the next few days.  We had wine at a cafe over looking the Tower at sunset.  After we spent more time looking at the Tower, this time at night when it is absolutely stunning!

Over the next few days we had amazing food-pasta, beer, eclairs, macaroons, ganache, wine and croissants (the best in the world).  We saw the Louvre-we joked that it took us longer to find the exit than it did to see what we wanted.  We went to the top of the Arc de Triomphe, it was really great but I'm not a fan of heights!  We wandered around the Champs Elysees and I oogled over things I will never be able to afford, like a 600 euro Louis Vuitton scarf.  We saw Notre Dame and Sacré-Cœur Basilica, both were stunning.  And last but not least we went to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower, where I spent most of the experience deciding whether I was going to pass out or throw up.  I am really trying to conquer my fear of heights here, but so far no change.






 







We came home from Paris on St. Patrick's Day, so my dad and I went to an Irish pub with my friend Brittany, who was very gung-ho about the holiday.  They died the fountains in Trafalgar Square green, so of course we saw that too!  It was a lot of fun.  We spent the rest of his time here going around London to sites like Parliament, Tower Bridge, etc.  Being avid tennis players and fans, we went to Wimbledon to see the stadium or at least the outside of it because unfortunately it was closed when we got there.  It was still really great to see and think of all the great players that had been there.  We also did the London Eye, however for most of the ride I was immobilized by my fear of heights.  Literally, I couldn't move myself from the bench in the middle of the vestibule.  

To top off the great week I spent with my dad, he brought me TWO boxes of Girl Scout cookies.  I somehow have managed to make them last a month, but I'm almost done with my last sleeve of Thin Mints.

Florence, Cinque Terre, Venice

The rest of my Italy blog will probably be mostly pictures because I think that is the best way to show you what I did/saw. 



Florence was gorgeous!  Our hostel was very cute and we were located very close to everything that we wanted to see.  We went to the Duomo (a giant church), Piazzale Michelangelo (my favorite) and the pizza place where the Jersey Shore cast worked!  We of course ate a lot of pizza and drank a lot of wine.

Florence

Piazzale Michelangelo is on the side of an enormous hill (it was really awful to hike up) and has the best view of all of Florence.  A few of us went up there and drank wine and watched the sun set.  It was amazing!

Duomo

Florence

Cinque Terre was a lot of fun, even though it rained the whole time.  We stayed in Manarola, one of the 5 towns, which is located on the side of a mountain.  It was so gorgeous.  We mostly just wandered around the village and admired the coastal views.  The highlight was a restaurant that we went to both nights called Trattoria Del Billy.  I had the most amazing pasta with tomatoes and fresh shrimp, wine, bread with oil and vinegar, and tiramisu.  If I ever get the chance to go back to Manarola, I will definitely go back to Billy's.  Our server, Laura, was so nice!  She learned all of our names and even gave us free bottles of liquor!  I would highly recommend visiting Cinque Terre!

Leaning Tower of Pisa

Dinner at Trattoria Del Billy

Manarola, Cinque Terre

By the time we got to Venice I was pretty burned out.  We spent most of our time wandering around the island of Venice (where everything worth seeing is located).  It's a very pretty city, but it's also very easy to get lost!  I loved all the canals and boats, it was so iconic and neat to see.  Once again, we had amazing pizza!  I think I will have a hard time eating pizza after being spoiled with Italian pizza.

On the Bridge of Sighs, Venice

Venice

 

Venice

Sorry this is an abbreviated version of my spring break.  If you have any questions, feel free to comment!

Rome, Italy

I'm back from spending 10 days in Italy for my spring break!  I haven't had the time or energy to blog so the complete account of my adventure will probably come in multiple entries at random times. Bear with me!

Thursday (February 28):

After arriving in Rome and only getting a little lost on the quest to find our hostel, three girls on the trip and I met my friend Matt, he goes to Madison but is studying abroad in Rome, and he gave us a little tour of the area.  We started at the Trevi Fountain, which is stunning!  And even more so

Matt and me at the Pantheon

because it was sunny and about 60 degrees!  I must have gotten used to dreary London because I had forgotten about warm sunny days.  After that we went to the Pantheon.  All I could think was "how'd they do that?!", I really don't understand how thousands of years ago they could build a massive building like that!  We went to the Spanish Steps and Largo Argentina aka the cat sanctuary.  For some reason stray cats are drawn to this area of ruins, and they are everywhere.  It's actually disgusting (and sad).  We saw one cat with 3 legs, one missing an eye and another with part of its skull showing! Ugh I'm getting grossed out just writing about it.  We also saw the Vittoriano, I'm not really sure what its

150 Flavors of Gelato!

purpose is but it's stunning nonetheless.  Aside from seeing these iconic places, I'd have to say one of the best parts of the day was going to a gelato shop that had 150 flavors of gelato!  It was overwhelming, but in a good way!  I got amaretto and chocolate, and I instantly fell in love.  Later we went to the Piazza Navona to meet up with our other friend, Katie, who is also studying in Rome.  (Katie, Matt and I worked/lived in Liz Waters together)  In this Piazza there are 3 fountains (one really massive and spectacular one) and during the day there are stands with people selling water color paintings of sites in the city.
After this long day of touring, we headed over to Trastevere for dinner.  I had pizza with sausage and

Sausage and mushroom pizza

mushrooms with red house wine.  Both were aaaamazing! 

Throwing in our coins at the Trevi Fountain

Friday (March 1-holy cow it's already March!)

Friday we went to Campo Di Fiori for some shopping!  First we had lunch at a little restaurant in the square.  I had lasagna, one was green with artichokes and ham (at least, I think it was ham) and the other was just normal lasagna.  It was so amazing! (this is a reoccurring theme)  After a little bartering I ended up getting souvenirs for a few friends back home, success!  After lunch and shopping, we of course had to get gelato.  We spent the rest of the day exploring Rome.  We hiked the Spanish Steps and then walked over to Piazza Popolo, which is less special than I thought it would be but still cool!  We spent the rest of the night hanging out at the Trevi Fountain drinking wine and waiting for the sun to go down so we could pictures of it all lit up.  We had a lot of fun people watching and just hanging out!  Down time was limited on this vacation.

Saturday (March 2)

Saturday my friend Brittany and I headed to the Colosseum, Palatine Hill and Roman Forum while the rest of the group went to the Vatican.  This was definitely one of the highlights of the trip!  Aside

Colosseum

from becoming increasingly annoyed with street vendors that harass you at every turn, Rome is amazing!  (On the trip I learned two key Italian phrases: No thank you and F--- off!)  It was really awesome to stand in the Colosseum and think about all the history and all the people who attended the..uh..activities...that took place there.  All I could say was "wow!!".  Palatine hill provided great views of Rome, but it was probably my least favorite of the three places.  The Roman Forum was really awesome!  Even though it's mostly just ruins, it's still really great.  Again, it's crazy to try to put yourself back in the time when Rome was in its prime and think of everything that took place right

Roman Forum

where you are standing!  Or maybe that's the history major in me!
We ran into a bit of trouble when trying to go visit my friends again that night.  Bus tickets are technically required if you want to use public transit, but I was under the impression that the bus police rarely enforce this rule.  So when we saw the bus police get on our bus I knew we just needed to hop off and walk away!  However, the policeman knew this trick as well and blocked us from leaving.  We tried to play dumb (finally! the language barrier works in our favor!) when they demanded our tickets and I.D.s, but when they threatened to take us to the station I decided to hand over my license.  (Didn't want to call my mom from an Italian jail)  We were suppose to be charged 50 euro for riding without a ticket (100 euro if you don't have 50 on you-which I didn't), but after acting completely confused for 15 minutes the man only charged us each 30 euro.  Not a great experience at the time, but I can laugh about it now and it made for an entertaining story!
After that debacle we went to dinner where I, of course, had pizza and wine for dinner and yes, it was amazing!

Sarah, Brittany, me and Grace with gelato

Trevi Fountain

Sarah and me at the Spanish Steps

Yep, you read that right.

Afternoon Tea, Brighton and Fulham Football

My week was pretty average, with a few random activities thrown in so here we go!

Monday we went with my History of London class to the National Portrait Gallery because it's semi-educational but mostly my professor is just incredibly lazy.  Anything he can do so that he doesn't have to do actual work!  Anyway, we saw portraits from the Tudor period and uhh the Stuarts. I didn't really pay attention to that. They literally all look the same. I joked that the artist just painted one face and put the face on everyone else in the portrait.  There is a really great one of Prince William and Harry, it almost looks like a photograph.  The most...interesting portrait was of David Beckham.  It's not a painting or a photo though, it's a video of him sleeping.  It's really odd, but it's David Beckham with his shirt off so I'm not complaining.  And now to the portrait that really matters- Kate Middleton.  If you haven't seen the portrait yet, quick! Google it!  Now let's discuss theories as to how/why the artist botched it so horribly.  Perhaps, the artist was thought to be a decent one but I assume they wouldn't hire just anybody for this.  So that leaves us with either a) the artist hates Kate and/or the Royal Family/Monarchy OR b) someone paid a lot of money for someone to make her look like an old woman with saggy cheeks, eye wrinkles, etc.  I will say her hair looks great!  But that's the only good thing about it. It's truly a disgrace. 

This was the week before midterms, so I decided to get a head start on all the papers I had due.  The majority of my week was spent writing about the Viking Age and the Great Fire.  I thought the whole "study" in study abroad wasn't real!

Thursday my program organized afternoon tea at the Gore Hotel (no apparent relation to Al Gore).  It was awesome!  I was kind of expecting a boring, stuffy afternoon but was pleasantly surprised.  We all got dressed up, which was fun because I don't usually get out of leggings during the week.  We had tea, which turns out-is delicious with sugar and milk, french press coffee (much better than my instant stuff), and cucumber infused water (they are really into that here, although I prefer my water plain).  The best part, of course, was the food!  First they brought out small triangle sandwiches filled with salmon, egg salad, ham and something I couldn't identify with ham.  Then they brought out brownie bites with chocolate on top-so good!  Plain and raisin scones with cream (sweet butter) and jam followed.  Multicolored macaroons came next, I opted for a chocolate one.  And the best part came last- mini eclairs.  I could eat eclairs every single day, so amazing!  This was definitely one of my favorite British experiences and I can't wait to share it with my mom and dad when they visit!

Friday we went to Brighton, which is a coastal town 2 hours directly south of London.  It was very pretty!  We toured the Royal Pavilion, which is a very tacky palace built by George III.  It's pretty neat from the outside, but the inside is covered in oriental decorations and just very overdone.  I was also getting sick of touring royal palaces, so this wasn't really my cup of tea that day.  As usual we were not allowed to take pictures.  After the guided tour, a few of us escaped and went to find lunch.  We had been given a list of restaurants around the pier and I was really looking forward to going to this Mexican restaurant, but as fate would have it it was closed!  So we settled for Thai food.  I had veggie spring rolls with sweet chili sauce and pad thai.  I really enjoyed it!  After lunch we headed over to Brighton beach/pier.  I was most excited to touch the British Channel, bragging rights!  I also picked up a rock for my mom.  It's a family tradition that has been engrained in me since I was little.  The beach is gorgeous!  I'm sure it's better in the summer, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

 
















Saturday we attended a Fulham football match, but first we prepared (or pregamed, rather) like we were in Madison.  We are badgers, no matter what country we are in!  Everyone attending the game went up to flat 5 and we all hung out before leaving for the game.  It was really fun to all hang out, something we don't get to do a whole lot.  I had never been to a football (or soccer) match before and it was a lot of fun!  I mean, I had no idea what was going on in the game and for most of the match I didn't even know which Fulham was!  Luckily, the man next to me knew his stuff so he explained lots of things to me.














The rest of the weekend I slaved away at my midterms...actually I spent a lot of time watching Harry Potter!  Spring break starts Thursday and I'm headed to Italy until March 10!  I will be in Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre and Venice!  So on that note...ciao!

Budapest: Day 3

Saturday, February 16

So turns out Budapest is humungous and trying to walk around to all the places on our list was impossible, so we scored a deal on a Big Bus Tour.  Basically this bus takes you all over the city and you can hop on/off whenever you want.  There was also commentary for places we went passed, which was very helpful because we never had any idea what we were looking at!  We started a joke that the theme of the trip was "What's that?!".  Some of the places we went on the tour were the Shoes on the Danube Promenade (memorial for Jewish victims of WWII), the Citadel (in Buda-on a hill with the Liberty Statue and what I'm assuming was a fortress because weapons are displayed outside it), the Castle district (in Buda-very neat building that I can't identify and the Royal Palace-much better view from down below near the river) and the Jewish Quarter (there is a fee to enter it, so we saw it from the outside while enjoying a Bailey's coffee).  My favorite part of the tour was the magnificent views of Pest and seeing the old buildings in Buda.  For lunch we ate at a buffet-style cafe in the Castle district.  I could only identify a few things in the line, so I chose what I thought was a fried veggie balls (told you, they fry everything) and rice with veggies.  The balls ended up to be meat, what kind of meat I cannot say.  I said chicken, another girl said fish-maybe tuna and another thought it might be lamb.  It was pretty tasty so I moved on from the mystery.

Shoes on the Danube Promenade

 

Chain Bridge

Operating large weapons at the Citadel

Citadel- Liberty Statue

Fisherman's Bastion

Matthias Church

After the tour we stopped back at the weekend market for dessert.  I got hot wine (tasted like cider!) and a cheese strudel-pastry type thing.  Both were delicious!  I tried a poppy-seed strudel, but had to spit it out.  It honestly tasted like dirt.  The market was super crowded and it was getting cold, so we headed back for a relaxing night in the hostel.  Two girls went to the Turkish Baths, but two of us didn't bring our swimsuits so we stayed back and had a few Hungarian beers.  We had dinner at a gyro place up the street from our hostel. The pita included meat, cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers, some veggie I couldn't identify, tzatziki sauce and chili sauce.  It was probably the best gyro pita ever. 

We had to be up at 3 to catch our 6 am flight so we called it a night after dinner.  When we left at 3:30 people were still raging hard down in the hostel bar!  We experienced sketchy cab ride number two on the way back to the airport.  The cab driver took a lot of alley roads and I was convinced at some points that we were going to be kidnapped.  He also drove just like the first one, passing cars even when cars were coming at us head on!  I was very relieved to get to the airport in one piece.  My morning quickly took a turn for the worse when I realized I had booked my flight back to London for March 17, not February.  Ugh!! 61,000 forints (Hungarian currency) later, I had a flight home on the correct date.