Now my charms are all o'erthrown...

Or almost!

As I finish up (finish being a loose term) my two final papers and prepare (prepare being a VERY loose term) for my final exam tomorrow, I want to take a moment to, well, to procrastinate. 

I still have a longish night ahead of me, but I'm not in terrible shape. One paper lacks a conclusion and the other paper lacks about a thousand words--which is about one-sixth of what I'll have written in the past two days, so child's play as far as I'm concerned. 

Tomorrow, after I finish my papers and take my exam, I'll head over to the final formal hall (which takes the form of a "masquerade and disco") in King's. I expect that this one will be more lavish than all the ones since the first, which is an exciting and fitting end to the program. Friday will be a day for me to explore Cambridge and maybe make one final trip to The Orchard for a farewell scone. I'll also have to PACK (what!) and do some shopping. Saturday I return home. 

My thoughts are, as of right now, get me out of here, but it's only because I have so much work to do. On Friday, I'll write another post, and I am willing to bet (not just because I'm the one who writes it...) that I'll be thinking I don't ever want to leave. 

Now it's back to paper-writing for the Erica!

The Final Stop

Okay, before I jump into the story of my weekend in Amsterdam, I think I need to do a little reflecting.

The title of this blog is a quote about England by Shakespeare, the URL is "erica-in-england," and I've spent the majority of my summer in England, yet by far most of my posts are about other European places and my adventures in them. As Harrison pointed out when he stayed with me for a few days after our trip to Amsterdam before he headed back to the States, I've SUCKED majorly at exploring Cambridge. In two days here, he saw over fifteen colleges. In my seven weeks here so far, I've seen about four or five. That's PATHETIC. So my goal for this weekend, besides writing two term papers, is to do some serious Cambridge exploring. If I'm feeling adventurous, I'll make my third trek back to The Orchard (more on that in a second). I'll visit more of the colleges and learn some Cambridge history. I'll be a good little explorer. 

Good, now that I've got a goal, let me work backwards in time. I had a take-home midterm due today for my Avant-garde Lit class. I also had the final exam for my Shakespeare class which went okay. Earlier in the week, Harrison was here. I took him to The Orchard in Grantchester (where many famous writers, etc. hung out), which is the next town over, and we had some delicious tea and scones at this QUAINT--I capitalize QUAINT because it is especially QUAINT there--although our trip was somewhat dampened by the rain (HA!) and by the swarm of bees trying to eat the honey from my little honey pot. That was anti-exciting because I am terrified of bees (never having been stung by one, I fear that it will be the most painful thing ever). But there was good news: using my newly discovered bee-trapping talent, I slammed the lid onto the honey pot and sentenced that little bee to his not-as-sweet-as-it-sounds death. It went like this:

OWNED. 

Anyway, I want to go back one more time before I leave, so that might have to be this weekend. 

Harrison and I also went punting for both our first times and it was fun although also kind of terrifying. 

So, that's Cambridge. Now, Amsterdam. 

Amsterdam is an absolutely charming city--the houses are skinny and tall, the canals are wide, the streets are overrun by bicycles, and there are prostitutes and pot. What more could you ask for! 

No, but the city is really beautiful. I was expecting seedy, but I got clean and charming and pleasant. Despite a debacle with our hotel room having been overbooked and thus given to someone else (we didn't so much smooth out the situation as pay an extra 30 euro to rent out one of their apartments), we had very few problems with logistical stuff. We got in on Saturday morning and went on another free tour, run by the same company that ran the Dublin one. This one was much better. The guide didn't repeat himself three times for everything he said and he kept up a good pace. He received a slightly higher (ha) tip than the Dublin guy. 

After the tour, we walked over to watch the Gay Pride Parade float down the canal. There were a bunch of characters and lots of phallic imagery. This couple was particularly adorable: 

Then I think we went back to the hotel to check in (at which point we had our debacle) and ended up in a kinda sketchy apartment, complete with red Christmas lights, a giant stuffed tiger, and a disco ball. The toilet and shower were also not at all separated, even by a shower curtain. Whatever, it was a place to sleep. 

We headed back out, grabbed dinner, and then went to take a tour of the Westkerk. We climbed to the top (stopping on a bunch of the floors to see the carillon setup) and had a pretty nice view of the city.

After the church, we went on a canal cruise which lasted for about an hour. I was far too tired to pay attention to much of the information (which was first said in Dutch, then German, then English) but the views of the city from the water were nice. I like this one:

After the canal cruise, we walked around the Red Light District for a bit, which was awkward and interesting. Some of the prostitutes stand there with their doors open, flirting with potential customers and trying to draw them in. We went to bed pretty early (I didn't really sleep on Friday night since our flight was so early) and then got up early Sunday morning to do the bulk of our sightseeing. 

We started off the morning with a visit to the Rijksmuseum, which holds some of the most famous Dutch art (Rembrandts and Vermeers and etc.) and then we made our way (a bit too slowly) over to the Van Gogh Museum. When we got there, there was a pretty long line, but we waited it out and got in after about forty-five minutes. I enjoyed it, Harrison not as much. 

After Van Gogh, we walked across the city to a windmill! An actual windmill! It looked like you might imagine a windmill to look:

There's me in front of the windmill!

Then we walked back to our apartment, gathered up some strength, and headed back out for dinner and more sightseeing. We had pancakes for dinner! They were delicious (apple and bacon, yum!). Then we went to the Homomonument (which is exactly what it sounds like). It was beautiful and moving and a lovely monument to all those persecuted because of their sexuality. This is just one of the three pink triangles that connect together to form a large pink triangle (the Nazis forced gays to wear a pink triangle as identification). 

Ending our sightseeing on sadder note, we went to the Anne Frank House and Museum. The museum was the saddest one I've been to since the Holocaust Museum in Berlin. At the same time, it was uplifting to see how Otto Frank survived and carried on and helped to build this great historical place which now plays a role in anti-discrimination and anti-hate movements. He must have been one the strongest people ever--to have lost his entire family and then to create something like the Anne Frank Museum--and that is inspirational. 

After the museum, we walked over to what should have been the Skinny Bridge but was instead a re-built not-so-skinny bridge. But Amsterdam is pretty by night: 

We went to sleep pretty early again, got up the next morning, checked out without too many problems, and headed back to Cambridge. 

This trip marked what was basically the end of my European travels. My passport is much fuller than it was at the start of summer. I've added London, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Dublin, Rome, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Ibiza to my list. That is pretty impressive for a short nine weeks. This summer has been FULL of wonderful experiences and I could not be happier with how it all turned out. 

I've got one week left and it's time for me to buckle down and write some term papers. The upcoming week involves lots of homework, the final formal hall, and a few loose-ends, and then I'll be headed back to the US. That final trip will be bittersweet, I think, but more on that later in the week. 

Lovely(?) (Two) Day(s) for a Guinness

Continuing on my limited European tour, Harrison and I headed off to Dublin. My flight was delayed like five hours, which was awful, but didn't really throw off our schedule. We got to our hostel pretty late and when we went into the dorm room (parents, see, it's better that I tell you about these things after the fact, that way you can see I'm still alive!) which had five bunks of two beds which were *supposed* to be labeled with numbers. But we didn't want to turn the lights on and wake the sleepers, so we resorted to the ever-useful "cellphones are flashlights" rule. My bed didn't have a number, but using our deductive reasoning skills, we figured it out. I slept terribly and woke up the next morning not even sure I was waking up from sleeping.
Saturday morning we headed over to the tourism office to pick up our Dublin Passes, which cost us 35 euros and saved us about 3 euros. Then we went on a FOUR hour walking tour with a guy whose main phrases were "ladies and gentlemen" and "brilliant" but he was kind of funny and at times, informative, so we gave him a reasonable tip (the tour was free) at the end. After that, we headed over to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, but once we were in line, we decided we didn't really want to spend 8 euro on a book we hadn't heard of until we started researching Dublin, so we walked over to the National Gallery and saw some art instead. Then we kind of wandered back to our hostel, showered, and headed out to find some dinner and walk up one of the main streets in Dublin.
Finding dinner was a struggle, because basically the only restaurants in Dublin are pubs, and I wasn't really in the mood for pub food. Eventually we found this pub and I was delightfully surprised by the penne chicken broccoli dish I had. Then we walked to the Temple Bar area to go for the Irish pub experience, but everywhere was super crowded.

After walking into The Temple Bar and walking out about three minutes later, we just decided to head back to the hostel and ask the "concierge" there for a recommendation of a less crowded, less expensive pub.
He told us to go to the Cobblestone, which turned out to still be crowded but not unbearably so, and so we did. We ordered pints of cider (YUM, America, please get cider, you NEED it) and stood at the bar, chatting and people-watching. There was a really good musician playing in the back room, but it was 12 euro to get in there, so cheapness prevented us (also, I don't think Harrison really cared for her music, but what I heard through the door was beautiful and I wish I could remember the name).
We went back to the hostel early and got in a solid eight hours of sleep before beginning our heavy day of sightseeing.
Although Dublin doesn't really have that one main attraction to draw tourists in, it's got a bunch of little stuff that adds up nicely. We started out with St. Patrick's Cathedral:

took a long walk over to Kilmainham Gaol:

which was interesting, and then headed back toward the center of the city and stopped at the Old Jameson Distillery. Here we went on a tour to see how Jameson whisky is made and then were treated to a "complimentary" (read: included in the price of your ticket) drink at the end. Harrison even volunteered to be one of eight whisky tasters, which meant he learned the differences between a Scotch whisky, an American whisky (Jack) and Jameson. When the tour guide went around the eight of them at the end, asking which was each person's favorite, he blasphemously said the Jack Daniels! They gave him a certificate for being a qualified whisky taster anyway:

Left: Harrison with his certificate; right: my Jameson and ginger ale. 

ALSO, as we walked into the square where the distillery was, we were greeted by HORSES and lots of them. It was weird and I don't know why they were there, but that's that.

Anyway, after Jameson, we walked over to Christ Church, which holds the infamous(?) mummified-ish cat chasing the rat. The story goes that a cat chased a rat up an organ pipe, both of them got stuck and were years later pulled out of the organ. They're preserved down in the crypt of the church and the whole thing is kind of dodgy.
After the church, we went to a museum/hands-on experience called Dublinia, which is more geared toward children, which was kind of relaxing. I didn't learn very much, but we had fun fooling around with the various children's activities. Then we went to the New York Times recommended Queen of Tarts for an afternoon scone (yum!) and then walked up to Dublin Castle for our 4:30 tour. The castle doesn't look like a castle in the medieval sense, because most of that was destroyed and it was rebuilt in the 18th century. There were some really beautiful rooms there, full of Waterford crystal chandeliers and so forth.

They also ushered us underneath the current castle to where you can see some of the old foundations of the original castle, which was built by King John (of Robin Hood fame).
After the castle, we rushed over to the Guinness Storehouse for our final stop of the day and easily the one that draws the greatest number of visitors. We traveled up the floors of the exhibition, working our way toward the Gravity Bar, which is a 7th floor, circular, glass room where you get your "complimentary" pint of Guinness at the end. The view was pretty great, which you'd normally be surprised by, since it's only seven stories, but most of Dublin is short, so we could see basically everything and there weren't many taller buildings than that. Harrison drank about one-sixth of his pint and I (proudly!) finished mine off. I actually kind of like the taste of Guinness, which reminds me of coffee.

I bought my Ireland souvenir in the Guinness gift shop, which is a new poster for my room. It's the one on the right here. 
Then we stopped back at the hostel, picked up our backpacks, and hopped on a bus to the airport. While we were waiting for the bus, we ran into a Yale student on the streets. Small world!
We made it back to London EARLY this time and I was even able to wiggle my way on to an earlier bus back to Cambridge, which was nice, because I was really behind on my homework, and as I write this, I'm only falling more behind.
This week's almost over, and we're leaving for Amsterdam early Saturday morning. This will be the last big trip of my summer, I think.

On an unrelated note, I had my first real pangs of longing for home today. The weather here was AWFUL (like, 50 degrees and raining) and I REALLY wanted to be at home, sitting in the sunshine, doing whatever it is I do when I'm at home in New Jersey with no work to do. So, I'm now looking forward to going home (which could also be a product of the fact that I have a lot of work to do and more to come).

You can find some more pictures (biased toward pictures of Harrison doing weird things and me standing in front of barrels) here. There's a short video that you can find here. I apologize for the terrible videography and the even more lamentable editing.

A Tale of Airport Woe

I write to you from the tiny Stansted airport in London. I paid a pound for 10 minutes of internet access. Now, I wouldn't have needed to pay a pound for internet access had my flight not been delayed four and a half hours.
FOUR AND A HALF HOURS. Can you believe it? Honestly, can you believe it?

Anyway, I'm really quiet angry with RyanAir at the moment.
I have about another 1:45 in the airport here, and i've already been here for 4:30.

Well, time is running low.
See you all on the other side of Dublin, assuming I ever make it there.

Say Hello to the Coopers!

If there are any readers out there who aren't my family, then I want to treat them to my experience of Skyping with my family. Mostly, I'd like to share some of my father's jokes with you. "Joke" is a liberal term, used here to describe a "humourous" comment that elicits so-called "pity laughs" from the audience. 

My parents frequently joke about Marion's phone, the Droid. My dad likes to make that sound from the commercial. Anyway, so he says:

"If you go to Stonehenge, say hi to Marion's droid for me." 

and Marion goes: 

"That's 'druid,' honey." 

HA. They're funny. 

Later, my sister tried to show me a picture on her phone through the video camera, and I tell her it's not going to work. 

I said, "You guys already look dusty." (I was trying to describe their not-quite-pixelated but...well, dusty appearance.) 

and my dad goes, 

"Oh, Helena [the cleaning lady] didn't clean the webcam!" 

HA. Once again. What a riot. 

Then, they told me how they went to go see Salt. My dad goes, 

"It was good, but pepper wasn't in it." 

HA. That was funny in itself. 

But then, Marion accuses, "You've been holding that one in!" 

and he goes,

"I was waiting for a transatlantic audience." 

HA. 

There were tonnes (haha) of other jokes, but I didn't want to look too suspicious writing them all down. 

I had a nice (long, at 40 minutes) chat with all four of them (parental units, sister unit, and grandma unit!) and it was VERY enjoyable. 

However, the Coopers seem to be holding up well without me...so maybe I can stay in England forever? 

Rome, London, &c.

Well, after several frantic e-mails from my parents begging to know whether I'm actually alive, I figured it was time to get back to this.
I had a traumatic experience about a week ago where I wrote a whole blog post about my adventures in Rome and when I clicked "Publish Post," the whole thing disappeared. After that, I kind of gave up. So, in honor of the only three people who read my blog (my parents and my sister), I'm writing a special-edition, "what I've been up to" post, which will be de-necessitated (is that a word?) by the fact that I'm skyping with the group of them this evening.
So, to begin, Rome:
1. The gelato was amazing. I was talking to someone the other day and she found out I had been in Rome so I was telling her about it. I was like, "Yeah, the food's delicious. The pasta and the gelato..." and I sort of trailed off, and she goes, "Yeah, did you have ice cream? I hear the ice cream there is great," and I just sort of nodded my head and was like "Yeah, that too!" Anyway, it was a delicious trip. One of our YDN reporters, who's working at the AP in Rome this summer, took us to one of his favorite sandwich and gelato shops on the Sunday afternoon we were there, and then he gave us a mini-informal-tour of the Pantheon, which was nice.
2. The heat was brutal. Like, over 100 degrees each day. Try walking back and forth across a city in that heat. Impossible! If it weren't for the free water fountains scattered everywhere, and the potable water from actual fountains, like this:

we surely would have died from heat exhaustion.
3. The buildings were ruined! All of them! In ruins! But seriously, Rome is a mixture of: churches, ruins, piazzas, and fountains. Almost everything is wonderfully picturesque, which could explain the hundreds of pictures I took in the two days we were there. A selection of them can be found in my previous blog post.
4. The Gina was there! A big highlight of the trip was seeing my beloved high-school friend, Gina, who's studying abroad for a couple of weeks in Italy. It felt kind of absurd, but mostly just awesome to see her in a foreign country that wasn't Canada (which is the only other "foreign" country we've been to together). It was also lovely to see Harrison, although of course, it was the first of many times that I'll be seeing him this summer.
5. My favorite sights were St. Peter's Basilica (and square), the Coliseum, and the Trevi Fountain (at night!). St. Peter's was just of such stunning proportions and so elaborate that it was hard not to be amazed. The Coliseum had wonderful historical and cultural information all over the place, which was refreshing, since a lot of the other things we saw were sorely lacking in placards about history and such. The Coliseum was also a lot of fun to photograph. Seeing Rome by night was another good idea. We went out the first night we were there and saw the Trevi Fountain as well as the Pantheon (the outside, at least). The second night we walked and saw a lot of the ruins (Palatine Hill, the Roman Forum, and the Coliseum) from some good vantage points and then spent a lot of time loitering around the Coliseum while I attempted to do some photography with a makeshift tripod (in the form of some random street utility box or parking meter or something).

That was the bulk of our Rome trip. I'm sure I'm already forgetting tons of stuff, which is of course the disadvantage to writing such a delayed post. I was impressed with how much we saw in such a short time and with the challenge of such incredible heat.

That week I got back from Rome, I spent one night and day in London. On the Wednesday night, Harrison and I went to see Avenue Q (which was funny, although plot-wise it was a pretty standard boy-meets-girl tale). During the day on Thursday I did a bunch of sight-seeing by myself.
I started with the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens. Anyone familiar with Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen's "Winning London" will recognize it:

I also saw a lot of birds in the park, which were really cute:

Then I headed over to Harrod's, where, before it even opened, people (mostly tourists) were already waiting to go inside. I went in and it was amazing. It made me wish I were rich so that I could wander through feeling like I belonged rather than feeling like an alien. The coolest parts were the stationery section (which had Prometheus Bound books) and the food store, which was full of gourmet options. I bought myself some tea there, so that at least I could say I bought something from Harrod's:

After Harrod's I headed over to the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is an absolutely amazing museum. I spent most of my time looking at their silver and gold collections, as well as their jewelry. As you can see, I was feeling quite fashionable that day.
After I spent a good two hours (you could spend days, but of course, my time was limited) at the V&A, I took the Tube up to King's Cross, where I tried and failed to find Platform 9 3/4. The most depressing moment came a few days later, when I saw one of my friends had been there and found out I was just looking in the wrong place. At any rate, I was AT King's Cross. So that's pretty close. My real destination however, was the British library, which has a special "Treasures" room of all their coolest stuff. My personal favorites were manuscripts of Jane Eyre, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, the Beowulf manuscript, and Milton's Commonplace book. There was a ton of other cool stuff, like a Gutenberg Bible (although I'm of course spoiled by the one that's always on display at Beinecke) and one of the four copies in existence of the Magna Carta, which was actually pretty cool. There were other neat things too, like some original song writings by the Beatles and some cool Alice in Wonderland stuff.
After that, I wandered around for an hour trying to find the Charles Dickens Museum, which turned out to be a complete bust because the museum was really poorly done. Annoyed that I had wasted my time and also missed my chance to go into Westminster Abbey (last admission is at a very early 3:30), I headed over to the Tower of London, with the prospect of seeing more jewels in mind.
When I went to buy my ticket at about 4 PM, the (very very nice!) ticket lady advised me not to buy it, since it was pretty expensive (almost 20 dollars) and they recommended at least 3 hours to see the whole place. Of course, I didn't know if I would be able to make it back into London and there was no way I was leaving without seeing the Crown Jewels. I splurged and as soon as I got in, hurried over to the Jewel House as the ticket lady had advised me.
Personally, I would have paid 20 dollars just to see the Crown Jewels. They were stunning. I got to see another exhibit that's part of the castle/fortress which featured a lot of armor, so that was interesting too. I don't think it was a waste, although I do wish that I'd had more time.
After the Tower of London, I took my time getting to Parliament, where I was meeting Harrison and two of the other Yalies he's living with this summer, one of whom who works at Parliament, to go on a tour.
While I was waiting, I took pictures of Big Ben:

Then we went on the tour of Parliament and got to see the House of Lords (although not the House of Commons) and the Crypt Chapel, which most people don't get to see. We also saw the Queen's Robing Room, which is a giant room where basically she puts on her robe and crown and it's only used once a year.
After Parliament, the four of us went out to dinner in Chinatown (yum!). That basically ended my trip to London. I hope I have a chance to go back, although I'm not sure I will.

Since then, I've had more work to do. I'm in the midst of extensive revisions to my short story which has a long way to go before I'll deem it "polished." I also have a Shakespeare paper coming up, which I need to start thinking about. My third class, Avant-garde Literature, started this week, and so far I've mostly just been confused. Hopefully as the course goes on, things will start to make more sense. He played us this "piece" (I caution you to only listen to it for a few seconds) at the beginning of our first class, for EIGHT MINUTES at LOUD VOLUME. It was excruciating, anxiety-inducing, and almost made me cry by the end. When he asked about it after, I called it a form of psychological torture.

What more can I say? I went to my third Formal Hall last night, where the company was wonderful, but I found the food to be lacking (mostly because the main course was salmon and I dislike cooked salmon).
I'm off to Dublin tomorrow night, so hopefully I'll be less negligent when I get back about writing up a post.

Céad slán (that's apparently "farewell" in Irish)!

Roman Holiday

I don't have time to write an account of my weekend in Rome just now, but here's a slideshow until I do.
(I tried to embed it on the blog...but like all of my other pictures, it got cut off at the edges. Anybody have any advice?)

Traveling Light...to Rome!

I just finished up most of my packing for my trip to Rome this weekend, and since the carry-on restrictions are pretty tight (strictly ONE bag), I had to do some really light packing. I wanted to bring only my backpack and my camera, which is what I'm doing, but in order to get through security, I'll need my camera bag to be IN my backpack. And it takes up about half of the space. Which means I can't bring too much else. After packing in my clothes and stuff (I can't resist traveling without at least two books), I picked up my backpack and was pleasantly surprised at how light it is. This is going to have tremendous advantages--I can walk to the train station tomorrow without any pain, I can dart through the airport past those travelers who insist on lugging around two gigantic suitcases full of clothes they won't wear, and I won't have to ruminate for very long about what to wear each day.
This post has been an extreme excuse for me to procrastinate working on my Shakespeare midterm, which I want to finish before I leave for the weekend.
Look forward to plenty of pictures when I get back and the story of our adventures through the Eternal City.
Arrivederci, Cambridge, ciao, Roma!

Mmmmm...Formal Hall!

So, Pembroke kitchen has a blog, like all cool people, and they wrote about the dinner they made for formal hall last night, with pictures! So you can see what I ate. They must have gotten us confused with the other summer school program here, which is strictly Californians (although there are a ton of Californians in our program as well).

Dessert was particularly delicious.

Parents, now you know I'm not starving.

On the subject of food, there's a wonderful little open air market in the city and my favorite stall has unbeatably delicious peaches and nectarines. So although I'm missing out on the gardens of my apt-nicknamed home state, I still get my fresh summer fruits!

The Globe, Tate Modern, Ye Olde London, and Trafalgar Square / Dirty Dancing

I made my first trip into London today with a busload of fellow PKPers. They dropped most of us off at the Globe Theater for a special tour and lecture given by a geekily attractive, not-so-well spoken staff member for the Globe Education project. He was really informative though and I enjoyed the tour (in fact, I enjoyed the tour more than the actual play). After the tour and before the show, I got to spend about two hours at the Tate Modern, and although I'm not a huge fan of modern art in general, I did get to enjoy some Robert Frank, August Sander, and a couple of other cool things, like Monet's Water Lilies and some Warhol and other pop stuff that I liked. I also determined what I don't like. I headed back to the Globe for a production of Henry VIII, which I realized is not very exciting. The acting was overall decent and the costumes were awesome, and all of the pageantry/pomp/procession scenes were cool, but the play itself just was not enough to keep me going for three hours. Interestingly, when the original Globe burnt down, it was during the first (or one of the earliest) performances of Henry VIII, so that was kind of neat. The thing that was not neat was being a so-called "groundling" which meant that I was standing for about three hours watching the play in the area in front of the stage. Had I made the choice myself, I probably would have paid the extra 10 or 15 pounds to have a seat, so that instead of focusing on how much my feet hurt, I could focus on the Shakespeare itself. 

After the grueling three hours, I headed out with two friends to go grab some food at a pub (I had a lackluster Irish stew (beef + guinness likely, although I couldn't taste the guinness at all)) and then we walked toward Trafalgar Square with ice cream on our minds, pleased to find a stand right on the outskirts of the square. We got ice cream (at that point, it tasted like the best ice cream ever) and then headed into the square, which was full of activity, because T-Mobile was doing some sort of thing where they set up a giant screen and projected Dirty Dancing to hundreds of people. They gave out blankets and soda and popcorn and it was all a very bizarre marketing ploy, but it was free and we were tired, so we sat down and watched the movie. 

On the bus ride home, we saw a big cloud in the shape of the UK. We watched it dissolve and fade for a while, like the British Empire herself. But no, London is a vibrant city and I can't wait to go back and check out all the rest of its offerings (the Tate Britain, the Tower of London, etc...I am DYING to see the crown jewels). 

Less than one week until ROMA! 

Ciao! 

The Most Epic Love Story Ever Told...

Twilight!

Okay well I took some time out of my busy (read: uneventful) day today to go see the latest installment of the soggiest saga ever written. It just came out in the UK today, so I was expecting the theater to be kind of swamped. I guessed wrong. Maybe the British are smarter than the Americans, because at 6:15, when the show was supposed to start, there were only 25 people in the theater (called a "screen"). A few more trickled in during the previews and even into the first ten or so minutes of the movie, but by the end, there were still under 50 people there. I guess it was dinner time, but I was still surprised.
I'm not going to waste much of my or your time talking about the movie. They did the best they could with the material they had, which actually makes the fact that it was not a terrible movie more impressive. Kristen Stewart gave the performance of her lifetime up to this point. She managed to not bite her lip at all through the two hour movie. At the end, I wanted to clap for her. Taylor Lautner's abs also gave a great performance, although I can't say the same for the rest of him. Robert Pattinson remains, as ever, not terribly attractive. But the character that stole the show was Jacob's wolf form. He was cuddly and fuzzy and all sorts of adorable, with a fierce and, well, wolfish side for contrast. I nominate him for Best Supporting Actor. He really showed some depth of character and delivered all of his lines with the subtle grace and perfection of the world's best talents.
Anyway, there were two more things I wanted to say about the moviegoing experience. One being that the tweenage girls in that theater were extraordinarily obnoxious. They talked throughout the entire movie. I'm okay with some gasping and laughing and whatnot on occasion, but to talk pretty consistently throughout is just plain rude.
The other thing I wanted to mention, and this is mostly for Gina's benefit, is that before the movie started, there was a Twilight-inspired Volvo commercial, which was about the funniest thing ever. It wasn't this one exactly, but you get the picture.

Well, that's all I have to say about Twilight, until Breaking Dawn, of course. Happy Friday!

My Accommodation (vs. American English "accommodations")

Well, I've been here for almost two weeks now, and I have yet to post a picture of my room! I know you've all just been dying to see what it looks like.
BLANKIE!!! Okay that's the wool blanket I bought in Scotland to which I now have an age-inappropriate attachment.

My "bathroom," a.k.a. a sink and a mirror:

The whole room (or as much of it as would fit in the frame): 

It's quite fetching, innit?

Evensong at King's College Chapel

I know I've already raved about the beauty that is the Chapel, but let me rave once more. This evening I had the chance to see (hear?) Evensong in the Chapel, which occurs most nights of the term and is finishing up at the end of this week. According to the King's College website,

the Choir [the one that sang in the Evensong service] owes its existence to King Henry VI, who envisaged the daily singing of services in his magnificent chapel. This remains the Choir's raison d'être, and is an important part of the lives of its 16 choristers, who are educated on generous scholarships at King's College School, and the 14 choral scholars and two organ scholars, who study a variety of subjects in the College.

and these boys were AMAZING. Two in particular stood out, a little redheaded boy whose voice was SO high and an older boy, probably in his late teens, who had a high voice as well, all the more impressive for his age.
My cursory internet search turned up no results for a recording of the Evensong service itself (which the BBC seems to sometimes stream live online), but I did find a lovely recording of the choir singing something else here.
As "students" of the college, we also got special treatment, meaning we got to skip the line and go in early, as well as to be some of the first people to leave the chapel when the service was over. We even had preferred seating--I was directly behind one half of the choir and so could hear their voices clearly. Things got a bit uncomfortable during the very religious moments, but other than that, it was a lovely way to spend 5:30-6:30 PM and I'm sad that I probably won't ever witness it again.

It's finally the weekend (man, what a grueling three-day week this has been, with a walloping six classes) which means that tomorrow I'll be going to tea (how British am I!--incidentally I just ate a scone with some jam, yum!) in the afternoon, Saturday I'll be heading into London for my first time and seeing a show at the Globe (Henry VIII, I believe), and Sunday I'll be going for tea again, this time at The Orchard in Grantchester, which will be really fun.

The other day I was at the Gap and I walked out of the changing room and handed a pair of jeans back to the guy and took a pair with me, and I say thanks and he says "cheers" and then I didn't know what to say back. What do you say in response to "cheers"? "You too?" "Cheers too!" "Right back at ya!"

On Top of Olde King's College Chapel

I don't know what possessed me to take a tour of the Chapel roof earlier today, but before I really knew what was happening, I found myself climbing up the sloped roof of the chapel, with nothing but some light friction and some 500 year old stone preventing me from falling to my death.
Since that's not really what my parents need to hear, I'll go on by saying that it was all quite safe!

The chapel is really long, quite high, and amazingly beautiful. My favorite part of the roof is underneath the above part, where in the Victorian age, they decided the roof needed some extra support, so they put in these iron bracings, which are the white bands stretching across the chapel:

Recently, structuralists studied the church and these bracings only to determine that they do absolutely nothing to help support the church. Hahahahahaha. The stone at the bottom there is about 10 inches thick and underneath it is just solid...air. Gothic architecture is awesome like that.
The view from the top was pretty nice, although terribly frightening and somewhat obstructed by all the stone work on the edges of the roof.

Since I felt like I was about to die for most of the tour, I won't be going up there again anytime soon. I will go back to the inside part (for Evensong this Thursday actually), because it's really pretty in there:

In other, non-chapel news, I've added a trip to Amsterdam into my travel schedule, which means that by the end of the summer, I will have been to: Spain, England, Scotland, Italy, Ireland, and the Netherlands! Whether I go to Paris is yet to be determined (although with budget and time constraints, as my magic 8 ball would say, outlook not good).

There and Back Again...A Scottish Tale

After spending many hours driving through the Shire--

--we (that is, Coach 3), reached Richmond, our break point, where we had lunch and saw the Richmond Castle, which was more ruin than castle. (Just a sidenote, I think Blogger is cutting off my pictures on the sides, so you have to click to see the whole thing.) It was cool, but not terribly impressive (look at me, I've been in ye olde England for a week, and already castles are seeming unimpressive. Next thing you know, I'll be telling you that the Sistine Chapel is "okay").
We finished our drive into Scotland, dividing our time on the bus between napping, reading, and staring at the sheep. They were super cute and looked like this:

N.B. This picture was NOT taken while on the bus. I took it on a hike which I'll tell you about later.
We dropped our stuff in our rooms (which were really nice--we stayed at Pollock Halls at the University of Edinburgh, although I didn't see any University buildings...), ran to dinner, and then at about 9 o'clock we set off on a hike up to what's called Arthur's Seat (although according to Wikipedia, it doesn't seem too too likely that the place has any relation to King Arthur) in Holyrood Park. This was a WONDERFUL idea. The sun doesn't set until after 10 up there, and it doesn't really get dark until around 11, so we had plenty of time.
Anyway, it was a bit arduous at times, but it was a BEAUTIFUL view. Maddie took this picture of me:

My cardigan's all funky because it was really really windy. That's the lovely city of Edinburgh behind me. Note that this picture was taken at 9:45, which is kind of crazy.
Anyway, that was the main highlight of the first day.
The next morning, we woke up early (they served haggis and black pudding at breakfast...needless to say, I did not go near it) and headed over to Rosslyn Chapel, of The Da Vinci Code fame. The chapel was lamely undergoing conservation and they didn't allow pictures inside AND the Holy Grail might be hidden under its floors but they're not investigating so I am kind of angry with this Chapel and thus will spend no more time on it...although it was kind of pretty.
In the afternoon, we headed into Edinburgh to see the sights. We walked up the Royal Mile to the Edinburgh Castle, which holds the Scottish crown jewels, but decided the 14 pound admission rate was a bit steep and just admired the castle from the outside. We walked back down the Royal Mile to the new Scottish Parliament building, which is drastically different from the castle. It's a modern building that looks really wacky and is full of a lot of highly stylized old Scottish symbols. The tour was pretty interesting and free to boot, so I and my wallet appreciated that.
Saturday night, the eve of the 4th of July, saw all of us gathered into the conference center for TRADITIONAL SCOTTISH DANCING, called Ceilidh, which was a riot. It's kind of like square dancing but Scottish. It actually reminded me a lot of German Folk Club dancing, for those of you who remember that.

Yes, this dude is wearing a kilt. Yes, he is American.

So that was pretty cool. At midnight, we all sang the Star Spangled Banner loudly and obnoxiously, like true Americans. A few of us even had mini flags, which we waved around with wild abandon.
Sunday morning at first seemed like it would be a terrible disappointment. We were scheduled to go on a hike through the Trossachs, which are the "mini-Highlands." It was going to be tough and tiring, but entirely worth it for the view. However, our program leader, Greg, came up to us with some bad news, saying that there were "torrential downpours and 70mph winds" in the Trossachs and he thought it was "too dangerous to go out." He had planned a closer, alternative hike for later in the afternoon, which we were definitely going to go on. In the meantime, Maddie and I trekked into the city to do some shopping. I bought a scarf and a blanket made from Scottish wool, both of which are absurdly amazing. I snuggled up in the blanket for the whole bus ride home and couldn't be happier with that purchase.
We headed back to the dorms to leave for the hike. I, of course, in my perpetual irreverence for the weather, had nothing water-proof, and was forced to go buy a trash bag in a pathetic attempt to stay dry. It didn't really work.
We drove about a half hour away and began our hike up to a close peak. The weather got progressively worse as we neared the top, so that by the time we had reached it, we were being pelted with small hailstones. I kid you not. It was hail. And it was painful. But it was also invigorating, in the same way that I assume acupuncture is healing. My jeans were sopping wet and my shirt (underneath my trash bag) was damp. But the view was amazing (this isn't from the highest peak...I wasn't about to take out my camera in the hailstorm):

Basically, the most important thing I learned this weekend is that Scotland is beautiful.
Anyway, after the hike, I curled up under my covers, made myself some hot tea, and did some (pleasure) reading.
I went out for a glass of cider (hard) and then hung out with some people for a while before heading back to bed to get up early for today's departure.
The bus ride back started off boringly and we were stuck in traffic for a while. But when we got to Fountain's Abbey, all of that was forgotten. The Abbey was built in the 12th century and is pretty well preserved. I won't try describing it in words, since I would probably fail. Pictures will do the job better:

There are tons more...so if you're interested, I can send them along. The final one is the so-called "Surprise View" from "Anne Boleyn's Seat." The place was beautiful and secluded and made me wish I could have been there in its heyday.
I actually have to go do homework (you know...I'm here to "study abroad"), but I'll leave you with this for now: A Scotsman playing the bagpipes whilst wearing a kilt!

And one more sheep, for good measure:

And this quote I just found from Braveheart, which I have yet to see, but definitely will be watching soon:
[William has asked Murron to go riding with him in the rain] 
Mother MacClannough: In this? You're out of your mind! 
William Wallace: Oh, it's good Scottish weather, madam. The rain is falling straight down. Well, slightly to the side like. 


Bye now! 

"Please Do Not Walk on the Grass"

You see signs that say that everywhere around the university. So basically you can't walk on the grass anywhere on campus. But once you become a fellow of the university, then you have permission. There's one lawn in Pembroke College called "Bowling Green Lawn" I believe that has sloped edges and the main part of it is flat. Students are actually allowed to sit on the sloped edge, but only fellows can go into the main part, and it's on that lawn that they play this game called "bowls" which involves rolling a black ball across the lawn to try to get it as close as possible to a white ball on the other side. It's very much an old-people sport (sport sounds a little too active).
At any rate, it's weird not to cut across the grass or be able to go and have picnics. There are some (very specific) times however when you can go on the grass, like specified hours when you're allowed to go onto a specific lawn and play croquet.
Or, like two nights ago, when before the Formal Hall, we got to go onto the Back Lawn of King's College and have our drinks there:

So you can imagine how exciting it was to be able to go on the lawn...or maybe you can't quite imagine how exciting it was. But, boy, let me tell you, it was exciting!

England, the Abridged Version

I've finally got internet in my room, which is a vast improvement on me running to the library at random times to check my e-mail. That also means I can start blogging as regularly as my schedule allows. Which is, I think, going to be not very much! For instance, I haven't stopped DOING stuff since I woke up at 8 AM this morning. When I wasn't in class, I was reading Titus Andronicus to prepare for class, and in 20 minutes I have to leave for an information session about my Scotland trip this weekend, and then after that, we're having a "restaurant night"--I chose to go to an Indian restaurant--and then after THAT, I have to come back and read A Midsummer Night's Dream for my Shakespeare lecture tomorrow as well as interview my character (...more on this in a second) for my Short Story Writing class. Short Story is SO much fun. For example, yesterday, our professor told us to write for 10 minutes when we woke up this morning. Then today, in seminar, we were to go through and pick out 7 words from what we wrote and write them all spread out on a separate page. Then our task was to link the words together in story (mine's about an old man dying with some sort of lung disease that makes it hard for him to breathe). Then, she sent us out into the town to follow the first person we saw, taking notes on his movements, speech, where they were headed, what we though they were thinking, etc. When we returned, she had us add this character into our story in some way. It's a lot of fun, forcing yourself to be creative and seeing what comes of it. Which is why tonight, I have to interview my character without planning the questions beforehand, the idea being that each answer will prompt the next question. This sounds weird, because, well, I'll be supplying both the question and the answer, but the point is to become the character, to really get inside his head. Should be fun.
So my classes are good. The social scene is fun too. Last night was our first "formal hall" which is essentially everyone sitting down together in a giant hall (which looks a lot like the Great Hall--there were even four tables) and being served a three course meal. Much fun! We even got to walk on the lawn (this is a subject for its own blog post. I wish to do the inanities of this university's traditions justice.)
There are about a gazillion more things I want to say--so I'll note them here for now and return to them later. They include: vocabulary differences, new friends, my first pub experience, the power of the British accent, the dining hall and food system (esp. in comparison to Yale's), and my room.
Unfortunately, I won't be posting any of my own pictures today as I literally haven't taken any since I got here. However, I will treat you to one of my favorite views so far:

I haven't been inside the chapel yet, but hopefully soon I'll step inside the *wondrous* King's Chapel. 

One final note before I head off. I was reading Richard II the other day for my Shakespeare class, and funnily enough ran across the lines that I quoted in my first blog post. I suppose it was only a matter of time, but still, reading those lines after having actually seen England made them infinitely more powerful: you cannot imagine the beauty of the English countryside or the quaintness of the Cambridge streets until you have seen them for yourself. So the thing I am actually looking forward to next is the bus drive to Scotland and the hike in the Trossachs, where I will really get to see this blessed realm.

Cheerio? 

Erica

Addendum: I can't be positive, as I'm no expert on bird-calls or whatever, but I'm pretty sure I hear owls outside my window all the time. This, of course, leads me to hoping that one of them will swoop into my window holding a letter only about 10 years late. 

Hiking up Mountains, or, How I Saw All of Barcelona in Two Days

My feet hurt, my shoulder hurts, my legs hurt; my stomach is sated and so are my eyes. In the past two days, in a whirlwind of walking, Melissa and I took in much of what the city of Barcelona has to offer. We went to La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's brilliant church, and took the elevator up to the top of the tower, where we could see the whole city, and then we went to Park Guell, his park. After hiking all the way to the top of Guell, we had an amazing view of the city laid out below us that was well worth the trek (today, my feet disagree).

Here's a view from inside the church. The columns are supposed to look like tree trunks.

After Guell we headed over to Barceloneta, the port and beach area of Barcelona that has the feel of a fishing town. We walked by the beach and observed some toplessness, although not nearly as much as what we encountered in Ibiza. Next was Las Ramblas, the city's most tourist-y destination, complete with shop stalls and street performers. It was kind of a spectacle, but one worth seeing. After stopping at Cafe Viena (for the world's best ham sandwich according to some guidebooks and pretty highly praised by this guy) and at La Boqueria, which is a big covered market, with lots of meat and lots of fruits and vegetables, we ventured into the Gothic Quarter, where the streets are twisty and turny and tiny and filled with little boutiques and restaurants. After heading back up Las Ramblas, we wandered toward the restaurant we had chosen for the evening's dinner, a pretty big tapas place that was recommended to Melissa by a real Barcelonian. The food was pretty good and relatively inexpensive. We headed over to a bar to watch the Spain v. Chile game, but we were both too tired to care by that point.
This morning, we hit the Picasso Museum just a few minutes after it opened, and there were already a decent number of tourists there. We spent a while in the museum--first at the permanent collection, most of which Picasso donated himself, a lot of which from his earlier years, and then into the temporary exhibit, which wasn't very good. After the museum, I wanted to go to the chocolate museum, but Melissa wasn't interested :( so we headed back to Las Ramblas, planning to go into the Catedral on the way. Unfortunately, we got turned away because we were wearing shorts, which I guess is reasonable, but it's also really hot here. Ah well, a church is a church is a church, right? Outside, there was a group dancing the sardana.

We stopped at the market and I got some fruit to eat and then we wandered into El Raval (one of the neighborhoods) on our way over to Parc Montjuic. Here was where the most amazing thing happened. One second we're walking down the street, and the next, we hear someone call out "Melissa!" so we turn around, and sure enough, there are our friends from the winery, who are meandering over to the same park!!! What are the odds? Barcelona's not a huge city, but still, this was a little weird. We seem fated to be friends. We walked for a while with them, catching up on the past two days' adventures, and then parted ways, Melissa and I heading for the south side of the park, they for the north.
We hiked up the park (much to my chagrin) and had our gazillionth breathtaking view. This time, I'll actually let you see for yourself!

This is only really a small portion of the city, but that's La Sagrada Familia to the right (heavily under construction, since Gaudi died before completion. I think it's due to be finished in 2025...)

We stopped at the botanical gardens, where we saw cacti, my favorites. I chilled with this guy for a bit:

This is basically the end of our trip to Barcelona. We have one last thing for the night, and that's dinner reservations at Tapioles, 53 (incidentally, that's the address of the restaurant) where there's no consistent menu and all the ingredients are collected by the chef that day from local markets. 

I'm somewhat sad to be leaving Barcelona--it's a pretty cool city and we just scratched the surface--but I'm glad to be moving onto my next adventure: Cambridge!

Espana!

WOW. This has been a whirlwind few days of travel for me, much of it spent literally traveling, but I've had some time to see some cool things, starting with the Barcelona airport--where I spent about 12 hours on Monday. The airport is beautiful; the glass is all tinted sea foam green and it really affects the quality of the light and the atmosphere in general. The building is spotless and the bathroom are some of the nicest public ones I've ever seen. I spent a couple hours in the morning repacking my luggage to store some of it in the airport while I headed off to Ibiza for two nights with just my backpack and my camera.
By the time I finally got to sleep in Ibiza, I hadn't slept in about 38 hours. But staying awake was worth it for Ibiza. The water was the prettiest I've ever seen and the temperature was perfect (although I imagine being there in July and August would be *too* hot). It looked like this:

We spent our time in Ibiza at the beach and at a few clubs and then on our last day there we went to the "Hippymarket" which was fully of pretty shiny things:

and I bought myself a necklace. 

I do have one beef with Ibiza, and that's its transportation system. The public transport was so bad it was absurd. We took a bus to a town, then had to get off the bus to take it to a town that was only another 15 minutes away. This whole trip, which was about 30 minutes of actual travel time, took us about 2 hours. On our way back, there was no ticket station at the stop, so we had to buy the tickets on the bus, which meant everyone had to stand in line to get on the bus while tickets were purchased. But when we got back to the first stop, we had to get off the bus and the next bus was waiting. We thought oh we'll just buy our tickets on the bus again, but no, this time, you have to wait in line at the ticket station to get a ticket, while the driver sits there waiting for people to get on, when it could move twice as fast if he also sold tickets. Silly! The other annoying thing about transportation in Ibiza is the crazy cab drivers and the prominence of the "roundabout," which is possibly the most dangerous type of road since the one-lane bridge. When you combine the fast drivers with the roundabouts, disaster seems imminent. We made it out alive, if not a little poorer. 

Our trip back to Barcelona was flawless and we woke up early this morning for what I think was our best day yet. We decided to go cava tasting in the cava winemaking regions about an hour outside of Barcelona. If you don't know what cava is, it's basically the Spanish version of Champagne. It's made in exactly the same way, but they couldn't use the name, so they chose a different name (cava is the underground cellar where the wine undergoes the fermentation process). The train system in Barcelona was pretty easy to navigate, with the help of my high school Spanish (dos billetes, ida y regreso, a Sant Sadurni d'Anoia) and we arrived a bit early in the village. When we got to the train station, we saw that a winery different from the one we originally had reservations for was right across from the train station, we decided to go in there for a tour as well. It turns out that the two tours were pretty similar, but still interesting, and now I feel super informed about the cava making process. 

That's our tour guide at Freixenet (fresh-uh-net) holding up a bottle of cava that's almost done with its second fermentation. The stuff near the neck is basically leftover yeast that they need to get out (which they do by freezing it into an ice cube, taking off the cap, letting the ice cube pop out from pressure, and then recorking it quickly.
We tasted three cavas between our two tours, and I really liked them, although one was a bit dry (a brut natural) for my taste.
We ran into two Canadians on our second tour and got a recommendation for a restaurant from the woman who poured the cava for the tasting. As we were all walking away to go to the restaurant, the woman pulled up and told us it was closed (it's a holiday here!) and then she drove us around to a few different restaurants until she found an open one (that may have been her son's...although her English was a bit spotty). The four of us ate together and tried a cava sangria, which was actually delicious, and then headed back into Barcelona on the train together. The couple we ran into was engaged and really cute and it was the kind of thing that might be awkward but was just really nice. We all had a good time together and I'm really happy for the experience.
It's about time for me to take a nap and then tonight Melissa and I are heading into the center of Barcelona for the first time, finally, and tomorrow we'll head back into the city center for some real touristy-type sight-seeing. I'm glad that we didn't spend our whole trip doing that though, because going to do the wine tasting and running into a bunch of cool people was better than seeing the tourist attractions (not that I'm not super excited for Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia, among other things).

Well, as they say in Spain, adios!