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)!