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?)