jblog

It is 27 March and as usual, I’ve prolonged writing this final entry. This possibly might be because I didn’t want to actually be done with writing in this blog, and also possibly because I’m lazy. Anyway, though. I’m home now (it’s snowing! I’ve missed snow so much), after a whole lot of packing (resulting in very overweight luggage), one last stop at Teasmith, one last doner kebab, one last drink at the Hobgoblin, one last bus ride (on the 436 to Paddington, if you were curious), one last bit of pub food (Irish stew! yay), and one last plane ride (double yay!!). I’m not quite sure how to sum up the past six months, and actually, I don’t think I would be able to even if I tried. London certainly had its ups and downs, but fortunately there were tons more ups than downs! I feel incredibly lucky for the fact that I had this experience, and though it already seems like a dream, I know it was real, and I have this (poorly updated) blog to prove for it. Stay classy, London, and thanks for stopping by!

These past couple of days have been pretty exhausting..not only have I been taking advantage of a 7 day travelcard but I’ve also been wrestling 6 months’ worth of stuff into two suitcases and 2 carry-on bags! I’ve been to markets, had numerous cups of tea, eaten loads of calories, danced like an idiot, and marvelled at how dirty the Thames looks. I’ll make one more post from home, I think, after one last night at the Hobgoblin, a trip to Paddington station with a few flatmates, and a plane ride back to the United States, but until then, here a lot of pictures!

And now, a quote I stole from Mariam…

I’ve learned to accept London as my muse. Initially, there I was, sitting on the tube, when she came in: filthy, raddled, smelly, old and drunk. But now we’re inseparable, going round and round the Circle Line, arm in arm, perhaps for eternity.

February 26 I went to Brighton in order to visit Amanda! We started talking ages ago (in very late 2001, I think, to be specific) and always kept in touch. She studies at UNC at home and is currently abroad at the University of Sussex, and Brighton is only an hour away on the train from London Bridge so we figured we might as well meet up! I took the train in and got there around noon, then after waiting for Amanda to come in to town from her uni, we went for lunch (we both got burgers… how American!). We hit up the Royal Pavilion first, which was built sort of as a getaway pleasure palace for King George IV back in the day in the early 19th century, and it was really rather tacky, but in a very charming sort of way (if that makes any sense…). Apparently he wanted it to be built in a sort of Indian style, though he’d never actually been to India, and this is what they came up with…

Afterwards we went to the beach and walked around. The beach was pretty rocky, just like in Nice, and it was a really windy day, but the sun out so overall it was a really nice day for a beach visit. We walked around the pier and had a pint before calling it a day.
(BTW I took tonnes of pictures here, so click one of the above Brighton links and it should take you to my Flickr.)

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On 5 March, a Wednesday, we not only had a hockey game, but we also had our Athletics Union dinner. I agonized about whether I wanted to attend or not, since the price was most definitely £31 (aka $62!), but I decided I would definitely regret it if I didn’t. I bought a ticket for myself and one for Erica, who happened to be conveniently visiting for that week, and started getting psyched up for the match. Unfortunately, we lost! We had an amazing unbeaten run for 12 games so I suppose we had to lose sometime, but it was just upsetting because we were meant to be promoted into league 3 (we’d already won league 4b) but St. Mary’s, who’d won league 4a, played us to see which one of us could move into league 3 and they won. It was very upsetting. However, we had the dinner to look forward to! I think that a champagne opener, 3 course meal, half bottle of wine, and a glass of port was sort of worth £31/$62, or at least that’s what I’m telling myself… And we won TEAM OF THE YEAR out of all the Goldsmiths sports teams, so it was most definitely worth it in the end.

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As I write this, I have seven days before I fly home. I plan on spending every one of those days out in London, now that I’m done with all my coursework. I’ll have to do some enormous post on Friday to attempt to recap all of it! Maybe it’ll just be full of pictures… hmm…

Sunday, 24 February 2008, Allie, Mariam, Sarah, Milli, and Lola and I all went to the Natural History Museum to attend the final day of London Fashion Weekend! We realized we had this opportunity when Akane and I were baking a cake on Friday and she told us that we really needed to go to the shopping (I told you this post was going to be about gender stereotypes, didn’t I?). We all leapt at the chance to do some extremely discounted shopping and though there were some glitches with booking on the internet, after leaving New Cross Gate at 8:30am this past Sunday and standing in line for a bit, we were let loose to go shopping! I racked up some souvenirs for myself and some souvenirs for some other people and spent about £100 in total on the following: the most beautiful salad I’ve ever seen (and I don’t like salad. Mixed greens, chickpeas, beetroot, tomatoes, onions, croutons, mozzarella, smoked salmon), a £30 dress marked down from £120, a ring, a Swarovski necklace, reusable canvas bags from this vendor, a goody bag (it included the most random stuff, like: tea, Elizabeth Arden 8 hour cream, sparkling apple juice, oxyclean, &c &c &c), and some money on my Oyster card. Afterwards, we went up to the catwalk theatre! This was really exciting, and we got seats right up in front of the end of the catwalk. It was a short show and lasted only a half hour, but we definitely enjoyed it and afterwards went back to New Cross in order to recover from the amounts of money we’d all spent.

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For some reason they sell Kentucky and United States tokens in select London souvenir shops.

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Yesterday, 25 February 2008, Akane, Junich, John, and I all trekked up to Emirates Stadium for our belated Valentines Day stadium tour! John’s post will probably be able to tell you more about, you know, the actual facts of the tour. I’ll just post pretty pictures here, because everything I remember he already said, so. … Okay, actually that feels sort of like a cop-out, so I will tell you the female side of the tour. I think I felt as though the most memorable moment of the tour arrived when we were led into the players’ locker rooms, partially because we got to glimpse their really really cool spa jacuzzi but also because it made the stadium more real, as opposed to just some immense building with some grass in the center of a bunch of seats (yes, you can tell I don’t follow football.). Their jerseys were all hung up in the lockers they use and it made the whole experience a lot more personal. Okay, I don’t know if this paragraph makes sense, but it does to me. So. Um, anyway, once we walked around the stadium and got to see things like the directors’ box and the locker rooms and the tunnel entrance and the press room and stuff, we made a quick trip to the museum before calling it a day.

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Oh, by the way, I have a crush on Cesc Fábregas.

Okay, I don’t know where the title of this entry comes from. I just thought I should do one with the stereotypical phrasing and stuff.

Anyway, John and Cat and I kicked off reading week on 10 February by twisting my ankle. No, not all together (I just realized how that wording sounded), but while coming downstairs on our way out of Loring Hall, I twisted it. I’m graceful. Anyway, we caught a bus and then a train from Waterloo to Salisbury, in the West Country of England. We had a little bit of a ridiculous train ride involving XTRM caffeination on the parts of Cat and I, attempts to draw shrimp (or prawns, as they’re known here), attempts at playing Trivial Pursuit UK, and sheep discussions (not necessarily in chronological order). After an hour and forty-five minutes of absolute absurdity we alighted at Salisbury and waited a bit before catching a 20 minute bus ride to Stonehenge. Now, this bus ride was probably the best bus ride that I have probably ever experienced. The driver drove quite quickly (and it was hard to tell if we were just totally unused to such speeds, since no one ever goes more than like, 35mph in London, I swear, or if he was really speeding), and with the many turns and hills, it was quite the experience. Finally, our lives intact, we made it to Stonehenge.

To be honest, I didn’t know much about Stonehenge when I got there, and I probably should’ve picked up one of the free audioguides (except those things actually really weird me out), but oh well. We had a good time taking pictures every other minute (almost literally, to be honest), and made it about 3/4s of the way around before stopping on some conveniently-located benches to eat the picnic we had all brought along (various sandwiches and tortellini were had, as well as Sainsburys-brand Twix) next to some sheep. Catherine really liked the sheep and so did I, and eventually John got up (a thinly-veiled look of disgust on his face. just kidding) and wandered back over to Stonehenge while Cat and I stayed to look at the sheep. We eventually dragged ourselves away from our woolly friends (this entry is getting so silly… my apologies) and finished our walk around Stonehenge, then immediately proceeded to the gift shop, where I bought seven miniature stuffed sheep (they’re souvenirs, they aren’t all for me).

Baa.

Okay, I don’t know. I felt that was appropriate.

After another (awesome) bus ride back to Salisbury (it ended with us wondering if we should just stay on the bus and keep riding it, haha), we walked along the Avon in search of the Cathedral, which did not disappoint, as it was definitely really beautiful. Part of it is under construction for… reasons that I cannot remember right now, but despite all the debris and rubbish (which was mostly contained to one area, thankfully) it was still a very nice building (and apparently it has the tallest spire in the UK!). After seeing the Magna Carta (the best preserved one of the four copies, apparently) and procuring a shot glass for Cat from the gift shop (she collects shot glasses from religious places of worship, on the grounds that they really shouldn’t be selling them. And she’s right), we left the Cathedral and walked around downtown Salisbury for a bit (we mostly stayed closeby to the river so we could look at the birds and stuff). By the time we finished with that, we were pretty hungry. Unfortunately, though, it was a Sunday, so most everywhere was closed, but we found quite a few gastropubs before finding a nice place to have dinner (I got fish and chips. Finally. Yes, I hadn’t had any yet.). We were so tired from walking around, though, that we stayed a bit too long at the restaurant and realized we had to basically speed-walk/run over to catch our train once we were done (this definitely did not feel very good after our enormous meal!). Oh, and then we missed our train after all of that trouble, by only a minute or so! After a lovely hour spent waiting in the station, we were on the next one, and then after a short nap, we were back in London, sheep and all.

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Reading week this term was spent lazily, just how I’d wanted it. Sure, I had a bass lesson on 11 February, Cat and I spent way too much time looking for yarn on 12 February, and I had a hockey game on 13 February (another win. Have I mentioned that we’ve been seriously kicking butt? We won our first league and are so close to winning our second one!) and Phantom of the Opera with John (which was great. Of course.), but the point was that I was in London for it all, which was so nice. Valentine’s Day was also spent lazily with Junichi and Akane, my flatmate and his girlfriend, at Teasmith in Spitalfields Market and some shopping (and then chinese takeaway afterwards. I was so full.). And on 15 February, Hannah and Marissa arrived, though their arrival was rather dramatic! I was all set to meet them at Liverpool St. Station at 8:45pm, so I was there at the appointed time, bundled up a bit since I figured I’d only be waiting for a bit, and in retrospect maybe this wishful thinking was what JINXED us. Hannah finally called me at around 9:30pm to say that their bus driver from Stansted hadn’t told them where LSS was, and had instead taken them to London Victoria station. I finally arranged to meet them at London Bridge station (this was another moment where I cursed the lack of the East London Line!) and eventually, around 10:30pm, we found each other and caught a bus back to New Cross Gate, finally arriving at 11pmish. Cat and Allie had a wonderful meal prepared for us consisting of tea sandwiches, muffins, and brownies (the latter were arranged in the shape of a crucifix, in honor of my not eating meat on Fridays, haha)! We were all so tired and full though that we couldn’t enjoy them properly, so we packed them away in a plastic container and promised we’d eat them the next day in London.

After a full English breakfast with John and Cat, the three of us went into Central, following the London Tour Extravaganza that I had planned (I wanted to do some of my favorite things in London, and also do some new things that I hadn’t yet done before so it wouldn’t be too boring for me!). We first took a bus to Westminster to see the London Eye, Parliament & Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey, before walking up to Trafalgar Square. We climbed the monuments (something I hadn’t done yet!) and hung out there for a bit to enjoy the sun before walking to Piccadilly Circus (I’d been by it on a bus, but hadn’t really seen it on foot before I’d gone through it with John on our way to PotO). From here we caught the tube to Knightsbridge so we could go through Harrods for a bit (Marissa bought a mini jug of milk. That was a little embarrassing, but I’m glad she enjoyed it!) before walking through Hyde Park (which I hadn’t really explored much. I prefer Greenwich Park) and having our tea sandwich picnic next to the Serpentine (we basically finished the entire contents of our plastic container!). After burning off some calories by walking up to Marble Arch, we took the tube to Covent Garden, where we went to the London Transport Museum (yes, again. I love that place, okay?). Marissa and I split a pasty once we were done (steak and stilton is my favorite. She enjoyed it!) and then walked back down to Charing Cross/Trafalgar Square, where we tubed to Tower Hill for the Tower Of London. A walk across Tower Bridge and along the South Bank and then we were back at London Bridge to catch a bus back to Loring Hall, where we prepared a meal of Taco Bell (thanks, Mom!) and watched Juno (for my third time, Cat and John and Allie’s 2nd time, and Hannah and Marissa’s 1st) before, well, falling asleep. Sunday we went to Greenwich Park for the Meridian and had lunch at Pizza Express (I got a pizza fiorentina, which is quickly becoming my latest pizza obsession. I kind of want to try making it myself, fried egg and all…) and an after-lunch Nutella crepe at Greenwich Village Market (I was tempted to get a ‘Hog Sandwich’ from the ‘Roast Hog Booth’, but was too full) before picking up Will at New Cross to head over to the British Museum (which I hadn’t really explored yet!). We hit up Egypt (for the (Rosetta Stone), Asyria, and Greece (which was so cool! I’d been to most of the places the British had stolen things from!) before heading upstairs for Southeast Asia and the Americas. And here is where I was greatly disappointed, because

THERE IS NO FILIPINO ANYTHING IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

I guess I should be okay with this. This means that the British haven’t stolen anything from the Philippines, but still! I felt a little rejected. Not really. Anyway, after pub grub nearby (I had shepherd’s pie, yay), we returned to New Cross and played some Taboo with everyone before going to sleep. Hannah and Marissa snuck out in the middle of the night, at around 3:30am, like the sneaky suspicious people they are, and flew to Nice. And thus ended Ye Ould Reading Week!

Very early on Saturday morning, 2 February 2008, Mariam and I found ourselves waiting for the 436 bus at 3:30am. I had multiple layers on, so I was okay with the weather (I was planning on taking off said layers in the Greek airport), but we were both ridiculously exhausted. One bus ride to Victoria station, one Gatwick Express ride to the airport, and one flight later, we arrived around 12:30pm in Athens (GMT+2)! The first thing we did was text Derek (who was conveniently also in Athens) and Rob (our third travel buddy), and we heard right away from Derek but not from Rob. Undeterred from this, we took the Athens metro (it was scarily clean!) to Syntagma Square, and funnily enough, one of the first people we saw upon exiting the metro station was Derek! He walked with us to our hostel, where we found Rob waiting for us (he’d turned off his phone and had forgotten the PIN number he needed to turn it on).

The four of us went for lunch at a nearby taverna (there are so many of these around, and they are all lovely), where I had moussaka and a plate of olives. We realized that the taverna owners are really really crafty and understand that it’s hard to not have bread with Greek food, so they just put a basket of bread on the table and charge you for it anyway regardless of whether you actually eat it or not. We did, though, because it was hard to resist when there was so much olive oil and tzatziki in the food! After saying bye to Derek (he had to meet his dad), I realized that my camera memory card was missing as we walked over to the Temple of Zeus and Hadrian’s Gate (we were really close to the tourist-y ruins! Our hostel had a great location .By the way, this picture is not the Temple of Zeus– it’s the Temple of Hephaestos, but more on that later. I just wanted a picture for this paragraph.). I’m really not sure how I lost it, but I bought a new one anyway, and I’m glad I did because I actually still can’t find the old one!

The Temple of Zeus and Hadrian’s Gate were only a short walk away (about 10 minutes, max) and we got many glimpses of the Acropolis from wherever we were. I used to be a big fan of Ancient Greece and its mythology and all that, but I couldn’t remember anything that I used to know during this trip, unfortunately! (I’ve noticed that I tend to be a very naive traveler, in that I’ll go places and then look up information on where I’ve been. Oh well) It was all a very sort of philosophical experience, though, which sounds really lame and cheesy, I know, but it was really bizarre to think about how long ago the ruins were built and how impermanent life really was/is. Um, anyway.

After we were done gaping at the ruins, we had a wander around downtown Athens, which was quickly endearing itself to me. Rob and I had heard that you only need one day in Athens, and that it’s dirty and grungy, but I found it to be a really nice city. This may have been because we were in one of the nicer, more tourist-friendly parts, but I still liked it a lot. We went up to the Acropolis in search of a view of the city, even, and sat on the Areopagus for a bit. After wandering around some more and having a visit at the 1896 Olympic Stadium (from the first modern Olympic games!! So crazy!!), we went for dinner at another taverna (saganaki is a beautiful thing, and so was having it with more tzatziki) before going to a local wine bar down the street. We didn’t have wine, though, instead opting for ouzo! I’d developed a taste for anise/licorice in Amsterdam, so I enjoyed our drinks, and once we were done with that, we went back to the hostel and basically collapsed from exhaustion.

The next day we got up pretty early and got up to the Acropolis right around 8:30am. Its shadow dominates Athens, and once we were up there, it was easy to see why. The ruins were incredible! Mariam was especially thrilled to be at the Theatre of Dionysus, which was really cool, and we saw a lot of random ruins as well, but nothing can compare to the Parthenon and its imposing figure. It was mind-boggling, thinking about all the things the Acropolis and its ruins have been through. We followed up our climb with breakfast at a taverna (we all got a sampler of moussaka, grape leaves, sausage, and feta) and then a visit to the Roman Agora (it’s weird to think that the Roman stuff is actually relatively new! Relatively being the key word) and the Ancient Agora, the old centre of town and such. It was amazing to think about how people like Socrates and other such philosophers lectured in the very place that we were standing! We also saw a very old temple. It was called the Temple of Hephaestos and is the best-preserved temple in all of the lands. After the Agoras, we grabbed some gelato (I had nutella and hazelnut) and snacks (yay for spanakopita!) before attempting to get to the bus station. I say ‘attempting’ because the hostel told us to ask for “Bus Terminal B”, which got us absolutely nowhere with the cabdrivers until we found this kind old man who helped us in Greek. We made it in time to buy our bus tickets to Litochoro, and in no time we were leaving Athens!

During our 5 hour bus ride, we discussed the Greek language (Rob and I had a general familiarity with the alphabet due to our math and physics studies, though he definitely knew more than me!) and how we could actually read the names of cities and stuff in the alphabet, attempted to learn how to say “thank you”, played some cards, did sudoku, read a bit, procrastinated reading, and slept. Good times were had by all, until we realized that the Greek buses have this very odd system of dropping people off at the side of the highway and expecting said people to just walk to wherever they need to go/get other buses. Luckily, though, our next hostel’s owner told us to call him when we got to the side of the highway and he actually came and picked us up! We were the only people in the place, literally, which was attached to their family restaurant, but we were totally okay with that. After walking out to the beach, we came back inside and had dinner at around 9:30pm (calamari!) to the sounds of Independence Day on the television (it was so random.). After playing more cards upstairs, we called it a night.

We finally had a lazy (and absurd, as you’ll soon read!) day on Monday, despite plans for getting up early and watching the sunrise (it was too foggy to see anything, so Rob didn’t wake Mariam and I up and instead we slept until 9! (which felt really late to us. In retrospect, maybe this trip is why I’ve started going to bed around midnight and waking up early)). We had a seriously amazing (and provided!) breakfast at the downstairs restaurant (cheese and meat, bread, phyllo pastry things, eggs, feta, general deliciousness) before taking a taxi into downtown Litochoro. This town is at the foot of Mount Olympus (yes, that Mount Olympus) and was really cute. We were at a loss for what to do though, since we had wanted to leave our last night open and didn’t know where we could go for the day. We were debating between Meteora, Delphi, and Vergina, and finally decided on Vergina since we wanted to stay in the area because Rob’s mom and younger brother were driving up from Athens to meet up with us.

Our book said that the ruins at Vergina (the tombs of Alexander the Great’s family) were closed on Mondays, but we found a tour website that said they were open until 7 on Mondays, so we decided to trust the website. Bad choice! Four buses later (we went through Katerini, Thessaloniki, Veria, and Vergina), we realized that not only were we in backwater Greece, in a town where we saw more cats in heat than actual people, the ruins were closed and we’d just wasted an entire day in Greece. To be perfectly honest, the situation struck Mariam and I as completely and utterly hilarious, while Rob was really actually pissed off. We caught a bus back to Veria (thank goodness that last bus ride was only about 20 minutes long!), finally got in touch with Rob’s mother, who was totally lost in Northern Greece looking for our hostel, had dinner (we all got sauteéd beef with chips-as-in-french-fries), wandered about some Byzantine ruins, and caught a bus back to Katerini, which kindly dropped us off on the highway next to the exit for Litochoro. Thanks, Greek transportation! A 45min walk down various nighttime roads got us finally back to the hostel at a rather late hour (it was probably around 11 when we got back. when I say late, I mean late for walking on the highway. Seriously, they really do this! The bus dropped this lady off on the highway before us and her husband was waiting for her on the side of the road!), and the hostel owner, Kostos, announced warningly that Rob’s mother had arrived (he probably thought that she was checking up on Rob!) and the five of us had an amazing dinner of ouzo, saganaki, and freshly caught and fried fish before going to bed.

We woke up rather early on Tuesday with the intention of driving partially up Mount Olympus before Mariam and I returned to Athens, so after another huge breakfast (it had basically the same thing that breakfast the previous day did, and yes, I do feel that it was totally necessary to detail our meals), we did just that. The drive was terrifying, as mountain drives tend to be, but the view was spectacular and gave us plenty of stuff to think about on our 5 hour bus drive back to Athens. We had lunch at another taverna (saganaki and baklava!), totally glad to be back in Athens after the sketchy times in Northern Greece, and did some souvenir shopping before flying back. And that is all!

(BTW, all the pictures are here.)

7 out of 8 of Flat D3 went to Budapest 25-27 January (gosh, I’m so belated in blogging!) and we had a really great time having adventures on the transport systems of the city (and also seeing the beautiful sights &c). As usual, this trip had its roots in spontaneity: Sandy (D3H) and I (D3F) had talked about how we should go to Budapest together sometime, and then Mariam pointed out to me that Easyjet was having a January sale, with all roundtrip flights priced at £20. We jumped at the chance to make what would already be a pretty cheap trip (the current rate is £1 = 353.20Ft, or $1 = 180.08Ft) even cheaper and our excitement must’ve been pretty contagious, because soon everyone in the flat was booking their own tickets as well (Adam (D3C) couldn’t go because he had to go home that weekend, unfortunately). We all had our tickets booked in about a timespan of two hours or so, but they were pretty tense hours! Sandy, Junichi (D3A) and I had our tickets booked first, but Easyjet had run out of seats for our specific flight (leaving at 8:20pm on Sunday evening) so Will (D3B), Milli (D3D), Lola (D3E), and Mikala (D3G) had to buy tickets for around 12:30pm on Sunday afternoon. However, we weren’t going to let this unfortunate hitch stand in our way of fully enjoying Budapest in our short weekend trip! After taking a (cheap! £5 per person)taxi to our hotel on the outskirts of Buda (the two sides are separated by the Danube), we were faced with our first transit puzzle: How on earth could we get to any restaurants, let alone the Castle District? We managed to catch a bus, though there was absolutely no way to buy bus tickets that we could see (the driver was totally shut away from the bus passengers, there wasn’t a dispenser at the bus stop, &c), so we figured, “hey, free transport!” and went on our merry way. After having a ridiculously amazing (and filling! I ordered roasted duck on spaetzle) dinner, we went up to the Castle District, and from here I will just let 4 of my favorite pictures speak for themselves. Oh, by the way, this is going to sound really lame, but I actually sort of teared up due to how ridiculously beautiful it was.

(As always, check out the Flickr for the rest of the pictures; I took so many! Oh, and because these are the first pictures of the new flatmates, that picture above goes, from L-R: Junichi, Will, Lola, Sandy, Milli, me, Mikala)

After a lovely night of card games and our favorite new show, Fist of Zen, we went to sleep, totally tuckered out, and ready for our next day, which was spent exploring the Pest side. Our hotel breakfast was included (oh, our hotel was also really cheap, about £21 for both nights!) so we stocked up on food before heading out on the ‘free’ bus towards the Metro. Here’s where we decided to fight the system, sort of: basically, we attempted to get daypasses, but the man working at the Metro was totally unhelpful and gave us singlepasses instead, or something. We were okay with this; no one was checking anyway. So we traipsed across the Danube via Metro and got to Parliament, where we booked 3pm tours before moving south through Pest in search of the Basilica. On our way we also found a very very charming church (pictures at Flickr), and once we were done killing time, we made our way back to the Metro in order to go to our Parliament tour. And then we were fined! We totally warranted the fine, of course, seeing as we did have single tickets (and apparently you’re supposed to punch a new ticket every time you switch lines, too; how inefficient is that??), but it was 6000Ft, aka £17 and $33.30, and let’s be honest, I’ve had a parking ticket from Cranbrook that was more expensive than that, and the trip was really cheap in general, so it wasn’t that annoying. It was stupid and a waste of money, of course, but it could’ve been a lot worse. This was the positive attitude we kept preaching to each other as we went to Parliament, and thankfully, the inside of that building was so beautiful (I was kind of too taken by this ceiling that I could barely focus on the actual crown jewels in that room) that it totally (for the most part) kept our minds off of the fining incident (actually, by the time we got out of Parliament, it was pretty funny!). We had a 3 hour lunch at Pizza Express (or Manzano, as they call it in Hungary), posed for pictures on a random bridge in a park, and then went off to Andrassy Avenue in search of the Opera House (it was beautiful.) and Heroes’ Square (which was surprisingly awe-inspiring, for being just a square). From there we wandered behind the square and were totally flabbergasted to discover that there was another castle sort of area with people ice skating next to it. Sandy and I were suddenly then filled with a desperate longing to go ice skating next to a castle, and our flatmates were content to stay up and watch us, so she and I went off in search for the rental skates. Unfortunately, they were all out for the day, so we had to be content with walking around the castle and such, singing and pretending that we were in the Sound of Music, a bit (I don’t know why. It just happened). We then made our way back to the hotel for more cards and Fist of Zen, but not before picking up some Hungarian rosé wine, various snackfoods, and some McNuggets from McDonalds (I just couldn’t resist).

Mikala, Milli, Will, and Lola left around 8am or so on Sunday morning in order to head back to the airport, while the lucky ones, Sandy, Junichi, and I, enjoyed a lazy breakfast at the hotel before planning out what to do with our rainy day (Friday and Saturday had both been beautiful!). We settled for Gellert Spa, as we needed to experience the famous Budapest spas, bought the appropriate Metro tickets, and got on the #18 tram. Except we took it in the wrong direction and to the end of the line, thus wasting about an hour or so of our lives. Oh well. We got back on it and eventually we were at the spa! (Junichi never left the jacuzzi, but Sandy and I alternated between doing laps and sitting in the jacuzzi with him. I’d never thought swimming in carbonated mineral water would be so fulfilling!) We then climbed the nearby Gellert Hill, which took us higher than the Castle District, before making our way back down for lunch at the Spa (more ridiculously good food. I had a veal stew with noodles). We had tentative plans to walk over the bridge to the Synagogue (the biggest in Europe and 3rd biggest in the world!) but we were deterred by the sharp wind that greeted us as we left the spa. “No big deal”, we thought, “it’ll stop eventually. We’re tired, though, let’s just go to the airport.” So we did, and after a few hours chilling out there and playing more card games, we realized that our airplane flight was going to have to be delayed due to 50+ mph winds. Oh joy.

So we eventually got to New Cross at 2:40am after one flight, one train, and two buses. The three of us cooked food and collapsed in our respective beds, pleased with our ridiculous ride through Budapest and back.

As you may recall from this post, John and I went to Madam Tussaud’s for part of my Christmas present. The other part of it was a trip to the London Eye, which was something I’d wanted to do for a while since being here. Unfortunately, I sort of have this mini-fear of ferris wheels that was instilled in me just a few weeks before coming to London, when my family made me take my nephew onto a very very very rickety carnival ferris wheel that went backwards and was altogether very very jolt-y. John wanted to go on the London Eye at night and I was ready to go along with that (despite said mini-fear) until I realized that last Thursday, 24 January 2008, was a really gorgeous day, much unlike the type of day you generally see here (while it doesn’t rain nearly as much as it’s made out to be, it is very very cloudy here.). The ride didn’t last too long and I thought it was kind of cool how it sort of never stops, but it was pretty intense getting into one of the pods. It was very “Mind The Gap!” but to an extreme. XTRM! Anyway. I sort of wish that it had been a bit more east on the South Bank because then you would have been able to see Tower Bridge and the Tower of London, but it was still really nice and the weather was perfect for it.

Afterwards we had dinner in a chinese buffet that was randomly there before walking to London Bridge. This specific walk is the obviously-named South Bank walk and it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a really long time, so I’m glad we got to do it, especially as the sun was setting. It didn’t take very long at all (at least, I thought it didn’t!) and it was definitely really pretty at night (I especially liked the blue lights in the trees, as shown in the photo on the left in this specific paragraph!). I took a few more photos so as usual, if you want to see more than the ones that I’ve put in here, just go to my Flickr!

Ideas for our Amsterdam trip didn’t start floating around between Marissa and I until about mid December, but I had been vaguely interested in going ever since Cat, Tina, Mariam, and Sarah went there during last term’s reading week. We were going to do it very early in January but decided to wait and see.

On Friday 18 January I flew to Amsterdam to meet Marissa, who was coming in from Erlangen! We were leaving very early on Monday 21 January, so we decided to try and make the most of the short weekend that we had. I had no trouble finding the hostel, even though I may have panicked a bit at the fact that I totally didn’t know the language &c, but in the end it was really no big deal and was just another thing that made me feel a bit more grown up nowadays. Or maybe I’ve just gotten better at reading maps and following directions, I don’t know. After settling into our hostel we speedwalked (spedwalked? I think speedwalked) through the wind and rain over to the Anne Frank House in an attempt to earnestly start off the museum-seeing, but unfortunately it was too late to go in for the day. So instead we settled for the Sex Museum, which was, well, interesting? I wasn’t too sad to leave it, though, especially since we were both hungry by this point so we went off to have food! We found this random Indonesian restaurant and, bolstered by my recent experience having Indonesian food with Mariam, I ordered something random and was well pleased with the result.

(As an aside: I think it’s pretty obvious that our main objective was to attempt to see tons of museums while we were in Amsterdam, seeing as we rushed right away to try and go to a few, but I just wanted to clarify. No drug tourism here We spent our money on food instead. It was really interesting being in a place where it was so just. There. If that made any sense. And now I’m writing about the legalization of cannabis and the interdependence between dealer and buyer for my psychology paper!)

We did some walking around after that; I got some fries+mayonnaise and Marissa got some ice cream, and for some reason both of those things are just ridiculously amazing in ze Holland (no, I don’t know why I put ‘ze’ instead of ‘the’). We enjoyed them a lot, despite the fact that it was ridiculously hard to eat while still holding up an umbrella in a very very windy place. It was definitely a challenge. After we were done with our food we attempted to go to the NEMO museum to no avail; my tourbook told us the wrong opening times! We got to walk along the harbor, though, which was pretty nice, and after that we took a detour through the Red Light District (which was, in a word, depressing) to get back to our hostel just in time to plan our very very busy Saturday and go to bed!
(the picture in this paragraph is really unrelated. it’s from Madurodam (more on that later) and has nothing to do with the red light district or fries or anything but I wanted to include it SOMEWHERE)

(Another aside: this was the first time that I’d ever stayed in a hostel room with other people besides the people I’d been traveling with. We were in an all girls’ room for all three nights and it really wasn’t as bad as I had been expecting, thank god! Actually, the hostel was pretty great in general.)

We got up really early on Saturday to shower and have breakfast before going to the Anne Frank House, finally. It was really great, in that kind of “this is so unbelievably depressing but I can’t believe that I’m actually here?” way, if that made any sense. It was a lot bigger than I imagined in my head and I really couldn’t believe that I was there. From there it was a short tram ride over for something completely different, the Van Gogh Museum, which I really enjoyed (I bought a deck of playing cards there with my favorite painting). What we REALLY enjoyed, though, were the waffles we split with ice cream and the stroopwafels in between the Van Gogh and the walk to the Rijksmuseum. Oh, I also had a mozzarella baguette, but I have that everywhere.

The Rijksmuseum, unfortunately, was (is, still, I think) under renovation and only certain areas were open to the public. We didn’t know if it’d be worth paying all the money for just a bit of the museum so we hopped back on the tram to go to the Dutch Resistance Museum. Lovely and uplifting, that was. Well, actually sort of. Okay, no, it was actually kind of really creepy, but it was really interesting. What was especially interesting, though (and no, I’m not horribly biased, I swear, because Marissa agreed with me on this!) was the mini exhibit on the Dutch resistance in the Pacific Rim, regarding their stuff in Indonesia against the invading Japanese. You hardly ever really hear about that aspect of WWII, which I think is kind of unfortunate because it’s still a part of history that needs to be uncovered &c. Anyway, though. We finally made it to NEMO, which is this enormous hands-on science museum that was five floors tall and was pretty much awesome. We had dinner at this totally cheap Italian restaurant before going back to the hostel and playing cards for about three hours straight and passing out at 10pm (we wouldn’t let ourselves sleep before 10pm because that would’ve been totally wimpy, we thought!).

Sunday we took the train over to The Hague, and it was here where we fell totally in love with the country &c. Amsterdam was fun and educational and all that, but it felt way too touristy even for us (not like we really know what we’re talking about, but perhaps you know what I mean). We kind of forgot our tourbook in the hostel so we winged it, pretty much, and stumbled upon all the main buildings (Parliament, Peace Palace, Noordeinde Palace, &c) we wanted to see out of sheer good luck before having an amazing lunch in this restaurant we stumbled upon as well (which I immediately followed with pannenkoeken, since I just eat a lot). After that it was a trip to Madurodam, where we had fun acting like giants before we took the train back to Amsterdam. I totally had more fries before we went back to the hostel and Marissa had more ice cream, and we bought about five million stroopwafels (not really, but I think between us we purchased about twenty overall) to bring home before going to bed. We had a really early morning the next day on Monday (we woke up at 5:30am, blah! So not fun at all!) so we definitely went to bed super early.

(Random digression again. I left my scarf in the pannenkoeken place and we were panicking about that for a bit. Before the trip Marissa was laughing about how similar Dutch and German are to each other, though she didn’t try to use her German because she still has some problems being understood because she speaks it with an American accent, I guess? But I theorized that perhaps because Dutch is really similar to English as well, her Americanized German would be understood decently and it was! Snaps for both of us!)

And that was that! Sorry this post was delayed! (two more coming up hopefully tomorrow!) I know that this is a really lame post, by the way, picture wise, but check out my flickr for more!

So in my previous post I mentioned something about how I get all starstruck, sort of, whenever I see Big Ben. Strike that, actually. I saw it last Saturday on the bus and it was kind of no big deal. This sort of depresses me, actually.

Anyway, though. I totally owe an update about the holiday season. So, I‘m sure everyone who’s reading this has at least some vague (though most people have a very specific, rather than vague) idea that I’m rather stubborn sometimes most of the time. So basically when I realized we were going to need a Christmas Eve dinner for six people, I decided to cook it mostly myself. Yes, I’m sometimes a bit insane. The menu was as follows: tomato-basil-mozzarella salad, green beans and mushrooms with parmesan, roasted potatoes, a beef roast, and two store-bought puddings (double chocolate and sticky toffee). It went well, better than I thought it would, and I actually found myself waiting around for a while anticipating the next thing I had to do (I had everything on timers on my computer because I’m just that neurotic). Oh, and the six people that were there included John, myself, Mariam, Sarah, Clif (who was visiting again from France!), and Sarah’s friend from high school, Emily. Dinner went really well overall I think! We listened to the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack, watched the Charlie Brown Christmas special, a Chrismukkah episode of the O.C., and random episodes of Daria before I suffered a severe attack of hiccups and decided I needed to go to bed. When I woke up, I felt like doing absolutely nothing (as one should on Christmas morning!) so overall, our Christmas morning (and, really, the entire day) was pretty lowkey. No transportation was running so we were pretty confined to New Cross, but we had fun nonetheless just hanging out and ended up going to the pub in the evening (how English ).

In between Christmas and New Years’ John and I went to Madame Tussaud’s (which was part of my Christmas present). As expected, it was fun, though the layout left a bit more to be desired (it was really cramped and therefore really crowded, but oh well. Here- have a picture of John punching Hitler! (I was sort of surprised by the number of people lining up and wanting to take pictures with him, haha…)). We also went to the National Portrait Gallery, which I enjoyed a lot more than I thought I would. It’s organized in chronological order and shows you portraits of different famous English persons with corresponding historical & informative signs accompanying each one. There’s a pop art exhibit there right now that leaves at the end of January, but I didn’t get to see that so hopefully I’ll return sometime soon to check that out.

New Years’, as I suppose is to be expected, was definitely a lot more intense than Christmas! First, Will, Akane, and Milli and I went to Chinatown for dim sum at our favorite Chinese restaurant (they all got full really quickly (the weaklings!!), leaving me to finish all that we’d ordered. It was totally an unfortunate task) and then the girls went to Oxford & Regent Street (as usual) to go shopping. We didn’t buy much at all, in the end (I did buy two fabric headbands for £1 combined at H&M, though, and Akane bought a bag, but this is probably too much information for this blogpost so I’ll move on), but it was fun anyway. There was some downtime then to chill out (which was good because I was sort of in a food coma from all the dim sum) before we went over to the London Eye to see the traditional New Years’ fireworks, which were SWEET. We got there at around 11pm and the waiting time went pretty quickly, especially as we kept moving closer towards the Eye. I was kind of taken by surprise by the arrival of midnight, since I was going by my watch and then all of a sudden Big Ben chimed, but whatever. The fireworks were great and were well worth the wait (the bus ride down was SO crowded and we had to listen to some obnoxious people most of the way there who were going on about how it was the new year, innit!) and the walk back (yes, the walk. It was only about five miles, but it was down one of the more infamous roads in London (mm, gang crime! Actually, no, let’s not talk about that) and, well, we weren’t expecting it so we weren’t exactly mentally prepared. Um, anyway). We ended up linking up and pushing through the crowds to find our way even to the New Kent Road (which turns into the Old Kent Road <– [edit: um, that links to dimsum so now you can click dimsum to get to the OKR!] (my favorite part of that wiki page is: the street is famous as the cheapest property on the London Monopoly board), which turns into New Cross Road, you get the idea), but we made it without injury so all was well.

So that was about 10 days ago (happy birthday, mom, whenever you read this!). The rest of January so far has been spent traipsing about London, mostly for Mariam’s 21st birthday (we went for drinks at the Edge, the same place I had my birthday thing, then went for Indonesian food (which was really good! Okay, I need to stop nesting my parentheses)) and starting classes. But we won’t talk about those yet. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season!