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Thursday, April 03, 2003
Spring Break Journal
Tuesday, March 25th
Hello from Camden, Britain. Me and Leanne arrived safely in London around 12:00 noon, with no hitches in travel at all. Woke up very early, around 5AM, in order to get over to the Florence train station and catch the train to Pisa International for our 10:45 flight to London (yeah, we definitely played it safe with two and a half hours of time in between). The RyanAir flight went perfectly, especially considering we only payed $25 to go from Pisa to London. After arriving at the airport, we hopped on the Stansted express train to Liverpool Station, took a few underground trains, and got to our hostel at 1:45. It's a pretty nice place for 22 euros a night, and it's situationed right on top of a 'swinging' bar called Belushi's, where we enjoyed a great American lunch of a philly cheese steak and fries (well, me at least. Leanne enjoyed pickes and cheddar cheese, rare commodities in Italy). We both throughly enjoyed lots of ketchup also, which isn't something you can easily get in restaurants in Italy.
Around 2:30 we started walking toward the British Museum, which was our one tour stop planned for today. We enjoyed the four parks we passed during the twenty-five minute walk. London is even more enjoyable to walk through than I imagined, at least in the area we're staying in. We scoured a few supermarkets for peanut butter, which we're planning on importing into our Florence apartment in massive quantities, and then selling on the streets for 3 euros a pop. It was absolutely beautiful out today, and it was hard to not lie down in the grass at every park we walked through.
It feels great to walk around a country where everyone speaks English. Honestly, I haven't felt this at ease walking around since I got here. It's not just that I can't understand everyday conversations in Florence, but that every time I open my mouth I identify myself as an outsider, and also kind of feel like one. But here I feel completely relaxed to blabber in English as much as I want, albeit without a British accent. I tried faking one but Leanne says it sounds more like a Swedish / German accent than British. We've even slipped a few accidental 'Grazie' and 'Scusi' to people in the streets without thinking.
On the other hand, I also see how having gone abroad to an English speaking country, like Australia, wouldn't have given me the same experience as Italy is giving me. I love London so far, but I don't feel the same cultural vibes walking around, and aside from the accidents, cars driving on the wrong side of the road, and shops spelled with two extra letters, I could be in America. There are lots of other differences of course, but basically what I'm saying is that I am very grateful for being immersed in the rich and new Italian culture.
The British Museum was incredible. Leanne had looked it up briefly on the internet, saw it was free, and we figured it'd be a nice, casual thing to check out our first day here. For some reason I just pictured a small little museum house with British history. This place was huge, and had all these artifacts from Asia, Egypt, Africa, America, etc. The most impressive part was when I turned a corner and happened upon the Rosetta stone, you know, one of the most important archealogical artifacts ever. And it was just chilling there in a corner of this museum. I wish we had known how big and interesting this museum was going to be, because we would have allowed for more than an hour and a half of browsing.
Afterwards, we headed across the streets to get another dose of American comfort, known as Starbucks, and I refreshed myself with an iced cafe moccha. It takes a bit getting used to the monetary system here, since everything at first looks really really cheap before you remember that a 3 GBP coffee is actually around $5. We slowly made our way back to the hostel, rested a bit, and now stopped in this internet cafe before finding a place for dinner. It's very, very odd to be eating at 8:00, and since we're still on Italian time (which is one hour behind), we're not really hungry at all. But hey, I haven't had mashed potatoes in about two months, so bring it on.
(The following was all written after I got back to Florence)
Me and Leanne went out to dinner to one of the dozens of pubs littered along Camden High street. I had the fish and chips, while Leanne had a cheeseburger (she’s decided to call herself a redmeatetarian, as she only eats vegetarian food and red meat). I also had my first Guinness, though honestly, I couldn’t stand it, and it’s the only beer I’ve ever left without finishing. It tasted like what coffee might taste like if it was made into beer. We went back to the hostel right after and got to sleep, as we wanted to wake up early the next morning.
Wednesday, March 26th
Around 8:30 we woke up, showered, and enjoyed the hostel ‘breakfast’, which consisted of coffee (American coffee, not the great Italian café I’m used to) and pieces of toast. But we were staying in London for 23 euros a night, so hey. Immediately after we bought our all day bus pass (we decided bus rides would be more scenic than the underground) and took one over to Buckingham Palace. It was very fun to ride on the top level of the one of the double-decker busses, especially when it drove (or more like crawled) along Oxford Street, which seemed to be London’s version of a crowded New York street.
Buckingham Palace and the surrounding area was delightful to walk through in the morning. The palace is surrounded by acres and acres of grassy park, quite unlike the White House which is surrounded by streets. We made our way from there over to Westminster Abbey, making a stop at Starbucks along the way. The Abbey was magnificent, and different enough from the hundreds of Italian churches I have seen for me to enjoy it. It was very light, for one thing, and a bit more gothic in design.
From the Abbey we walked past Big Ben and Parliament House, through a park along the Thames, and then to the Tate Britain museum. We ate lunch there (mmm … tuna fish sandwich) before walking through the galleries of some of Britain’s most famous artists. Two of my absolute favorites were William Blake, who did fantastic renderings of both his own mythology and scenes from Dante’s Inferno (which I am a big fan of), and John Martin, whose Apocalypse triptych was featured in one room (three of my favorite paintings of all time). I also enjoyed Turner’s paintings, of which they have almost a whole wing dedicated to.
After the Tate, we hopped on a bus over to Hyde Park, which we strolled around for an hour. A very pretty, immense park, and I was surprised to see about an eight of it was taken up by a Star Trek convention. We walked past a movie theater, and I told Leanne since we didn’t have anything else to do (nudge nudge), why don’t we go see a movie? None of the movies looked too thrilling (which was actually a good thing), but she agreed. We walked for a few minutes along Oxford Street, which was enjoyable for the first minute and then just way too crowded for the next nine minutes.
We got back to our hostel, changed (I told Leanne it would be fun to dress up for the night, though in reality I was just worried about the dress code for the place I was taking her). We found a wonderful Greek restaurant right around the corner from our hostel, where Leanne had a close-to-authentic Greek salad, and I enjoyed moussaka for the first time, which was fairly accurately described to me as Greek lasagna.
Afterwards, we took a bus over to the theater district (luckily, Leanne often places all her trust in me to find our way to places, and didn’t notice that we were in fact headed towards a different direction then the movie theater). When we got off the bus and it pulled away, she saw a huge, lit up sign for the play Les Miserables, one of her favorites. And then I told her that I was in fact taking her there, and she punched me. In a good way though. She was overjoyed as we made our way to our seats, which were admittedly a bit high in the balcony, but we were only one row back so we had a good view. The play was absolutely incredible, my favorite musical I have ever seen, and Leanne enjoyed it just as much.
When the play was over, we went in search of sundaes, but unfortunately could not find a place with a sundae less than $8 (literally). So we opted for a McDonald’s cadburry egg flurry, and for only 99 pence it tasted magnificent. We went back to the hostel and got some much needed sleep.
Thursday, March 27th
We woke up pretty early in the morning in order to make the most of the couple hours we had left before catching our plane to Paris. We enjoyed a classic English breakfast at a nearby café and then made our way to the London Zoo. It was close to empty, which was great, and Leanne went crazy when she saw the sloth bears, which she had been looking forward to for weeks.
After finishing with the zoo, we caught the train back to London Stansted airport, talking to some friendly folks from New Zealand along the way. When we got to the airport we found out our flight along Buzz Airlines was delayed three hours, which sounded back at the time but actually went by pretty quickly, even though London Stansted airport is basically one big room.
When we finally got to boarding our plane, the folks from Buzz were all very friendly, joking that the pilot had never flown before but had only crashed three times in the simulator, and that if anyone felt nervous flying they should just leave the plane right now. We arrived in Paris at 9:45, a bit late to get into a major city and not even have a map for it. The people there were all extremely friendly though, and we made it to our metro stop without any problems at all. We then found our ‘Young and Happy’ hostel, located in the very lively Latin quarter of Paris, and fell asleep pretty soon after that.
Friday, March 28th
We met our friend Eve, who had already been in Paris for two days along with our other friends Stephanie and Diana, after a quick shower and breakfast. We walked, and walked, and walked, enjoying the sights but realizing how BIG Paris was at the same time, until we got to Pere Lachez cemetery. In front of the entrance was an Iraqi peace protest of about one hundred people. I voted to go around, but Eve and Leanne plowed right through, and we didn’t even get one dirty look, which was great, but made me feel bad about what our country was doing at the same time. The cemetery itself was very intense – tombstones, memorials, and monuments covering every inch of the ground. It was also beautiful at the same time though, filled with flowers and trees.
Around noon we took the cemetery towards the Eiffel Tower, where we met with Diana, Stephanie, and Stephanie’s friend Meredith. We had a quick lunch, where I enjoyed hot dog for the first time in a few months. I have to admit that it was aggravating trying to speak French after I was just getting into the groove with Italian, but Leanne did wonderfully with her three semesters experience.
After lunch a few of us walked over to the Eiffel Tower area, enjoyed the scenery, and made our way to the elevators which take you up to the top of the tower. I was a bit nervous, since it was like being in line for an amusement park ride. And it was a bit daunting riding the glass elevators up to the top, but the view was magnificent, and I’m really glad I decided to go to the top.
We went straight from there to the Pompidou museum, Paris’ modern art museum. It was cheap, and some of the things were interesting there, but that was about it. I’m still not much of a modern art fan.
Me, Stephanie, and Diana walked up 284 stairs to the Arc D’Truimph, and got the most rewarding view of Paris from the top. It was my favorite moment there and I’m really glad that I endured all those steps. It also made me really realize that I was, in fact, in Paris. Afterwards we headed to a restaurant recommended to us in one of our guide books, where I enjoyed French onion soup and beefsteak.
Saturday, March 29th
In the morning we went straight to the Louvre, which we didn’t even have to wait in line for. Unfortunately, I was really museumed-out by that point, and spent most of my time sitting on the benches and humming 80’s songs. There was one really great room of impressionist paintings, and me and Leanne agreed that we should have just went to the impressionist museum, Museo D’Orsay. I did get to see the Mona Lisa though, and while it wasn’t all that impressive, it’s at least something I can tell my kids!
We spent the afternoon lounging about Paris, and made our way over to the Montmarte district in the evening. It was an very enjoyable area to walk through, especially at night, and the Sacre Coure church was quite impressive. We had dinner in a square there, where I once again ate very good French onion soup. It was a great way to spend our last night in Paris.
Sunday, March 30th
We were woken up at 6:30 by a phone call from Stephanie, telling us that it was, in fact, 7:30, because it turns out Europe has daylight savings as well. So we woke up and rushed to pack and sign out of the hostel. We took the metro over to Notre Dame cathedral and walked through it, enjoying the Sunday mass that was taking place at the time. We then went to the train station and caught our train to Brussels.
We arrived in Brussels around noon, and had a great gyro lunch. We then stuffed ourselves even further with Belgium waffles, which were incredible, and Belgium chocolate. We also looked at two of Brussels more famous sights before heading back to the train station and taking an express to the airport. We arrived back in Florence that night around ten.
Overall, it was one of the most enjoyable and impressive vacations I’ve taken in my entire life, up there with the West trip me and my family took a few years ago. I can’t believe now that when I read about Paris or London in books or see them in movies, that I have actually set foot in those places. I was most impressed with London, probably partially because I didn’t expect to be impressed by it, but I’d already love to go there again.
I think I took around 200+ pictures, but unfortunately my electric adapter broke so it might take a few more days before those are up. I also still have to post my pictures of Lucca and Fiesole, and then will have quite a few more pictures after my trip to Sienna and San Gimigano this weekend.
posted by Jon at 5:02 PM
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