Roman Holiday Part One- Ancient City

I’ve already explained to you my love of cemeteries. It is that same pull towards the old, decrepit and abandoned which draws me towards very old, forgotten buildings or ruins. Stonehenge, Anasazi Cliff Ruins, St. Andrew’s Cathedral, I can not resist the richness, the romance and mystery which surrounds these sights. They might be the biggest tourist draws in the world, but I can’t help but feel there is some special meaning reserved, just for me. Maybe I’m just full of myself. Anyways, this love for the ancient is part of why I absolutely adored Rome. Like London, it is a city with illustrious past, and even more so then London, thousands of years of history have been preserved concretely, making the entire city a living monument or museum. Loved it.
I knew Rome was impossibly vast, and that there was just no hope of covering it all in the three days we were to spend there. We decided to devote our first day primarily to ancient Rome; The Coliseum, the Forum and the Pantheon, all conveniently grouped near each other in the southern part of the city. And what better place to start then with the blockbuster attraction of Rome, the Coliseum? I knew it would be impressive, but wow. Dating from 80 AD, it wasn’t the largest Roman amphitheater, but it was the most durable, it is still in impeccable condition, two thousand years later. Its image is known by all, but you don’t really get a feel for the scope of it until you are actually inside. Inside the structure there was fabulous exhibit on Greek mythology, which contrasted interestingly with the roman temples of the forum, visible just outside.

The weather in Italy had finally taken a turn for the better, it was sunny an almost warm, the perfect day to wander among the ruins of the Palatine and the Forum. Palatine Hill was once the poshest neighborhood of ancient Rome. It’s now a gorgeous park and collection of ruins; we spent quite some time soaking up the majestic pillars, the beautiful orange trees and the feral cats skulking everywhere (descendents of roman god cats?). Eventually we descended into the Forum, the ancient center of Rome, home of its temples, markets and meeting places. Many of the structures, like the House of the Vestal Virgins, are rubble now, but there are still some spectacular temples almost whole. Particularly memorable were the stark pillars of the Temple of Saturn shooting defiantly up into the air. Just to walk among these ruins and envision what once was, made the whole trip, the whole study abroad experience, entirely worth it to me.
Rome can be dizzying to navigate; it is so huge, and so frenetically busy. A new church or ruin or monument around every turn, it would be easy to wander for days. Another item on my Rome agenda, one that drove my travel mates crazy, wasn’t a flashy temple or ruin; it was tucked into the eaves of a small church. If you know me at all you know that I am crazy about Audrey Hepburn, I couldn’t visit Rome without paying homage to at least one scene from Roman Holiday. It took a couple hours, but I finally tracked down La Bocca della Verita, the Mouth of Truth. Here I am trying to reenact one of my favorite moments, a shame Gregory Peck didn’t show up though…

Scotland Adventures

This past weekend I took the train up north to finally see some more of Great Britain. I made some friends earlier this semester up at St. Andrews so I decided to go visit them. I am part Scottish so I was really excited to finally go see some of my native homeland, and I wasn't dissapointed. Scotland is beautiful and interesting and I hope I have a chance to return when I have more time. (which would be...when?)

First I took the train to Edinburgh, one of Scotland's bigger cities, and met up with my friend Susan. She is an Emory friend who happened to be visiting her Scottish relatives for Thanksgiving. I was so excited to see her and have her show me the sites of Edinburgh! I really lucked out that afternoon, it was brilliantly sunny, although very cold (my entire trip could probably be summed up as very, very, cold). It was friday and the city was just putting up it's christmas lights, there was this cute little carnival going on downtown outside the train station. This is a picture of the carnival in front of the very large and gothic monument to Sir Walter Scott.
I was only in Edinburgh for an afternoon, not nearly enough. We had lunch (while I caught up on all the Emory news) poked around a street fair and then went up the Edinburgh castle. It is a hulking mass high on the hill, huge and dominating. We did a whirlwind tour, climbing to the top for the view, peeking into the church and the WWI memorial and stopping briefly to hear a knight speak on scottish fighting techniques (basically act tough and kick everyone's butt). It was a pretty impressive castle, reminded me a bit of Dover Castle. It get's dark even earlier there then here, the sun started to set aroung three! We did a little but of shopping on Princes Street, the high street and then hugged our goodbyes. She hopped on the bus back to her grandparents and I was off to St. Andrews.
I was very excited to see St. Andrews after hearing all about it from Jason and others. It is one of the oldest universities in the UK and home of the first golf course ever! It is a very cute little town, very very small. The entire town consists of about three streets. Still it is very much a college town, it has the highest concentration of pubs of anywhere in the UK! I could tell that they party hard there, I think they have to if only to keep warm! I was able to sample some Scottish pubs (quite similar to English ones) and some Scottish whiskey of course. Fun stuff.
Aside from the bars and the golfing, St. Andrews is known for the great castle and cathedral ruins. As you should know by now I love old things, especially cemetaries and ruins, so this was right up my alley. The castle is from the thirteenth century and only small parts remain. I didn't pay to go inside, I walked around the outside and took pictures. I think most of what was there could be seen from the outside anyways. I especially loved the cathedral ruins dating from the tenth to the sixteenth century. It was once Scotland's largest building, now there are only a few pieces left standing. They are perched on this cliff overlooking the North Sea. It was windy and near dusk when I went which made it very, very chilly but the view, the sea and the sky were spectacular. There is a large cemetary all around where the cathedral once was so I spent some time waundering around in there as well. The ruins were beautiful against the dusky sky, it was all very romantic to see. And I took a lot a lot of pictures, I am becoming a picture taking addict.

The one thing I will probably remember most about Scotland was how incredibly nice the people were. I don't mean my friends at St. Andrews (although they are very nice and fun) but the actual Scottish people. They were all so friendly, especially compared to the English! I ran into some trouble on my way back home and I don't know what I would have done without their help. Basically I needed to take a bus and two seperate trains to get home. The bus dropped me off at the train station at Leuchars (the closest station to St. Andrews) at which point I discovered that the station was actually closed for the day due to construction! There was a bus taking passengers to the next station but I missed it by about 30 seconds, the next one wouldn't be there until 1:30. I needed to take that train to get into Edinburgh to take my second train home at 2 pm, there was no way I could wait that long. I happened to meet another student from St. Andrews who had missed the bus and we tried to figure out what to do. Suddenly a man approached us, I think he may have been a professor and asked if we needed help. When we told him what had happened he offered to drive us himself to the next train station so we could catch the train! He had just gotten his wife onto the bus and felt bad for us being stranded there. It was so incredibly nice of him I was totally taken aback. And thanks to him I was able to actually make it home thank goodness. I am definatly a fan of the scottish. I snapped this picture out the window of the train as we were leaving Scotland. What a beautiful welcoming place it was.
My mother is flying in tomorrow morning, how exciting! We will do some sightseeing and other fun things but then it's really going to be time to really work hard- only three weeks to go!

Praha Part Two

Even though Prague was subjected to a double whammy of destructive occupations, first the Nazis then the Soviets, there are still an amazing amount of churches and synagogues perfectly preserved. The churches have far outlasted the faith of the people- this city is something like 86% atheist, but they have the most beautiful religious buildings. The most impressive in my opinion was Saint Vitus Cathedral. St. Vitus is actually in the center part of Prague Castle, one of the biggest castles in the entire world. It was kind of cold and rainy so I didn't see most of the castle, just the cathedral with it's amazing stain-glass windows which were glowing despite the pouring rain. I actually saw several different beautiful churchs in Prague, all roman catholic and Renaissance or Baroque in style. They shared similar painted ceilings, huge frescoes and gold gilding. I haven't been to Rome (yet) but these were the most beautiful churches I've seen thus far.

Europe is of course full of grand churches, but what is unique to Prague is the pefectly preserved Jewish Quarter of the city called Josefov. Almost all the Jews in the city were wiped out by Hitler (I think there are about 600 left in the city today) but he left the buildings just as they were. Sickenly, he meant them to serve as a museum of the "extinct race." The lucky thing is that all these synagogues are still there, you can visit them all for one price, including the oldest synagogue in Europe (it is confusingly called the Old-New synagogue) and a really elaborate Spanish synagogue. My favorite part of the Jewish Quarter was the Old Jewish cemetary (Europe's oldest jewish cemetary). Yes, I have a thing for cemetaries. Yes, I know that is weird. I just really like them okay? What made this one interesting was the unique arrangment of tombstones. The cemetary has been around for so many years that people have been buried in layers one over top of one another, which has cause odd rippling and sinking in the ground. As a result the tombstones are extremely crowded together, leaning against each other, on top of each other, sinking into the ground, just general chaos. It's a little hard to describe but very interesting to see.
Other cool things I saw in Prague included the Charles Bridge. This is a medeval bridge which crosses the Vlatva river and has these amazingly huge religious statues dominating it, such as the one on the right. We went there are sunset and watched the sky change from gray to pink to purple, blue and black. Very beautiful and very romantic. I also really enjoyed waundering the old quarter of town. I happened upon some very cool shops and this cute outdoor market selling fruit, food and souveniers. Prague was a very pretty city, it fit exactly into my ideas of Old Europe. Still, after four days in the city I felt like I'd pretty much seen all of it and I was ready to move on.
Coming up: Budapest- aka the best city in the entire world (except maybe london)!

Day Two: Where is everybody?

Not many people around in the dorm yet. As I have no one to hang out with and am too jetlagged for ambitious site seeing I decided to walk to UCL. Went out to investigate the park behind my dorm and found that there are indeed gravestones there. It’s so weird how the bushes are growing in front of them isn’t it? I haven’t figure out what exactly is going on back here but I will. Took a very circuitous route up to UCL. Saw several really interesting used book stores that I will probably spend too much money in. Can’t wait to go back and check those out. Also saw a sign for a book fair. This is not going to be good for my wallet. UCL campus was interesting. I’ve had the campus style school experience for three years and now it looks like I’m going to get to try out the city style school. Hopefully I will get the hang of things soon. Here is the main building of UCL and the main courtyard.






This one didn’t turn out so well but it is supposed to be Jeremy Bentham, the founder of UCL. For some reason he wanted his skeleton to be put on display, fully clothed. They styled a wax head for him because people kept trying to steal the real one. The British are so strange: what other society would keep the headless corpse of a well respected man on display in a university hallway?

Okay 1 roommate has arrived. It is a boy… a 25 year old Italian man named Andrea actually. This is interesting…

Day One: Finally Here!

After months and months of planning and plotting, researching, whining and generally driving everyone nuts I am finally here in London! It’s hard to believe it, even though I am sitting here, looking out my window at the backwards traffic. It might be the fact that I haven’t slept in something like 32 hours but everything seems a bit surreal.
Took a redeye out of Dulles Monday night (I am still confused about what happens to those five hours I lost over the Atlantic) and arrived at Heathrow bright and early, 6:30 am. From the plane I could see the sun rising over London to illuminate Tower Bridge and Big Ben. This was a sharp contrast with the next six hours which were spent hanging around Heathrow waiting for the rest of my minicab group to arrive. Finally made it to my dorm around 1. Langton Close is in this quant little neighborhood within walking distance of King’s Cross Station and UCL. The best part is the lush little park that serves as it’s backyard.
That is the view from the kitchen of my hall. If you look in the center you can see these strange stones structures which sort of resemble graves. I went down to check it out but the writing had long been rubbed away so I couldn’t determine their purpose. I suspect they are graves and that my backyard is actually a cemetery. I’m already convinced my hall is haunted. All night I’ve been hearing this strange singing. It is almost certainly the wind but it makes me wish I wasn’t the only person to have already moved in! Oh and my room is on the fifth floor (which is actually the sixth floor). The elevators are out of service today so I got to lug my heavy, heavy suitcases up all these stairs ------>

Because after that my feet weren’t feeling nearly as sore as my arms were I went out exploring the neighborhood. Wandered around several cute parks, by Kings Cross Station and down to Russel Square. Stumbled upon an organic supermarket which would put Whole Foods to shame. Decided to stalk up on delicious British snack food. For some reason this won't let me post the picture of snack food. But I bought something called a “Meaty 6 pack” of crisps. It has bacon, chicken and lamb flavored potato chips! I can not for the life of my fathom why that does not exist in the United States. I also bought chocolate digestives (biscuits, not nearly as medicinal as they sound). I have already consumed an unhealthy amount of those. For breakfast tomorrow I’ve got something called Crunchy Nut Bars. Haven’t had one yet but the package claims that they are “ludicrously tasty” so I look forward to it!
On the agenda for tomorrow: Scoping out the UCL campus, possibly spending some time at the British Library which is high on my list of places to go. Also important is finding some way to get connected to the internet so I can post this!