Back to the Regularly Scheduled Programming: Prague

It seems like it wasn't bad enough for me to not post about Reading Week while I was actually travelling. I then had to come back and take so long to post my stories that I was forced to interrupt with things happenning here. So, here I am, almost 3 weeks after my trip, finally filling you in. I last ended with our day trip to Pompeii. I'll pick up with the next leg of our journey. And so, without further ado: Prague.

As usual, our trip began with a dose of drama. Rachel and I managed to get up right on time, catch our train, and arrive at the airport with time to spare...or so we thought. We hadn't anticipated the longest check-in line ever, going the wrong way to our gate, and missing the shuttle. By the time we got on the shuttle to take us to our gate, it was about 9:28. Our flight was scheduled to take off at 9:30. We were freaking out just a little. As soon as we got off the shuttle we sprinted to our gate and got there in time to see that the doors were closed. And no one was there. Well, wait a second, no airline people were there, but lots of people were sitting in the chairs. Lots of people who spoke Italian. That's helpful. We wanted to find an airline person, but the desk at the gate was empty--just the little screen with the flight information on it. The little screen that said the flight was now taking off at 12:30! Woohoo!!! We didn't miss our flight. (Insert victory dance.) It occured to us that they were calling for snow in Prague, which could explain the delay. I'll be honest, this was the best snow delay of my life. I honestly don't know what we would have done if that plane had been on time. S0 now we had three hours to kill. About a half hour or so was spent trying to figure out the stupid pay phones so that I could call George and tell him we'd be three hours late. Then we had time for breakfast and shopping. We even thought to buy a gift for George and Marketa (our Mom's would be so proud).

Our 12:30 flight took off around 1:00 or so, but at least we made it. The view as we were landing in Prague was gorgeous. The ground was blanketed in snow and it looked so pristine. Once we were in the city, though, most of the snow was gone. Even so, the city was beautiful. Rachel and i met George at his office and we walked to his apartment. He and Marketa live on the top two floors of the apartment building. Their top floor is one story higher than the adjacent building, so they have a view of the entire city. It's spectacular, especially at night. After we dropped of our things, George led us into town. He walked us to the main street, Wenceslas Square, and told us to meet him back for dinner at 7. We walked through the square, which isn't a square at all but a wide avenue flanked by stores that originates at the National Museum and culminates at the border of Old Town. We continued into the Old Town where (after a few wrong turns) we found ourselves in the square. It was dark by now, and the astrological clock was lit up. We had a few munites to walk around the square before it was time to head back for dinner.

Old Town square at night

We met George and Marketa at a restaurant that serves traditional Czeck food. The waiters brought us English menus, which confirmed my suspicions--traditional Czech food involves a lot of meat. After confessing my vegetarianism, they suggested onion soup and sheep's cheese gnocci. I happily ordered just that (by which I mean Marketa ordered it because I don't speak Czech). It was surprisingly good, very hearty and filling. I quickly realized that the traditional food is like that because you need it to stay warm. After dinner we went back to their apartment. Since they were jet-lagged from their flight back from the states and we had gotten up at 5:30, everyone turned in early.

Friday we had all day to roam the city. Before setting out we bundled up to ward off hypothermia. (Rachel's from NC and I just don't like the cold--we were not meant for this weather.) With two pairs of socks, tights under my jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweatshirt, my Northface, leather gloves, the scarf I bought in Rome and a hat I bought the night before, I was ready to go! George offered to help Rachel and I get started on our tour of the city. He took us to a bakery for breakfast and then put us on a tram with very specific instructions. He clearly had little faith in our navigational skills; as he handed us our tickets he pointed out our stop, showed us where we were to get off, told us how to go fom there, and all but followed us onto the bus. It was a good thing did all that though, because we'd ave been so lost otherwise. As per his instructions, we got off at the stop behind the old castle. From there, we followed the tourist signs (which were not so helpfully written in Czech) to the entrance.

Castle entrance, with very serious guards

I thought this was going to be a take-a-picture-and-move-along site, but boy was I wrong. We went into the courtyard and decided we wanted to tour the cathedral. When you buy the pass, itincludes all of these other places, too. We bought an audio guide, which looks like an ancient cell phone and has an English recording explaining everything in the cathedral. While the recording man was a bit longwinded, I am glad we had him because we learned so much about the history of the cathedral and about St. Wenceslas (yes, of Wenceslas Square, and the Christmas carol). The cathedral was sectioned off into a number of chapels, which we heard about. We also got to see the room with St. Wenceslas' tomb, but we couldn't go inside. We learned that behind that room is where they keep the crown jewels. The door that leads to them has seven locks, which are opened by seven different keys. There are seven Czech heads of state that each have one key and they all have to be together to open the door. The jewels are only taken out on impotant state holidays (makes sense seeing as all the impotant state people have to be there) so we couldn't see them. But recording man told us what they looked like. That was the end of the cathedral tour, but the ticket got us into some other places too. We mostly went in them all because it was so cold that we were looking for any excuse to be inside, but I enjoyed most of them. We were able to explore other parts of the castle, visit an art museum, and a travel (aka march behind an old man) down a street with all these cute old shops.

Me marching beind old man

(I did this for a pretty long time, so Rachel could get a good picture, but he never noticed)

We'd spent the whole morning at the castle, and were starving, so we set off to find food and continue our tour of the city. Our plan to follow the touristy signs was complicated by the fact that on the road outside the castle, signs pointed in both directions. Again, with them being in Czech, we had to go by the tiny pictures. Well, there's a building over that way...and some other buildings this way. We decided to go to the right because it was downhill. At the bottom of the hill we found a cute little restaurant with English menus and a veggie option. Yay food! And yay heat! I had a delicious vegetable risotto and a newfound appreciation for warm, hearty food on a cold day. After a nice leisurly meal, we continued on our way. The street leading down from the castle has all these palace buildings that royal people used to live in. According to George, most of them are now embassies, or something. Whatever they were, they were very cool. The architecture here is remarkable. Apparently, the city suffered considerably less damage during World War II than some other major cities in the region, allowing most of its historic architecture to stay true to form. It contains one of the world's most varied collections of architecture, from Art Nouveau, to Baroque, Renaissance, Cubist, Gothic, Neo-Classical and ultra-modern. I of course can't tell you which of these is what, but I do know that it makes Prague a very popular place to shoot movies (more on that later).

We continued to wind our way through Old Town, stopping at a few other churches to take pictures. We also took frequent shopping breaks. Surpisingly, we bought fairly little in the way of souveniers in Italy. Now was the perfect time for a little retail therapy, most of which was geared towards finding Christmas presents. It helped that we were so cold that we'd take any excuse to go inside.

We croseed over the Charles Bridge sometime in the afternoon, which brough us back over to George's side of the river. This was the side we had explored the night before. The one area we hadn't had time to see was the Jewish quarter. This area of town is home to the oldest active synangogue in Europe and a large Jewish cemetary. It was getting dark at this point, but we managed to get a few pictures of the cemetary gates. We made plans to come back the next day to get a better look.

City and the river from Charles Bridge

We were meant to call George and arrange dinner plans, but our phones didn't work, so we headed back to the apartment hoping to find him. Fortunately Marketa was home and she filled us in on the plans. We met George soon after at an Italian restaurant they'd told us about. From the street, it looks like a diner, cafe-type place, but downstairs is a nice dining room. The restaurant is owned by an Italian family, so it's authentic Italian food. George said this would make up for the night we ate Chinese food in Rome, and it certainly did. This might have been better than anything we ate in Italy. It was a proper dinner, with separate courses and endless glasses of wine (we couldn't afford such luxuries when we were actually in Italy). It was definitely the best meal we had all week. I had bean soup and some pasta dish with lots of veggies (boring, whatever, it's what I like). And did I mention the continuous flow of red wine--good red wine. Oh, and then there was the dessert selection. Rachel and I both went with the tiramisu. George introduced us to limoncello, an after dinner drink, even though the last thing we needed was another drink. Our dinner lasted at least 2 hours, and we got to tell George and Marketa all about our day. They seemed very pleased that we enjoyed the city so much. Oh, and another fun factoid about the restaurant--remember how I said Prague is a big city for filming movies? Well, apparently this is the place all the stars come to eat. They like it because it's very well hidden, and the food is great. One whole wall is covered with picturesof celebreties who have visited. Geoge and Marketa have seen a handful,including Mogan Freeman. We didn't get to see any celebreties the night we were there....hmmm, I guess we'll just have to come back.

The amazing view of the city from their balcony at night

Sunday morning we woke up and it was snowing again, so being the 5-year-olds that we are, we went outside. We walked down to the Wenceslas square, then to the Old Town. Lots more picture taking ensued. We had some time before we needed to go back to catch our taxi, so we thought we'd head back to the Jewish Quarter and and see some more of it. It was a nice plan in theory, and while we did manage to see some very nice side streets, we never actually found the Jewish Quarter again. Running out of time, we had to head back to the apartment, where we gathered our bags, said a quick goodbye to George and Marketa and took off for the airport.

Last stop: Geneva!

Raisin Weekend

This past weekend, I participated in an age old tradition at St. Andrews-- Rasin Weekend. It's tied to another tradition here, academic families. First year students are adopted by third year 'parents' at the start of the school year. It's similar to Bigs and Littles in Greek life. However, first years get both a mom and a dad, and parents can adopt as many children as they want. Parents are meant to help their children make the transition to university life, mostly by upping their alcohol intake. It turns out that JSA's (Junior Semester Abroad) can get parents, since we're new here, too. I got my parents a bit late, close to Halloween. They are Molly and Jon. I also have a number of siblings with the same parents (as opposed to many first years, who have mostly half siblings). The biggest parental/family occasion is Raisin Weekend. I'm not sure when the traditions started, but they've been around for a along time, and their completely unique to St Andrews. The festivities begin on Sunday afternoon, with your mom's tea party. I'm assuming that back in the day, these were actually tea parties. Today, the beverages are a bit more varied (and a bit stronger). My siblings and I hung out in Molly's room playing games. Jon joined us, then took over his main responsibility-- the Sunday night party. We made our way over to Jon's house, where he had quite the beverage selection. More games, more fun. After some time, a couple hours, I don't know, Jon took us over to another dad's party. On the walk there, we kids avoided all the police who are all over town. Jon, however, started to talking to them, and we lost him. Seeing as we didn't know were the party we were going to was, it seemes natural to stop for food. (It was probably around dinner time at this point.) So to Empire we went for a huge plate of fries (chips). Still no sign of Jon, so we went over to Tesco and bought pasta in the prepared food section. I guess we were hungry. Outside, we managed to get a hold of Jon and he collected us back up. At the second party there were tons of people. It was really fun, and I ran into lots of friends. It seemed like most of Uni Hall was there, and so were some of Rachel's friends from John Burnet. My (academic) sister Zoe and I stayed til about 12, then went back to get some sleep. Gotta rest up for Monday.

Raisin Monday is, in my opinion, the best day at St Andrews. All the classes are cancelled (unless your teacher is just mean, some are) and the Raisin fesitivites continue. In the morning, children go back to their mom's house. In appreciation for being wonderful parents, and having parties on Raisin Sunday, kids give their parents each a bottle of wine. Wine has replaced the traditional gift, a pound of raisins. In return, fathers give their children a reciept. But first, the moms are charge of dressing their children up in crazy costumes. (This will all make more sense shortly.) Moms get pretty creative. My siblings and I were dressed as Raisins. Basically, we were in trash bags all stuffed full of newspaper, with little boxes of raisins taped to us. It was pretty funny. I saw everything from superheroes, the whole Simpsons family, and babies, to caterpillars (all the kids connected), and all sorts of animals. Once dressed, children are ready for their receipts. Originally, receipts were written in Latin on parchment. Today, they are usually big, heavy, and/or gross objects, seeing at the kids have to carry them to Sally's Quad. All week I had been hearing that Jon's receipt was amazing, but I had no idea what it was. Molly led us outside to see. Jon had built himself one of those chair things that kings used to be carried on. It had a seat and back, all covered in fabric. He was dressed like Ceasar, complete with a glass of wine and grapes. He had also made a banner with the Latin message for the receipt painted on it. We had to carry him in his seat thing all the way to the Quad. Even with all 5 kids (3 boys!) we couldn't do it. He let us take frequent breaks, and he walked part of the way. We live really far from the Quad. The whole walk there, you see all the other kids decked out in their costumes carrying their receipts and their parents accompanying them. The townspeople all gather on the streets to watch. We were quite the spectacle.

Here we are carrying dear old dad, King of Men.

Even though the walk there was a struggle, it was lots of fun. People were pretty impressed with our reciept, and I must say, it was genious. We did manage to carry him all the way down North Street and into the Quad entrance. At that point, everyone dumps their reciepts into huge trash bins and the kids get in line. Wat are we all doing at the Quad you ask? Well, only the coolest thing ever-- having a foam fight!

That's right, a foam fight. All the kids in their costumes wait to be set loose into the Quad with cans of shaving foam. At 11, they opened the gates and we poured in. Within minutes, foam was EVERYWHERE! There were literally hundreds of us. We started out spraying everyone we knew, then moved onto everyone we didn't know. Every exposed surface was white-- our faces, hair, and clothes, the ground, everything. Our doting parents stood around the perimeter, behind the tape, and look lots of pictures. There was a huge crowd of people watching; they spread all down North Street. After about a half hour of foam fighting, we were completely covered, all out of foam, and very cold. Time to head back home.

Sea of Foam

(from left to right) Anna, me Tina, and Zoe, in all our foam covered glory

I can see why this is one experience that everyone talks about at St Andrews. I'm really glad I got to be a part of this tradition, partly because it was so much fun, but also because its such a unique experience and one I will never forget.

Thanksgiving- Uni Hall Style

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope everyone had a fun and relaxing holiday. I'll be honest, this was the first time I've ever been homesick. Thanksgiving isn't quite the same across the pond, what with them not really caring about the pilgrims and turkey and football. I, however, was in full holiday mode. Therefore, I skipped class, didn;t go the gym, and cooked all afternoon, which is what you're meant to do on Thanksgiving. Fortunately, there are lots of Americans in my hall, and we weren't about to let Thanksgiving pass by without a feast. Our amazing International Students Rep, Brett oraganized a big Thanksgiving dinner. He got the kitchen to cook us some chickens. I know, not turkey, but close enough, at least if you're a vegetarian. Then, we all cooked the traditional (and some non-tradiational) side dishes.

Our awesome Rep Brett with Laura and her amazing stuffing!

A few friends and I took over one of the hall kitchens and got to cooking. Laura was making stuffing, Kristyna chocolate chip cookies, and I took on the sweet potatoe casserole, complete with the marshmallows on top. Our friend Anna (she's English) tagged along to learn about this whole Thanksgiving thing--she was very intrigued by a holiday centered around food.
Given our lack of dishes, utensils, counter space, and experience, I think we turned out some amazing food. I never realized how many things I take for granted in my well-stocked kitchen at home until I tried to cook in an empty one. I mean, it's one thing to have to buy all the ingredients for a dish, down to the milk and butter. But I had to buy a pan as well. Then, in the kitchen, we realized that there weren't any bowls, We only had two knives and one measuring cup between the three of us. We didn't have a clue how to turn the ovens. (I promise it was not at all straightforward.) We had to improvise some with ingredients and measurements, what with the whole conversion issue. This was not a simple task.

We all ran into our fair share of obstacles. Kristyna had a hard time with the measuring, since improvising is not so easy when baking. Laura's measuring cup was in cups, but she bought it here, and it seemed way off. Oh, and they don't have chocolate chips in Britain, so she had to chop up a bar of chocolate, which required precious knife usage. She also forgeot to buy baking powder, but was able to borrow someone else's in the end. She finally got all the rounded teaspoonfuls of dough on the cookie sheet, only to find out it didn't fit into our miniature ovens. At this point she disappeared to another floor to find a smaller pan or a bigger oven.

Laura's stuffing was a family recipe-but-not-an -actual-recipe type thing. Basically it involved some combinaiton of bread, butter, onions, celery, and poultry seasoning (which they also don't have here). The proportions were a little off (she had about three loaves of bread left over) but in the end it turned out great. We taste-tested regularly to make sure. After seeing how much butter went into that recipe, I think I know why it was so good.

I've neer actually made sweet potatoe casserole before, but I decided to give it a shot. Given our initial inability to turn on the oven, I started by microwaving the sweet potatoes. Who knew it took 15 minutes to cook 3 sweet potatoes? And I had to do 2 batches! Oh well, all the more time to help Laura tear up bread. Once my potatoes were cooked, I practically burned my fingers off trying to scrape the potatoe-y part out of the skin. As my mom knows, the potatoes don't mash themselves, so that was my next task. Remember how I said we didn't have any bowls? So into the pan they went to be mashed, with my one and only fork. The recipe I found called for milk and butter and salt, as well as nutmeg ans some other spices. Well, it turns out spices are kind of pricey and Laura already cinammon, so I replaced all the spices the recipe called for with cinammon. Oh, and I accidently bought pecans instead of walnut, but I like pecans better, so maybe I subconciously meant to. Of course, I put the marshmallows on top, even though all my Scottish friends thought it was weird. What's weird is that you can't buy bags of plain white marshmallows here. They come in a mix of pink and white, so I bought two bags because I refused to put pink marshmallows on my sweet potatoes. In the end, I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Once everything had come out of the oven, we brought it down to the common room were everyone was gathering for dinner. By the time we got there, there were already the chickens, greeen beans, mashed potatoes, and an impressive array of desserts. Eventaully everything showed up--stuffing, mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, roasted vegetables, 2 sweet potatoes casseroles, salad, rolls, and cranberry sauce (which showed up very late, tsk tsk). That was only one half of the buffet. The other half, of course, was desserts--2 pumpikin pies, chocolate cake, fudge doughnuts, chocolate chip cookies, chococlate chocolate chip muffins, some lemon-y cake, and pecan pie (also late). In addition to all the "normal" food, there were two small pizzas, pita bread, hummus, and nachos.

Our Thanksgiving spread, sideways (I have to figure out how to rotate these!)

Laura and Kirsty enjoying the feast.

Kathryn, fellow American and maker of the pumpkin pies, eating a very non-traditional but delicious fudge doughnut.
It was sooooo good. It was a good thing we had so much food, because a lot of people showed up. Pretty much all the Americans in hall were there, along with some non-Americans who just wanted to eat good food. Then we had some visitors from outside of hall stop by. Everyone consumed massive quantities of food. I had three full plates. That includes my dessert plate of pumpkin pie and chocolate cake. I was disappointed at the lack of pecan pie, but I was so stuffed by this point it didn;t matter. Then, just as I'm debating unbuttoning my pants, the pecan pie shows up. It was like I instantly grew a second stomach. So, just one last plate, and it was totally worth it- that was good pecan pie.

This Thanksgiving might not have been the same as at home, but I had a great time. I have lots be thankful for, starting with all my friends here at St Andrews who have become like family. Enjoying the holiday with them was the next best thing to being at home with my biological family.

When in Rome

And so, after our train mishap (see previous post) Rachel and I arrived in Rome. Having negotiated our way around Florence, we felt much more confident in our ability to navigate through Rome. With only one U-turn (and a bit of confusion regarding it's location on the first floor, which means second floor in Europe), we found the hostel. This one was definitely not as nice as the one in Florence, but its was not as expensive either. We definitely got what we paid for. We were staying in an 8-bed room with a shared bathroom. I didn't mind sharing the room so much, except getting ready in the dark. More annoying was the fact that our stuff was out in the open. That meant always carrying our passports and important stuff on us, since we couldn't lock them up. Also, we had to deal with some seriously loud late-night partyers. I typically sleep like a rock, but even I had a hard time. The upside was getting to meet some friends. Our roommates were all American's and Australians, some backpacking and others just on vacation like us. They were all really nice, and it was fun hanging out with people who spoke our language. We also helped each other figure out the city--what to see, when to go, where to eat.
That first night we didn't get to do much. It was already late when we arrived, so we began our search for food. It didn't take us long to find a little restaurant that wasn't too expensive. Of course, I had pasta, And we rounded out our meal with yet another bottle of wine. Then, it was early to bed since we knew we had a full day ahead.

In the morning, we mapped out our route and set off to do Rome in a day. It seemed that the best thing to do would be to take the metro across the city and work our way back on foot. So we hopped on the train and set off. First stop: The Vatican. We arrived at around 9:30 or so and already the line looked impossibly long. But you can't miss the Vatican, so to the back of the line we went. Amazingly, we wound around some four blocks in less than 40 minutes and got inside. There's much more to do there than I had thought. There's a museum that quite large, which is where we started out. We got to see all the old stamps, displays on past Popes, and even all the old Pope-mobiles (they used to have some pretty amazing carriages). There a very nice courtyard that we walked through on our way to the Sistine Chapel. I thought that we would just follow the signs, go in and stare at the ceiling, and then leave. Little did I know that to get to the actual chapel, you walk through much of a rather large building. I kid you not when I say that the entire route was breathtaking. Literally every wall and every ceiling was covered with the most ornate painting and sculpture I have ever seen. It was all so amazingly detailed and it just never seemed to end. I had no idea that there was that much to see.

Vatican bulding from the courtyard

We eventually made it into the actualy chapel. At this point, you are not allowed to take any pictures. Everywhere else, it's no flash, but here it's none at all. Of course, we totally took pictures, but they're not all that good since I had to hold the camera down by my hip and point it the ceiling. I did, however, manage to get the famous part in, with the hands reaching towards each other. I'll be honest, I thought that was the only thing on the ceiling. I had no idea there were so many other scenes, and that the walls were all painted as well. The magnitude of it is just unreal.

That's my best ceiling shot, a little crooked, but you can see

the hands in the second section from the left.

After leaving the chapel, we walked back into the Vatican from another entrance, near St Peter's Basilica. Again, the line looked unbelievably long. While we were willing to wait for the Sistine chapel, this one we just weren't up for. I mean, it was after 1:00 and we were very hungry. We did take some pictures of the outside though, which kind of makes up for it.

St. Peter's Basilca. Check out the statues along the roof (and the line of people in front).

From here, we went in search of food. Cheap food is not easy to find, but we came across a a little sandwich place where we sat down. Let me just say, Italy is the place to be if you're a vegetarian. Sure they've got their ham sandwiches, bet there's ALWAYS veggie sandwiches and pizza and pasta. It's awesome. Anyways, after my lovely egg, lettuce and tomato sandwich (might sound strange but it was really good) we crossed over a bridge to the other side of the city.

Now it was time to hit all the other places on our list. We passed the Mausoleo di Augusto on our way to the Spanish Steps. Since, Rachel's knee wasn't 100% better, we figured it was best to avoid going up the steps. To that end, we took a side street and emerged at the top of the steps, which gives a nice view of the square below. We made our way down the stairs, stopping to take pictures at each level, until we reached the fountain at the bottom. The street directly in front of the steps has all the big designer shops. So, we walked down there, past Gucci, Prada, Valentino, Armani, etc. Sorry to disappoint you, but none of our souvenirs/gifts came form that street. It was fun to see them all though. After stopping for a mandatory gelato (two scoops, chocolate and strawberry, sooooo good) we headed to the Trevi Fountain. There's a myth of something about throwing coins in, one to come back, two for getting engaged or married or something. Needless to say, Rachel and I each threw in a coin. Rachel's coin worked last time, since here she was again, so hopefully they'll work again.

Tossing my coin into the fountain

After tossing our coins, we walked to the Pantheon. I honestly didn;t know what the pantheon was, so I didn;t know what to expect. It sort of looks out of place in it's little square, surrounded by less historic buildings. Inside it's a church (I didn't know that) with some statues and an alter and other churchy stuff. Unfortunately, it was really dark, so the pictures didn't turn out so well, but it was quite pretty. From the Pantheon, we went to the Wedding Cake. It as an Italian name, but I don;t know what it is. The building is quite stunning, but of course they were doing renovations so much of the front was covered in sheets or something. I can imagine it would ahve looked really remarkable uncovered. The statues flanking the sides were cool though, so we took some pictures of them. Sadly, I can;t add more than 5 pictures to a post, and these didn't make the cut.

By this point, it was starting to get dark, but we still hadn't seen everything. Luckily, it was all fairly close by. Just behin the Wedding Cake is the Roman Forum. This is more what I expected to find in Rome--ruins of old buildings. The forum actually covered quite a large area. We walked around the perimeter, but didn't have time to explore inside. If I ever go back, I'd like to spend more time there.

Roman Forum

We then took a longish route to the Colosseum so we could go by the place where they used to have races. Now it's just an oval of grass with a dirt/gravel path around it. But it's still cool to tihnk, I'm walking where they used to race. By this time, it was dark, but we had to see the Colosseum. It's absolutely immense. I could only see inside a little bit. This is another place I would definitely return to, if given the chance. By now, we were both exhausted, so we went back to the hostel to get ready for dinner. I will admit, we committed a grave sin in our choice of restaurants. We ate Chinese food in Italy. But it was good, and it was cheap, and it was close to the hostel. It doesn't matter, somewhere inside, I still know that it was very wrong.

So there you have Rome in a day. I must say, I think that if I had it do over again, other than spending more time at the Roman Forum and the pantheon, I wouldn't do much different. Since we'd managed to fit everything in, we decided to take a day trip tomorrow to Pompeii. Rachel desperately wanted to go, and I thought it sounded cool, and since you never know when you'll have another opportunity to go to Pompeii, we decided to take it. So, next up in my Reading Week blogs: A Day in Pompeii.

And They're Off...To Italy That Is

As I've mentioned, Rachel and I started our travels off in Italy. More specifically, we flew into Pisa, home of the leaning tower. Here, we encountered our first of many obstacles/adventures. You see, we were staying in Florence, which is about a 2 hour bus ride away--significant enough that we would not be returning to Pisa. But seriously, how can one go to Pisa and not see the leaning tower. So we collected our bags (and by we I mean me, since Rachel was still hobbling around on the crutch) and hopped on the city bus. After missing our stop once and riding all through the city, we got off at a close-enough stop. Picture the following scenario: Rachel is on her one crutch, I have my backpack and am pulling our 2 suitcases. The sidewalks in Italy are only wide enough for half a person. We cross under some bridge and fight our way through all the vendors into the square with the tower.

By the time we arrived the sun was setting, and the tower really did look beautiful against the horizon. We took the obligatory "holding up the tower" pictures. As you can see, these were taken from a distance, and we lined ourselves up to make it look like we were pushing against the tower. After setting up to take the shot, I understood why an Asian woman had been in the exact same pose moments before. (She was not in fact doing tai-chi as I had originally thought.)




Besides the tower and the church standing next to it, there isn't mush to see in Pisa. So, after our photos, we picked everything back up, hopped on the bus and went back to the airport. From there we hopped on a bus to Florence.

It didn't really occur to me until we were on the bus that I had no idea where we going in Florence. Fortunately, Rachel had the hostel reservation and it came with directions. But guess what, when you don't know how Italian and the street signs are scarce, they're only so helpful. Miraculously, we found it, only to get upstairs and find out it was full. The owner(?) led us to another hostel, and even helped carry our bags. As it turned out, the hostel we ended up in looked better than the one we had reserved. It was actually quite nice. We had our own room. There were two (clean!) bathrooms, a kitchen, and free internet. Also, the location was great, just a few minutes walk to the Academia. That night,we basically got in and crashed so we could get an early start the next morning.

Sunday we headed out bright and early. The plan was to find breakfast first. (I am very cranky if no one feeds me in the morning.) To my dismay, we happenned upon the Galleria dell'Accademia before coming across a cafe. It turned out for the best though, as we only waited in line for about 15 minutes. I hear the wait can be over an hour later in the day. We saw quite a collection of paintings and sculptures, culminating in Michelangelo's David. The scale is absoultely amazing. I don't know much (read: anything) about art, but this was spectacular. Pictures aren't allowed inside, but we did get some of the replica that now stands in the Palazzo della Signoria.

In fact, we were on our way to the Santa Croce when we noticed a large sculpture down the street in the opposite direction. Rachel and I looked at each other, said "That looks cool," and wandered over. Turns out, we had wandered into the Palazzo della Signoria. We saw the David statue, as well as Neptune, and several others. After taking some pictures outisde, we got back on track and headed over to the Santa Croce. It's a beautiful Gothic church. Being Sunday, it unfortunately wasn't open. I wish we had gotten to go inside. It wasn't a huge loss though, as there was lots more to see. Next, we wanted to go to Uffizi. When we pulled out the map, we realized that it was in the Palazzo della Signoria, where we had just been. Laughing at our stupidity, we walked back to the palazzo. In the end we didn't go in Uffizi, but the museum next door as the line was much shorter. Neither Rachel nor I know much about art, so we had pretty much had our fill of art museums after that.

Here's the Santa Maria del Fiore, known as The Duomo. You can't see the dome from this angle, but it's the best-known cathedral in the city.

This is the statue of Neptune in the Palazzo della Signoria. I was going to show you the David, but Rachel has all those pictures. I only have one from behind. I mena, its still a nice view, but I'll wait for a normal picture.

That's the front of the Basilica of Santa Croce. Unfortunately the light wasn't great, but as you can see, the building is still spectacular. Wish we could have gone inside.

I'll be honest, I don't excatly remember where this was take. i do know that it's a picture of a ceiling. It could be a ceiling in the museum we visited. In fact, that's quite likely. We'll go with that for now. If I figure it out for sure, I'll update with accurate information. :)

By the time we'd seen all this, we were starving again. (I really am like a small child, always complaining that I was either hungry or that I had to go the bathroom.) We ended up finding a sidewalk cafe in the middle of a plaza where we had delicious pizza and listened to a woman singing opera. I could really get used to this.

Exhausted from our day of travel the day before and walking around all morning, we went back to the hostel for a quick nap. It turned into more of a two hour nap, so we woke up in time for dinner. We went out to find a restaurant, which ended up taking about an hour, maybe more. (This ended up being the norm. We spent a large portion of every day looking for places to eat.) After walking all the way down to the river, along the bank, and back towards the center of the city, we found a nice little place. It was quite small, but the food was great. Fresh bread, spaghetti with tomato sauce, and a bottle of wine. On the way back to the hostel, we stopped for gelato. (I think gelato is heaven, an pretty much demanded that we have it daily.) Really, I could eat like this every day.

On Monday, it was time to catch our train to Rome. We had to check out by 10, but our train wasn't until 12:20, so we packed our bags and went looking for a cafe. We were lucky to find one right by the station. We had time to kill, so we had breakfast--muffins, oranges, and cappuccinos. And yes, we enjoyed feeling quite European drinking our cappuccinos in a cafe in Florence. Then, being the responsible people we are, Rachel and I went to the station a full hour before our train was to depart. We stood watching the screen, waiting for it to come up. Waiting....11:40, 12:00, 12:20. Yea, it was a 12:20 train, but there was still no sign of it. Off we went to information, where I spoke to an Italian guy whose English was terrible. He told us we missed the train. Not possible I said. It never came. Well, that's because we were at the wrong train station. Ha! In that case, perhaps we did miss it. Who knew there were two train stations in Florence? Not us. In our defense, the station we were supposed to go to isn't even on the map, and the Italian train system is not exactly straightforward. In the end, we took a train from the central station to the one we were supposed to leave from, and caught the next train to Rome. other than gettin to Rome a few hours later than planned, it all worked out.

So that was Pisa and Florence. Stay tuned for the rest of the trip. Next up: Rome!

A Whirlwind of a Week!

I'm back at St Andrews after an absolutely amazing Reading Week. I had sincere intentions to blog all about my travels during the actual week, but we can see that that didn't happen. We crammed our days so full and then came back and collapsed into bed every night. But there are lots of stories and pictures that I can't wait to share. At this very moment, I am downloading 132 pictures from the second half of the week, not including the ones I plan to steal from Rachel. (For those of you who know I NEVER take pictures, that's impressive!) Once I can get them somewhat organized, I plan on having a blogging field day. I should of course be doing work, but since all I want to do is go back to travelling around Europe, telling you all about it is the next best thing. Check in over the next few days for my belated posts from Florence, Rome, Pompeii, Prague, and Geneva!

Countdown to Reading Week: 7 Days!

OK, first, the Reading Week plans.
Let me just say that planning a week of traveling (especially on a student budget) is not easy. Rachel and I had basically no idea how to go about doing this. We didn't even know where we wanted to go. We had a few vague ideas, and, being list-makers, we decided to write them down. We ended up with an entire page of places, including London, Bath, Dublin, Paris, Nice, Prague, Italy, Greece, and Germany. And that's just what I remmeber! Clearly, we needed to narrow it down. Having never been to Europe, I want to see and do everything. Other than definitely wanting to Prague to visite my cousin George, I didn't have any strong preferences. We both want to go to London, Bath and Paris, but since those are relatively close, it makes more sense to do them as weekend trips.

So, we were left deciding between the rest of our option. Rachel's been on a few vacations in Europe, and had a better idea of what she wanted to do, so I pretty much let her decide. Greece is on the top her list, so we looked into that first. We initally tried to plan a trip that would include Greece and Prague. We began loking into flights, hoping to find something affordable. Initially, we found a pretty inexpensive flight to Prague, but the cheapest one from Prague to Athens was over $3,000. We thought that was the end of our Greece trip, until I realized I had selected Athens, Georgia, not Athens, Greece. Fixed that, and the price went down substantially. Seemed like it would work, and we planned to get together later to buy the tickets and book the hostel rooms.

In the meantime, it occurs to me that I should contact George and let him know that I want to come for a visit (perhaps before I book my flight, in fact). After about a week of waiting to hear back from him, figuring out I had an old email address, and waiting for my Mom to get me the new one, I finally get a reply. Good thing I asked, because it turns out he and his wife Marketa are going to be in the States during most of our Reading Week. Bummer. However, they are getting back on Thursday and he graciously offered to let us stay with them Thursday to Saturday. Not the original plan, but still good.

Meeting with Rachel again. This time, we're REALLY going to make our plans. Turns out there's some kind of unrest or something in Greece, so we scratch that idea. Back to squre one. We entertained the idea of doing a Mediterranean cruise. Haha. Not on this budget. But. now, we were fixated on Italy. So we look into flights and hostels, and it seems doable. We factor in the two days in Prague. We figure out the that cheapest way to get home from Prague is to fly on EasyJet through Geneva. To do that, we have to stay one night in Geneva. I'm not complaining. (By the way, EasyJet is AMAZING. Yea, they only fly to like 3 places from Edinburgh, and yea you can only take a suitcase that weights like 3 lbs., but seriously, the flights are sooooo cheap.)

And so, after much deliberation, and much time spent on the money conversion website, here are our final plans:

We leave next Saturday, fly to London, then connect to Pisa (yes Mom, the one with the tower).
2 days in Florence
Train ride
3 days in Rome
Another flight
2 days in Prague
Plane again
1 night in Geneva
Last one (we're gonna be so sick of peanuts)
Back to Edinburgh

How fabulous is that? Best part, all the travel was less that $500. Hostels were pretty reasonable. That means we might actually have money left for attractions, and shopping, and food! We're still working on what we actually want to do and see in each city. I'm sure it will be hard to fit everything in. I know we can't do it all, but it will still be an amazing trip. I can't wait to tell you about it. The current plan is to bring the laptop. With any luck, there will be WiFi and I can post throughout the trip.