Florence, Venice, and Chris's family

This is my last morning in Italy. Our bad experience in Rome was followed by a nice two days in Florence where we experienced the majesty of the Duomo, Santa Croce, San Lorenzo and Michelangelo's mannerist stair at the Laurentian Library, the Palazzo Vecchio and Piazza della Signoria, and even all the way up to the Piazzale de Michelangelo which was worth the climb. Florence is still very crowded and the streets are more narrow than Rome but I think we just accepted the fact that Italy is full of people all the time. I was fortunate to be in Florence at the same time as Chris's parents and aunt and uncles who were having a mini family reunion and greatly enjoyed spending a couple of days with them. Bill and Sue and I took a day trip to the walled city of Lucca, about an hour from Florence, and spent most of our day wandering around trying to figure out where we were on the map! It was a nice quiet departure from the hectic pace up to that point. His family is wonderful and I look forward to seeing them again soon. Thanks to Bill and Sue for feeding me so well in Florence!

So yesterday we left Florence for Venice and just spent the day here. I was prepared for it to be stinky and dirty and unpleasant but really, we had a very nice time here. All of the important architectural sites are visible from a waterbus cruise on the Grand Canal and we spent most of the day wandering aimlessly (I am tired of being chained to a map all of the time!) and experiencing Venice's wonderful shopping. Murano glass is huge here and I found a really unique dish I hope makes it home intact. We ate lunch on the Piazza San Marco (yes, with all the pigeons... yuck!) and enjoyed our last meal together and in Italy at a small trattoria in one of the maze-like Venetian streets complete with some after-dinner limoncella.

I fly to Oslo this afternoon and my dad arrives in the morning. We will spend three days in Oslo and then fly to Helsinki on Thursday. I'm also thinking about taking the ferry across to Talinn, Estonia since what I've read says it's a really interesting place that is enjoying its new found freedom from the Soviet strongarm. It is all going by so quickly! I am getting ready to be finished living out of a backpack, wearing the same clothes all the time, and sleeping in many different unfamiliar beds. I think we planned the duration of the trip just right... Jolie and Sandy and I are ready to get rid of each other! (Well, me maybe more than them.)

More from Scandinavia!

No love from Rome

Greetings from Italy. I wish I could tell you that Rome is absolutely wonderful... we have had a really tough time here. We arrived around 11:00 Saturday night on a really old and junky train and due to a miscommunication within our group, Jolie booked the wrong nights at the hostel and we ended up having to stay at this really horrible place. Even though we had made a reservation, when we arrived, they didn't have enough beds for us and asked if we would share a twin bed. Um, no, we won't. So this guy goes and gets pieces of bunk beds from the basement and starts to assemble them in a room with 12 other people already in it. We reluctantly paid (although I really wanted to go to a hotel) and I "slept" in my clothes with my shoulder bag on top of me. Half the people in the room were snoring loudly so there wasn't much sleep to be had. The icing on the cake was that there was one disgusting shower and one toilet (with no toilet seat) for the 50-odd people staying at this horrible place. I bypassed the shower (which is a big deal for me) and wore the same clothes I'd worn the day before and all night. We left without saying a word to the people who run the place. Fortunately the place we are staying now is much better but it was not a very good introduction to Italy.

We have seen a lot of stuff in the last three days, the highlights have been tossing coins into the Trevi Fountain, waiting in line on the Piazza St. Pietro to get into St. Peter's for 2.5 hours in the sun, seeing the Sistine Chapel, eating gelato on the Piazza Navona, and wandering around the Colosseum. With the exception of my €20 dinner last night, the food has been unimpressive, it is extremely crowded (it doesn't help that we are here for Liberazione Day) and it has been very hot here. We are really hoping that things will go better for us in Florence; I am sure that under ordinary conditions, Rome is a fantastic place but it's just one of those places that I am ready to leave and try again some other time.

More from Florence in a few days!

Rail strikes and palm trees

We left Paris yesterday after four wonderful days. The day before we had taken the stairs to the 2nd balcony of the Eiffel Tower (718 steps) so we were looking forward to the 8 hour train ride to Barcelona to rest. Our double-decker TGV train (which travels close to 120mph) arrived in Montpellier on schedule but after total confusion and language barriers, we finally figured out that there was a rail strike in Spain and we could not cross the border. It was complicated because I needed to cancel our lodging reservations in Barcelona and could not get the call to go through from the payphone in the train station so thankfully my dad was in the office when my call came and was able to send an email for me. So then it was 10:00 at night in Montpellier, we have no place to stay and no map, and this is a part of France that doesn't speak as much English. Luck was in our corner when we got the last room (which somehow was a triple...) at a hotel with a private bathroom and comfortable beds. We decided to just take things easy and stay in Montpellier until we head to Nice tomorrow.

When we woke up this morning, we discovered that this is a beautiful city! Pure blue skies and temps in the upper 70s which felt like August in Nebraska after having been in London for so long. There are palm trees everywhere and we are just 7km from the Meditteranean. We ate lunch at one of dozens of outdoor cafes and spent the afternoon in a park after buying sunscreen, which was another ordeal. Everything ended up working out pretty well although last night, with 30 pound backpacks and no place to stay, I was a little worried. Someone up there is surely watching over us while we're trapsing around Europe!

Sandy is now sick and so none of us are sleeping very well with her coughing. I am anxious to move on to Nice tomorrow and then Rome on Saturday. It's wonderful to have warm weather and sunshine now. Au revoir!

Beautiful Paris

I am typing this on a French keyboard and all the letters are in the wrong place so it will unfortunately be brief! We arrived in Paris on the Eurostar yesterday and spent the afternoon exploring Montmartre including Sacre Couer and Moulin Rouge. Our hostel is also here and is pretty nice compared to what we were used to in London! Free internet, a shower in our room and croissants for breakfast. Montmartre is also the highest elevation of the city so there are a lot of steps and hills! We feel the change from the relative flat of London. I experienced salty crêpes for the first time last night with cheese, ham and tomatoes... the food here is just so good. (Tough to do worse than English food, though!)

Paris is beautiful even though it has been cloudy the last two days. Things are definitely a different pace here and at night the city is very quiet. This is new and different! We are speaking French as much as we can but usually people will respond to us in English so that has been helpful. The words for "Leave me alone, please" have been helpful as there are a lot of people begging for money or trying to sell souvenirs. I speak German to them sometimes because generally they don't know it!

Today we went to Notre Dame for Easter Sunday along with everyone else in France apparently! It was SO crowded, we just kind of got pushed around until we reached the exit. To say it is a beautiful place is obviously an understatement and it was very special to be there on Easter. Also visited today were the Pompidou Center, Ste. Chapelle, Jardin du Luxembourg, Pantheon Ste. Genevieve, and made a reservation at Gare d'Austerlitz for our train trip to Barcelona (in French!). It was a full day of walking so after a nap; we treated oursevles to a hot meal at a great Italian place (again, English-speaking waiter) and took the subway to the Eiffel tower to see it at night. HOLY MOLY. How incredible! It's incredible lit up at night - we will get to the top tomorrow afternoon but are trying to decide if it's worth it to take the steps (€3) or the elevator (€11). As you can imagine, it's a LOT of steps but the budget is pretty tight! :)

We are off to Chartres in the morning!

Last Post from London

WE ARE FINISHED! Yesterday’s final studio presentation at Woods Bagot was a success and now all academic work is complete. I haven’t done much of anything this week besides prepare my design so having everything finally finished is a fantastic feeling. We even have our grades already. After our presentation, we paid one last visit to The Rocket, a pub on Euston Road we’ve frequented because they have a deal where you get a burger, chips, and a drink for £3.95. The hostel threw us a party in the downstairs bar last night, which consisted of two free drinks for each of us and tortilla chips. But apparently if they hang up posters in the hostel with American flags advertising that there will be a bunch of Americans (let alone Nebraskans) in one place, it keeps them away rather than encouraging them to come…

Did you know that a Dutch girl stole my umbrella in Westminster station on Tuesday? And it was raining outside! Grrrrr.

So now we are in the process of packing it all up – our room is so small than only two people can pack at once. I am glad that I did not overpack because everything is fitting pretty nicely in preparation for going home. However, packing for 23 days in a backpack is something I’ve never done before! I have mixed feelings about the end of the official London program – I am anxious to experience new cities and see some amazing sites on the Continent but London has been home for three months and I’ve seen and done some really cool things while here. (By the way, I was in the first group of people to ever visit the brand new Wimbledon Lawn & Tennis Museum on Wednesday!!) Besides the obvious things like the amazing architecture, vast history, and the great museums, I have heard some truly amazing music here, especially the London Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra, and that will stick with me for a long, long time. That was what personalized the trip for me and is something that no one else really got to experience. Also, all of the walking, stair climbing and living off of Tesco sandwiches and fruit has resulted in my clothes hanging on me and a belt becoming an essential wardrobe accessory. It’s great! I also really need a haircut...

So, on to Paris! We leave Waterloo station at 11:10 tomorrow morning to take the Eurostar (the high-speed train that crosses and goes underneath the English Channel) and arrive in Paris at Gare du Nord around 2:30 tomorrow afternoon. (It seems so weird that we’re actually leaving – I have been thinking about and preparing for this trip since September and it’s kind of surreal that it is now time.) I have to admit that I’m a little nervous about some of the logistical things in a country where I don’t speak the language but we have phrase books and maps and a guidebook (and each other) so hopefully things will be alright. It will definitely be an adventure! I will try to post on this next leg of the journey but since I’m not taking my laptop with me, I don’t know if I’ll be able to share photos until I get home.

Now I’d better go ride the tube one last time before I go… au revoir!

Spring in London

I am slowly recovering from the sickness that ruined my birthday but I have a persistent phlegmy cough that is probably going to stick with me for a while. On Sunday, I went to the Oxford University-Cambridge University boat race on the Thames. This is an annual 8-man rowing event and the exhibition of the rivalry that exists between the two universities. Close to 300,000 Londoners crowd the banks of the Thames between Putney Bridge and Chiswick Bridge (that's us there in the photo at left). The race lasts about 18 minutes and we saw them come by us just past the halfway point to much cheering and yelling. And the sun was even out for the occasion! It was the first time I’d worn my sunglasses for quite a while. Oxford was the unexpected winner, much to the disappointment of the Cambridge-heavy crowd I was standing in.

We continue to battle with noisy European travelers at all hours of the night. Sunday night brought about 50 Italian 12-year-olds (whose leader lied to the owner of the hostel and said they were all 18…) who were in the room across the hall and several others along our corridor. They were honestly running up and down the hallway, yelling and screaming and making monkey noises ALL NIGHT Sunday. Attempts to ask them to be quiet resulted in doors slammed in our faces. I even woke up their leader (who was blissfully sleeping in a room three fire doors away) but he seemed to care less than the kids themselves. At 5am, they all left the rooms with all of their luggage making even more of a racket than before. Turns out their airport bus was picking them up so instead of going to bed early and getting up early like most normal people, they’d stayed up all night. (Although I do recall a time or two in South Africa on a Bel Canto tour that we did the exact same thing although hopefully not at that decibel level.) I finally fell asleep around 5:40am – not good for my sickness. I had a few words with the owner (who knows us all pretty well by now and is generally pretty great about things) in the morning and was just about ready to pack my bags and go stay at a hotel just so I could get some sleep and start to get better. This hostel sucks.

Naturally, we are trying to finish up all of our work and this week has been beautiful with mostly to partly sunny skies nearly every day so not much work is getting done during daylight hours, which now extend until nearly 8:00. London is at her best right now under a blue sky and with her flowers in bloom. I’ve been eating my lunch in various parks and squares and have had some great conversations with the people on the surrounding benches. Deck chairs have appeared in all of the big parks and for a small fee, you can sit in one for a couple of hours. The Science Museum has a great exhibit on Pixar animations right now, it has a lot of great drawings and models from the developmental stages of the movies and a couple of great interactive visual installations. I took in a London Symphony Orchestra of Elgar, Mozart and Brahms at the Barbican Centre on Thursday night and spent a day wandering around the Docklands where I got yelled at and chased away for taking pictures! The photo above is of the St. Katherine's Estate in the Docklands, a recently completed Richard Riogers building. It looks like the sky is inside it!

I spent Friday in Cambridge which felt a lot like Oxford but a little bit smaller. It is a city inundated with bicycles and has the narrowest sidewalks I have ever seen. King’s College Chapel is breathtakingly beautiful and I was extremely disappointed that my visit did not coincide with term time so I could partake in evensong. It’s so amazing to have read about and studied these places in books and then finally get to experience it first-hand.

I’m getting excited to leave London next week and see some new cities and VERY excited to see my dad in Oslo! I miss my family.

Birthday, Wimbledon, Kew Gardens

Today is my 25^th birthday and as luck would have it, I’ve come down with something nasty and have mostly been in bed for the last few days. I suppose it was inevitable with all of the germs I must touch in public places but it’s made for kind of a miserable birthday. At my request, my mom sent me a box of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese so that was my birthday lunch – it’s the little things I appreciate now!

Last week I made two very exciting trips. The first was to Wimbledon! Now you have to understand that this was the tournament that got me hooked on tennis way back in 1993 and every year, I am glued to the ESPN coverage of this and the other three grand slams… although Wimbledon will always be my favorite. The All England Lawn & Tennis Club (the venue’s official name) is only a short voyage on the District line from where I live in the West End. They have a great tour with a very knowledgeable tour guide that took me to Court No. 1., Henman Hill (a large grassy area outside Court No. 1 where thousands who can’t get tickets to the biggest matches can watch the action on a mammoth LCD screen), Centre Court, the dressing rooms, the gymnasium for the players, and even got to sit in the chairs the players sit in for their post-match interviews with the Press. I can’t believe I got to sit in Centre Court. It was a very exciting day and I learned things like they cut the grass to exactly 8mm for the tournament and only use Centre Court and Court No. 1 for the two weeks of the tournament in June and July. They’re also getting ready to add seats to Centre Court and put on a new retractable roof to be ready for the tournament in 2009. The roof will be translucent so the grass won’t die when the roof is closed. The new museum opens on April 12^th so I’m going to have to go back for that. I am already excited to watch the tournament this year!! (Album: Wimbledon)

I’ve given up waiting for clear, sunny days to see things outdoors so on Sunday I went to the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, also just a short journey from the West End on the District Line. I didn’t know what to expect but what a place this is! It’s gorgeous even on a cloudy, drizzly day in late March so I can only imagine how beautiful it will be on a sunny day in mid-April. Kew Gardens is 300 acres of paths, gardens, and greenhouses and takes about 3 hours to walk around. My favorite part were the glass houses (The Temperate House is the world’s largest surviving Victorian glass house) which house all kinds of different plants and trees. The Crocus Carpet, which is near its peak right now, creates a sea of purple and white flowers just inside the entrance. And of course, the daffodils are brilliant and continue to grow with each passing rain shower. The Davies Alpine House had just opened a week before I visited – it’s a small, strangely shaped enclosure with a glass roof designed to protect the plants inside from the British weather. Inside there are little teletubbie-like pipes that blow air of the proper temperature over the plants. It’s really a neat place and I must return to see the new growth before I leave London. (Album: Kew Gardens)

The sun appeared on Tuesday for the first time since last Wednesday and I was out the door as soon as I could, camera in hand. I walked from Knightsbridge to Westminster, through Green Park, past Buckingham Palace, and through St. James’s Park. In grand English fashion, twenty minutes later it was pouring and then ten minutes after that the sun was out again. This resulted in some interesting skies and clouds and even a rainbow witnessed while seeking shelter from a downpour by standing under the canopy of a hot dog stand in St. James’s Park. It was one of the first days it really felt like spring here and I am ready for it. It’s getting warm enough that I only need a short sleeved shirt and a light jacket instead of two shirts, a sweater, a wool coat, scarf, hat, mittens, and two pairs of socks. (I don’t even wear that many clothes in the middle of winter at home – I’m not quite sure why it has felt so cold here!) It is a welcome change. Also, daylight savings time has come and now it does not get dark until around 7:30pm. (Album: A Spring Walk)

To those who are paying attention, I have just spent hours uploading pictures from the last month or so. You will find the new albums in My Photo Album – click the link on the sidebar at the right. Look for these new albums:

A Spring Walk, British Museum/V&A/Natural History, Kew Gardens, London Zoo, Oxford, Wimbledon, Winchester

More soon!