Last week of school!

So the last week of school - we all took it pretty easy considering we had a big exam to take (harder than the first 2) and lots and lots of readings to do but we did manage to have some fun!

This is a pic of the Trafalgar Square fountains at night. They were really cool. London is really really lit up at night - it's a beautiful city once it gets dark too!










We walked past Trafalgar Square on the way to Her Majesty's Theatre. Four of us saw Phantom of the Opera there. We HAD to see a play while we were here in London. The London "West End" is a lot like New York's Broadway. It has a ton of shows - good ones. Phantom has been playing at the same theatre for 23 years!














Madelyn, Katie, Aaron and I all went to see Phantom, but the tickets we got were 2 and 2. Each pair was in the same row - opposite sides. It was a great show. Tons of fun. I was still a little sick at the time (I feel 100% better now by the way - stupid strep).




Then the last night - Friday night - after our tests, classes are done and we had to move out of our dorms the next morning - we went out to O'Neills in Muswell Hill (on the north side). I blogged about it before - it has the San Francisco like streets overlooking London. Really beautiful. So we had one last celebration together! It was a ton of fun.



The next day I went to the Camden Town market to check it out. It was really different from Portobello Market and just really different in general. Much of it happens inside - or semi-inside as you can see from the pictures. This is known as the stables. A century or so ago these were horse stables - so each store is in a long, skinny room with a semi-circle roof and the corridors are reallyl small and crowded - but it's really neat. Got a couple of trinket type stuff for some gifts and for keeping - all in all a good day!
Oh yeah - i bought a new suitcase there too - got a GREAT deal on it - if you remember from my 2nd blog or so - mine is now missing one wheel which sucks to try to move with so this one will be much much better for getting home!

Sunday Adventures 7.19 and more!

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Well.... It's been a while - so I'm gonna catch up a few blogs here. After Brighton on Sunday I headed out on my own to explore. So I went to Hyde Park, which is a HUGE park that I believe Central Park was modeled after. And Speaker's Corner is in the northeast corner of the park and happens every Sunday afternoon. Speakers corner is rumored as the beginning of the exercise of Free Speech. Basically on Sunday late morning, until about 5pm, various people come out to the corner of the park and bring with them chairs, stepladders, boxes, podiums - basically anything they can stand on and normally their voice alone (although some had megaphones) and they talk (or yell) about WHATEVER they choose. Most of the people were either very fringe political views or very fringe religious views. Anyone that comes out to a park with a chair to stand on and preach their views- probably has crazy views. (And they DID!) This lady was screaming about how Jesus loves me - but I've got some

videos and she gets a little nutty the longer you listen. She also made the mistake of attacking Islam, but not having a firm understanding of Islam first and got EATEN ALIVE by some Muslims near by.... (got that on video too! lol). Rule #1 - if you're going to attack the validity of a religious belief - you should probably have at least a basic understanding of that religious belief first.... lol
This guy represents one of the fringe political views - the Socialist Party of GB. He wasn't very interesting though. He only










There are LOTS of monuments and statues in Hyde Park as well - including this one which just got opened while I was there - it was the 7/7 monument commemorating 4 years since the largest terrorist attack in Britian. It was the single largest terrorist attack - bigger than any of the IRA bombings during the Irish / British conflicts in the 70s and 80s. On 7/7/05, Arabic suicide bombers blew themselves up in a timed sequence in 3 subway cars and 1 bus which was the British version of 9/11 I guess and was a really difficult time for the Brits.


Earlier in the day I had been in Notting Hill on Portobello Road visiting the Portobello Market. It is the largest street market in London (i'm told) however, it seemed to me that the Camden Town Street Market was bigger, but I might have missed part of Portobello I guess. The houses (and the doors) are all VERY colorful in Notting Hill. (If you remember the movie Notting Hill - Julia visited the market when staying with Hugh Grant in NH.)





Portobello Road - With the basic street sign from London.


Many, many more blogs and pictures to come!

I checked today and so far I have taken over 2000 pictures! A CRAZY amount of pics... but I've sorted and named most of them!

Friday and Saturday trips!

Well... as it turns out folks - I do NOT have swine flu... only strep throat. Which still sucks - yeah but it's manageable - i'm getting a couple of days off school and the medicine is working so I'm a lot less miserable now - which is a good thing for sure.

On Friday night I headed up to the very north of London to go to this really cool Irish pub that's in an old Catholic church - beautiful building inside and out - but totally converted. The pews are now benches for the tables, the stage is now where they have live bands, etc. AND - the street has the most AMAZING views of London - straight down these steep streets that remind me of San Francisco and then in the distance - all of London to see. It was beautiful.

I had purchased a ticket and everything for Amsterdam for the weekend - but Northwest totally screwed me over - so no ticket - no Amsterdam. Long story - but I'm pretty sure I hate them. So instead me and a friend took a train down to Brighton. Brighton is on the southern coast of England on the Atlantic Ocean. it is BEAUTIFUL! The picture right here is of the Palace Royale - One of the many King George's built it as a beach house / party palace to entertain guests. It is Indian on the outside and Chinese on the inside and HUGE.




One of the walk-out piers and the waves were crashing - it was really really windy that day so the waves were whipping up something fierce. It was pretty chilly with the wind blowing in cold off the ocean. It was a very cool town with lots of little street markets - on the weekends a lot of the smaller streets in downtown are pedestrianized so all the stores and restaurants just flow over the sidewalks and into the street. it was really cool actually.




There is some VERY expensive beach front property just north of the road. and it lines the whole beach for MILES. And beaches in England are NOT what most of us think of - that is NOT sand - it is rocks. Rocks and Shells. You can tell better from the next picture. But it doesn't stop people from laying out on the beach and running on the beach barefoot, etc.
It really was a beautiful beach.


There is also Brighton Pier right here on the
beach where there is a HUGE pier extending quite a distance into the ocean and on the pier there are all of these restaurants and pubs and games and rides and shops, etc. It reminded me a lot of the Boardwalk in Santa Cruz, CA actually. It was a lot of fun. Great way to spend a Saturday.

We had a blast, got some sun and the weather didn't haunt us too badly at all - it was a little cold but only rained on the train-ride there and on the train-ride back - never while we were actually outside!

Well.... I'm sick as a dog - may be this crazy changing weather over here - hot / cold / hot / cold.
Or... I might just have swine flu or something - who knows.

But i do know it's 9:30pm and I'm going to bed b/c I can barely breathe.

More updates on the fun weekend excursions later! - I went to Notting Hill the Northern edge of London and Brighton on the southern coast to the beach!

Latest Excursion!

Well on Tuesday of this week we had our last PLANNED excursion. IU has been shelling out money all month and these things aren't cheap. We started with a bus tour, one of the hop-on, hop-off busses where you get off where you want to explore, then get back on and continue sightseeing. We saw a lot of cool stuff and the commentary from the locals really helps you identify things you would otherwise have no idea what you're seeing.
We saw a LOT of famous people's houses including 10 Downing street - which you may or may not know is where the British Prime Minister lives. But we also saw the houses of Margaret Thatcher, Cher, Bono, Madonna, and tons of other people who have houses in posh upscale neighborhoods here in London - it was pretty cool.


My cousin Angie highly recommended the "Spanish Galleon" in Greenwich as a play to try out so after the bus tour, we had a ticket that let us take a boat toar around the River Thames and check some stuff out - and we got off in Greenwich. Me and my friends checked out the Galleon and had a pint before we continued exploring Greenwich. Greenwich is a cool place with lots of little shops, but not a ton to do there. The thing you HAVE to do in Greenwich is visit the Royal Observatory and see where the Prime Meridian is housed. That is what GMT is - Greenwich Mean Time.







And of course.... no trip to Greenwich is complete without a picture of your feet straddling the Prime Meridian. In other words - you are simultaneously in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres at the same time. Pretty cool actually.














The bus tour earlier in the day had taken us to
Buckingham Palace - this time in time to see the Changing of the Guard. I have to be honest though .... we all got kind of bored and left. "The changing of the Guard" is a 30 minute process!!! It involves 2 different parades of people coming down the street at different times and bands and lots of soldiers and police and gun tossing, and oh my god! I was over it after like 5 minutes.... lol I'm a bad tourist I guess. But we all left. we thought it was like Changing of the Guard at Arlington - cool but short and to the point. Nope! I am glad I got to see it though.


Then - the really cool - Tower of London. If you've seen any historical period movies - they just call it - "The Tower" as in "Lock them in the Tower!" It is the oldest palace/ castle in Europe originally build in 1060 by William the Conqueror - and has stood ever since (built on and grown of course) - but besides palace it was also the royal prison. And this is where they would decapitate people and then put their heads on spikes on the bridge - if you seen any mideavel London movies - i know you've seen this. It was kind of eery to walk where so many had been tried, tortured and be-headed. That's the one thing that never ceases in London - history, history, history every where you look. It never ceases to fascinate me.

Well that's all for now! Look for more soon!

News and more pictures

Well... I still LOVE London! I've been a bit of a bad blogger lately. Having a LOT of reading, quizzes, test yesterday to prepare for. It's a real class - who knew!? A little bad news. I'm having to cut my trip a little short. So I'm coming back 11 days early - money - blah! The prices over here are pretty much in line with prices at home - BUT the exchange rate is almost 1.8 so it's still like you're paying DOUBLE for everything. I went to the movies with a bunch of friends to see Bruno (very very funny by the way) and the student price was 8.50. Sounds decent - but on my bank statement - that's $15 - not so decent. But I'm still having lots of fun. Still lots more to see in England - so I'll most likely be sticking close to home - may be able to swing a short trip over to Paris or Prague (seems like the cheapest right now). But I'll let you all know when I know.

Have more postcards on the way - so if I have your address - you may be getting one! If I don't have it... well then probably not :(

More posts to come soon! I love and miss everybody!

Brussels - THE European Capital

So the weekend of the 10th, 11th and 12th, I went to Brussels with some friends from class. Brussels is completely AWESOME! It was different than what I expected, but amazing all the same. It was so relaxed and laid back. It is very European - and I mean that it is a cool mix of European cultures. I heard Italian, Dutch, French and English the most. But we also heard Greek, German and Spanish quite a bit too. There were lots of different ethnic restaurants and neighborhoods - it was just a really cool city all in all.

Smoking definitely doesn't have the stigma there that it does in other cities / countries. We saw signs for "smirting". Well - you can read it for yourself, but they basically are promoting smoking as a cultural interaction tool.







We were there during our friend Cora's 21st birthday too - so we had to go out and celebrate it.
It was a ton of fun. She did a few shots - we met some really cool Irish people there that we bonded with over a fishbowl of Mojitos.

We also met some American students from UC Berkley that we talked to a lot and they were a
lot of fun too.
And of course no trip to Brussels is complete without Absynthe - so we each tried a couple of different varieties - all in all not bad stuff.








Brussels is also the home to the headquarters of NATO and the European Union - including the European Parliament. This was the building - we got on a very touristy "hop-on, hop-off" tour of Brussels to catch all the sites and all the things you have to see like the Royal Palace, Belgian Parliament, lots of old and historically significant churches, etc. It is a very old, very very beautiful city.








One of the most beautiful parts of Brussels is the Grand Place. It is the city center basically but now most of the buildings are just converted to pubs, shops and museums of different kinds - not churches and government buildings anymore. But this is the view of one of the buildings in Grand Place lit up at night - I just can't emphasize enough how beautiful that city is.

Much of Grand Place was damaged (like a lot of European capitals) by Germany in WW2, but it has since been restored. European cities take a lot of pride in the history and heritage and no expense is spared to restore these buildings - the same is true for a lot of London as well.




Brussels also has a semi-autonomous region of Flanders where the Flemish people live (Flemish is also the language of the Flemish people). On Saturday it was National Flemish Day celebrating the Flemish people and the contributions, etc they have made to society in Belgium. So we all got Flanders flags and celebrated Flemish day with the locals!










The Atomium was a really cool thing to see - we didn't stop there because it was raining on us in the bus when we got there - but it was really cool. It was built for the World's Fair in the 60s when it was in Brussels. It is an exact replica of an iron atom blown up 230 million times life size. It is a really cool structure. Today it houses a lot of restaurants and shops around it - just a touristy area but really cool.




This was just one great view from an area that is higher than most areas in the city. It is just outside the Brussels Parliament - and it is a great landscape view of the city.








And this is the most famous Brussels resident. Mannekin Pis. I know many of you have seen the beer taps where he pees or you see these in fountains where the little boy is peeing. They are all based on the real Mannekin Pis. He was built in the 1600s to commemorate a legend about a boy who peed on the fires of the enemies who were trying to burn Brussels and he saved most of the city. Today it is just an attraction that hundreds of people try to gather around to take crazy pictures. It's really cool because he is dressed up about 200 days of the year and he has over 400 outfits they dress him up with. He is only about 10 inches tall.
You can't see Brussels without seeing Mannekin Pis - he's on every shot glass, keychain, postcard, book or anything else you can buy about Brussels.

It was all in all a GREAT time there - if you're ever in the neighborhood - stop by!