A Day in Milan, Italy

As far as I knew, there wasn't an incredible amount to see in Milan in terms of being a tourist so we decided to make it a relatively chill day. Landing in the airport after an early flight from the Leonardo Da Vinci airport in Rome, we took a coach to the Milan city centre and left our luggage in the train station storage. First thing's first: we went off to look for a cup of delicious Italian coffee in the still-sleeping city. To go with our anticipated coffee, Tatiana and I bought some chocolate croissants at a baker's market just outside the train station. The weather was a bit chilly (I was wearing both my pleather jacket and my coat) and the sky sprinkled a tad during the day. The grey sky wasn't doing developing Milan a favor, but when we finally got in the city centre, things turned up. I found the buildings with narrow windows and wooden shutters charming on their colorful facades.


It felt quite European going from coffee shop to coffee shop with espressos, cappuccinos, lattes, melanges and the occasional Americano. Okay, so maybe we had about three cups each, but we hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, okay? Also, coffees in Europe are a bit different than our talls and ventis in the States (although Starbucks is everywhere now and they keep their American sizes). Espressos and cappuccinos are small and dainty, but strong.

I'm a huge fan of markets: outdoor markets, covered markets, farmer's markets, antique markets and especially flea markets. After a lounge in a cafe, we stumbled across a sign pointing to a market, so we made a beeline for it. Being Italy, naturally there were plenty of leather goods and plenty of designer goods (whether they were real or not, I wasn't sure, but I fell in love with a pair of Valentinos that I simply couldn't afford or fit into my suitcase).


The market was a great combo of clothing and food so we bought some great abate pears and really yummy grilled chicken skewers for lunch. :) Time for another cup of coffee! Besides, if we get coffee we can sit in the outdoor cafe and eat lunch while people watching. :)

So what is there to see in Milan in terms of tourism? Well, the Duomo for one!


It's a beautiful cathedral as you can see. :) And a great place for people watching as the shopping centre is really close to it. I do love looking at peoples' outfits!




That shopping centre is packed to the brim with Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Dior, etc...

There is also the Santa Maria delle Grazie that holds the Last Supper however! But on the downside, one needs reservations practically months in advance to see it. But regardless, we were in Milan on a Monday and the Santa Maria was closed. Sad day! And we walked all the way over! At least it was a nice walk. And we got to grab some Pocket Coffee candies (coffee candy filled with a liquid centre). Here's a photo of the church:


The courtyard of the church was actually open and it was recommended, so we went for a look-see:


Afterwards, we kept on exploring the city, looking for a place to grab a bite before catching our next flight to Berlin. When the time came, we grabbed our luggage and bussed back to the Milan airport only to be greeted by a canceled flight to Berlin. This caused quite some drama amongst all the passengers and we ended up spending the night in a hotel lobby due to easyJet's poor service (they were supposed to pick us up from the fully booked hotel and transport us to another for free). Luckily for us, we were able to catch a flight 24 hours after our original one and off to Berlin we went! At last!

There's No Place Like Rome

Sorry there's been such a delay, or a blog-blockage... I've been doing a bit more traveling and moving out, but we'll get to that later! Here's the scoop on Rome!


Ah, yes, Rome, Italy... one of those go-to places in Europe. Truly a capital of the world in history. Everyone goes there. The Colosseum... the Trevi Fountain... To be honest, when we got to the city, I wasn't incredibly psyched for it. What? Everyone's been there! There are cheesy movies about it! As one of my professors would say, it's a "glorified Disneyland!" Commercialised! Sold out!
Well, the first thing we did when we jumped off the Terravision bus was get gelato! Wonderful Italian ice cream for such hot weather (to be honest, it wasn't really all that hot, but after living in Northern England for a while, "warm" feels hot.) Rome earned a few points here for having ice cream parlours everywhere.

We trekked through a shady bit of Rome to get to our budget accommodation; we had been relocated to another hostel because the one we had originally booked was under construction. Unfortunately, where we ended up was very crowded and only consisted of two toilets and two showers. I do believe there were at least 20 people staying in that hostel on the ground floor alone! Gutted! Apart from that, the guy working at the hostel was incredibly nice and did everything he could to make up for the crowded situation. The hostel even offered free dinner every night! But let's venture outside of the confines of jank-hostel-land and take in the super-touristy sights!

Hitting the Sights!
Our first stop after assessing the bathroom situation in the hostel was THE Colosseum!

I have to admit, seeing it in person was pretty dramatic. Imagining the gladiator battles and hustle and bustle of people in Roman garb... epic. More points for Rome... (FYI: at this point, I was still convinced Rome was over-hyped, over-crowded and over-littered... SO MUCH TRASH!)
Literally, right next to the Colosseum is the Arc of Constantine and the Arc de Tito. Here's where Rome looks like Disneyland: there's one attraction after another, side by side, in plain view... but now, I'm not complaining! It actually is amazing that these enormous ancient structures stood the test of time and still remain intact! And it's mind-blowing to think that with the technology they had back then that they could just pop these things up like daisies!

More points for Rome...

Lunchtime! So from the Colosseum, we went trekking to find a place to get some nourishment. It was migraine-inducing, pushing through crowds of both tourists and locals alike on the narrow sidewalks, bordering fat rushing streets with speeding cars. Many of the large streets didn't have crossing lights! Cross like a boss! Yes, crossing the street was frightening, having faith in the incredibly intense drivers to pull out their set-aside sense of humanity to stop before they flattened you like a panini. I continued to be pissed off with noisy, touristy Rome. And then we came to La Fontana, a pizzeria just off a main street.
After a pretty amazing lunch of real Italian pizza (it differs from what we know as pizza in America in that traditional pizza is a lot thinner and one pizza is served as an entree for one person).
Following a pretty awesome lunch, we went out to see more! We hit the Trevi Foutain, the Spanish Steps, the shopping districts and one of the fanciest McDonalds in the world.



Rome is not the place for a kick-back-relaxin' vacay... it's very go-go-go, very busy.
Later that night, after a free dinner from our hostel, we went in search of a place on our to-do list. This isn't your typical touristy to-do that Frommer's publishes. Our evening stroll took us to Latte Piu, a milkshake bar designed after the one in Stanley Kurbrick's A Clockwork Orange. Illuminated with black lights and decked out in modern, edgy decor, Latte Piu was filled with locals; the menus were completely in Italian and we had to do some Italian to Spanish to English matching/guessing to order. Like the drinks in A Clockwork Orange, some of the shakes on the menu were mixed with absinthe! Crazy! I stuck with a nice, boring, delicious blueberry-yogurt milkshake... and it came with an awesome chocolate breakfast bar! :)



As if this was enough dessert, we ambled back down the street towards an enormous crowd of Italians standing outside a pastry shop. Ah, but this was no ordinary pastry shop; this was Pompi, a posh gelateria and pastry shop and cafe! The cannolis, gelato, tira misu and cakes weren't the only amazing things. It was awesome being surrounded by locals; the energy of the language was invigorating. Of course we were all stared at, being the only non-Italians... I could hear murmurs of "Americana..." but everyone seemed curious and amiable. Speaking of locals...

Let's take a break from sight-seeing and talk about another topic: Italian guys. The first thing I found peculiar was the eyebrows of Italian men. They are waxed! Most of the young men walked past here had nicer eyebrows than us girls did! I have an example for you here with the guy on the right:

Amazing right?! The guy on the left is an exception to the rule... believe it or not, most of the local men, even the older men, had their eyebrows "man-scaped." In addition, they are very into status, dressing in labels and wearing bling. Flashy!

The second full day of our Roman excursion started in Vatican City. We took a bus to this place that is considered it's own country, apart from Italy, to get to St. Peter's Basilica. On the way there, we bumped into an elderly couple that were from... drumroll... the South Bay! Complete strangers, they were globetrotters themselves and had made their home in Palos Verdes before doing a bit of traveling. It was lovely chatting about Point San Vincente, whale-watching, etc... after being away from home for so long.

Approach the Basilica was epic. There were bustling crowds, but it was a lot quieter, probably due to the religious significance of the 400-year-old landmark.


The inside of the Basilica was just as beautiful as the outside, embellished in gold and marble. We also caught a glimpse of the Pieta. :)





Following our perusing of St. Peter's, took off to the Vatican museum with the famous Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo. Traveler's tip: entrance is free on the last Sunday of each month. Going through thousands of paintings, sculptures, pots, relics, sarcophagi and woven tapestries, we wandered through the huge place. Comically enough, each room had a sign reading "Sistine Chapel This Way," except the Sistine Chapel is the last thing along the route. Realizing that we were going to be late meeting up with our group, we headed through the maze of art, only stopping briefly to look at particularly shiny objects or just really cool pieces. The Sistine Chapel is actually a Chapel like the name suggests and Michelangelo's iconic bit is quite far from the ground on the ceiling, making it look a bit tiny. There were dozens of people crammed into the dark space; many people were trying to sneak photos and the docents patrolled the crowds yelling "no photo. NO photo. NO PHOTOOOOO!". It's a shame that some idiots even used their camera flash.
Anyways, here's an image, courtesy of Google Images:


The actual Chapel does look like this, but without the lights. Yes, it's completely dark save for the light emitting from those windows at the tops of the walls. As an artist, I believe in preservation of works of art like the Chapel, but at the same time, the lack of lighting makes it difficult to enjoy at all. Oh, right, we have to preserve it for future generations to pretend to enjoy. But until we come up for a solution, we'll just have to twiddle our thumbs in the dark and pretend to see the famous fresco'd E.T. moment.

Out of the museum and into the sunlight! Walking back along the sloped road towards the Basilica, we crossed paths with a very busy gelato shop. An unusually busy one. "Old Bridge Gelateria" had a line of at least 20 people out the door (I'm not including the people in the shop either). I stopped the group and begged to check it out. No one queues for gelato like that unless it's amazing. When we decided to join up in the line, we noticed that it was mostly locals (in fact, the photo of the manscaped local is in front of that shop). Anyways, this gelato was 2.50€ for the three hugest scoops of gelato we've ever seen... with whipped cream if you pleased. The guys working there were also incredibly happy and friendly. They crack jolly smiles if you say yes after contemplating the extra fat in the whipped cream. By the way, this place had some of the BEST gelato I've ever had in my life. I do recommend the rum flavour as much as I dislike the taste of alcohol. Strawberry is also super refreshing. Alright, I need to save the rest for my food blog...

After our pick me up at Old Bridge Gelateria, we buzzed around to see the Castel S. Angelo and the Pantheon. We also paused to enjoy a sunset in front of Vatican City as well as the view of the fantastic bridges.




We buzzed back to the hostel for a complimentary dinner and then went back out again to get some night shots of the city.




Palm Sunday Participation!
So you're probably wondering at what point during my trip in Rome did I change my mind about the city; well, it started at Palm Sunday Mass and our Pope-sighting.


We decided to head out a bit early, catching a bus, on Palm Sunday instead of camping out to get a spot, but when we arrived, we found that camping out or arriving at dawn wasn't needed. We scored decent seats on the right hand side of the Basilica courtyard and parked our tushes, watching the buzzing energy; from all sides of the Basilica, people holding olive branches were funneling into the enormous area. Sitting under the sun for a while was daunting and we started feeling the zing of the burn. A bit later, the ceremony started and the Pope road around in his Pope-mobile. The liturgies in the middle of the mass were a different rhythm from the typical Anglican sermon I'd been getting in Leeds, so I hate to admit that we all dozed off a bit. My pal said people probably thought we were praying. :P Communion commenced and we went to the side aisle to receive our wafers and wine. The end of mass was triggered by the Pope's speech. During the speech, he spoke in what seemed to be a dozen languages. English. German. French. Spanish. Etc. An amazing feeling of unity was in the air. Plus the Pope has a delightful smile.


All in all, Palm Sunday Mass at St. Peter's was a great experience. :)


A Slice of Wonderful
We took a little trip to the Trattoria region in Rome, just a bit to the south of Vatican City. After Palm Sunday service, lunch and gelato, we went for a mooch to walk off the double serving of gelato. After about an hours walk, we stumbled upon a cheerfully coloured and quiet neighborhood. In the late afternoon the narrow streets and sunset-hued houses with clothing lines connecting charming balconies were particularly romantic. This is what I imagined Italy to be like!

Some restaurants in this area even sold pizzas for 2€! Amazing! I definitely recommend a trip to Trattoria to get away from really hectic Rome. It's a walk (or a metro trip), but worth it. Here are some photos!:




The lovely S. Maria Trastevere.

Yes, because of a combination of Old Bridge, the Vatican, Palm Sunday Mass, the Trevi Fountain and Trattoria, now I love Rome. :)

Barcelona, Espana!

Blogging Location: The flat, listening to Christmas music, because that's what I do... in June. And all 11 other months.

So after arriving in Barcelona in the evening, we headed off for our hostel, which turned out to be quite charming. We stayed in Rambla's Home, a hostel past La Rambla, one the liveliest streets, if not THE liveliest street, in central Barcelona. Our hostel actually looked like a home and the staff were very nice. It looked EXTRA comforting because for some reason it took us an hour to navigate our hostel, despite the fact that it was close to where we were dropped off. :-/ Nonetheless, it was a great hostel. Probably one of the best I've stayed in all year. I recommend it.

First of all, let me tell you: I LOVE the Spanish accent. The simplest way I can explain it is that their 'j' sounds isn't like the Mexican 'h' but more gutteral... YouTube it. They also speak with a lisp. So it's not "barr-sa-loh-nah," it's "bar-theh-loh-nah." :) Muy adorable! Did I mention that a huge part of my Easter trip was to learn some lingo? As a good ol' Californian (or as some say, "Mexifornian") I know a wee bit of Spanish so I tried to practice as much as I knew how. Of course, my vocab mostly consists of gracias, por favor, hola, donde esta...?, hace frio, and as an avid shopper, who could forget?: cuanto cuesta (rough translation of "how much does this cost?").

On our first whole day, we set out to explore the city; what made such a huge difference was that we were traveling with our friend that had been to Barcelona 3 times prior to this trip, so she knew her way around and even got to finding some hidden jewels of Barcelona, including restaurants, bars, and sales! The weather was mostly overcast, but we had an occasional spot of sun and a drizzle of rain. It was warm enough for me to walk around in a t-shirt and flip flops, and you won't believe how exciting this was for me, having lived in and survived an unusually snowy English winter. Our first day, we visited one of Barcelona's most famous landmarks, La Sagrada Familia. This Roman-Catholic church has been under construction forever and still is. So many styles have been mashed onto it's structure that it's impossible to label its architecture. It's a Frankenstein of works that's quite a magnificent site.


For lunch, we visited a little restaurant behind La Rambla called Romesco and tried our hand at some local food, which included rabbit, salmon, trout, and sheep's brain. Yes, you heard right. (I'll cover more of this on my food blog over the summer.) Afterwards, we went for a stroll to find L'Ovella Negra, a bar that was said to have amazing sangria. And BOY was that true. As one that doesn't like the taste of alcohol at all, I have to say this was easily the best sangria I've had and the fruit was delicious! :) Naturally, I turned just as red as the sangria...
While we were still set on food, we decided to crash the local market, which was gorgeous! One of the most beautiful markets I've ever seen; the fruits, vegetables, sweets, breads and fish and poultry was laid out so tantalizingly. However, this was not what we came to the market for... we came for the freshly squeezed fruit juices. In the late afternoon, these juices went on sale for less than half price. A cup would normally run for 1-2€ each, but in the early evening the prices could drop by half easily. These aren't your normal fruit juices either... Some of the flavours consisted of coconut-blackberry, mango-passion-fruit, strawberry-papaya, guava-coconut, kiwi-banana, etc... I'm a sucker for tropical fruits! Some of us got as many as 8 cups that day. :P



For a night out in Barcelona, we went to see was a bar called Chipito, where they served all sorts of crazy shots. All of their recipes are secrets; the bottles behind the bar have their labels covered by number placards. For example, one was called the "Harry Potter" and they poured the shot, put a slice of orange on top, chucked a LOAD of sugar on top, sprayed the entire thing with something edible, yet flammable and lit the whole shot on fire. The bartender then took a shaker and ignited little sparks all around the shot, blew the flame out, had the customer eat the orange and then drink the shot. Another, called the "Boyscout" was similar, but instead of adding an orange slice, they gave a skewer with a marshmallow that could be roasted over the flaming shot glass. I wasn't allowed to take pictures here, but it was quite a fun place.

The next day we all met up at Mc Donalds. I know, all Mc Donalds' are the same around the world... but no! They aren't... My favourite difference between some of those in Europe and those in America are the "gelat cafes," which is coffee with soft serve in it! Amazing. Anyways, while a couple of us were ordering these, one of our friends' entire bag got nicked! She didn't get pickpocketed, her bag was lifted without notice. Throughout my travels, I've noticed that whenever "Barcelona" or "La Rambla" is mentioned in hostels or amongst fellow travelers, there is always a groan, maybe a chuckle and a shake of a head. The mere mention of either names always triggers memories of gypsy* theft. Despite the setback, we headed for the American Embassy where she was able to get a replacement passport within a couple hours.

After all that, we headed for Park Guell, a park full of architecture designed by Gaudi. Even his house is there. Anyways, it looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. Honest. It was pretty wicked.




I apologise for the significant lack of photos here... lo siento! I did not format my memory card before I started snapping and ran out of space just after Barcelona... oddly enough a 4 gig memory card was only 12€. I don't know how much it should be, but where I'm from, that is DEAD CHEAP. Onwards!
It was our last night in Barcelona so we decided to go all out on some snack-age. We went to a restaurant and ordered some churros con chocolate and the Spanish version of creme brulee. We headed back to our hostel just in time for free paella y sangria night! Yes, every Thursday, Rambla's Home does cooks paella and makes sangria for her guests. Awesome. We had a hankering for more of L'ovella Negra's sangria, so back we went and toasted to a good trip in Barcelona!


At about 4AM, we woke up to get to the bus station; flying budget airlines boasts one addition disadvantage to the obvious ones... they always fly out of airports that aren't really in the city's main airport. We were to fly out from Girona instead of Barcelona. Getting to the bus station, we made our coach by God's grace. Due to unfamiliar metro lines and poor planning, we arrived late to the bus station and missed our 5:45am bus. The next bus was at 7am and we were going to be late for our flight. Now, I don't know where this bus driver came from, but around 6:11am, he came up to us and asked us if we were headed for the airport. Si! Oddly enough, there was no bus scheduled for 6:20am, but because of this miracle, we made our Ryanair flight to Rome! PTL!

A Really Cool Layover...

Blogging Location: Good ol' flat... next to my watercolour set and while waiting for an episode of Modern Family to fully load (hilarious show, by the way... my new fave.)


It's a GORGEOUS day in Leeds, sitting at about the low 70's in temp; it's actually warmer here than in some parts of CA. Who'dve thunk? Oh, and the sun sets at 9:30pm. WILD.
Anyways, I'm sorry for not blogging as much as I thought I would this week; I've been just relaxing before the exam-week to come. Here goes...

So from where we left off in Amsterdam, my friends and I had to get to the airport for a morning flight; this involved leaving the hostel at 5am to get to the train station and eventually the airport. Kind of a pain in the butt since we had no clue of our way around Amsterdam! The city centre is enormous and we'd only been there for a day and a half. In addition, it was there that I learned that if I want to know my way around a place, I've gotta be the one doing the navigating. (Yes, I learn the hard way.) After quite a stressful time, we got to the train station and the airport and took off for a day in Geneva, Switzerland.


So when we booked the trip, my friend Tatiana and I realized that we could either a) spend the night in the Liverpool airport or b) spend a day in Geneva; both options were the same price! Neither of us had been to Geneva, so why not? When we arrived in Geneva, we got off the plane and just on the tarmac we could see gorgeous mountains capped with snow! A massive Swiss flag nearby helped the ambiance as well. In the city centre, a short train ride away, we walked around with the help of city maps planted every few corners.
As we walked out of the train station, I saw a small blond guy with a beard waiting for a cable car that looked oddly familiar. "Hey Jesse," I said incredibly casually as if I'd seen him every day of my life. He turned around rather surprised. Ha! So it WAS my Social Communications TA! He's been a TA at Leeds, and while not British, but Canadian, he's put up with my professor (who constantly takes jabs at North Americans-- both Americans and "fake Americans"/Canadians) for quite some time. Anyways, it turns out he was just touring Switzerland for Easter Break. Cool. For those of you that know me pretty well, it's not unusual for me to run into a teacher/TA/professor in another country.
The highlight of the city for me was Lake Geneva, a lake in the centre that had a massive fountain called Jet d'Eau. Not only was that amazing (spouting at about 450 feet in the air, but the water was beautifully turquoise and clean! If you got close enough and the wind changed direction suddenly, you could end up in the splash zone and look as if you just got off the Log Ride at Six Flags.




It wouldn't really be fair to give you a summation of Geneva based off of what I saw, but it seemed a nice little city. There was a University and a lot of the public transport consisted of cable car and buses. Intercity transport is all trains. The city is a mix of modern buildings and some older-looking buildings. It didn't have a lot of sites, but was a nice place to be.
So apart from feeding the swans, getting ice cream, and just going for a mooch (walk), seeing a clock made out of flowers, we also went to check out St. Pierre's Cathedral and indulged in some Swiss hot chocolate! :)




Next, we took a lovely ride on a train to a trainyard by accident in our attempt to get back to the airport, but luckily we had enough time to get shunted back to the station, catch another train and make our connecting flight. Praise the Lord! And now off to Barcelona!

Fun fact: Switzerland has 4 spoken languages: Swiss-German, German, Italian and French. In Geneva, we got to practice a little French. Lots of 'merci beaucoup's and 'sil vous plait's.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Blogging location: Ruminating on memories in the good ol' flat... and ignoring my coursework... a little. Also sporting spectacles... There's a story to this for Lisbon. But that's later.


The canals in this city are gorgeous. The Dutch houses are also really quaint and the staircases are rather treacherous because of how small and tall they are (imagine only being able to fit half your foot on each step). The Dutch are supposedly some of the tallest people in the world, so houses have high ceilings, making the staircases even longer, steeper and more scary to climb.
Unfortunately, Amsterdam does have it's reputation (I will get to this soon). The city centre seems to lack even the tacky traditional culture. Everywhere I looked, the restaurants and stores all were themed with some other culture (for Australia, I guess they couldn't think of anything or couldn't sell vegemite to the local community, so they just have ice cream shops called "Australia"). I rarely saw anything Dutch! It was so different from the other places I'd been before. We had to rummage through the city to find local markets that sold cheese to get our Dutch on. Anyways, enough of globalisation...


Cheese
Cheese, glorious cheese.
My favourite souvenir from this entire trip has actually been from Amsterdam and it is the spade-shaped tool you see in the photo above... a cheese slicer! It says "Holland" on it, so that justified me buying it. That and we needed it for lunch because we went downtown on one of those cheese booths at a street market and we had nothing to eat it with. We bought two types of cheese, one spiced with cumin and another with various herbs such as parsley and oregano (hey, we're in Amsterdam, so that might not have been all the "herbs" put into the cheese... but I didn't feel funny afterwards, which is a good sign).
How was the cheese, you ask? Delicious! Europe in general has amazing cheese, and I'm a huge fan, so I figured I'd try cheese everywhere I could. The cumin cheese was half way in between a cheddar and brie texture, so more difficult to slice, but just as delicious as the herb-cheese.


The Redlight District
It was what I thought it would be. The street was just like the others with street lamps, but the rest of the night was illuminated by fluorescent glows of a seeping red, neon green, tacky purple and electric blue. We popped over on a Sunday night, which was relatively empty, but we did see the prostitutes sitting in the windows (I had seen an art exhibit earlier this year in London where a couple remade the Redlight District out of mannequins). Most of them were texting on their Blackberries. A few were gyrating and doing their thing, but for the most part, Sunday night wasn't a busy one for anybody. What hit me was actually looking into the eyes of these women: they're real people. I know this is obvious, but remove yourself from the computer monitor and go there yourself to get a grasp of the reality. Are eyes not the window to the soul?
These women selling themselves are just like me and just like you. They have families-- they didn't just pop out of the ground. They have friends-- they weren't made in a factory. They're people-- they go grocery shopping and pay bills just like everybody else. If you saw one of these girls in a convenience store, having no idea of her job, and she asked you for the time, you would tell her it was a quarter-to and not think anything else. These women have histories before and after you've spotted them in their windows, regardless of how quickly you look away. What separates us from them is how they see themselves and their bodies.
I actually had the opportunity-- whether this is a good or bad one is your decision-- to see a man stop at a window to watch the lady in the window beckon him forward, contemplate for a while, and then march straight into one of those buildings. My stomach twisted itself and jerked a bit. Something about the way he strode through that door seemed very inhuman. If you had seen him walk into a library that way, it would have made you wonder what sort of books he had in mind. A lot about this wasn't right and I didn't just feel that way because of my conscious. The aura was all wrong. Somewhere along the line something went wrong in the way we humans have decided the acceptable level of respect with which to treat each other and ourselves.

On another note, more sites!
We went and saw the Van Gogh Museum the morning after our evening peruse around the town and it was fantastic even though there wasn't a student discount... Highly recommend it.
"... to paint 'what I am not yet able to, in order to learn how to do it'" - Van Gogh


We also ventured to the Anne Frank House (not her actual house, but the house that she and her family hid in during the Holocaust). While the house has been preserved extremely well, Otto Frank, Anne's father requested that the rooms be left empty of any original furniture. Some of the photos that Anne pasted to her bedroom walls are still there and the height markings that her mother made of her and her sister are there as well. Unfortunately, photos could not be taken inside the museum.


Well, anyways, that's about all I have time for at the moment. I'm leaving for Poland early tomorrow, so I have to catch some shut eye. I will probably add more to this entry, but I just wanted to post something for you to read. ;)
Thanks for the continued prayers!
Toodles!
RxW

Stranded

Blogging Location: A hostel in Lisbon, Portugal, using the free computers and internet. God bless them.

Stuck!
If you read the papers or watch the news, you'll know that there's been a massive air disruption in Europe caused by the Icelandic volcano Effyjavybooboo: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/04/18/iceland.volcano.europe.flights/index.html?hpt=T1
So my flight to Liverpool was canceled today and I rescheduled for a week from today, but there's a problem: class starts tomorrow. SO my friend and I are launching our own escapade to get back to Leeds within about a week (at least that's our goal). We'll be taking mostly buses as they are far less pricey than trains and staying in hostels along the way. The plan at the moment is to get to Paris and take the chunnel back to jolly old England and finally the train to Leeds. The first step is a bus to Seville... from then on, there's nothing planned. This is probably the least planned I've ever had my life, so as exciting as this sounds, it's pretty scary for someone as semi-type-A as me. Nonetheless, I have faith in Jesus to get us back safely and on His watch with plenty of stories to tell.
If I could ask for you guys to pray for safety and a speedy return for us, that would be amazing!

You never know what temporal days may bring
Laugh, love, live free and sing
When life is in discord
Praise ye the Lord*

Yours Truly.

*"Paperthin Hymn," Anberlin

A Quick Hello!

Hey everyone! Gruezi! Guten tag! Hola! Hallo! Bonjour! Bonjourno!
Just wanted to say hello from Lisbon, Portugal. I'm on the last leg of my Easter break travel before I go back to Leeds. It's raining like El Niño here, but it's still nice to be in a place where I don't need my coat. I do need an umbrella though. :P I should go buy one soon.

Anyways, it's been crazy living out of a suitcase for 4 weeks. I feel like George Clooney in Up in the Air (a fantastic film, by the way-- so is Shutter Island, but that's another story). I've been flying 1-3 times a week and have been documenting my meals closely for my food blog (see sidebar for link). For a preview, I've seen the Roman Coliseum, been to a Viennese Opera, stayed in jail for a few nights (don't worry, it's not what you think), strolled past the Red Light District in Amsterdam, slept in an airport, ate street food (not roadkill-- distinct difference), biked lakeside along Luzern, etc... Lots of prayers have been answered as well, big and small. There's much more for me to tell you, but that will have to wait till after! I may abandon some coursework in Leeds to blog completely, but I can't abandon my essays completely, so no promises on my conciseness. Hope every one of you have had amazing spring breaks and what not! Lisboa waits for no one!

See you on the other side,
rXw

P.S. Stoked to eat some pastels. ;)