Just another week

After Louie left the beautiful city of London there hasn't been much going on other than school work(weird, I know) and hanging out.  It was a week where we had some reading and stuff to do along with some other tedious tasks such as grocery shopping.  There have been a couple positives to this week however.  I found a new way to run to the gym, which was very exciting for me! Also, I booked a trip to Paris for the weekend, which is the real reason I am writing this blog.  It is kind of weird to be able to say that it was kind of an impulse decision for a couple of us in our flat to decide to go to Paris.  I mean, that is another country, but over here it is really easy to go from on country to another and fairly cheap to stay in that other country (you just have to be willing to not have every luxury you would in the states).  So, Friday night, 3 of us take off and head on a coach down to Dover and the white cliffs of England.  We drive that coach right onto a ferry that we can walk around on and hang out and head across the Channel to France.   When we arrive in France, we proceed to drive our coach off the ferry and continue our journey to Paris.  In total, it is about a 7 hour journey and we booked it overnight.  So, me being the limber, flexible, ready to sleep anywhere kind of person I am, should get about 25 minutes of sleep for the night!  Anyways, I thought I would tell you a little bit about what I will be doing this weekend and how easy it is to travel from place to place.

Cheers

Jimmy

A weekend with Louie

Well, this weekend I spent playing touring guide again.  Louie, my cousin who is studying in Barcelona, came up to the beautiful city of London for the weekend.  He arrived here late on Friday night and was here until Monday night.
 On Friday we headed out to a local pub to grab a couple pints but it was already late so we headed home and went to bed.
 Saturday rolled around and he woke up and headed over to Westminster where I could show him Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey and the London eye.  However, it was not this easy.  When we tried to get off at the Westminster station, it was closed.  We did not know why but it we soon found out.  We found our way to the next stop and walked there.  There were an estimated 250,000 protesters in the city of London on Saturday.  They weren't all near Parliament, but there were thousands of people there.  We got distracted watching these protests and spent about an hour walking around looking at all the creative people.  After a while we made our way through the crowds and eventually through the parade of protests and walked over the River Thames to see the London eye and the south side of the river.  We made our way to Waterloo underground and headed to Piccadilly Circus and showed him that area.  From here we headed over to Leicester Square which is about a 5 minute walk and then continued our walk to Covent Gardens which is another 10 minute walk.  We walked around these areas and then heard about the Oxford Cambridge Rowing race that is held annually.  We tried to catch the end of that game, but we did not make it in time.  I thought that the race would take a long time but it apparently doesn't last long.  So, we ended up missing that, which would have been a lot of fun. Saturday night we headed over to our favorite spot to grab some pub food, Gloucester Arms.  It is about a mile from our flat but has the best food that we have found.  We had some pints before dinner and then had some great good.  We came home after a long and tiresome day.
Sunday came around and we headed to Chipotle for Louie.  It is the only Chipotle in Europe and he really wanted it so we went there and then found our way up to Camden.  Louie had never seen anything like this market and he loved the atmosphere and the huge variety of stores and markets.  We spent a long time here in Camden and then we took the tube back to Green Park where we walked through the park and saw Buckingham Palace.  We headed home after this and stopped to get some food for a home cooked meal.  Sunday night we took it easy and headed to bed.
Monday morning we woke up early for class but we were not going to class.  Instead of class, we headed to the Imperial War Museum which I had already been too, but Louie really enjoyed it.  We spent like 2 hours here before we had to go to our other class.   Louie got to relax for awhile until we came home and then we headed over to Tower Bridge where we saw Tower of London and walked up and down the banks of the river.  We were kind of close of time and we hustled back to our flat so Louie could grab his stuff and head off to where Easy Bus picks him up and brings him to the airport.  So, we brought him there and then headed back after saying bye.

It was a great time showing Flash Lash around and a fun weekend overall.

Cheers

Jimmy

March Madness and WICKED

After the Roberts left on Friday we came home and had a pretty relaxed day and night.  A bunch of people were gone and there were only a small group of us left in our flat.  We don't get to watch March Madness on TV but we can stream it off the internet so we set up 3 different computers all on different games and watched the games while enjoying a couple pints.  Saturday rolled around and we got up and went to the gym and walked home from there.  The weather this weekend and the beginning of the week has been absolutely fabulous.  The last couple of days has been sunny and 55 or 60 and I have been in shorts.  I do get looked at kind of funny because I am in shorts and they are still in scarfs and jackets.  Saturday we walked around outside and spent the day outside but didn't have a plan so we just wondered.  That night we continued to watch March Madness and hung out.  Sunday we headed to the Brompton Oratory, which is a famous Catholic Church just about a mile from here.

On Monday we went to see the musical WICKED.  It was so good! I am not the one who likes musicals but this was very good.  The two main roles were such good singers it was remarkable.  It was quite the show and was voted best musical of the decade.

The show was very long and it ended up being a great night.  We student rushed tickets, which means we go one hour before the show and our tickets were incredibly cheap.  The tickets were 62.50 and when we rushed ours we got them for 27 pounds.  We ended up being 5 rows from the stage which was unreal.  

Other than that it was kind of a low key weekend.  Watched a lot of March Madness and hung out with a small group of us.

Cheers

Jimmy

Roberts Week

Where to begin? I left off last time updating through Monday night so here is my attempt to re create this week.

On Wednesday, we had a big paper due, which put a small damper on the things we could do on our day off.  So, much of Tuesday was spent writing a paper and then meeting up for Evening Song at Westminster Abbey.  The Abbey is a little under construction for the big wedding so we had to sit in the very back.  It made it hard to understand the songs and prayers which was a little tough to pay complete attention but overall is was a cool experience.  After mass, we headed over to Piccadilly Circus to show the Roberts and Roane's around the Time Square area of London.  We had dinner over there and then came home to finish editing the paper.

Wednesday, we had class in the morning and then took the clan up to Camden, which is a northern area of London with massive amounts(city blocks long) of famous markets.  We spent a good amount of time up there, most of the time eating the delicious foods they offer there, before we had to come home for night class.  However, on the way home we decided to show them Hyde Park and Kensington Palace, but got side tracked.  As we got off the tube on the Hyde Park Corner tube stop, we noticed copious amounts of Police Officers patrolling the area. It was quite odd, and I went up to ask what was going on.  They said everything was fine, but I could tell there was something suspicious going on.  As we walked no farther than 50 yards ahead we saw big TV cameras and groups of people gathered.  We could hear loud chanting noises.  I immediately went up to ask the TV man what was going on and he just pointed at the top of the building and said it was the Libyan Embassy.  As I turned to look, I saw men on top of the roof of the building waving Libyan flags.  I talked to the camera guy and found out all sorts of stuff.  They were protesters trying to get the UK involved in Libya to help out what was going on.   They had climbed up scaffolding the night before and said if any police tried to get them down they would jump.  We sat there and watched for about an hour before we had to go to class and as we were there we noticed the number of bystanders and protesters grew exponentially. Anyways, we left and went to theater class where we saw a play on Global Warming.  It was alright, nothing special.  We met up with the Roberts and a bunch of people from our theater class at a local pub we frequent before heading home.

 Thursday we had class early in the morning and then met up with the clan and headed down to Brixton where we showed them our favorite pizza place.   The pizza is a lot of that you would see in Italy and very good.  After that, we headed to Oxford Street, which might be the down fall of me, shopping with 4 women.  The only plus was Jay was here so we wondered around the stores trying to keep ourself sane by guessing prices and thinking of stupid things we could sell that people would buy.  This went on for about 3 hours before we got to go to a pub.  Guiness time! We meet up with some people from our flat and had a great night to St. Patty's day.  Ended up being a great week.

Today, we woke up and took the clan out to the airport to say good bye after a great week.  It was hard to say good bye and send them on their way back home but it had to be done.  Tonight, there are only about 5 of us in the flat because people are off traveling, some to Ireland, others to Paris and what not.

Anyways, that is the week in a short review.  Thanks to the Roberts and Roane's, it was a blast showing you around.


Cheers

Jimmy

Windsor Castle and London Eye

As I mentioned last time in the blog, I have been playing tour guide the last couple of days.  The first was Friday when my friend from highschool came and I tried to take him to some of the big attractions around town.  We kind of did that by finding pubs close to tourist attractions and having a pint while catching up on our time since good ol STA.  It was a great night and fun to see how he has been at Westpoint.

Saturday morning we headed out to the airport to meet Libbie's family who arrived some time around noon.  We traveled out to LHR which is about 45 minutes on the tube and headed back to South Kensington to their hotel which is about 100 yards from our flat.  After we moved them in we headed out to see Covent Gardens, which seems to be the best place to show our guests.  We walked all over that area and had dinner at a pub called The Prince of Wales which was very good.  After this meal we walked over to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese which is turning into our favorite pub to bring our guests too for the sole fact of the history.  The sign on the outside of the pub says REBUILT in 1667 which gives you an idea of how old it really is.  We meet up with Charlie, my room mate, and his parents there and had a couple pints.  Fun place to hang out and talk.  After this we headed back to South Kensington and went to Zetland where some of the members of our group were.  We stopped and introduced the Roberts to all the guys from our flat. At this point in the night the  jet leg caught up and we headed home.

Sunday morning we were up bright and early for our trip to Windsor Castle which Scott, our director, planned for us.  We headed to Paddington Tube stop where we caught an actual train to head out to Windsor.  It was about 45 minutes in total because we had to transfer in a town called Slough(which was where the British TV show "The Office" was shot).  Windsor Castle is where the Queen spends most of her time and she actually calls this place home.  We heard that the Queen was having lunch when we got our tour.
Here are some of the pictures of the Castle.  The sad part is, we couldn't take any pictures inside the castle, which was very cool.

 

After our tour we headed home and ran to the hotel before heading to the London Eye which was very cool.  We set our time for 630 and it was a perfect time because it was dusk when we got on and dark by the time we got around the enormous ride.  Here are some pictures of the view up there.

You get some very cool views from up there.  

Today we had class most of the day and for the first part of the day we went to the present day Shakespear globe theater which is as accurate as can be remake of the one from 400 years ago.  It was pretty interesting to think about the plays he directed and how they performed them in comparison to what we see today.  For example, there was not multiple copies of the script lines, only one, so the actors(only boys in these days) had to be very good at improving when there lines were suppose to be said and what not.  Better example is how the words were spoken, used to describe what was going on rather then special effects we see today.  Anyways, we had a actual class after that and than I came home to take a nap.  Tonight I went to see the broadway show Dirty Dancing, which was not up my ally, but the performers and dancers were very talented an it kept me entertained.  

Tomorrow I have a paper to write! Fun fun.  Anyways, that is what is going on in my life right now and I hoped you liked some of it.

Cheers

Jimmy

Not much to say

If any of you have been looking frequently at the blog you probably have noticed that I have not been updating it recently.  To tell you the truth, I haven't really done much because of our school work.  It is a little different here where as in England our big mid term papers are due the week after spring break.  So, upon arriving back in the England I have been going to class, working out, reading and writing papers.  It hasn't been the England that I am used to, but I guess I am STUDYING abroad so it might be alright to devote a week here and a week there to homework....

Anyways, the upcoming days should be a lot of fun because Thursday night is karoke night and having just turned a big paper in, everyone is ready to go out and have a fun night in good ol London town.  Tomorrow, my friend from high school Nate Schwartzbauer will be arriving for just one night.  He goes to West Point and is in France but wants to spend a night in London.  Just after he leaves I am off to the airport to meet Libbie's family who flies in on Saturday.  I will be going out and doing some fun things now so the blog will be more entertaining.

Hope all is well.


Cheers


Jimmy

Spring Break-Rome

After a great trip to Barcelona we headed to Rome for the rest of the week.  We took off early in Barcelona and landed in the early afternoon in Rome.  It was pouring rain when we landed which made the adventure all the more fun.  We tried to find our hotel and it was not exactly an easy task.  On top of all that, there was another language barrier but this time I had never taken even a high school class on it.   We were lost and could not find our hotel and it was pouring.  We saw 4 other tourists that got off the metro with us and we passed them about 4 times walking around this random neighborhood, each time we were laughing with them cause we both knew we were completely lost.  As we were walking, frustrated and wet, we looked just mad until we made eye contact with a random lady and she could tell we needed help and she pointed us in the direction.  However, this right direction was not our hotel, it was another one.  Eventually we found our hotel.  It was still raining and at this point it started to storm. We went into the city center and grabbed a pizza which was great. We could not walk around because of the rain so we headed to our neighborhood for the night.

Wednesday we headed over to the Coliseum which was an amazing experience.  Here are some pictures from it.

After the Coliseum we headed over to the ruins of Palatine Hill.  It is another small city like but completely ruins.

Again it was rainy and this took up most of the day for us.  We walked around the area and then headed to dinner.  They eat very late in Italy, much like Spain, and after dinner we headed home for the night because we had to get up early in the morning to see the Vatican.

Thursday came and we meet up with a bunch of people from group that have been in Italy.  We went and saw Saint Peter's Basilica and the Vatican. Here are some of the pictures.

The Basilica is enormous, they say it can fit 50,000 for mass if needed.  

After the Basilica we headed over to the Vatican city walls and entered in.  It is huge and we went to the Sistine Chapel and museum of art.  There are thousands of huge religious art pieces before you enter the Sistine.  You can't take pictures and they are very strict about it.  After the Vatican we headed down and walked a lot of the town.  We headed down to the river and saw the Castel San Angelo which dates back and is very cool.  It sits right on the river.

Castle San Angelo.

We continued our walk and headed to Piazza Navano which is a really artsy part of town.  There are people doing all sorts of drawings and art work and selling them to the tourists.  It was a neat little place.  By this time it was getting later so we continued our walk over to the Trevi Fountain. 

This is the famous fountain.

We had some dinner and then headed home.  Friday was a day of walking around the city and then we had lunch.  It was a nasty day of rain but we had a night set up with one of Libbie's relatives who lives in Rome.  We got picked up and shown around the city by Walter, the husband of her relative.  He was born and raised in Italy and he showed us around before taking us to have an amazing meal.  It was sooooo good.  We headed home and had to get up really early to catch our flight back to London.  

Overall it was a great trip.  Totally different then London in every aspect of life, but it was nice to see different traditions.  

Cheers

Jimmy

Spring Break-Barcelona

I am finally back home, back home to London that is.  It has been an eventful 10 days that was simply amazing.  I am going to break my blog up into parts, one that I will do tonight and one that I will do tomorrow because if I were to try and tell you about the whole trip it would take me way to long.  So first I will write about Barcelona.  

It all started on last Thursday when we headed to Luton Airport on our way to see Barcelona.  It is always a long day of travelling from central London to any airport.  Anyways, after a long day of travelling we arrived and then took a bus into the city but we were completely lost.  So far, we have been able to ask for help, but having not taken a Spanish class in 2 years, I was a little rusty to say the least.  We were told in very broken English that we should watch our stuff because it was a sketchy part of town.  So, we were planning on meeting up with Louie but we did not and we just found our way to our hotel.  

The next day, Louie had class and we couldn't meet up with him until a little later so we decided to eat lunch on the beach.  It was about a 10 minute walk from the hotel and we arrived to this...

After lunch we decided to head into the city center of Barcelona and again, the language played a barrier because we got all sorts of lost and in the end, Louie came to our rescue.  We meet up with him and it was a beautiful day so a bunch of his friends were down on the beach playing volleyball.  He took us for a walk all through Barcelona and it was a lot of fun to chat with him.  The picture below is in Plaza de Espana and it is an old palace but turned into a huge museum.  If you look closely there is a fountain in front which we would visit later.

On our walk to the beach we walked down Las Rambas, which is a street that is very long and I compare it to Covent Gardens with lots of little restaurants and street performers.  Here are a couple of good ones.

We finally reached the beach which was beautiful.  This is where we meet up with Anna who was in from Madrid for the weekend.  

AFter the beach we headed to Louie's dorm so he could change and then decided to go out for Tapas, a common snack before you eat a really late dinner.  It was very fun to learn about the traditions of a different country.  

At night we headed to the magic fountain where a very cool performance is put on every night.  This is what I was talking about earlier. 

 There are also all sorts of water falls in front of the old palace.  It was very cool.  There was a street vendor selling a local beer of Spain called Estrella and we bought a 4 pack for the four of us and we sat and watched a intriguing fountain show.  After that we headed home only to get up and head right back into the city on Saturday.  We headed to Park Guell, which is a famous park designed by Gaudi and it was quite the adventure.  Gaudi has a very unique style of design and here are some pictures to show what the park kind of looks like.  It is not by any means what a park looks like when we say "park" in the US.  

After seeing much of Park Guell with Louie and Anna, all four of us headed off the trail to a mountain which Louie had been on before.  We climbed, and we climbed and we climbed with a lot of complaining straight up this "mountain".  We eventually reached the top and it was an incredibly view of the city.  It was a prelude to something that was later to come. 

This shows Tibidaba, a church located at the highest part of Barcelona.  More to come on this.

We made it! I am dripping sweat in shorts and a t shirt while everyone else was cold.  Nothing new.

After our mountain climb we headed over to Carlota's house, who is Louie and Anna's friend.  It was nice to meet her and we decided to head back to Louie's so I could shower before we went out.  Anna and Carlota made a typical Spanish dinner for all of us and we had dinner in her house which was great.  We had some drinks there before we went out for the night.

Sunday we went back into the city center to meet up with Louie and at this time Anna had to head for the airport to catch her flight back to Madrid.  We spent the day walking around the city and he was going to show us Tibidabo but it ended up being closed on Sunday so we all decided to head out to the beach near our hotel and have a late dinner.  We went to bed early because it was a late night before.  Monday was our last day in Barcelona and we made the most of it.  

Louie had class in the morning so we decided to head to Sagrada Familia but the line was literally  3 blocks long and we head someone saying it took over 3 hours to get through the line.  So we didn't go in and took lots of pictures.  Here our some the pictures we took from the outside.  

This is the front of the church.  It almost looks like it is melting, but that is all detail.  It is unlike anything you have ever seen before.  The front(this picture) depicts the entire Nativity scene from the Angel Gabriel and Mary to the Birth of Jesus.  

A picture of the side of the church.  If you look carefully, you can see the two different tones of the church.  It has taken over 100 years to build because it costs so much that it was to wait for more revenue then build then wait and etc... 

The back of the church which depicts the Resurrection of Christ.  A lot different mood than the front.  

This is just showing the detail of the church.  

The whole church.

I suggest reading about this church online.  It is something special.

We meet up with Louie and he took us to Tibidabo, which is the highest point in Barcelona.  On top of the mountain there is the Sacred Heart church and is about 2000 feet above sea level.  Here is a picture of the church.

You have to take a cable car up the mountain and it brings you to this point.  You then climb and make your way to Jesus' feet.  It is way up there.  Once you make it there, it is like nothing you have ever seen.

A view from Jesus' feet.

The city of Barcelona.

This was going to be the last thing we did, but Louie forced us to go back to see the inside of Sagrada Familia.  So, we did and it was totally worth it.  Here are some of the pictures of the inside.  

Its all like white marble and the stain glass is beautiful.  There is so much symbolism in the church that it is almost too much to comprehend.  Gaudi also designed this and it was by far the most intricate detail I have seen in any Cathedral I have been in.

After that we headed home and had a late dinner before packing and heading to Rome for the next couple of days.  I want to thank Louie and Anna because without them we would probably still be stuck in our hotel looking up how to ask where the airport was in Spanish.  It is simply amazing how good Louie has gotten at Spanish and he was one hell of a guide.  He is coming to London in a couple weeks and I have to start making a list of things to do so I can try and compare to the luxury he provided us.  

Anyways, feels good to be home, back in London.  Crazy how adapted I am to London that I can comfortably call it home.  

More to come later.

Cheers

Jimmy