Spring break part three - Roma!

Guess I should blog about the last 4 cities I've been in, huh?

After a very early morning on literally 45 minutes of sleep, I packed up my things in Barcelona and headed to the airport with Christina, Emily and Lane for a weekend in Rome to finish off Spring Break.
When we landed, Lane's dad greeted us at the airport and drove C, E and I to our bed and breakfast. Thanks Lane's dad! After checking in and dropping off our things, the three of us had a pizza lunch then headed off to see the Spanish steps and Trevi fountain. So beautiful! My 2^nd favorite thing about Rome was the Trevi fountain. I felt like I could sit there for an hour and enjoy every second of it. We did some shopping, had our first gelato of the weekend. We walked around, stumbling on the high end shopping street… Prada, Gucci, LV etc. We had a pasta dinner at another small place near our B&B then had an early night.

The next morning there was talk of plans of getting up and going to a mass… we chose sleep instead and were all very happy with that decision. Later on we headed into Vatican City for the tour that Emily and I had. It was absolutely incredible. It started with museums with some great sculptures, a huge bath made of purple marble (the most expensive kind in the world!), lots of Raphael paintings. Then we were in the Sistine Chapel. Wow. Just spectacular. Snagged some illegal photos of the ceiling and all the walls. It was marvelous. Then we walked outside and made our way to St. Peter’s Basilica. It’s HUGE! There are marks along the floor showing how big other churches around the world are. The vastness is just amazing. There’s a Michelangelo sculpture too, of Mary holding Jesus. The tour ended and Emily and I went down into the tombs where the bodies of past Popes are kept. Very eerie. After walking through, and stopping at the gift shop, we each mailed a postcard home and met up with Christina who was soaking up the gorgeous sunlight in the square. We took some wonderfully touristy pictures in front of the Basilica and then had an excellent meal of pizza right nearby. When we’d finished we walked to the Pantheon… which was honestly anti climactic. We couldn’t go inside so we snapped some pictures and headed off to do some shopping because I still needed to replace my jacket. After a few hours of shopping we had a late night dinner at a wonderful, cute restaurant. We ate pasta outside, and Christina had a whole fish! She got to debone it! Ha! We split a tiramisu before going back to our beds and crashing for the night.

The third day we met up with Lane and headed first thing to the Coliseum. We had gelato for breakfast (lemon and frutti- yum!) and then opted to pay for a skip-the-line guided tour. Wasn’t anything special, but we didn’t wait in the 2 hour line. The Coliseum was… incredible. Breathtaking. I absolutely loved it- number 1 favorite thing of Rome by far.  I wanted to sit for hours just taking it all in. We had a tour of the Platno Ruins right next to the Coliseum as part of our skip-the-line tour which was really interesting and the tour guide was very knowledgeable. After that we wanted to find lunch, and we wound up at a little restaurant near the Coliseum. Wine, bread, pizza, espresso, and giant gelatos (mint and chocolate!) later we were all very happy and very full. (Thank you Lane’s Dad for buying us lunch!) After that we turned the corner to go to St. Peter in Chains where you can be the closest in the world to a Michelangelo. We wandered around for a bit, stopping in a second church where some musicians were rehearsing for a concert that night. We did some more shopping, then after the sun went down we went back to the Spanish steps and the Trevi fountain to see it all lit up. So beautiful. We threw our last coins in and had our third gelato for the day (chocolate chip, called something else though) and waited for Lane’s dad to meet us there. We took a few more pictures, then went back to our B&B for a few hours of sleep. Lane and her dad picked us up bright and early to take us all to the airport back to Well.



Total gelato count for the weekend: six.

Spring Break part two - Barcelona!

Oh Barthelona! Definitely my favorite city thus far.

After a wonderful afternoon of strolling and haircuttery, we piled into some taxis to take us to the airport for Madrid. I had a ticket mishap... and paid for it dearly... not a fun event. But the plane ride was quick and we landed in Barcelona about an hour later.

After getting turned around in trying to find our hostel, we finally made it and got settled in (with the help of some of the friendliest, kindest hostel staff EVER), and promptly went out to "Nasty Mondays" at club Apolo. Twas a good time.

The next day, despite being out until approximately 3am, Christina and I awoke at 9am and found a nice little cafe to have breakfast. We waited for our friends to wake up, then around noon all 6 of us headed out to explore. We walked down the Arc de Triumph walkway (name??) in the beautiful sunlight and gorgeous day, then made our way down the the beach and soaked up the sand and salt for an hour before making our way back up to some little shops. We also saw a movie being filmed in a small alley, that was really cool. Found some gifts in an adorable shop. Then we headed back to the hostel to commence dinner making! Pasta with chicken and broccoli and wine, with strawberries dipped in melted chocoalte for dessert! Inexpensive and a really fun and different dinner. Some people had found a small jazz bar that they wanted to go to that night, mainly to contrast the intense club we were at the night before. We headed downstairs to the cozy bar the hostel had and enjoyed 2 cocktails for 7 euro before grabbing some taxis to the bar. Two castle kids (Pat being one of them!) got to play onstage with members of the band, which was awesome and so cool! Didn't go to bed until about 5am. I love Barcelona time tables :)

Wednesday was our last day in Barcelona. Christina and I woke up early for another glorious day, and we met Patrick and Z in town. Pat, Z and I got brunch, then headed to La Sagrada Familia. Wow. It was absolutely breathtakingly beautiful, both inside and out. It's incredible to think of how it was designed, every detail carefully thought out with precision. I will be back there someday when it's finished. Wow.
Then we took the metro to Gaudi's Parc Guell which was also absolutely beautiful! We walked around the entire park, going up into the mountains... the view of the entire city of Barcelona is something I'll never forget. After 3 or 4 hours there, we went back to our hostel and made dinner again :) Rice, chicken and cashews... with wine. There was talk of going out again, I woud up going to a few bars before winding up at Club Apolo again. Crashed back at the hostel for 45 minutes (woken up by some annoying Irish students) before waking up for real at 6am to catch our flight to Rome.

Barcelona was wonderful and I want to go back!

Spring Break part one- Madrid!

Since Spring break was 10 days long, I'm going to do three separate posts about each of the three cities I visited.

So, we started in Madrid with an academic excursion with our professors and OSA members (the people that take care of us at the Castle). We awoke bright and early last Friday morning to head to Amsterdam International for our flight. Once we landed, we stored out things in our hotels and had an early walking tour with different professors. Mine was with Dulcia, the head of the program and an Art History professor. She's really knowlegeable and clearly studied in order to provide us with information about the city. We walked around the old parts of the city, studied different buildings and learned a bit about the history of Spain/Madrid.

After, we were released for lunch, and a bunch of us wound up at a cafe that had wondeful Paella... it's my new favorite dish. (I can't wait to go to Valencia and eat some more this weekend!). Lunch was quite rushed however, because, as it turned out, they didn't plan this trip very well. It was the Castle's first time to Madrid, so the staff was learning how thigns worked as we did, but it did prove for some scheduling mishaps: Our second activity on Sunday was cancelled because the director didn't look up the times of the museum, and the second activity on Monday was also cancelled because they booked too early a flight back to the Netherlands. Little things like that made the trip disorganized, but it wound up giving us more free time to explore the city which was GREAT since our other days were so jam packed they were almost hard to enjoy. So Friday night consisted of a Flamenco bar, which just had cool Flamenco music playing while we enjoyed drinks and each others company.

Saturday we were split into gruops and went to different museums according to class. I went to the Museum of the Americas for Contemporary World History. Mainly Mayan and Aztec artifacts. Then after lunch we all took a bus an hour outside of the city to look at the palace of King Philip II, which also had a huge library, a monestary and museum inside. It was huge! The views of the nearby towns were gorgeous as well, and on the drive there we saw Franco's huge cross marking his monument of Fascist soldiers. It was really cool to accidentally see something we'd learned about in class. Saturday nigth was a CRAZY 7-story club called Kapital. Insane. By this point my feet and shins were killing me because we'd been walking from 9am-at least 2am every day and it was not fun.

Sunday was a [tired, hungover] morning at the Prado museum. Unfortunatley our guide was really quiet and didn't know where she was taking us so it wasn't engaging at all. After a relaxing afternoon of shopping and eating, we had Flamenco lessons! I was SO excited for them, since I'd learned a little bit when I was younger. We actually learned the sequence called Sevillanas that I'd learned when I was 14. I had an absolutely blast, but I know it was really ahrd for others to learn. Such a fun night for me! After that, I wound up going out to dinner with Patrick, Tim and all the OSA members, plus a professor, Rob, and a member of the kitchen staff who was along on the trip, Stephan. Had a wonderful time, and got a free dinner and 2 rounds of drinks. A wonderful last evening spent in Madrid.

Monday morning we were split into groups to tour around the gigantic Parc de Madrid, and I had Dulcia as my guide once again. She wanted to show us the only statue of Satan (that she knew existed) and she said, "There's a statue of Satan. Let's go pray to it"... that woman! We saw some beautiful landscaping, went into a musem that had modern Dutch artist (from Eindhoven!) Rene Daniels works (which I absolutely LOVED), and just wandered around the beautiful park. We were set free to go have lunch, and everyone wound up at the huge market to buy Paella and fruit (yum!). Christina, Pat and I foud a salon nearby and got a haircut! Ha! Definitely needed and a nice addition to Madrid. Then we had some gelato and it was time to leave for the Airport to catch our flight to Barthelona....

Pre-Spring Break

Guess I should update this before I head off to 3 cities in 2 beautiful countries for 10 days. #solucky

So the plan for spring break is:
Friday 3/2 - Monday 3/5 Excursion to MADRID with some professors and Castle Faculty for some learning and fun. And Flamenco lessons! (I am SO excited)
Monday 3/5 - Thursday 3/8 BARCELONA! Basically partying and clubbing and drinking. I'll be safe I promise! And seeing the gorgeous sights, obviously.
Thursday 3/8 - Sunday 3/11 ROME. I am going to Rome. I cannot process this currently. Seeing the Vatican. And other things. Staying in a cute Bed and Breakfast. And oh yeah I'm going to be in Rome. Super excited for Italian food and gelato :)

Exciting plans in the works! This past week was really chill and relaxing. I stayed back at the Castle, which was nice seeing as midterms are this week and I have one in 16 minutes....
Friday  a bunch of us went to the Pancake House.. these pancakes were awesome. They were thin, a little thicker than crepes and had different combinations of bacon, ham, cheese, apples, bananas and other things on them. Delicious! Then at night the World Drama class saw a production of Rain Man in Utrecht, a town about 2 hours away. It was in Dutch, and the production was really interesting. It was cool to see a story that we knew (we'd read the script and watched the film) cut down and put onstage in another language. I found myself watching how the actors watched and listened to each other, since I wasn't focusing on what was actually being said. I thoroughly enjoyed the production, though other students had different reactions. We even got to talk with the actors who played Charlie, Susan and Raymond (for a bit). That was pretty cool.

Ok, midterm in 10. Send smart World History vibes!

Carnaval!

Whew. Carnaval weekend was crazy. And mine was wayyy less crazier than some others I've heard about!

Saturday I ventured to the Amusement park with 4 other Castle-dwellers. It was ... interesting. IT was geared mainly to a younger audience, we found out once we'd finally gotten there after 2.5 hours and 20ish euro. There were 3 roller coasters suitable for anyone over the age of 14, so we did those and then wondered what we'd occupy ourselves with until the cab got us 3 hours later. We found a ropes course that wound up actually being challenging, and, for me, very terrifying. I had the chance to back out during the first exercise and I didn't, so I'm proud of that. But it was still terrifying. So we were up probably 50ish feet in the air, hooked up to this cable with different courses suspended between telephone poles in a big circle... in the cold, wind and rain. Christina and I were exhausted after that and walking around a lot, so we decided to stay in Saturday night instead of going out.

Sunday was the big Well parade! The theme of the Castle was Around Europe in 90 Days, so Christina went as Croatia, and I went as Scotland... or, the Scotland flag anyway.

The morning started off sunny and reasonably warm, but as we walked to the destination where all the people and floats were gathered, it started HAILING on us! It came in literally under 3 seconds, and they were huge! I'm talking Dippin' Dot sized hail. That was not a fun experience. I'm pretty sure we were all squealing/yelling/whining.

It was crazy. And that was at the very beginning of our 90 minute wait for the parade to start. So we were freezing... and many of us ditched the parade as it passed the Castle. No shame. I couldn't feel my hands. But the costumes and floats of the Well-ers were so colorful and creative. They go all out for Carnaval. Check out the kids' float below!

Sunday night was aonther night of partying at de Buun, the cultural center of Well. Christina and I dressed up as Peacocks and headed over to the craziest party ever. Carnaval can best be described as a mix of Halloween, Mardi Gras, St. Patrick's Day and 4th of July: crazy costumes, so much drinking, dancing, fireworks and parades. Here's us in our Peacock costumes!

Monday night concludes the main Carnaval festivities, with a Light parade at night, consisting of Sunday's floats all decked out in crazy neon lights! Didn't get any pictures, but it was general festivities and colorful lights and floats on a freezing night. This week is finally starting to get warmer though... yay!

Friday Night Update

Hello all!

Nice to give an update not on my traditional Monday-post-traveling. This weekend I'm staying back at the Castle to celebrate a HUGE festival here in the Netherlands - Carnaval! It's basically Mardi Gras, except everyone gets dressed up in ridiculous costumes with three main elements: a colorful costume, face paint, and a musical intrument of somekind. It's a week-long celebration, with the main activities taking place on Saturday, Sunday and Monday night before beginning the long fast for Lent. The Castle students and staff are participating in the Parade this year! The theme that was chosen is "around Europe in 90 days" since that's basically what we do while we're at the Castle. So each student picked a country to represent in the parade. I'm being Scotland, sort of in homage to my most recent trip to Europe previous to this one. For the parties Saturday and Sunday night though, we're expected to go all out. So, Christina and I ventured into  the (sort of) nearby town of Venlo today. We came across a decked out version if iParty and started the costume search. I'd gone through a few ideas of what to be... a caterpillar, a stop light, grapes. No real luck. Then I found this awesome mask with peacock feathers... done. Peacock. It was decided. After finding only expensive costumes, Christina decided to join me. So we got the masks, green, teal and purple huge plume feathers to stick in our black skirts over our black sequened shirts, colorful rights and heels. Bam! Peacock. I'm fairly proud of this. And I totally have a Halloween costume for next year :)

I also finally bought new boots to replace my sad broken ones!

And Christina and I pushed our beds together and watched Juno while snacking on pretzels, celery and gummies. Good night.

Off to an amusement park tomorrow during the day, then the first Carnaval party tomorrow night!

London: Quick, Cheap and Easy

Except London was none of those things... but that's alright because it was still magical and absolutely wonderful! Christina, Emily, Pat and I spent 4 whole days in London this weekend. And it was long, expensive and difficult.

Thursday morning at 4:30 a taxi picked us up from the Kasteel, and we had a 6:45am flight that landed us in London by 7:00am. After breakfast of crepes, we wandered and made our way to Harrods for some shopping and gawking. Bought someone's present there! We learned that the Tube system is fairly easy to navigate, and that our hostel was cold and the staff wasn't that smart. We also met up with 2 of Pat and my friends from high school- Kara and Sandie. It was really great seeing them for dinner and drinks at a Irish restaurant/pub/club smack in the middle of Chinatown.

Friday we did the London Eye, Big Ben, Westminster Abby and shopped at the Forever21 of the UK: Primack. Then.... I SAW SINGIN' IN THE RAIN ON THE WEST END!!! That was one of the best productions I've ever seen... And I just saw my idol/crush perform as J. Pierrepont Finch on Broadway so that's saying something! But I was absolutely blown away- I loved every second of it. Squealing and crying through the whole show.

Saturday morning we walked around Kensington Garden, and saw the Crossing of the Guard. Then we headed to the London Tower and London Bridge. Saw the Crown Jewels! Then we went to St. Paul's Cathedral, where Occupy London has apparently set up camp next to. Dinner was an absolute DISASTER Saturday night. Curtain for the 2nd West End show we're seeing is at 8. We find an Italian place near the theater at 6:15. They tell us 5 minute wait. Then 10 minute wait. It's all okay, they bring us up to the waiting room and offer us wine. 20 minutes goes by, they seat us, then saw just kidding and bring us abck upstairs to the waiting room. At around 7:00 we ask if we can order our food anway, so it'll be ready when we're sat. Sure. So we order. We get sat about 10 minutes later. Come 7:25ish I've called the waitress (who did nothing) over and told her that we were leaving in 20 minutes for a show and if we don't have our food in the next 5 that we're leaving. She brings us bread and olives, then our food shows up exactly 5 minutes later. So we all scarf down what would have been delicious food in 15 minutes before scrambling to the theater. The wine and bread was free, but we paid full price for our food AND a 12.5% gratuity. I was not happy.
The show was great though! "The 39 Steps". Parody and physical comedy to the extreme! Woo!

Sunday we awoke SUPER early to get everything done on our lists that we wanted to. First stop was Shakespeare's Globe Theatre where we got a private tour and got to go up to both levels of seats. So cool. Then onto the National Gallery, where we saw the Impressionists and them promptly left for some yummy food and last minute postcard shopping. Then to the British Museum which wasn't that cool, except that we saw the Rosetta Stone.

And what would a trip to London be without a visit to Platform 9 3/4! We all got pictures there before running to grab our bus to the airport. Security at the airport was a disaster but at least the people were really nice about it.

Whew! What a weekend. As fun and exciting as travelling is, I'm looking forward to the next 2 weekends staying back. Carnivale is this weekend!