I am just starting this blog as I sit on my balcony enjoying the 85 degree weather.. finally!! I can hardly believe it is the end of April. Time is just flying by, and I realize I have a lot to update you all on!
I just got back last night from a long weekend in London. I met Christina there, and we spent 4 days seeing as much of the city as possible. Luckily, everything ended up going just fine with both of our flights. All week, I was thinking that our flights would end up being canceled, so when I finally saw Christina on Thursday night it was a good feeling! London is so big... we were lucky to be able to spend 4 nights there, but I think I would need another 5 or 6 days there to feel like I had seen the things I wanted to. I really loved London - the atmosphere everywhere we went in the city was just great! It was nice to be in an English speaking country with some American comforts. I was really excited to find a number of foods... including VEGETARIAN STARBURSTS! Who knew that the ones they make in England don't have gelatin!?? I hadn't had Starbursts in probably 10 years, so I happily bought a pack-a-day for myself and brought some extras home with me. Maybe when I get back to the states they will be vegetarian there too? :D I also got a huge bag of dried basil, which I haven't been able to find anywhere here in Madrid. As far as eating food there, we had a lot of good stuff... including Indian! There were Indian restaurants all over the place, and although I'm not one to eat a lot of spicy foods, it was nice to get a bit of spice in my life. Word on the street was that a Chipotle was due to open April 2010, so naturally we had to go find it! We were SO excited... but it hasn't opened yet :( Just seeing the Chipotle sign hung up made me so excited to eat it first thing when I get to Chicago in just 2 months :D We did find a restaurant that is a Chipotle-wanna-be, and it was pretty good! It was great to get a burrito!
Me on Millenium Bridge with St. Paul's Cathedral in the background
As for the touristy things in London, there is sooo much to do. I was amazed at how big the city was! We did two walking tours, which were both great. The weather was fabulous, about 65 and sunny, not the infamous London rain at all! We figured out that students can get awesome deals at shows, so we went to two! Friday night, we saw Avenue Q, a musical about a recent college graduate trying to figure out his life and living in NYC. The end of the story was him still not knowing what he was going to do... but at least he had made friends! I guess we'll just have to wait and see how my story compares to his a year from now. On Saturday night, we saw Wicked (a different version of the Wizard of Oz)! I've been wanting to see it for awhile, and it was just awesome to see in London! Both nights were a lot of fun. We went down to the walk along the Thames one night and saw Big Ben at night over the water - absolutely beautiful. Being there made me realize how much I really miss having a big lake or river nearby. Madrid has a river, but it is not that great, haha. As for museums, London has a ton! With everything else that we had to fit in, we were only able to make it to 4 museums - the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, Tate Modern Art Museum and the British Museum. The National Gallery was probably my favorite museum I've ever been in. They had really strong collections of art basically from 1300-1900, with a lot of paintings that I've studied. We were only able to spend about 4 hours there unfortunately; I could probably spend 2 days just in that museum. The British Museum is the home to all of the relics that the British have so kindly helped themselves to throughout the years.. including the Rosetta Stone and a dismantled Parthenon. Definitely another museum that we didn't have enough time to go through. The nice thing about London is that these museums are all free, and some even have free guided tours!
Christina and me inside a guard's little house-thing
The bad thing about London is that every other touristy thing costs a lot - about 15 pounds (20 or 25 dollars). We decided that we didn't have enough time to spend in any of these - such as Buckingham Palace and The Tower of London - but hopefully I'll be back in London someday, because I would really like to be able to go to those. We also went to a couple of cool outdoor markets, where we got the best vegan ice-cream I've ever had (made with cashews for its base). As the weather was beautiful, we spent a bit of Saturday afternoon at Hyde Park. It is basically like Central Park, but it was really fun people watching. I don't think I will ever get enough of little kids with British accents. Christina and I tried to practice our British accents a bit, but I don't think I improved much, haha. We also went to Harrods, the craziest and biggest department store with everything you can imagine. It is such a destination that they even have a dress-code! My favorite department was "Pet Kingdom" where they had dogs painted all over the walls and they even had pets for sale... all of which seemed to be the most cared for (and expensive) dogs I have ever seen in a store. There was even a section of fossils and huge gems for sale. The fossils were so cool to look at; most of them were from Wyoming! The most expensive one I saw was this beautiful flower fossil that was at a going price of 30,000 POUNDS. The man working there kindly showed us where the more affordable fossils were, where I could have bought a small fish one for 500 pounds. Haha! Finally, no trip to London would be complete without a visit to Kings Cross station to see Platform 9 and 3/4! Christina and I tried to find Gryffindor scarves, but apparently nobody in London has Harry Potter pride because nobody sold them, not even the huge tourist shops! Either way, we had fun finding the platform. All in all, London was just great and it was so much fun to hang out with Christina for a few days!
Big Ben and the Thames
I'm exhausted from the weekend, but no time to rest! I got back around midnight last night, and had a full day of class today. It is my roommate's birthday, so we're celebrating that tonight! Tomorrow, my cartography class has a field trip to a map-making facility for the day, so that will be fun! Thursday and Friday are going to be filled with paper-writing and hopefully seeing my señora. This Saturday, I'm going hiking in a big park in the mountains about half hour outside Madrid with some friends. Then Sunday I'll have to find time to get more homework done and then I'm going to a Real Madrid game! I'm really excited to see the stadium and just be at a game. Although I haven't been following them all that much, I love watching soccer and it will be a lot of fun with all of the fans. Next Wednesday, I'm going to Mallorca with my roommate Vanessa. Then I have one more week to write 3 papers (egghh..) but then I turn them in and will have some visitors - Ruth and Will! It is just crazy how much I'm going to fit into these next couple months... I feel like I have just about every day planned out. It is going to be hard to get work done since the weather just keeps getting better and better, but it'll work out!
I have some telling to do for other travels this past month. Last weekend (the 18th), I went to Extremadura with my program. It is a region southwest of Madrid that borders Portugal. It was wonderful! It was full of Roman ruins and old castles. It was really non-touristy, which was a nice change. I still can't figure out why it isn't touristy, as some of the ruins I even found more interesting than some in Rome. On Saturday, we spent the day in Mérida, which has a really well preserved theater and amphitheater (for gladiator action). They also have the 2nd longest Roman bridge, so that was really neat! Late afternoon we headed to Cáceres, which is another cool city with a really nice atmosphere. We did a night tour, because the city is really neat lit up at night. On Sunday, we went in a museum there and then headed to Trujillo, a small beautiful city on the way home. Trujillo had really great views of rolling hills with mountains in the background. I really liked the weekend - it was nice to be somewhere where we were the only tourists.
A bridge designed by Santiago Calatrava, who also designed the Milwaukee Art Museum
Ahh alas, I am going to post this and then update more to put up some more pictures from extramadura and FINALLY talk about Florence!
Love, Bonnie
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