Hey everyone! Well it has been a while since I last updated but I’ve been so busy! Two weekends ago Alex, Courtney and I went to London. It was amazing. The city is gorgeous and there is so much to do and see that we were not able to cover everything. We arrived in London Thursday night and checked into our hostel, St. Christopher’s. It smelled like the bar Kams and seemed like a backpacker’s haven. We then found that we hadn’t booked the private room, but instead an 8-person mixed dorm. It was quite a surprise to open the door and see a guy lying in a bed next to mine. Well we introduced ourselves to him and he was very nice, but we wanted to get out of the room as soon as possible. So Alex went down and bought locks for the lockers in the room and we shoved our suitcases in them and left the room. After roaming around London for several hours looking for an open restaurant, we returned to our mixed hostel room… Well our roommate was sleeping with the lights off; it was 11:00pm. Alex, Courtney, and I deliberated in the hallway for about ten minutes trying to decide if we should go in the room or not. We determined that we needed to go in our room and it was not our fault that we had to rifle around in the metal lockers for our sleeping stuff. Well when we settled into our bright red child size bunk beds we all noticed that our roommate had the worst smelling feet possible. Aunt Julie, I cannot thank you enough for the hostel sheet, I was wrapped so tightly in it sleeping in St. Christopher’s. When I finally drifted off to sleep, another roommate wandered in and hopped up onto the bunk bed next to me. My phone vibrated immediately and I saw that Alex had bbm’d me about our new roomie. We were freaked out. Luckily morning came early and we hopped out of bed and got ready in a flash.
Friday morning we set off to see the changing of the guards. We were running a little late so we ended up chasing the guards to Buckingham Palace. What we did see when we got there was so neat. I did take some pretty good pictures of the beef eaters; I have to say. We saw the beautiful golden gate near the palace and walked around the park for a while. We saw Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Parliament, and other London monuments. While in London we mastered the tube. The tube is the easiest public transportation system to use by far! We hopped on and off with our day passes to get to all of the major sites. We went to Picadilly Circus and Oxford Street only to see how inadequately dressed and unfashionable we were. Oh and to realize that London is expensive… thus I was not able to make any purchases. Friday evening we got back to our humble abode and mingled with all of the dreaded, tattooed, backpackers staying at St. Chris… or not. But anyways we got ready as quickly as possible to get out of the hostel and we ended up going on a cruise on the English Channel for the night. We met up with a bunch of our friends on the boat that were also in London for the weekend.
Saturday we tried to go shopping again, but London was still expensive. We did get to go on the London Eye though—we were able to see all of the sights from a great view! However, this was the point where we ran into some trouble with our planning. Since our flight was early Sunday morning, like 6am, we didn’t book the hostel for Saturday night. This is when we decided to stake out in the hotel lobby of where Courtney’s friend was staying for the weekend. I don’t know how we were so lucky, but they happened to be in their hotel room so we were able to take amazing showers and sit on a comfortable bed. That night Alex and I went to a club, while Courtney met up with some of her friends from high school. The club was awesome, expensive, and really fun. Alex and I cabbed it back to the hotel and had the most interesting conversation with the cab driver. He wanted our opinions on everything including if we thought China was taking over the world and if we thought Bush was nutty. After meeting Courtney back at the hotel we had to get to the airport. We ended up meeting and talking to a French woman and running to catch our flight. We arrived home safely after a long, but really fun weekend in London. It is most definitely a city that I have to go back to, but maybe next time I’ll stay in a hotel; for some reason I don’t think I’m cut out for hostels.

This past weekend we stayed in Roma, our beautiful city. Michele and some of Courtney’s friend Jacki came to visit for the weekend so our tiny apartment was packed. We luckily found out that our couch is a pull out bed. Friday we couldn’t entertain our guests because we had a class trip to Seina. Siena is a small town about 3.5 hours north of Rome that we took a bus to. We learned all about the contradas in Siena and their obsession with the palio (a horse race that they are devoted to). Unfortunately it was a dreary day and the town was very small. It was interesting to talk to our tour guide and see the city. We were excited to get back to Rome though. The rest of the weekend we did some touristy things with Michele and went out with everyone in Rome. We also had a delicious breakfast that a con man served to us and then charged us each 30 euro.

I am really looking forward to this weekend; we are headed to Venice for the Carnivale. It is like Mardi Gras in Italy. This time we are staying in a hotel and meeting Michele and her roommate there and our guy friends and other girls from our program are also going so it should be a blast. I’ll definitely let you know how that trip goes! I have to go study for my two quizzes tomorrow in sociology and Italian, so ciao!