London

My roommate Eunice and I spent the better part of last spring planning our European adventures. And though she'd already visited me in Paris, I hadn't gotten a chance to see what she had done with her year abroad. So a few weeks ago I finally booked my ticket across the Channel to spend a long weekend with Eunice.

Some of you may have heard of this amazing innovation called the Eurostar. Supposedly it's this rapid train that can get you from Paris to London in two hours. But me, I don't trust new-fangled contraptions like that. So instead, I booked a ticket on an overnight bus that involves 8-hours and one 3:00 A.M. ferry ride. Because that was clearly the most efficient option.

The other great thing about bus travel is that it gets you into London at 5:20 A.M! Trust me, Eunice was really excited too. She was even more excited when she found out that I wasn't leaving until late Sunday night, approximately 15 hours before she had to turn in an 8-page paper on humanitarian intervention. But she pulled through, and took me to basically every important spot in London. Here, in no order, are the highlights:

5) Westminster Abbey

Europeans love dead people. I have visited cemeteries in almost every country I have traveled to. Still, Westminster might have the highest concentration of famous corpses that I have ever seen. In the space of an hour we paid our respects to Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth I, Bloody Mary, Dickens, Chaucer, Handel, Olivier, Churchill, Darwin, Browning, Hardy, Newton, Tennyson and more. Plus, all of them were safely tucked away beneath pretty headstones, unlike those at the last cemetery Eunice and I visited together...

Of course, the Abbey's main function is as a house of worship, not a burial place. And the building itself is pretty magnificent. Henry VII's Lady Chapel is one of the most beautiful rooms I have ever stepped into.

And to top it all off, Jeremy Irons (aka Scar) narrated our complimentary audioguides. Eunice had to restrain me from performing "Be Prepared" on the main altar. All in all, a successful visit.

4) Greenwich Meridian

A quick tube ride from the city center is the famed Greenwich Meridian, aka longitude line 0. If you stand with one foot on either side of the meridian you are standing in both the eastern and western hemispheres. That's right, you can stand in two places at once! (Yes, I did make a reference to A Walk to Remember. Eunice was very disappointed until I assured her that I have not watched that movie since its release, and that I believe Nicholas Sparks deserves his own special place in literary hell for comparing himself to Ernest Freaking Hemingway. Seriously.)

Anyway, the meridian itself was pretty cool. We took the obligatory meridian pictures. You can't tell, but I'm standing with one foot on Paris latitude and the other on Chicago latitude.



As an added bonus, the Royal Observatory is surrounded by Greenwich Park, which was just starting to show signs of spring.



3) The museums

So Eunice has been whining all year about how London is so expensive. And then I get there to find that all the good museums are free. And I felt compelled to point out that the Louvre costs 9.50 euros (well, technically I get in for free. But still.)

So Eunice and I went to the National Portrait Gallery, the British Museum, the V&A, the Tate Modern and about 97 others completely free of charge. And they're great museums. My two favorites were the British Museum and the V&A. The British Museum, because I am a huge nerd who listens to podcasts where they talk about ancient spearheads and stuff, and the V&A because they have collections of pretty much everything (theater, music, gold and silver, jewelry, sculpture, fashion, stained glass, architecture, snuffboxes...).

So at the British Museum we learned that this rock is really old (and also that British people like to steal things from other countries):


And at the V&A, we learned that Mick Jagger was really skinny.

2) British Library

This one wasn't even a scheduled stop. We were headed to King's Cross Station when we passed by the British Library and saw several intriguing ads, including the words "The Beatles" and "free."

Turns out, the British Library has a freakishly impressive collection that includes two Gutenberg Bibles, several copies of the Magna Carta, the only surviving manuscript of Beowulf and the original score to Handel's Messiah, Beethoven's tuning fork and Jane Austen's writing desk (!). But the biggest attraction for most people is probably an exhibit of original lyrics from The Beatles. As in, the first time that Lennon and McCartney (or Harrison or Starr, to be fair) put their lyrics on paper. We saw "Michelle" written on the back of an envelope and "Eight Days A Week" scribbled onto John Lennon's son's birthday card. The words have reached such mythic proportions in the subsequent decades that it's good to be reminded of how they started: with a few scribblings on scraps of paper.

1) Food

If there's one thing Eunice and I learned about each other during our marathon Italy trip, it was that we both love food. A lot. So it makes sense that our first stop would be at Borough Market, one of the most epic collections of food in the world. You could cobble together a three-course meal just from the free samples you get walking around. Of course that wasn't enough for me, so I ordered up the ambiguously named "game sandwich," which turned out to be a sausage made of wild boar and venison mixed with apricots and red wine. Or, as the friendly vendor reminded me, "Mmmm...Bambi's delicious!" And he really was.

Sunday we went less traditional with a visit to Brick Lane in the East End. It's a long street packed with clothing and food markets. It's more international than Borough Market, think Moroccan, Vietnamese, Ethiopian and (especially) Indian food. You can't go to London without sampling the curry, and it did not disappoint.

Between market trips we also indulged in typical pub food (mushroom and steak pie, anyone?), tea and scones and some wild card meals (eel). Who ever said British food was terrible?

Buon Anno!

By the time we arrived in Venice, we had been traveling for 12 days. And while it's not really a punishment to travel around Italy for 2 1/2 weeks, we were both pretty exhausted. Thankfully, Venice is not a city that demands a lot of exertion. We had nearly a week for sight-seeing, which was more than enough to hit up the main sights (really, way more than enough). So we spent a few days doing nothing but sitting in cafes and restaurants, talking to one another and to new friends. More than the sights, Venice was about the people.

5) The islands


As geographically-inclined readers will know, Venice is actually a city made up of 118 small islands. Individually, these islands are not known for anything besides giving people something to walk on. The more famous islands--Murano, Burano and Torcello--are actually about 40 minutes away by water taxi. Eunice and I took an afternoon to see the first two, which ended up being a nice break from the city.

Murano is world-famous for its glassmakers. The island is small, but it's packed with glass showrooms and workshops. We visited on a Sunday, so things were pretty quiet, but we did manage to tour the Museo del Vetro (Glass Museum) which showcased some truly amazing glasswork done by Murano craftsmen over the years. If I had carried a bigger purse, you would all be getting Murano glass chandeliers as souvenirs.

Next we headed over to Burano, known for being the most adorable island in the world. Well, it's actually known for the lace manufactured there, but that was of secondary importance to us. Which was a good thing, because upon arrival we discovered that the lace museum was closed for renovations meaning that we had literally nothing to do on the island. So we wandered around, admiring the brightly-painted houses (each one is a different color) before taking refuge from the cold in a cafe.

It was a pretty laid-back day, which was exactly what we needed, considering that it was our last full day and we were both falling asleep on the water taxi ride over.

4) Peggy Guggenheim Collection

By the time we hit Venice we were pretty art-museumed out. But our guidebook peer pressured us into one final visit, by informing us that we would be terrible tourists and inadequate human beings if we did not visit the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

The museum is named for Peggy Guggenheim (yes, those Guggenheims), who spent her last 30 years living in Venice. She amassed a substantial modern art collection that is now displayed in her former home and garden. I've mentioned before that I have a love-hate relationship with modern art, but I had a love-love relationship with this museum. It has a perfect location on the Grand Canal, and is full of beautiful paintings from the likes of Picasso, Pollack and Magritte. And (a big plus for me) it's very manageable. The main building still feels like a home, complete with tables and sofas for visitors to relax in. Across the garden is another building, where we toured two special exhibitions: one on Maurice Prendergast and one on Italian futurist artists. It was a great way to spend an afternoon, and a nice change from the Renaissance works we'd gotten accustomed to.

3) Vitruvian Man

In the months I've spent in Europe, I feel as though I've seen more famous works of art than I can count. Mona Lisa? Check. School of Athens? Seen it. The Thinker? Yep. Birth of Venus? Got it. But there's one iconic piece of art whose location I had never bothered to research: Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man. It's one of the most famous images in the world and in case you were wondering, it's in Venice.

But you should probably wait a few years before rushing off to Italy. Since the drawing is ink on paper, it's too delicate for permanent display. The week we were in Venice it happened to be on display for the first time in seven years. We never would have figured this out on our own, as the sketch wasn't mentioned in our guidebooks and there was very little promotion. But while eating lunch one day, we happened to hear it mentioned by two American women sitting at the next table. They told us that it was the last week of the exposition, and that not many people knew that it was even going on. So we immediately headed over to the Galleria dell'Accademmia, bought our tickets and--five minutes later--were standing in front of the Vitruvian Man.

I didn't expect the sketch to be as fascinating as it was. It was only slightly bigger than a sheet of notebook paper, but it is one of the best art experiences I've had in Europe. One of my favorite things about artwork is the historical aspect, the idea that at some point in time Leonardo da Vinci was sitting in front of the same canvas. It's the thought that saves the Mona Lisa from being completely overrated, and it was especially apparent in this sketch. You could see da Vinci's handwriting, every line he drew and every crease in the paper. Incredibly, there were only two other people in the room when we first got there, so we managed to get a great look free of flash photography and jostling crowds.

2) New Year's



I'm not exactly a party animal. On a Friday night, you're more likely to find me in bed with a book than downing shots at a club. And my New Year's celebrations were always pretty consistent with this, especially considering that they were spent at my grandparent's house. At midnight we would go out in the street, my great-aunt would bang some pot lids together and we were all asleep by 12:02. So this was the first New Year's Eve where my plans did not consist of watching replays of the ball dropping in Times Square.

In Venice, the main celebrations were going on in St. Mark's Square. Now I don't know if you know this, but Venice has a lot of water. And sometimes, especially when it's been raining, the water does not like to stay in the canals. I fortunately had brought my pair of waterproof boots. Others were less fortunate and had to shell out 9 euros for glorified plastic sacks. Let's take a one of those poor noobs.



Anyway on New Year's Eve, a mere twelve hours before celebrations were due to start, the square looked like this:

Luckily, the water drained quickly and the entire place was dry by 1:00 in the afternoon. We thought we had dodged a bullet, stupidly forgetting that the tide comes in twice a day (this is why we are journalism majors). So when we returned at 11:30 PM, we realized that nothing short of Noah's Ark would get us in front of the stage without getting completely soaked. Eunice and I were accidentally separated at this point, and she decided to stay dry as I ventured out into the deluge. My reward for doing this was a spot close to the stage, and a good view of the emcee...



a seeming friendly but somewhat sadistic man who spoke in a mix of Italian and English and would say things like, "I will never forget this night with all of you beautiful people. We are all here together...except you are in the water. Haha!" Or, "The water is all around. It is so beautiful!...but so very cold. Haha!"

The theme of the night was "Love 2010," so there was a lot of random making-out and cheesy romantic songs. But the real fun started after the countdown. I was with three other girls from our hostel, one American and two hyper-friendly Australians who could (and did) strike up conversations with anything that moved. So we ended up wandering Venice, meeting a parade of characters, from an adorable, newly-engaged British couple to a fellow Aussie teenager to a group of locals out for the night. For hours after midnight, music was blaring in the square while people splashed and danced and rode inflatable rafts through the water.

It was a completely random night, but that was what made it great. There was something exciting about wandering the city, making new friends and exchanging "Buon Anno!" with every stranger we passed. Not a bad way to kick off a new decade.

1) The people

There aren't a whole lot of advantages to staying hostels (unless you consider noisy roommates and moldy showers advantages). But they are cheap and they theoretically provide an opportunity to meet fellow impoverished travelers from around the world. Up until this trip, however, I really hadn't made many friends while staying at hostels. This is partly my fault: I'm not the most social person even on the best of days, and after a day crammed full of sight-seeing it's easier to fall into bed than go mingle with strangers.

At our Venice hostel, mingling was pretty much mandatory, as the hostel gave us free breakfast and dinner. So twice a day, between shoveling our faces with pasta, we made several new friends. Among them were two New Yorkers, one Washingtonian and the two previously mentioned Aussies. We eventually formed our own little group. Sometimes we explored new sections of the city. One day (New Year's) we spent the entire afternoon talking in a restaurant. We bonded over the strangeness of our hostel, where it was literally impossible to sleep past 9:30, without having your bed taken apart and sprayed with god-knows-what kind of chemicals. We talked about different expectations put on American and Australian students, compared impressions of European cities and learned that Australians have some not-so-nice names for red-heads...

And of course, the most important person on the trip was Eunice. It's always a little scary traveling alone with someone for the first time, as there's no buffer if you get irritated with one another. But things could not have worked out better. It was the first time we'd been on our own in seven months, and we compensated by letting loose our own brand of unfettered, neurotic craziness. We spent 18 days talking about everything. And I mean everything. Happy subjects, sad subjects, weird subjects. We had disagreements, but we also had identical reactions to certain experiences (Most of these moments tended to be a bit morbid, such as our strange glee at discovering the serial killer museum in Florence, or our discussion of Little Mermaid songs while walking to the catacombs. Perhaps it was best that we were not around other people).

I love, love, love living in Paris and have made some great friends over the past months. But there's nothing like spending time with someone who knows you as well as Eunice and I know each other. Of course the fact that we were traversing Italy helped, but I am convinced we would have had almost as much fun had we spent our vacation in a cardboard box. So thanks Eunice. All of your personalities were greatly appreciated on this trip.
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So that's it: Italy in three entries. It was a great trip from start to finish, but after 18 days away from home I can't say I was sorry to get back to Paris, where the showers are warm and the pastries are fattening.

Old and New

One great thing about studying in Paris (besides, you know, the museums and the fashion and the architecture and the bread...) is the chance to experience all of the above with friends. And this weekend was all about spending time with friends--both old and new.

Friday afternoon, I saw enough of the Eiffel Tower to last me for the rest of the year. First I saw it from land while picnicking with some friends. Then I saw it from the Seine, while riding a Bateaux Mouche with a bunch of other Sweet Briar students. Yes, the boats are disgustingly touristy, but they do give you a great view of many Parisian landmarks. And afterwards a group of Sweet Briar friends and I treated ourselves to Berthillon ice cream. This ice cream will get its own post here one day, considering that I ordered five scoops of it within two days. I want to thank Mr. Berthillon for sacrificing his soul so we can all enjoy this ice cream.

On Saturday, I met up with Mary, a high-school friend studying several hours outside Paris. We spent the afternoon wandering the city, mostly the Marais, which is a neighborhood in the 3eme and 4eme arrondissements of Paris.

Aside: Paris is the perfect city for people like me. And by this, I mean people who have the directional sense of a lemming. Everything is so beautiful and there are so many things to see and do that you're bound to end up somewhere interesting. Case in point, Mary and I turned down a side street and ended up standing in front of Paris's (alleged) oldest house, formerly owned by Nicholas Flamel. (Bonus points for any readers who know why this is cool...)

Mary does not get bonus points, as she is one of those weird people who cannot name every minor character in the Harry Potter series. Still, I have never been so happy to be lost. My happiness increased when we stumbled upon a covered market that I had read about, known as the Marche des Enfants Rouges (Market of Red Children). The market is absolutely packed with food stands and vendors, and it was the perfect spot to pick up a cheap dinner before our evening out.

Said evening out brought us face-to-face with a newer side of Paris at a concert in Pigalle, the red-light district. I expected that the France would put the U.S. to shame by classing up their sex quarter. Parisians are generally so refined and elegant that I couldn't imagine them being as dirty as us, even when it came to their baser instincts. But then I exited the Metro, and was immediately greeted by the blinking neon sign of the "Sexodrome," and my inferiority complex promptly vanished.

The concert itself was held at a venue just a few minutes away from the Moulin Rouge. It was pretty small, but absolutely packed with people. The artist's name was Ray Lamontagne, a Vermonter with a very cool, folksy sound. I think I'll definitely be breaking out some of his slower songs for stress relief during finals week. But I preferred his faster stuff, notably what I think was this song, which literally had the theater shaking.

Sunday, I met up with yet another group of friends, this time two of my former dorm-mates from Northwestern. Yes, I am enormously popular. We ventured over to the Musee de l'Orangerie, located in the middle of the Tuileries Gardens, to take advantage of the Journees des Patrimoines. Basically, for one weekend a year, museums across Europe are completely free, and normally closed buildings (i.e. Sarkozy's house and the French Senate) are opened to the public. I didn't much feel like standing in line for three hours to see Nicholas and Carla's living room, so l'Orangerie was a perfect alternative.

The museum is fairly small, which I actually liked. I love art and I love museums. So art museums are great, but I tend to get pretty worn out after a couple hours. Especially when one of my friends is carrying around a delicious-smelling baguette in her purse the whole time (thanks Julie). Anyway, the Orangerie has lots of great pieces, but the highlight is absolutely Les Nympheas, a collection of Monet's water lily paintings.

Of course, I've seen similar paintings before. The Art Institute, notably, has a phenomenal Impressionist collection. But I had never seen water lily paintings displayed like this before. You walk into two huge white rooms with nothing on the walls except the paintings themselves. And they are enormous. Completely surrounded by these tableaux, I felt like I was inside Monet's dream world. And it was not a terrible place to be.

I wrapped up the weekend with a late lunch in the Tuileries, and accordion music on the Metro ride home. All in all, a successful weekend. I wrote before about the dichotomy of Paris, the contrast between its unpleasant and beautiful faces. But the city somehow manages to unify all these facets of itself, so that in one weekend you can visit the oldest house in Paris, take in a concert in the red-light district, or spend some time with the Impressionists. And whether you visit these old and new places with old or new friends, it's all Paris. And it's all pretty wonderful.