Walking Map of Venice

Want to see where we went?  Megan made a map!!

Tomorrow we leave for Belgium at 5:45 am!

Full, Tired, and Happy

So I survived my very first European adventure!! 

I made it safely to Venice and back- full, tired, and happy.

We had such an amazing trip- spent the majority of our time walking and the rest of the days were filled with  eating and drinking espresso.

We arrived in Venice around 11 on Thursday night and immediately found a gelato place. The first of many this weekend! Delicious treats in hand we made our way to the hotel we were staying in that night- Hotel Airone. It was nice and clean and right on the Grand Canal which was perfect- what a beautiful view to wake up to in the morning!!

Day 1 

We woke up really early on Friday and walked over to San Marco Square 

- Thanks to Megan and her trusty map we walked all over Venice and always knew where we were. We didn't always where we were going...but we were never actually lost! It wasn't hard to find the major places, like San Marco's Square for example, because there were usually signs with arrows. Clearly Venice is mainly a tourist location- this became even more evident as the weekend went on. 

Allie and I outside of Doge's Palace 

Doge's Palace in San Marco Square 

We wandered around San Marco -

 It was pretty empty because, as it turns out, February is off season but it was still fun to walk around and take lots of pictures of course!  Then we just walked along the canals and spend the morning drinking espresso in coffee shops, eating gelato, and looking for places to eat lunch. We had some suggestions for places to go but we decided to see what we could find ourselves first. We ended up in little place where we got delicious pizza and of course a nice bottle of wine. 

After lunch we found the B&B we were staying in for the next two nights- Nice and clean.

 It was run by a really nice man and he had the most adorable little girl. 

After that we went to Accademia - which was incredible and then just wandered around taking pictures of the sunset until dinner!

Day 2 

The next day we got up early to go to Dodge's Palace. It was absolutely beautiful. 

We walked around the courtyard and then went inside to see all of the incredible rooms. There were incredible halls with gorgeous paintings and elaborate details. Then we got to see the Bridge of Sighs which is where all the prison rooms where. That was pretty scary and intense but also really cool. It was incredible to be in a building that was so old and had seen so much history.

After that we decided to walk over the Jewish Ghetto and eat lunch there. 

Unfortunately we forgot it was  Saturday and everything was closed. 

So we walked around and saw the synagog and the memorial plaques. 

It felt really intense and empty.

After that we found a place to have lunch and then continued to walk around

 for a few hours before going over to the Guggenheim! 

Then we went home and took a nice long nap and spent some quality time looking up restaurants to make sure our last dinner in Venice was amazing...and it really was!

Day 3 

Our last day in Venice we literally wandered the streets until we finally ended up at the bus station to take us back to the airpot.

Overall it was a great first trip- we ate so much food and had such a fantastic time! 

Next weekend we're driving to Belgium with our class- yes that's right driving. 

It is a 5 hour bud ride through the Chunnel - it will be some trip!

The City of London

Today we learned all about old Roman London and then guess what- We went there!
I'm not going to bore you with all of the facts because while I thought it was fascinating, you may not. If by chance you do want to learn something new this is the article we had to read for class...
Click Here! to learn about Roman London

But here are some cool pictures I took while on the tour...

entrance to the City of London

Temple Church

Temple Church- Inside

Nights of Templar

New Roof of Temple Church after it was bombed in WWII

St Paul's Cathedral

Where Shakespeare lived and wrote!

WWII memorial inside Temple Church

The play we saw tonight was The Woman in Black - it was really good and really scary!! I'm interested to see what our professor has to say about it on Wednesday! 

..also had my first Guinness tonight! 

Weekends go by faster in London

This weekend just flew by! I can't believe that it's Sunday night already.

Things I learned this weekend


Spillage equals lickage...

Emma and Emily at The Court!

Instead of just saying "party foul" when something spills (while out at night), in London they say "spillage equals lickage" and the person who spilled has to actually lick up what they spilled.  Needless to say that is one part of British culture we decided to ignore. How did we learn this fun little fact? We met some locals on Thursday night at our new favorite location The Court- a pub a short walk away from our flat with excellent student deals on Thursday nights! We also learned that people from Manchester think that Londoners are 'snooty'. The girl we met actually pushed her nose up with her finger and said 'snoooooty!' ...also pubs here close at 1am so when the bar closed we wandered on home. 

 There are an infinite number of vintage shops around here...

We don't have classes on fridays so after sleeping in late- which was badly needed after our Thursday night adventures- we set out to find some vintage stores in the area. Well we didn't have far to go and we stumbled upon store after store. They had a lot of fur hats and jackets- Emily also found some nice blue spandex pants!! In one of the shops there was some great fun/funky swing music playing and when we told the guy- I assume he was the owner- we liked it he gave us two CDs of the swing music! It's a fun mix of all sorts of swing music - now we listen to it in our flat and it's absolutely fantastic! 

Avocados are cheaper in London...

On Saturday morning we went to Portobello Market which is just a few tube stations away. It's a two mile long farmers market essentially full of nick-nacks, bags, paintings, fruit, bred, pastries- basically anything you could think of! They were selling avocados 4 for 1 pound! Obviously we took advantage of this and came home with a total of 9 avocados. I also got the most delicious loaf of bread for 1 pound also. We will be going back there without a doubt! It was absolutely freezing though - well 26 but considering it's been in the mid 40s since we got here 26 felt bitter cold! To try and make ourselves feel better we kept bringing up how much colder it was at home- this helped but we had to leave the market by 11 because we could no longer feel our feet or faces! It was a good thing we decided to leave when we did because as we were leaving it seemed like hundreds of people were pouring out of the tube station. 

Burgers are cheap and bad in London...

Saturday night we went back to The Court for dinner - 3.50 for a burger, chips (french fries!) and a pint. We thought it was quite the deal! Which it was but it the burger was one of the worst I can remember and the fries were cold. Oops! But we were full and it was fun anyway! We came home early and to our pleasant surprise found some quality American Idol on TV- followed by Spice World. 

Crepes are delicious...

So we ate delicious crepes twice this weekend! On Saturday we wandered around the market with amazing crepes full of Nutella and strawberries. And then today (Sunday) we found the best gelato place near where we live and got crepes with nutella and two scoops of gelato. It was sooo good. Allie and I split one but Emma and Emily each conquered a whole one by themselves. We were so excited when they came out that I forgot to take a before picture- but there are some pretty exceptional after pictures. 

There is such a thing as bad Thai food...

Tonight we decided to get some Thai take out from down the street- it tasted like soap. Bottom line? Don't eat out here- not worth it at all. I will be saving my money to eat in Italy next weekend!

British Library - Day 1

I walked to the British Library today for my very first day of archival research!

Fun Facts

In London the second floor is actually the third.

After I registered for my library card (whoo hoo!) I got desperately lost in the massive building. I had my little map out and I was wandering around what I thought was the 2nd floor for a good ten minutes before I realized that I actually had to up another flight of stairs. There were so many people of all ages in the library. I was expecting to only see stuffy older people buried up to their eyeballs in books but there were actually a lot of university age students (not quite a majority but close). Everyone had their laptops and their plastic bags filled with notebooks and computer chargers - you can't bring regular bags into the library. Everything has to go into the locker room and you can only bring research related materials into the rooms carried in a plastic bag. People who spend a lot of time seemed to have their own bags - much sturdier then the ones they provide. There were a number of people (I assume Oxford students) that had bags that said OXFORD big across them. 

 I had some amazing Indian food for lunch in the Library cafeteria. 

One number does not equal one document

Once I found the Manuscripts room - there are actually designated rooms for different types of archival documents- I had to request the documents I wanted. All I had from my secondary sources was a list of call numbers and I really had no idea what to expect. I could only request four items a day and I was expecting a small folder per number. I figured I'd blow through the four items by the end of the day. I went and sat down at my assigned desk and waited for them to bring me my folders. About 45 minutes later a man comes out with a cart with four massive (the size of a classroom desk) red books about 4 inches thick. I couldn't believe it. I suddenly understood why you could only reserve four things in a day- there was no way I was going to read it all before close. But the good news is I have plenty of research material!

Handwriting from the 1920s is hard to read

It was pretty hard to read all of the documents since they were all hand written in fancy script. I didn't really anticipate this and I was surprised how long it took me to actually read the documents. It was really exciting though to be reading all of the archival sources. As I was reading I kept recognizing passages that had been quoted in my secondary source research. It was so cool to think that Marie Stopes ( the women I'm researching) actually held these pages and wrote some these documents. As I looked around the room I also couldn't help but picture the authors of the countless books I've already read on the subject sitting with the same red books that I was. It was pretty exciting and also overwhelming. I think I'm just starting realize the magnitude of the research I'm undertaking this semester. 

A rainy day in London

Today was not the most exciting day- had my seminar class in the morning and my British theater class in the afternoon. Both seem interesting. My Professor for the theater class is very eccentric and clearly knows a lot about his subject. I'm really looking forward to it. We go to the theater every Monday night and then discuss them on Wednesday. He said he's going to give us a list of what we're going to see each week so I will keep you updated on what we see. I know we're going to the Globe to see Hamlet at the end of the semester though!

Between my two classes Allie and I went back the British Museum to look at another exhibit - Chinese and Korean pottery. I think this is going to become a routine for us- just to go see something different each day.

After class we started planning our trip to Venice! I'm so excited! We also got our flights for Amsterdam for the third week in February! It is going to be quite an eventful month.

Emily and I are also going to be traveling together for two weeks after the semester ends and we're thinking  about spending the whole time in France.

Tomorrow I'm off to the British Library where I'm going to have to justify the legitimacy of my research project. Yikes!

and school begins!

I had orientation for my walking tours of london class today which seems like it's going to be really interesting. Our professor seems very alternative and anti-establishment which could make for a fun class. I'll write about all of the trips we go on as they happen for sure! 

After class I went to a cafe for lunch with Emma, Allie, and Emily and then poked around the British Museum and found the Tibetan section- it's one of my life goals to go there someday. I'm just so fascinated by the culture and history - It was an amazing exhibit.

Then we had an info session about the buildings we were going to be taking class in and for our flats- wish that had happened before today but whatever now we know all the important things like when to take the 'rubbish' out and recycling and how security works. 

After that we went to find Covent Gardens again but got super lost and ended up just turning around and going home- oops! Always need to remember to bring my map! But we found our way back home so no harm done.  

Tonight we went to see Les Miserables!! We decided to go stand online at the box-office to see if we could get discounted tickets and we did- With our student ID's we got them for 30% off and the seats were incredible. I had never seen it before and I absolutely loved it! 

Tomorrow is supposed to be our first day in the archives so hopefully that goes well and I don't break anything!

ALSO! We booked a flight to Venice for February! Super excited about that- it should be a fun trip!