Big Europe Trip Post!
This is gonna be long......just so ya know. I wrote this on the LONG plane back home.
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Well friends, as I write this I am currently speeding my way back home on a jet plane from London. I have so much to write about my travels during the past 12 days, my entire experience in Europe, and this whole YEAR that I figured I should start now. I am finding it kind of hard to reflect on all that has happened at this moment, but I’ll try my best.
I’ll start with my journeys over the past 12 days. It has been an amazing trip that was out of my dreams. I always told myself I would take a trip like this someday, and look. I did it! Leaving Vienna was hard, of course. I have grown to love that city and I made some very good friends there from all over the United States. It’s hard to leave people you really like when the prospect of seeing any of them again is slight. But leave I did.
Rome was simply and utterly amazing. It was my favorite city out of the ones I visited on my post-semester European extravaganza. The fact that it was the FIRST city I visited on my trip when I was not tired and hadn’t been traveling for days probably had something to do with it too. :-) I got there something like 11 or 12 hours before Rebecca and Jeff did, so I had an opportunity to go exploring by myself when I got there. There are wonders around every corner in Rome, and it was easily the city where I took the most pictures. Rebecca and Jeff soon arrived and we all set out exploring the city. We had a map with all of the main sights to see circled and we made our way through those. Not an easy task! Here are the main things that we saw: Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Roman Forum, the Coliseum, Palitine Hill, the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain Piazza del Populo, Vatican City and the Vatican Museum, and a whole number of other churches and fountains and piazzas that we stumbled across during our wanderings. Simply and utterly amazing. Among my favorites were the Roman ruins in the forum and the Vatican. Both are quite simply beyond words that try to describe them. The grandeur of both was unique and amazing in their own ways. It was amazing to walk around Roman ruins that are over 2000 years old and to see them still standing and to wonder what they must have looked like back then. It didn’t seem possible that they had been built by people who didn’t have modern tools and technology. The Vatican was astounding in its imposing grandeur and the enormous store of art within its walls. It felt strange to go in other churches after visiting this one because nothing can quite compare to how over the top the center of Roman Catholicism is. It’s also cool to say that I saw St. Peter’s finger and fragments of the True Cross and the crown that the old Popes used to wear. MAN that thing is HUGE. I didn’t catch a glimpse of the Pope, but some high ranking cardinal walked through a corridor at one point and all these security guards told us to stand back while the holy guy walked through and that was pretty cool. My feet hurt at the end of this city though. LOTS of walking. But oh so worth it.
Next we traveled on to Venice where we met up with our friend Elliot. This was a much different experience than Rome was. First of all, our hostel was WAY out in the boonies away from Venice so when we were taking the bus there we were like “Where are we GOING?” But it ended up being quite an amazing hostel. It had a hot shower with good pressure and about six different settings, a heated towel rack, and about four more beds than we needed for no extra charge. :-) All in all, a pretty amazing place to stay. It was a 45 minute bus ride to and from Venice everyday. This was kind of lame, but also worth it. It was pretty cold while we were there too. ANYHOO. Venice is a lot like you hear about in books and movies and stuff. A pretty city with lots of seaside buildings (obviously), canals, gondolas, bridges and lots and lots of shops. Near as we could tell, Venice didn’t have any industry except for the tourist industry. 95% of the shops we saw were glass shops, clothing stores, mask shops, and restaurants. I saw maybe three grocery stores plus an outdoor market and no butchers or doctors or dentists or anything. It was kind of weird. Venice is also easy to get lost in (as evidenced by getting lost on the first night there) but they know this and have helpful signs all over the place pointing you in the right direction. The streets are very nice, lit up, and full of pedestrians and shops. The main sights we saw while in Venice were St. Mark’s Square and St. Mark’s cathedral itself and the glass blowing island of Murano. St. Mark’s church is another amazing cathedral. It was very different than any one I had seen elsewhere. The mosaic work was exquisite. It also had a much……older feel than many other churches I had been inside (even though they were all quite old). The best way I can describe it right now is that it didn’t seem as….well preserved as other churches. It felt very old and dusky and…….old. It was an interesting experience. I also took the liberty of renaming St. Mark’s Square. I now call it the Square of Screaming Children. Here’s why. There are SO many pigeons on that square and a popular pastime of tourists is to buy bird seed and have the pigeons land on them to eat it. This results in children screaming when the pigeons when the pigeons land on them. *sigh* The other main product in Venice is glass. We went to the main glass blowing island and saw a couple works being made and learned about the history of the craft. It was quite interesting. I couldn’t resist buying a Carnival mask in Venice. There were so many pretty ones! And I think the one I bought will fit in nicely to a Halloween costume this year. Other than those sights, we pretty much just wandered around and took the boat places and chilled out. Finally, went in this super awesome cool museum with Elliot and learned about how the upper crust lived in 18-19th century Venice. Oh, forgot to mention. The card games of Hearts and Oh Hell were favorites on this trip, and we spent time playing those in Italy too.
After Venice, I parted ways with Rebecca, Jeff and Elliot. They went on to Vienna and I proceeded to London. I had just spent four months in Vienna, so as nice as it would have been to visit there again, I wanted to see someplace NEW. So I went to London. There I met my OTHER friend Rebecca and her father at the airport. They were extremely nice, generous and gracious while I was there. Not only did they pick me up from the airport, but they let me sleep in their house, they fed me, showed me everywhere to go in London, and were the best hosts EVER. I am very thankful for each and every one of them. Anyhoo, because of all this, London was easily the most relaxing of all the cities I visited. I got to see the INCREDIBLE London fireworks show on TV. Seriously, it was pretty much amazing. They turned the London Eye (the biggest ferris wheel in the world) into a huge firework itself with tons of blasts coming from the wheel itself. It was nice to be spending the New Year with a family, even if it wasn’t my own. The first day I was there Rebecca’s mom took Rebecca, her aunts, and I out to Stonehenge. It was really great because she is really knowledgeable about England and was able to fill us in on all these facts and things. Stonehenge was beautiful and fun, but it’s not as BIG and GRAND as the stories sometimes make it out to be. However, it was still mind boggling to think how the ancient peoples there managed to transport and raise these huge stones (15-20 tons) for a purpose we haven’t even discovered yet. Who knows? Then we took Rebecca’s dog Winston out for a walk in a nearby heath and that was awesome. It was a beautiful wintery day and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The next two days I went into London proper with Rebecca. She and her family lived about 45 minutes outside of London by train in a little town called Oxshott. This name still amuses me quite a lot. We did a lot of wandering around in the city. Some places we visited were the London Eye (giant ferris wheel), Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London and Kensington Park. We also walked by Parliament and Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Trifalger Square, and Royal Albert hall. GREAT times of course. It was a much more laid back part of my trip since I had people feeding me and a dog to play with, but I was still ready to come home.
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And now I'm back! I can do more of a reflective post on my overall experience later. Suffice it to say, now I am HOME, enjoying home cooked food again, jet lagged, and content and happy. I'm in a good spot right now. Good thing I typed all that before I came back, because I'm certainly too lazy to type all of that at this point. ;-)
Oh, and new books bought with recently aquired gift cards to Borders: The Martian Chronicles (thanks Matt!!) and Wicked. GLORIOUS.
More to come later!
_____________________________________________________________________________
Well friends, as I write this I am currently speeding my way back home on a jet plane from London. I have so much to write about my travels during the past 12 days, my entire experience in Europe, and this whole YEAR that I figured I should start now. I am finding it kind of hard to reflect on all that has happened at this moment, but I’ll try my best.
I’ll start with my journeys over the past 12 days. It has been an amazing trip that was out of my dreams. I always told myself I would take a trip like this someday, and look. I did it! Leaving Vienna was hard, of course. I have grown to love that city and I made some very good friends there from all over the United States. It’s hard to leave people you really like when the prospect of seeing any of them again is slight. But leave I did.
Rome was simply and utterly amazing. It was my favorite city out of the ones I visited on my post-semester European extravaganza. The fact that it was the FIRST city I visited on my trip when I was not tired and hadn’t been traveling for days probably had something to do with it too. :-) I got there something like 11 or 12 hours before Rebecca and Jeff did, so I had an opportunity to go exploring by myself when I got there. There are wonders around every corner in Rome, and it was easily the city where I took the most pictures. Rebecca and Jeff soon arrived and we all set out exploring the city. We had a map with all of the main sights to see circled and we made our way through those. Not an easy task! Here are the main things that we saw: Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Roman Forum, the Coliseum, Palitine Hill, the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain Piazza del Populo, Vatican City and the Vatican Museum, and a whole number of other churches and fountains and piazzas that we stumbled across during our wanderings. Simply and utterly amazing. Among my favorites were the Roman ruins in the forum and the Vatican. Both are quite simply beyond words that try to describe them. The grandeur of both was unique and amazing in their own ways. It was amazing to walk around Roman ruins that are over 2000 years old and to see them still standing and to wonder what they must have looked like back then. It didn’t seem possible that they had been built by people who didn’t have modern tools and technology. The Vatican was astounding in its imposing grandeur and the enormous store of art within its walls. It felt strange to go in other churches after visiting this one because nothing can quite compare to how over the top the center of Roman Catholicism is. It’s also cool to say that I saw St. Peter’s finger and fragments of the True Cross and the crown that the old Popes used to wear. MAN that thing is HUGE. I didn’t catch a glimpse of the Pope, but some high ranking cardinal walked through a corridor at one point and all these security guards told us to stand back while the holy guy walked through and that was pretty cool. My feet hurt at the end of this city though. LOTS of walking. But oh so worth it.
Next we traveled on to Venice where we met up with our friend Elliot. This was a much different experience than Rome was. First of all, our hostel was WAY out in the boonies away from Venice so when we were taking the bus there we were like “Where are we GOING?” But it ended up being quite an amazing hostel. It had a hot shower with good pressure and about six different settings, a heated towel rack, and about four more beds than we needed for no extra charge. :-) All in all, a pretty amazing place to stay. It was a 45 minute bus ride to and from Venice everyday. This was kind of lame, but also worth it. It was pretty cold while we were there too. ANYHOO. Venice is a lot like you hear about in books and movies and stuff. A pretty city with lots of seaside buildings (obviously), canals, gondolas, bridges and lots and lots of shops. Near as we could tell, Venice didn’t have any industry except for the tourist industry. 95% of the shops we saw were glass shops, clothing stores, mask shops, and restaurants. I saw maybe three grocery stores plus an outdoor market and no butchers or doctors or dentists or anything. It was kind of weird. Venice is also easy to get lost in (as evidenced by getting lost on the first night there) but they know this and have helpful signs all over the place pointing you in the right direction. The streets are very nice, lit up, and full of pedestrians and shops. The main sights we saw while in Venice were St. Mark’s Square and St. Mark’s cathedral itself and the glass blowing island of Murano. St. Mark’s church is another amazing cathedral. It was very different than any one I had seen elsewhere. The mosaic work was exquisite. It also had a much……older feel than many other churches I had been inside (even though they were all quite old). The best way I can describe it right now is that it didn’t seem as….well preserved as other churches. It felt very old and dusky and…….old. It was an interesting experience. I also took the liberty of renaming St. Mark’s Square. I now call it the Square of Screaming Children. Here’s why. There are SO many pigeons on that square and a popular pastime of tourists is to buy bird seed and have the pigeons land on them to eat it. This results in children screaming when the pigeons when the pigeons land on them. *sigh* The other main product in Venice is glass. We went to the main glass blowing island and saw a couple works being made and learned about the history of the craft. It was quite interesting. I couldn’t resist buying a Carnival mask in Venice. There were so many pretty ones! And I think the one I bought will fit in nicely to a Halloween costume this year. Other than those sights, we pretty much just wandered around and took the boat places and chilled out. Finally, went in this super awesome cool museum with Elliot and learned about how the upper crust lived in 18-19th century Venice. Oh, forgot to mention. The card games of Hearts and Oh Hell were favorites on this trip, and we spent time playing those in Italy too.
After Venice, I parted ways with Rebecca, Jeff and Elliot. They went on to Vienna and I proceeded to London. I had just spent four months in Vienna, so as nice as it would have been to visit there again, I wanted to see someplace NEW. So I went to London. There I met my OTHER friend Rebecca and her father at the airport. They were extremely nice, generous and gracious while I was there. Not only did they pick me up from the airport, but they let me sleep in their house, they fed me, showed me everywhere to go in London, and were the best hosts EVER. I am very thankful for each and every one of them. Anyhoo, because of all this, London was easily the most relaxing of all the cities I visited. I got to see the INCREDIBLE London fireworks show on TV. Seriously, it was pretty much amazing. They turned the London Eye (the biggest ferris wheel in the world) into a huge firework itself with tons of blasts coming from the wheel itself. It was nice to be spending the New Year with a family, even if it wasn’t my own. The first day I was there Rebecca’s mom took Rebecca, her aunts, and I out to Stonehenge. It was really great because she is really knowledgeable about England and was able to fill us in on all these facts and things. Stonehenge was beautiful and fun, but it’s not as BIG and GRAND as the stories sometimes make it out to be. However, it was still mind boggling to think how the ancient peoples there managed to transport and raise these huge stones (15-20 tons) for a purpose we haven’t even discovered yet. Who knows? Then we took Rebecca’s dog Winston out for a walk in a nearby heath and that was awesome. It was a beautiful wintery day and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The next two days I went into London proper with Rebecca. She and her family lived about 45 minutes outside of London by train in a little town called Oxshott. This name still amuses me quite a lot. We did a lot of wandering around in the city. Some places we visited were the London Eye (giant ferris wheel), Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London and Kensington Park. We also walked by Parliament and Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Trifalger Square, and Royal Albert hall. GREAT times of course. It was a much more laid back part of my trip since I had people feeding me and a dog to play with, but I was still ready to come home.
______________________________________________________________________________________
And now I'm back! I can do more of a reflective post on my overall experience later. Suffice it to say, now I am HOME, enjoying home cooked food again, jet lagged, and content and happy. I'm in a good spot right now. Good thing I typed all that before I came back, because I'm certainly too lazy to type all of that at this point. ;-)
Oh, and new books bought with recently aquired gift cards to Borders: The Martian Chronicles (thanks Matt!!) and Wicked. GLORIOUS.
More to come later!