Oh The Places We’ll Go

We left Manchester on the 1st of September and headed to Glasgow to check out where I’m going to be going to school for the next year!  Very exciting.  Our bus journey was much more pleasant than our last one.  A double decker bus and a lot fewer people, likely because it was a Tuesday (?) afternoon and less people were out and traveling than on a Sunday before school starts from London!  Gee, imagine that.

Scotland is absolutely beautiful.  Just seeing the countryside from the bus window heading up here, there is so much green, so many animals and farms, just rolling hill to rolling hill of green as far as the eye can see.  It’s pretty amazing, nothing like in California.  The weather here is a little bizarre too.  Sunshine, and then rain, and then pouring rain, and then sunshine.  All in one day.  Very bizzare, nothing like it is in California and it’s like that here all the time.  The accents are pretty fantastic too.  So far we haven’t had any problems understanding people since most of them are pretty easy to understand, Scottish accents aren’t THAT insanely different from anything else we’ve heard, but I’m guessing sometime along the next year I’m going to run into someone that I don’t understand at all.

My friends, Erica and Molly, get here on the 7th and the 8th so by that time I’ll be officially done backpacking and more in the mode of getting prepared for school.  I get to pick up my key on the 8th, which is very exciting since I’ll finally have a bed and my own ROOM to put all of my crap in (yay!), and then on the 9th I get my computer!  Thank GOD!  After that, Thomas’s travels back to the States are pretty wide open as far as when he goes and everything since he’s just leaving straight from Glasgow to Vegas. 

I’m definitely going to keep the blog up and running, especially since I know I’ll be going around Scotland a lot exploring everything around here, and there will definitely be a lot more pictures posted on a regular basis with my computer coming and all.  I definitely want to make it up to the highland parts of Scotland to explore and look around, and of course I’ll make it over to Edinburgh at least once while I’m here.  I think the plans as far as out of Scotland goes includes a journey back to Barcelona with my friends from California, and then Christmas is wide open.  Right now the idea is maybe Greece?  Who knows.

We haven’t been doing much here in Glasgow since we’re just relaxing and waiting until football (World Cup Qualifiers) start in the next few days.  There’s a lot to do I guess if you want museums and exhibits and things, but Thomas and I are all touristed-out so we’re just hanging out and relaxing.  We definitely want to see Celtic Park where Celtic FC plays, but other than that I’m guessing we’re going to hermit until the 6th when Scotland plays Macedonia, I believe, and the 7th when Erica gets in from California.  We’ll see what happens.

The hostel we’re staying at was IMPOSSIBLE to find after we got into Glasgow, by the way.  The only directions on our reservation confirmation were to follow the signs after a certain bus stop.  There was 1 sign.  1.  In an entire neighborhood.  Didn’t really help all that much, let me tell you.  We ended up asking a local, and then 30 minutes later finally found the damn hostel.  Jesus, you’d think they’d give better directions to people who have never been in their country before, don’t you think?

Also, people in my room (separate womens and mens dorms, urg) are REALLY LOUD.  These two German girls woke me up at the ass crack of dawn this morning after squeezing every imaginable kind of plastic bag into their suitcases.  So annoying.  Very rude, really.  The other girls in my room are pretty easy going and nice.  2 of them are from Canada, so that’s cool.  They’re from Alberta, so they say ‘eh’ which I think is pretty funny, and definitely have the Canada accent going on.  Love it.

I’ll post more when I have more to say… it’s been pretty laid back for the last few days and will likely stay that way until my friends get here and my Mom and Grandma do too! 

I’ll try and get Thomas on here again, also.  He can tell everyone all about Old Trafford (which was awesome, btw).  I promise. 

-Catherine

We are finally in an English speaking country and loving it.  No more being afraid to ask directions, no more wondering if we’re going the right way or if we’re accidentally walking to our deaths since we don’t understand the signs- we are in the English speaking world and everything is open and bright.

Maybe bright isn’t the right word, especially here in London.  It’s a little darker and gloomier than the other places we’ve been, but cool with a light breeze is a huge improvement over the weather we were dealing with in places like Rome and Venice.  We’ll take cool and dreary, just don’t make us sweat like the Italians did.  This is our last night here in London and we already have our bus tickets to go up to Manchester here.  Turns out the prices are pretty good around here on the bus.  The trains are insanely expensive, something like over 120 pounds just to go on the train up to Manchester for one person when on the National Express coach (bus), you can go with two people for around 40 pounds the same distance.

Our first real day here in London, Thursday, was spent going to all of the big museums around town.  The Brits know the perfect cost for their museums (my favorite ‘f’ word)- FREE.  Yes, free.  We made our way up to North London to see the British Museum, which has a lot of Egyptian, Japanese, various cultures art.  The coolest part of that museum is that they have the Rosetta Stone, which helped for modern day scientists to unlock the code to understanding ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.  The rest of the museum is alright, but the Rosetta Stone is insanely cool.  Nearby the British Museum is the British National Library which houses a bunch of old books and historical manuscripts, like one of Shakespeare’s First Folio’s, old Bibles, and even one of the 7 copies of the Magna Carta that are in existence.  Way cool.  There isn’t a huge museum or anything, it’s more of a library than anything else, but it’s still insanely awesome.

The other two museums we saw that day were the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery.  The National Gallery is pretty big, has a lot of different kinds of art inside of it.  Lots of Dutch Art, Medieval Art, all categorized and separated pretty well.  They have one of van Gogh’s “Sunflower” paintings inside the gallery, so that was the highlight for me.  The National Portrait Gallery, however, was my absolute favorite museum of the day.  The gallery has all different kinds of portraits inside, from one of the only known portraits of William Shakespeare, to royal portraits of Elizabeth II, to modern paintings of famous people from today.  Even one of Paul McCartney from the Beatles!  There was a lot to look at and since they were from all through history, you definitely don’t get bored looking at all of the different famous figures in British history.  After walking all through Trafalgar Square, where the National Galleries are, we headed back to the hostel and crashed.

Friday was our Abbey Road day, so Thomas and I headed up to St. John’s Wood station in North London to see the famous crosswalk where the Beatles took their Abbey Road album cover photo, and where Abbey Road Studios is (or was, we weren’t sure if it’s still there).  The actual intersection is really close to the tube station, where Grove End meets Abbey Road.  Turns out it’s a pretty busy street since there are so many cars going back and forth.  It’s nearly impossible to take a picture there!  There was a guy with some camera equipment set up taking photos of this girl walking back and forth across the crosswalk, so that made it even harder to take a proper photo.  Oh, well I got my picture.  We got a picture of the Abbey Road Studios and there is TONS of writing outside on the posts.  Lots of Beatles quotes, little drawings of John Lennon and things.  It’s all really cool.

After that we headed towards Buckingham Palace to see where the Queen lives.  Now where Abbey Road is located is a really nice ritzy neighborhood, but Buckingham Palace is where the LOADED people live.  Oh my God, the houses around there are absolutely insane.  There’s this really nice park next to the palace and the gates outside of the palace are guilded in solid gold.  Yes, solid gold.  The woman knows how to decorate in style I guess.  The Union Jack was flying, which means that the Queen isn’t in residence (probably at Windsor Castle for summer), but the Palace guards are still outside.  They’re pretty far from the gate, actually, but still cool to see them.  We walked from the Palace to Westminster Abbey and Houses of Parliament where Big Ben is!  Big Ben is insanely large, and dings really really loud, but it’s still awesome to look at.  Houses of Parliament are really nice too, the architecture is insanely intricate.  It’s pretty expensive to get INSIDE everything, 10 pounds for Parliament and 10 pounds for Westminster Abbey, so we just looked at them from outside and admired them from afar.  We walked from there to the London Eye across the river, which is a huge ferris wheel.  Cool, I guess?  There was no way we were going inside since it takes over a half hour to go 1 turn around and the line is insane, so we came back to the hostel and watched Semi-Pro with Will Ferrell before calling it a night.

Our last day here, today, was spent at the Tower of London seeing where they chopped off some heads and gawking at the Crown Jewels!  The Tower of London is a really cool place since it’s like a mini town inside the middle of the city.  They give you a map and a little tour around the place, little set-ups and messages up on the walls through these corridors so you can see what they did in the different areas of the Tower of London.  Where they prisoned people, beheaded people, where the King slept, stuff like that.  The highlight of the whole thing is the Crown Jewels, which are definitely worth seeing once in your life.  Not only are the diamonds absolutely INSANE, but even the dishware is impressive.  Solid gold plates, spoons, cups.  I mean, really.  Absolutely everything you could imagine guilded in gold.  They had videos of the Queen being crowned and coronated way way long ago, which was kind of cool.  Soon enough someone else will be coronated and hopefully I’ll get to watch it on TV along with everyone else in the world.

After the Tower of London, Thomas and I headed to the Globe Theater, which was reconstructed in 1997 off of the original layout of the Globe Theater from the 1660’s where Shakespeare’s most important and famous works were performed.  The original burned down, they rebuilt it, and then after Shakespeare died a few years later they tore the Globe Theater 2 down.  Before 1997, there wasn’t anything but a plaque in South End showing anything about Shakespeare but I guess some American came to London and after seeing that there was NOTHING honoring Shakespeare’s work, he decided to build a new Globe himself.  Pretty cool.  You get a whole history of Shakespeare’s career, different aspects of the culture and everything from back then, and then a tour of the theater itself.  Really cool tour, especially for someone like me who LOVES Shakespeare.  I looked at the list of his plays and I’ve read at least 15 of them, if not more.  Insane.

We finally did laundry here in London as well, which NEEDED to be done.  I can’t stress enough how badly we needed to do laundry here.  We haven’t done real laundry in a machine since Rome.  … That was a long long time ago, needless to say.  It was pretty cheap actually, but then again most basic things around here are.  Fish and chips?  2 pounds.  Yes, 2 pounds.  Score.  The food here in general is really good in London.  We found this pizza place with the BEST garlic dough balls in the history of the world.  They are freaking magical, I swear.  We’re going back for dinner tonight.

Manchester’s itinerary basically includes… Old Trafford.  Yes, we are going to Manchester simply to see Manchester United’s stadium.  I shall enjoy it now as I am still a Red Devils fan, but it’s moreso for Thomas than anything else.  Once I go to Scotland, I shall be a converted Celtic fan and the green and white will run through my veins.  My life’s goal right now is to get tickets to Celtic FC vs. Manchester United in Glasgow on October 21st since that’s the first leg of their Champions League matchup.  The city is going to go absolutely insane.  I can’t wait!!  Plus, World Cup qualifiers for Scotland are during the football season this season, so I will be cheering for the blue and white all the way.  Yay!

I think I forgot to mention we went up to Wembley after seeing Abbey Road, which is where the England National Football team plays.  It’s absolutely HUGE.  Oh my God, the football stadium is the biggest stadium I have ever seen in my life, and I have seen some really big ones.  Ohio State’s stadium fits over 80,000 and this thing was even bigger than that.  For reals.

I’ll get Thomas to do the next post so he can tell everyone all about Manchester United and Old Trafford.  Until then, I’m still working on uploading pictures.  Worst comes to worst, I get my computer back in like, 9 days so there will finally be pictures up by then.  Swear!

Bye!

We made it to Milan safely and easily after a boring and uneventful stay in Venice.  Now, let me just preface by saying, Venice isn’t all bad.  I’m sure if you stayed in the city center with someone you loved it’d be an absolute dream.  However, staying in a dump listening to romantic music in the blistering hot with your brother… doesn’t exactly sound appealing.

Our stay here in Milan has been alright.  Once again, everything is closed because of the holiday and nothing is open again until the very end of the month or the beginning of September.  The one thing we DID want to see, The Last Supper, in a church here in Milan, we couldn’t see.  Turns out the tickets to get into the church are SOLD OUT for the next two weeks straight.  Yes, two weeks.  We were amazed too.  And pissed off. 

We had quite an excursion trying to find a WC around here (bathroom), and walking to the San Siro.  San Siro, for you non-football fans, is the Holy Grail of football stadiums here in Milan.  Both Inter Milan and AC Milan play football there.  The stadium there is HUGE.  No wonder people love their football here, the stadiums are like cathedrals. 

Other than that, we went to a church here and walked around a lot.  Lots of pigeons.  Less people than in Venice.  Nice. 

We are heading to Torino tomorrow before going to Barcelona, since the train for tomorrow night was sold out (boo).  We hope Torino is nice and quiet like Florence was.  I wanna see all of the stuff ffrom the olympics.  It was there in winter 2006.

Sorry this post is so short.  The computer i’m on is very glitchy and is hard to type on.  Not a lot of time left to type! 

Finally, thanks for all of the great comments and messages.  We love reading them when we have the chance to stop in and read them.  We’re actively sending postcards so if you never gave me your address you can still email it to me at cat_brad@yahoo.com

Miss everyone and hope things are good in California (and the US in general).

Ciao.

Thomas and I have had a great stay in Florence so far and we’re almost sad to be leaving tomorrow.  The city here is our kind of style- small and quaint, but still has a lot of heart and soul.  It may not be the biggest city in Italy, but to us Florence has a lot more of the Italian spectacle and magic than Rome ever had.

Yesterday, after we had a chance to sit down yesterday and just relax after our long walk and expedition trying to find out hostel, Thomas and I made it over to the Uffizi art gallery to check out the different works of art in Florence’s most famous Italian art gallery.  The most famous work at the Uffizi Gallery, ‘The Birth of Venus’, is an absolute spectacle and is absolutely breathtaking to see in person.  Besides that, though, we found the Uffizi gallery to be a bit of a disappointment.  Other than the ‘Birth of Venus’ most of the other art in the gallery is medieval religious art from around the 1400’s, which after a while all starts to blend together and can be a bit of a bore.

Our adventures today, however, were much more exciting.  After sleeping for what must have been 12 hours last night, we got on and walking around Florence around 10:30 this morning before making reservations on a train to Venice tomorrow.  After we took care of the reservations, we made our way to the Accademia, which is most famous for Michelangelo’s ‘David’.  The line, while it was long, moved pretty quickly and before we knew it we were inside the museum staring up at one of the most famous sculptures in the world.

‘David’ is absolutely breathtaking.  You would think you’d be prepared for it, but the sight of it exceeds all expectations.  The sculpture itself is absolutely humongous.  It is probably about twice of my own height, and is on a pedestal which makes it even taller.  The details to the sculpture are what make it so incredible.  All of the veins, the muscles, the details of the hair and the features are all perfectly done so that even though you know it isn’t real, the attention to detail almost makes it seem as though it is.

After seeing ‘David’ we made it back to the hostel, hung out for a little while, and headed over to a little bar called Friends to watch the Community Shield match between Manchester United and Portsmouth.  Manchester United won on penalties, of course, but the fun part of watching the match was being around other football fans watching the match instead of it being just us watching the match at 4 in the morning in our PJ’s in Rocklin.  After a pint of Guinness, we met a family of Portsmouth fans from England who were here on vacation in Florence, so they bought us a pint of Harp while talking about Las Vegas, what people in Scotland are like, and other random things.

Typing right now, post-bar, is a little difficult.  After a couple of pints of beer, and a Long Island Iced Tea (which I’m sure has been the death of me), I’m probably what you would call drunk, so while I’m having a pretty good time writing this, getting the right keys in order has been a lot more difficult than it usually would be.

Tomorrow the plan is to get in to Venice and explore, since we’ll be there until the morning of the 13th before we move on to Milan.  I think we’ll both miss how beautiful and quaint Florence is, but hopefully Venice will be just as amazing. 

I’ll write more when I have the chance to update how life is in Venice.  I probably, after tonight, need to remind myself to lay off of the Guinness post-Manchester United victory but you’re only in Italy once, right?  I’m sure it will be a lot worse once I get to Scotland.  I’ve been warned that the Scottish drink like tanks so I’m in for a rude awakening.

Until next time- Ciao

Ahhh…

We finally made it to Italy.  All 14 hours later on a plane, from San Francisco to Rome, we’re finally here.  We left Rocklin at about 3 in the morning and drove to San Francisco International Airport to leave on our Delta flight to JFK airport in New York.  Turns out the confirmation code we needed to get our passes to get through security didn’t work so luckily we were able to find a lady who could help us and printed them out for us.  Then the fun began.  I had forgotten, but I guess when you use the passes my mom had given us for the discounted flights, your ticket is ‘flagged’ and you have to go through the all-on wave down by the security officers at the airport.  Thomas and I were both flagged, had to be wanded and our ENTIRE backpacks had to be wiped with these special cloths so that they could make sure we weren’t terrorists and were bringing bombs to the airport.  Unfortunately for the TSA guy, my bag has a LOTTT of pockets, so he had to go through every single one and wipe it down.  It didn’t take too long but it was still funny.

After we checked in at the desk and were given our seats, imagine our surprise when we were both given ‘zone 1′ tickets.  Huh? Zone 1?  Is that… first class??  Why yes, yes it is first class.  Cushy seats, our own butler, complimentary drinks.  Let me just say, first class is the way to go.  And… we didn’t have to pay for it.  As my Uncle Scott likes to say, it was all my favorite ‘f’ word’- ‘free’.  We got into JFK around 3:30 east coast time, which is 12:30 California time, and waited around until 5:30 when we boarded our flight to Rome.  At first, our seat assignments were in zone 9, which we were both fine with since hey, we are going to Rome… why complain?  Then, just as we were boarding, our nice desk attendant check in lady told us to sit in seats 4 a and b.  We got onto the plane and realized both seats were in International First Class.  Comforters on the seats, pillows fluffed, champagne at the ready.  Thomas and I looked at each other and laughed because it felt so bizarre, sitting in first class with all of these old italian people.  The flight went by really quickly.  I wasn’t able to fall asleep until the last 2 hours or so of the flight, so I spent my time watching episodes of Sex and the City and Entourage on the seatback TV’s and watching the new Chronicles of Narnia movie, Prince Caspian. 

After we landed, we tried calling home to give the heads up that we made it, but turns out… the phones in Italy are WEIRD and we couldn’t figure out for the life of us how to use them.  I lost my sunglasses on the way to the train station across the street from the airport, which sucked, but I’m going to get some cheap new ones soon.  We got to the train station and found out where to go pretty easily.  There are a lot of signs that are written in 2 languages in Italy: Italian and English.  That helps out a lot.  We took a train from the airport to the Roma Termini, which is like Grand Central Station, and took a Metro one stop up to the station that our hostel was at.  Found the hostel really easily, but our beds weren’t ready yet so we went off to explore the city. 

First impressions of Rome: It’s hot.  Very very very hot here, with a lot of humidity, so Thomas and I are both sweating like dogs out here.  We decided since we needed to kill a couple hours before our room would be ready we should go see the Colusseum, which is only 1 stop up from our hostel.  We got to the Colusseum, waited in line for an hour and a half or so and made our way inside the Colusseum.  The location itself is a little crazy- there’s this massive, historical ruin you see in all of these pictures in the middle of an urban area with restaurants and apartments and everything.  It has definitely become very touristy.  We walked around the Colusseum SWEATING and made our way to a little cafe to have some lunch.  Pizza, of course.  Oh, and beer.  Which I bought.  Myself.  Thought that was funny. 

We were both exhausted so we made our way back to our hostel and waited a couple minutes before going into our rooms and PASSING OUT.  We slept from around 4 in the afternoon here to about 7 this morning.  It has definitely helped with the jetlag, and Thomas and I were both ready and rested to tackle Vatican City today.

So today was our Vatican City day, and after waking up and showering (as well as locking myself in the bathroom… woops) we made our way to the holiest place on earth for Catholics, Vatican City.  Let me just say the entire place is awe inspiring, even moreso than the Colusseum.  It is breathtakingly beautiful; the courtyard, the statues, the buildings.  It is all absolutely incredible.  We waited in line to go and see the basilica, which has the canopy inside of it and a lot of famous statues.  We also saw the papal tombs inside of the basilica, where a lot of people were, rosaries in hand, paying their respects to John Paul II.  Afterwards we made our way to the Vatican Museums, which is around the corner, and saw a lot more statues, paintings, and tapestries before walking into the Sistine Chapel.  Now, let me just say, I have seen many many famous and beautiful things in my life, but never before have I been AWE STRUCK by something.  I can’t even describe how beautiful the Sistine Chapel is, it was that amazing.  First off, the ceilings are huge.  You can’t take pictures inside or talk loudly, but why would you want to? All you can do inside is look up and stare.  Thomas and I both look at each other are were like, I’m set.  If this whole trip ends right now, I’m absolutely set.

And now we’re here, sitting in a little internet cafe around the corner from Vatican City getting ready to go and see the Trevi Fountain and hit up a little Scottish pub that should be around the corner here somewhere.  We have to make it back over to the Colusseum tonight to take pictures since, woops, we forgot our cameras before so we have to make it up by seeing it at night.  As far as tomorrow is concerned, it is most likely a museum-filled day, to the Borghese Gallery and a couple others before resting and heading to Pisa and ending in Florence on Saturday.

The language barrier hasnt been a huge problem so far, and everyone for the most part is really helpful.  There is a LOT of graffiti here, and a lot of football merchandise, espeically for the Italian national team.  People here really love their football.  We both got a little homesick last night, and a little into the ‘what have we gotten ourselves into’ mindset in the middle of the night last night, but I think with Vatican City, we are both sure of why we are here.  As much as we miss Rocklin and California (not to mention non-sweaty weather) we know that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and we should savor things like seeing the Sistine Chapel while we still can.

I’ll be sure to post more once we make it to another internet cafe, most likely tomorrow afternoon to kill some time, and try to call home once we figure out how to use the phones! 

-catherine

It’s finally here.

It’s funny, you’d think that after months upon months of planning and speculating about where we’re going to go, what we’re going to do, we’d be prepared. But even now, mere hours away from when we’re driving to San Francisco and flying to New York before we go to Rome, I don’t think either of us feel 100% ready. It’s all such a foreign feeling: the backpack, the cubes, the new shoes, clothes. Brand new and untouched. Not for long, I guess. By the time we get going, maybe it won’t all feel so weird. Until then, I feel like I’m playing dress-up for Halloween.

Our first week plans take us on a flight from San Francisco to JFK in New York City, and from JFK to Rome, where we’ll be arriving on Wednesday morning. We’ll be in Rome until Saturday and from there we’re going to Pisa and Florence. We reserved our hostel in Rome not even an hour ago, so I doubt we’ll know the specifics of the plans for Pisa and Florence until our last days in Rome. We’re ready and armed with 300 Euros, which converts roughly into $525 US Dollars (what a great conversion rate, eh? Haha.), which if no one reading this has ever seen a Euro before it almost looks like Monopoly money. Pink 10’s, purple 20’s and blue 5’s, which are smaller than the other bills. Oh, and no dead people on European money. They stay classy- landmarks on their money.

So what am I going to miss? I guess for Thomas the obvious answer is his friends and the girlfriend, but I don’t really feel bad for him- he’s going to be back here in a month or so. For me? I’ve got almost a year until I get to come back in the house, hang out with the dogs and suffer in the sweltering Rocklin sun. The biggest thing I will miss (and the most obvious) is the family. The ‘rents (parents), Thomas and Alicia, the dogs, Uncle Scott, Grandpa, and everyone else around here. Not to mention school friends, random friends from random places. It’s not like I get to text any of them while I’m bored in class anymore. What am I going to do with myself? Pay attention? … I don’t think so.

Aside from the obvious, I’m most DEFINITELY going to miss Mexican food. I know that probably sounds really stupid, but I absolutely love Mexican food. Scottish people? Doubt they eat many tacos, enchiladas, nachos, or burritos. What is Scottish food anyway? Haggis? I’m afraid. The other BIG thing I’m going to miss is my sports. Baseball most definitely. I won’t be missing much of this season, since the Giants are obviously not going to be playing past September in the playoffs, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to miss Kruk and Kuiper, Jon Miller, Dave Flemming. Maybe if I’m up really late I can listen to The Razor and Mr. T on the internet. Maybe. I’m going to be missing the ENTIRE Warriors season and 49ers season. That sucks. I’m not expecting that I’ll be missing much, but at least the Brits get the Superbowl broadcast live as of this last year. Score. I’m holding onto a hope that they watch American hockey in the UK since there’s so many Europeans that play hockey. Cross your fingers.

There’s one guaranteed sport that I won’t be missing, though, which makes me happy: football. European football (otherwise known as REAL football, the kind you play with your foot). I’m looking forward to Sundays watching Celtic and Rangers in Scotland, and following the trials and tribulations of Cristiano Ronaldo with Manchester United. We’ll see how that goes. Maybe I’ll actually start understanding all the rules instead of just erratically screaming at the TV for the things that I do understand: block, goal, red card, yellow card, etc.

For now that’s all I’ve got. I’ll post more when Thomas and I get into Rome and have a look around.

-catherine