Rome

Happy Thanksgiving!

Though, as many of you know, its not my favorite holiday—not a fan of green bean casserole, stuffing, or gravy—today I find myself oddly homesick, if only for my family and my couch. It was quite the odd experience heading to class Thanksgiving morning on a double decker bus instead of watching the Macy's parade, helping prepare dinner, or coloring in the newspaper Turkey.

Ah, well. I'm in Europe and on my way to Barcelona this afternoon, which is still quite the way to spend your Turkey Day. Alex and I are even going to go on a hunt for some kind of turkey sandwich on our way home from campus today.

Speaking of spending important American days traveling through Europe, two weeks ago I found myself on the way to Rome on election day. This in itself was quite the experience: not only does the U.K. have all-day U.S. election coverage, anxiously awaiting who will become "the next most powerful man in the world" that we watched at the airport, but many people in Europe will flat out ask you who you're voting for. For those reading from the states, you know that's rather taboo at home.

It was fascinating, and even a little surprising, at how much stock the rest of the world puts in our election, something I had discussed at length with many of my British friends. A couple even watched the debates, both interested and knowledgeable about American politics. Go figure. In America, most of us only care about ourselves.

The bar of our hostel in Rome, where we spent our down time

It was definitely an eye opening experience to talk to some Australians when we arrived for our first night at our hostel in Rome. Watching election coverage online, we got to talking about politics. They were shocked that so few people voted in the U.S., as in Australia they are fined if they do not vote. The Australians also offered an insightful view on the importance of the election: if our president goes to war, it's very possible that their friends and family will be sent also, as they're our allies. To be honest, I never really thought about it that way before.

While it was definitely a new experience spending election day abroad, it was also a novel experience actually having voted in the presidential election. I must say it is quite the feeling to know you have had an impact, no matter how small, on how things turn out. Pretty cool!

Bright and early at the Trevi Fountain!

Anyways, back to my Roman adventures! Bria and I arrived safely at our hostel, the most popular one in Rome called the Yellow, on Tuesday night in time for me to scarf down a delicious goat cheese quesadilla. Awaking Wednesday to election results (and much Obama love in Europe), we got an early start. As we heard the Pope only comes out on Wednesdays, it was perfect timing to head to St. Peter's basilica.

On our way, we made our first stop at a famous Roman landmark: the Trevi fountain! We tossed coins into its waters and made time to stop for a cappucino (best. one. ever.) and nutella croissant for breakfast.

On our arrival to St. Peter's we were met by hoards of people anxious to see the Pope. We didn't go through the trouble of getting tickets, but we could see just fine at the back of the crowd. Though it was pretty anticlimactic—the Pope just weaved through the crowds in his Pope-mobile—it was still a very cool must-do in Rome.

Apparently Benedict XVI started speaking about the election, but we couldn't tell what he was saying in Italian, so we headed to the Vatican museum. Which, by the way, is just HUGE. Actually pretty overwhelming, so we took a fast track to get to the Sistine Chapel where we saw its iconic fresco on the ceiling by Michaelangelo.

You don't want to know how little time it took me to eat this

Outside of St. Peters—gloriously sunny and 70!

Now sufficiently starving, we headed to the first pizzeria we could find and devoured two huge pies. And yes, they were just as delicious as you can imagine Italian pizza to be. Here began the most amazing food week of perhaps my life.

Done with lunch, we headed to the Spanish steps to climb them and take pictures. I could have stood at the top and taken in the view for hours, it was just beautiful looking out over the Eternal City with the sun breaking through the crowds. From there, we walked through the shopping district of Rome and made our way to the Pantheon. Another one of those hilarious moments in Europe where you're just walking along the street and then—BAM–hello, ancient world wonder!

After exploring for a bit, seeing Raphael's grave, and listening to Bria's audio guide on her iPad (and nodding off just a bit), we got our first gelato of Italy! There are no words to describe the deliciousness. We managed to find a shop that didn't speak any English which probably speaks to its authenticity. With fragola and cioccolato, strawberry and chocolate, gelato in hand, we made our way back to the hostel, passing the sun setting on the Spanish steps, having had a very successful first day.
















For dinner, we went to a local restaurant across the street, Mama Angela's, for wine, bruschetta, and the most amazing ravioli I have ever eaten in my life (and I have eaten quite a bit in the last two decades). To make our first day even more spectacular, the restaurant gave us limoncellos, lemon flavored alcohol, on the house. The waitstaff was already fantastic, and this just made our night. A stop at the gelato shop down the road for a questionable yet delicious combination of tiramisu, melon, and cream (can you tell I was struggling at this point?), and our first day in Rome was complete.

The view from the Spanish steps! Bellisima!

The next morning we got another early start and headed straight to St. Peter's to go inside. After waiting in line for a bit (our first one in Europe, somehow), we took in the beautiful views of the huge cathedral. We even witnessed the first bit of a mass on our way out. From there, we started out our day of ancient wonders headed to one of the most quintessential sites of Rome, the Colosseum! It was amazing to see the ancient amphitheater (and snap plenty of pics), the largest built in Rome. It's incredibly well preserved for how old it is, and it was easy to imagine the thousands (?) of gladiators that met their end with crowds of people looking on. Kind of eerie.

From there, we headed to the Roman Forum, which is right down the street. This is the place that the ancients spent most of their time, shopping, praying, chatting, and strolling. Again, there were some pretty remarkable ancient ruins and we even spotted Julius Caesar's original grave. With a quick stop at the Palantine Hill, with some incredible views of the Colosseum and surrounding streets and hills, we regrouped and headed back to central Rome.

With a couple of hours to kill before we needed to eat dinner and not enough time to get to the catacombs, which are on the outskirts of Rome, we decided to still see some bones and head to a crypt. We explored a small museum of the Capuchin monks in Rome—and their focus on blood and death—and then headed to the basement, where we saw no less than the bones of 3,500 monks. ARTISTICALLY ARRANGED. I kid you not. At this point, Bria and I kind of questioned our decision to go, but we were overall glad we did. Even if it was one of the creepiest experiences of my entire life.


For our last meal in Rome, we stopped at a restaurant and sat outside people watching by the Trevi fountain. After devouring an entire plate of spaghetti carbonara, we of course stopped to get gelato on the way back the Yellow to pick up our things. From there, it was time to head to the train station to catch our train to Florence. Though we did everything we wanted in Rome (and, in some cases, more), we were definitely sad to leave. Rome is truly a beautiful, culturally thriving city. But with no time to waste and sitting next to some really nice Italian ladies, we were on our 8:45 train to Florence!

UPDATE: Before finishing my blog post I found the best substitution for a turkey dinner as possible: a turkey sandwich with stuffing and cranberry. All my love to my family and friends on this Thanksgiving, my first away from home. Could not be more thankful for all of these experiences which many of you have helped make possible!

For more Rome pictures, take a look here.

 

Bath

What is this? Two blog posts in one day? Some may think I have turned over a new leaf...more like I realize I'm still horribly behind on blogging and have four papers rapidly approaching. However, I have decided to bask in the glow of my newly arrived completed Jane Austen set of novels from Waterstone's and ignore aforementioned work.

Speaking of Jane Austen, I am pleased to inform you all that my next subject is a trip that I was looking forward to the moment I found out I would be studying abroad in the United Kingdom: Bath! As I'm sure many of you know, this is the famous residency of one of literary's great figures (and a personal favorite), my lovely Jane Austen. For those of you wondering, this is what I was expecting to happen to me during my time there:

But I digress.


First stop on our day trip was actually to Stonehenge, which pretty much speaks for itself. All in all, its basically a pile of rocks built a super long time ago. Definitely cool to see as one of the world's great wonders, but given how cold and windy it was outside (I couldn't feel my toes), I was more than happy to pop in, take a few pictures and hop back on the bus.

In true Arcadia fashion, the bus we took to Stonehenge started STEAMING. Yes, it looked like a miniature hurricane inside of our bus, which seemed about ready to explode at any moment. Just a bit concerning, seeing as this made the last ten or so minutes of our journey pretty impossible for our driver, who was surrounded by steam and couldn't see a thing out the window. So, we all piled on the remaining two buses and carried on our way.

Jillian & I at Stonehenge! Can you see how cold it was?!

Rolling along the countryside to Bath was truly like being in Joe Wright's fantastic cinematic version of P&P (above). The sun came out, beautifully shining through the clouds onto the rolling green hills of British countryside. At this point I was listening to the beautiful piano tunes of the film (click below for the full blog experience) and dying of excitement as we made our way to the city. Ah, what could be better?

Exactly what I pictured countryside England to be before I arrived. Could not be more thrilled that it was reality. Thanks, Joe Wright!

Dreams do come true.

After one further alarm on the bus—it stalled about 3 times in the middle of the road on the way from Stonehenge to Bath, either I can't pick buses to save my life or Arcadia just fails—we finally reached the town of Bath! After Jillian and I grabbed some delicious bacon sandwiches, our first stop was to head to what else? The famous Roman Baths for which the town is named for.









They were truly a fantastic sight to see to say the least. Again, I truly marveled at the immense history this country has to offer. These baths, somehow drawing on natural springs and chemicals and whatnot were used by the Romans over two millennia ago—crazy to think that people just like us were around that long before, using some pretty impressive technology for the age.

We didn't get to enter the baths, obviously, but we were allowed a sip of the water, which was pretty disgusting. But at least it supposedly has magical healing powers.

Casually chillin' with Jane.

Next stop on our list within the limited time frame was of course the Jane Austen Centre! After posing with a lovely statue of Jane outside, we headed into the house a few doors down from one that Jane lived in during her years in Bath. After heading upstairs, we were treated to a presentation on Austen's life and family.

Though I consider myself somewhat of an Austen-phile, one thing I didn't know was that Austen died at the young age of 41 (from unknown causes, perhaps Tuberculosis or some form of cancer). It's pretty tragic to think that in her short life time she published six amazing novels, and given another 41 years she could have written countless more. Sigh.

After the presentation, we made our way through the exhibits, including those on Austen's life (especially in Bath), the society of the early 19th century, and the making of her various films. It was definitely interesting to see how Austen's opinion of Bath changed from her first visit at 18—the naive love of the grandeur in Bath featured in Northanger Abbey—compared her opinion during the five years she lived in Bath as an adult—the stifling society viewed in Persuasion.

We passed on the opportunity to dress up like proper society women of Austen's time (tempting, I know, but too many layers on during a chilly day) and headed to the gift shop, where I promptly preceded to clean it out. Pretty sure I even held up the line.

Darcy, where art thou?

With what little time we had left in Bath, we walked in the footsteps of Jane Austen and explored the city center a bit more. Though I didn't meet Mr. Darcy like I originally planned to, by the time I collapsed on the bus to make it back to London—giant Jane Austen Centre bag in hand—I still felt like I had a pretty successful trip.

For more pictures, explore here.

The Pump Room, featured particularly in Northanger Abbey!

A note from Matthew Macfayden to the JA Centre

An original letter written from Jane to Cassandra, her sister!

Victorians

As usual, so many things to tell you about and so little time to do it in. Today marks off my quest, however, to get (somewhat) caught up on my travels before heading off to Spain this weekend. Sorry for the lack of original pictures on this post, but not many were available from the respective events!

Without further ado, this week on Rachel's Behind the Times Blog, we explore a new time period of British history and culture: the Victorian age! First, Brian & I headed on what was my second official Arcadia trip of the term: the Jack the Ripper walk through the East End. Fittingly, this took place the night before Halloween.

....And I just gave away how far behind I am on this blog.

Our tour started (albeit late, gotta love Arcadia) from the London Bridge Tube stop and we were lead around by a somewhat portly older British man by the name of Tommy. How perfect. Our tour lasted about 90 minutes around what used to be the low-class, dodgy area of the city which has now grown more fashionable (and decidedly less sketchy), especially with the arrival of the 2012 Olympic Stadium on the East End.

However, back in Victorian times, this was the area of London with the poor, the immigrants, and some overcrowded combination of the two. This area of town is especially a favorite of nineteenth century British revolutionary novels (Mary Barton by Elizabeth Haskell, among others), so it was really cool to be able to explore an entirely new area of London, especially one that has so much literary history. Book nerd, for the win!

The tour was definitely creepy in some parts–thanks Brian for protecting me from the serial killers—but all in all it would probably be scarier if the East End didn't now include a vast array of modern luxuries, i.e. Sushi restaurants. In our endeavors to hear about Jack the Ripper, though, we did meander through a few old, dark alleyways, witnessing the locations of 3 out of the 5 murders, including one in a historic Victorian square and another at the gated entrance to a marketplace. Talk about creepy.


For those less up to date on this historic murderer, Jack the Ripper killed a total of five prostitutes in Victorian times in a horrific manner, usually including organs splayed and throats cut. He even supposedly sent half a kidney of one of the victims to Scotland yard (you don't want to know what happened to the other half). No one know who committed the murders to this day, but our guide did offer us this conspiracy theory involving the royal family, the accession to the throne, and some anti-Catholicism. Who knows what's accurate, but Tommy sure believed that the government was hiding information that could have changed Elizabeth II's crown. Cue the intense music here.

Who knows if these theories have any merit. Nonetheless, having watched enough 48 Hours Mystery episodes at home (yes, I have a problem), I can't imagine the feeling of the East End-ers knowing they were living with a monster like Jack the Ripper in their neighborhood of Whitechapel.

Moving on to more cheery matters (or, not at all cheery matters if you've seen this play), the next day Bria and I had front row tickets to see my all time favorite play by my all time favorite playwright, Hedda Gabbler by Ibsen, at the Old Vic theatre. I must say it was pretty incredible to have front row center seats in one of London's most famous theaters: the Old Vic has served home to Ian McKellan, Maggie Smith, Laurence Olivier, and Judi Dench, and is now run by Kevin Spacey. Talk about legends.


Sheridan Smith was in the lead role—one called by many as the female Hamlet, it's that demanding—previously critically acclaimed in her role as Elle Woods in the West End's production of the musical Legally Blonde. As a trapped, frustrated Victorian wife, the two roles couldn't be more different.

I must say, Smith's performance was better than I could have imagined. Even though it was my first time seeing a live production of Hedda, every move and expression Sheridan made was perfectly in line with her complicated love-to-hate character.

The end was particularly moving. Most of the audience had never seen the play (look up a summary if you don't mind ruining the ending for yourself) and therefore were laughing at Professor Tesman's antics before the play came to a close. Even for someone like myself that knew what was coming, the ending was so much more real and shocking than reading lines out of a printed book could ever be. I may even have shed some tears at Hedda's most intense scenes, it was that good.


Seeing Hedda Gabler was definitely one of my favorite experiences thus far. What a moving, incredible production. I couldn't have been more lucky that my favorite play was on stage at one of the world's most famous theaters while I'm here in London. Ultimately, though, I must say after serial killers and horribly constrained women, I'm pretty happy to be living in the 21st century.

Catch-up

 So clearly I've run out of creative names for my blog posts... as I marathon-ed another paper on Sunday (this time on the post-war welfare state of Britain, just thrilling) and have been catching up on sleep ever since, I am still quite a bit behind on blogging my recent adventures.


Also my heart is breaking as tomorrow is my one month left mark. While it will certainly be nice to be home among friends and family, I've made my own family here for now. (Cue the awwwww's). But seriously, if you guys—Mel, Alex, Little Tom, Chef Tom,  Harriet, Jess—are reading this, I really don't know how I'm going to manage to leave. 

ANYWAYS. Enough pouting/sobbing on the inside/having a panic attack/not coming to grips with reality. There's a third of my trip left and plenty to discuss!

So last time on Rachel's horribly updated blog, my mother was in town (don't even ask me how long ago this was in reality). After a crazy busy weekend, we took it easy Monday by exploring Strand a bit and going to the Twinings store (for anyone who doesn't know, the quintessential British tea). Which is awesome. Just like a tea store you could visit in the eighteenth century—clearly using my imagination here—it's a basically a long hallway culminating in a tea counter that has all varieties of tea and accessories lining the walls. Still have to try Twinings coffee one of these days!

On Tuesday, my mom headed to Bath and I headed to class (odd, right?). On Wednesday we got the chance to do possibly one of the most proper British things yet: go to high tea! As my mother and I both tend to be chocolate people, we headed over to the Hilton off of Hyde Park and try out their "Confessions of a Chocoholic" high tea. We should have known from the title what we were getting in to.

The beginning of tea started out as usual, choosing our selection of tea (English breakfast for me, green for my mom), sandwiches, and scones. Words cannot describe the fabulousity. Obviously, our tea was fantastic. Next came our assortment of five sandwiches, which were served open faced and outrageously delicious for how small and seemingly simple they were. Then came possibly the best scones I've ever tasted, complete with homemade chocolate praline spread, strawberry jam, and clotted cream. Can this be every day?

Then the real fun began with the desert tray, filled with an insane assortment of everything you could imagine: chocolate cake, lemon/raspberry flavored lollies, key lime cake, cherry cheese cake, butterfly shaped cookies, and oh, oh so much more. Even the plate on the top of the tray was edible chocolate. Don't worry, I couldn't get any further than one bite after all of the deserts I consumed.

Look who I found? A KD!

That night, I had a planned trip with Arcadia to go to: The Comedy Store, one of the most famous comedy clubs in London (and the world...? could totally be making that up). The show was fantastic. For a couple of hours, five players participated in multiple improv games with suggestions from the audience Who's Line is it Anyways style. My favorite? Their rendition of a James Bond musical, complete with a ludicrous villain, Russian double agent/love interest Olga, clueless James Bond, and, fittingly, enough sexual inuendos for not only Bond's first life, but also his second (clearly, I'm not as fun as them.) Absolutely hilarious. These people are seriously talented.

Thursday between my Austen and Shakespeare classes, we headed to the Tower of London, anothe rmust-see that I had waited to experience with my mom. It was a bit unfortunate as I was running a bit of a fever, but I powered through (especially comforted by the fact that I wasn't actually going to get my head chopped off).

This was a great example of how cool it is to be studying in a city like London—especially British subjects. After learning about the Tudors in Early Modern Britain and having a weak moment of watching the HBO show over my fever-induced birthday last year (should have named this blog post fevers), it was pretty cool—and pretty eerie—to see the place Henry VIII sent many of his wives, the place Elizabeth I was held during the beginning of Mary's reign, the place Jane Grey was executed after a nine day reign. Also the place Richard III sent his nephews before he killed them, as I so happened to be reading in Shakespeare that week. HOW COOL IS THAT.

The Ravens kept here for centuries.

Sorry, I'm a nerd. But I must say it's just something you can't really do at home in the states: learn history dating back that far and just go out where you live and see where it ALL happened. That's kind of amazing. After a guided tour from our Yeomen (if you didn't see the Olympic time special like I clearly did, they have to have a certain amount of time served in the royal army just to get the job), I headed off to Shakespeare and to attempt to sleep off my fever at the hotel while my mom spent the afternoon at the Imperial War Museum.

And then Friday came, my Mom and I's last day in London together. After grabbing some pub food after my last class of the morning, we decided to head to Oxford street to have some mother/daughter bonding time shopping for the afternoon. For those who haven't experienced the beautiful life of shopping in Europe (minus the exchange rate), it's just something else. Instead of heading to huge suburban malls with all chain stores that sell roughly the same merchandise, Oxford Street in particular is filled with dozens of unique stores selling just amazing clothing. It's really a rough time here.

After purchasing a real pillow (remember how I said the one I sleep on is paper thin—THANKS MOM!) and a few articles of clothing, we got dinner at a nice Italian place in Leicester Square, we checked off our last to-do: the London Eye. As you can't exactly leave London without going on it, it made a fantastic last night for my mom to head up and see the city lit up at night on the Thames.

There are no words to explain how amazing this city is, and being up on the London Eye at night was definitely one of those moments you have to experience to realize that. As opposed to my first night in London on the Thames, it was a surreal experience to be the person living here; to see this city as my home instead of a destination.



Though I know I'll be back after this trip, if only to catch up with the amazing British friends I've met here so far, it's hard to think I'll be gone in a month. Though I certainly have a life to get back to living back home in the States, it's pretty clear I've managed to make one over here as well.