European Vagary

Alright so after Barcelona we went to Scotland. We flew from Girona to Glasgow and had to take a train from Glasgow to Edinburgh at around midnight Sunday night. It was reeeally cold in Scotland, especially at night. But it was super fun just to hear the Scottish accent that I love so much... even if I didn't know what people were saying part of the time. When we got to our hostel we checked in and saw our amazing rooms. Really, amazing (well, at least by hostel standards). We had huge down comforters with duvet covers and clean sheets and looong beds (I love long beds, for obvious reasons) and everything was in working order. The bathrooms weren't too crowded and even though we had paid for 2 beds in a 4 person room, the other 2 were empty the first night so we got our own room. After checking in, we decided to head out and try to find a pub. We ended up wandering around looking for Dropkick Murphy's (a pub that the guy at the front desk recommended) for a while and...

So, recently I went on my second and final 10 day break and I did a little jaunt around Europe with Ashley. The first place we went was Barcelona for 3 days. On our way out of Rome, it was pouring rain so we decided to take a taxi to the airport. It was a different airport than the one we usually fly out of, so we didn't know where we were going or what to expect. Looking back it was definitely a good thing that we took the taxi, otherwise we would have missed our plane. We were flying Ryanair which is a very well known carrier in Europe, known mostly for its cheap fares and very stringent baggage rules. Ashley and I walked into the airport with trepidation because we had already broken the rules (you're only allowed one carry on including your purse and it costs 20 euros for each checked bag... we had purses). However, we made it through check in quite easily and proceeded to security. There, the security guy made Ashley take her bike lock out of her bag and told her that she ...

Alright, I know I'm incorrigible. Let's move past that. So I went to Orvieto a few weeks ago as one of the day trips through the program that I paid for when I first arrived in Italy. It was beautiful and is known for this amazingly large church and also a bunch of underground tunnels, both of which we toured. Here's a picture of the outside of the church. This is a picture of me goofing around in the underground. And another... Um, I'm not entirely sure what to say about this graffiti except for, "why the question mark?" This is a picture of Allison (my Orvieto buddy) trying to take a picture of the front of the church with her super highspeed camera. After the underground tour, we explored for a few hours. I bought a pashmina scarf and Allison and I ran around looking at the town which was really small and quite clean for Italy. It was really beautiful. Then after our free time, we met up with the group to eat a lunch that came with the trip. The lu...

Let me preface this by saying that I have been shrugging off the complaints of others that I have not been blogging enough, by rationalizing that it's only been a week and blogging once a week really isn't that bad. My discoveries today have been twofold: 1) it has not been a week, but rather two weeks and so I have realized that my concept of time is severely and irreparably skewed 2) my dreams of becoming a professional blogger will most likely never come to fruition. On this note, we embark: We can start off with a couple of weeks ago when a bunch of us went out to a club called La Maison, lots of fun. Lina didn't want to have her picture taken. Times 2. Or else that's a gang sign. The weekend after the visit to La Maison I went on an excursion to Pompeii. Three and a half hour bus ride there, 5 hours spent running around and a four and a half hour bus ride back. Very draining. But I did come out with this cool picture of me standing in front of Mount Vesuvius. Here ...