Until Next Time

I can not believe my time in London is already over.  It literally feels like yesterday we were getting ready to board the plane in Chicago and now we are back in the States.  Although it is nice to be home, I can't help but think that we should be back in London.  It is really strange being able to say that I did live in London, and it was absolutely amazing every day.  Due to it being out last days, we wanted to make the most out of it and now I will share with you how we spent them.

We had our final exams this week, and it was very difficult trying to study when you want to enjoy your last week abroad.  I kind of wish that we would have gotten a totally free week, but that's just how the cookie crumbles.  It was also weird having my last days interning at Sporadic Space.  To think I will never be going back there to work and wont be seeing my co-workers three times a week.  I have learned so much from them and am very thankful for the experience and knowledge that they gave me.

This week was a week of lasts.  It was our last classes at Birkbeck.  Our last days interning.  Our last time going to the market on Thursday mornings.  It was definitely a weird feeling thinking about that this is the last time we will walk through these streets or see the hustle and bustle of London.  But will it really be the last?  I sure hope not.

Wednesday night, we had a cookout with everyone from our travel group from Point.  It was nice talking about all of the memories we have made with each other and making plans to all hangout together again.  We also had discussions on what is the first thing we were going to do when back in the States, and most importantly what we were going to eat.  This was also a good time to relax and have brats!  Nothing compares to Wisconsin brats, but still good.

Thursday night a majority of our group went out to the ISH Bar for one last Karaoke night and it did not disappoint.  Everyone knew that we were all leaving very soon and it was a great celebration to us.  Although happy at times, it was also very sad.  We had to say goodbye to several people, because they were leaving the next day.  It was really sad when Taylor and I had to say goodbye to our roommate, Katy.  This really made me realize that we were actually leaving and going home.

The next day was our official last full day in London; so surreal.  Taylor and I started out the morning by going to her internship boss's home and delivering flowers.  We chatted and she made coffee for us, it was very nice.  We then went to go get lunch at a bakery that Taylor went to every time she worked and then sat in the park.  The weather was absolutely perfect.  After eating we made our way to Westfield Mall to get Snog, aka a well-known froyo shop over here.  Mine had strawberries, passion fruit, and Agave sauce; very delicious.

And then it was time to go to the Zoo, which is located in Regent's Park.  The zoo is one of my favorite things to do when home, and we were both very excited.  Everything was there, except for elephants, which was kind of a bummer.  But there were owls, which made up for it.  Compared to the zoo in Milwaukee, there were are a lot of places that you can walk in and be in contact with the animals.  Such as butterflies, birds, lemurs, and goats.  When we were in the lemur section, a lemur almost leaped on a little girl, funny but scary at the same time.  Although the Zoo was not as big as the Milwaukee one, it was very compact, and surprisingly there were not a ton of people there.  Overall, very fun.

After the zoo, the last thing on our agenda for the day was Crystal Palace Park.  One of the only reasons we wanted to go here, was because there are giant dinosaur statues in the park.  While on the tube, we passed the statues and it was really neat.  After getting off the tube and finally finding the dinosaurs, we stopped and took pictures.  I really wish we could have climbed on the statues or even gotten closer to them, but they were surrounded by water and a gate.

 

 

While researching about the dinosaurs, I also found out that there is a maze in the park.  And le me just tell you, the park in itself is a maze, it took us forever to actually find the true Maze.  We made our way through it in a surprisingly short time.  And then is off to go back home and get food, because we both had not eaten since that morning.

Our last night in London consisted of us all packing and worrying about the weight or our suitcases.  After everyone was done, a group of us hung out in our room and played cards.  Since a majority or us had to get up early and make our way to the airport, we all parted ways. 

And then the day came, it was time to go home.  We woke up, grabbed our stuff, and made our way to the bus.  Or course we had to go and get Pret for the last time.  Truly am going to miss their passion pop smoothies among a lot of other things in London.  Then it was time to board the bus and head to the airport.  We all got through security without a hitch and waited for our plane.  We flew out of London at 11am and landed in Chicago around 2pm (six hour time difference).  Then picked up our luggage, found our families, said our goodbyes, and headed home. 

Without a doubt, I can say that studying abroad was the best experience of my life.  I have been given so many great opportunities and experiences that I will remember for a lifetime.  I have met so many great people and I would not have chosen to do anything any differently.  After this trip, I have definitely gotten the travel bug.  I am already thinking about go back to Europe and am even thinking about trips inside the States.  It is true that choosing to travel is one of the best decisions you can make in your life and I am glad that I had this great opportunity so early in my life.

Although this part of my life may be over, that does not mean that I will stop traveling.  The main reason for this blog was to keep all of my friends and family up to date on what I was doing while studying in London.  I have decided that whenever and wherever I travel to next, I will keep up n this blog.  It is a good way to not only remember the experiences I have made, but to also share them with others.  Until next time, Cheers - Heather

Only a Fews Days Left

As I am coming into my last few days here in London, I can't believe that my time here is over.  Before posting my final blog post of my trip, I will share with you how I spent last week.

After returning from Italy, you could tell that we all were not ready to leave.  We all enjoyed our time there so much, that we were already talking about making plans to go back in the future.  At my internship last week, I helped one of my co-workers with drawing a section of a kitchen that they were designing in AutoCAD.  I feel like I need more practice creating sections, so I was more than glad to learn and help.  After I was done with that, I helped my other co-worker with drawing elevations of a master bedroom and walk-in closet.  I was tasked with designing the closet and thinking of different possibilities for shelves, drawers, and hanging rods.  Since I had holiday last week, I did not have my British Art and Architecture, but I did have Shakespeare.  For this week read A Midsummer Nights Dream and I am very familiar with this play.  I had to read it in eighth grade and I even had to memorize and act out a few scenes.  Let's just say I wasn't completely thrilled about reading it again.

For the weekend we had a lot of plans, because there were still a lot of things that we had not done yet that we really wanted to.  One of those things was the London Eye.  We wanted to leave this towards the end of our trip, because that is what was suggested to us and so we would actually be able to recognize buildings as areas of London that we had been in previously.  We decided to buy a day and night pass, because we would be allowed to go on the Eye twice by only paying about five pounds more.  So we went at 10:30am Friday morning and the weather actually cooperated.  Although a little hazy, we were able to see a great view of London.  After going on the Eye, Ashley, Minami, and I went with Taylor to help her recreate some old photographs that her Grandpa gave her before she left.  It was fun trying to decipher what was in the photographs and trying to line things up.  For one of the photographs we are sitting in front of Big Ben and the position looks almost identical to the photograph, it was really neat.

 

 

 Another thing that was on top of our list was going to Olympic Park.  Ever since I was little, I remembering watching the Olympics and before I left London I know I had to go and see where the 2012 summer games took place.  When first going to the park, we all looked at each other and said, "is this it?"  But upon further discovery, we found the rings and Ashley and I decided to go on an adventure.  We of course wanted to get our pictures of the rings and we made the long trek towards them.  After our pictures we decided to go and see what else was around.  We ended up going into the Velodrome where they have all of the cycling.  I never realized that the track was so curved.  We then went over to where they held the swimming competitions.  Following swimming is one of my favorite parts of the Olympics and is was really surreal seeing the exact spot where Michael Phelps one all of those Golds.

 After we all met up and ate dinner is was back to the Eye we went.  We were trying to decided if we wanted to either go at sunset or when it was completely dark and you could see all of the nights of the city.  We decided on sunset, because then we could get better pictures and we would be able to see everything clearer.  We chose the perfect time, because the sky had all different hues of purple and pink and it was absolutely beautiful.  While riding in the Eye I couldn't help but reflect on my time here in London and how it really has gone by so quickly.  After getting off of the Eye, it was nearly dark, and you could see it lit up in red.  I waited to get some really nice photographs of both the Eye and Big Ben lit up.

As for Saturday we took our last trip to Burroughs Market.  That is the market that we went to in our first coupe of weeks here and it has all different types of great food and samples!  I ended up buying paella for lunch.  I also bought organic watermelon and apple juice and a tiramisu cupcake, because I was still missing Italy very much haha.  To take home I bought a bottle of winter warmer spiced apple juice and some of the best pears I had ever tasted.  All in all it was a pretty relaxed day.

While in London you just have to go visit Abbey Road and take the iconic Beatles album cover.  So that is where we went on Sunday.  All the interior architecture majors, Taylor, Ashley, Minami, and I, all walked across the road and it was actually really fun.  We also got a lot of enjoyment out of watching all of the other tourists try to also get the photo.  I was joking with a person that it would really entertaining to just sit there all day and watch everyone.  After that, we went to Little Venice, because again I. Miss. Italy SO much.  Little Venice is nothing compared to the real thing, but it was still really pretty.  We went to a café that was located inside of a boat and it was really cute.  The food was also really good; I got a ham and cheese panini with a slice of apple walnut cake.  We then headed back home to start packing and studying for our exams this week.

 

I will hopefully be posting one last blog post about my last week in London very shorty.  Cheers -Heather

Italy is a Dream that Keeps Returning for the Rest of Your Life

All my life I have dreamt about going to Italy and I still can not believe that I have travelled there.  The views, the architecture, the food; and what made it even better was the people that I got to share this experience with; Taylor, Ashley, Bridget, Cody, and even Nelson ;).  Although I was sad to leave this wonderful country, I know that in the future I will return. But for now I have memories and experiences that I can look back on until.


So now after that, let me dive in and tell you about how my holiday in Italy unfolded.  On Tuesday (3/31) we all raced back from our internships to catch a tube to catch our flight that was flying out to Amsterdam at 8:25 pm.  We were all a bit panicky because we were cutting it close.  After finally making it to the airport and rushing through security, we found out that our flight was delayed.  So we popped a squat and waited, we ended up waiting for more than two hours.  What a great way to start our trip.  We all got on the plane and landed in Schiphol airport around midnight.  Our flight to Venice wasn't flying out until 9:10 am, so we had a lot of time to do a lot of nothing.  A few of us tried napping, but it didn't go over to well.  I tried laying out on a bench in McDonalds, and I must of dozed of a little, because when  I woke some kid was staring at me...really weird.  We were then finally off to Italy.  Even though we were all utterly exhausted from not sleeping, we could not have been any more excited and anxious.  We landed in Venice, grabbed our travel day pass, and were off.

 

 

The view walking out of the Venice Santa Lucia train station was amazing.  Right in front of us was beautiful buildings, water, warm weather, and the sun was shining.  We stopped and took a few pictures, but the main thing on our mind was to find a place to eat.  We stumbled upon this little bar/café called Bacaro Jazz.  We were all very excited to try traditional Italian food and it definitely lived up to the hype.   I ordered lasagna.  We were than off to find were our free tour was.  We met up in Campo San Geremia and then were on our way to explore the city of Venice.  Our tour guide took us on my paths that tourists don't know about it and don't get to see.  We even got to visit the famous book store that has books in boats and a staircase made of books.  There were also cats, cats everywhere!  On this tour we also got our first taste of Italian gelato and that started our obsession for the rest of the week.  I swear we ate gelato everyday and sometimes twice a day, it was so delicious! 

 

 

Since we stored our luggage at the train station, we made our way back because we had to catch a midnight train to Rome that night.  After getting our luggage back, we found a cute little mom and pop Italian restaurant.  Since we had about four hours until our train we sat and relaxed.  I ordered spaghetti and it was of course very good.  We then went back to the train station and well lets just say we had a little bit of a problem with the train, but it all worked out in the end.  We got to Rome at about 7am and hung out in the station.

Now it was time to get to our hostel called the Prince Inn.  We dropped off our luggage and were off to our next free walking tour.  I really enjoyed this tour, because our guide took us to all of the main attractions and gave us some really interesting information about the history of the city.  The neatest thing we got to see were all of the ruins of the city.  It is amazing to think of all of the history that has happened here.  The tour ended with us seeing the Colosseum and that was absolutely amazing to see, because we have been studying this structure in school and Ashley and I even made a model of it Freshman year.  After our tour we were all starving and decided to wonder around and find some place to eat.  I got a tomato, mushroom, and prosciutto pizza and it was the best pizza I had while in Italy, or shall I say ever?.  For dessert I decided to get tiramisu and it was more a pudding consistency, but still good.  We then got back to the hostel to wait for Taylor's cousin, Cody, and his friend Nelson to get into the train station.  After we met up with them, we went and wondered around Rome to find food for them; boy was that a challenge.  After they finally decided on a place, we sat down, they ordered, ate, and then we called it a night and went back to the hostel.

The next day we decided to go venture to the Vatican.  We didn't go in anywhere, because there were so many people, but we did get to see it.  We then made a plan for the day and made our way to the Pantheon.  On the way to the Pantheon, we encountered some more ruins and without knowing it stumbled upon the Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary which was literally in the ruins.  There were cats everywhere, it was kind of weird.  After that minor distraction, we were on our way again.  Seeing the Pantheon was pretty surreal, seeing as though this is also another structure we studied immensely.  Because we had been walking everywhere we were all starving, so we went to a restaurant where I again ordered lasagna and again it did not disappoint.  Our final destination was to go and watch the sunset on the Spanish Steps. There are a total of 135 steps and it was an great accomplishment climbing them I would say.  The view was absolutely breathtaking and it was a good end to our time in Rome.

The next morning we were off to Lucca, which is most commonly known as the walled city.  We left at about 5am to catch our train.  This day was the only day where the weather did not cooperate with us; it was very rainy.  That was alright though, because we just hung out and relaxed.  The city was very cute and quiet.  It was nice getting away from all of the commotion of London.  The place we stayed at was a little apartment that we got the opportunity of staying in due to connections Taylor's family had.  For lunch I got more pizza and for dinner I got more pasta with tiramisu of course!  We then went back to our apartment and had a scary movie night.  It was really nice just hanging out with each other.

For our last full day in Italy, we took a spontaneous trip to Pisa.  Lucca is only a 20 minute train ride from Pisa so we thought, why not?  When getting there, it was funny seeing all of the people taking their cliché photos with the Leaning Tower of Pisa and of course we had to take part in this fun.  The train rides there in back were really fun too.  All in all it was a good time.  This day was also Easter Sunday, and we were not sure if the city would be open, so we bought groceries the day before.   So for dinner the boys made us a pasta dinner and it was actually pretty good.  To end the night we went up to the terrace, ate cannolis and looked at the stars. It was really a great way to end our last night, especially when we scared Ashley close to death.  We had Nelson hide in the wardrobe in her room and when he jumped out we all though that she was going to have a heartache!  It was hilarious.  We all had to get up pretty early to catch our train back to Venice, I think we got a total of maybe three hours.  You can sleep when you're dead I guess they say.

 

 

 Monday was our last day in Italy and I could not believe how fast the week went.  We got to Venice and ate lunch at a nice restaurant.  I thought no better way to end a trip in Italy then to get pizza, and that I did.  I got a Hawaiian pizza, my favorite.  After eating, we made our way to a donut shop that Nelson and Cody said we had to go to.  After literally running through Venice, we finally made it.  We then had to Run back to the train station, because we had a plane to catch at 4pm.  Out of luck we made it back.  After getting to the airport, we all said our good byes and then we were off back to London.  After having a three hour layover in Rome, we got back home at about 1am.

I have to say that this week in Italy was probably one of the best weeks I have had and it was definitely needed.  I will definitely make it my mission to come back to Italy sometime in the future.  The memories that I have made I will have for a lifetime and it honestly felt like a second home.  One of the main reason that I wanted to visit Italy is because of my heritage.  Some times throughout the weekend, I would just take a step back, and I could not stop thinking about my grandparents and how I wished that they could have spent this time with me.  I am glad, however that I had such great friends to share this experience with.  All of the laughs and joking around really lifted my spirits and made this time so great. 

Well that was my time in Italy.  As of right now I come home in about nine days, so I hope you all are ready ;).  Until then stay safe and I love you all! Cheers -Heather