Waking up under a warm duvet cover on my own accord (not because of an alarm) in pure darkness actually happened on the morning of Sunday October 17th … It was finally not just a daydream. I checked my iphone time – 9:45 AM – and opened the curtains to the bustling Euston Street in the northern half of the city London. Forty-five minutes later I saw a familiar face walk into the lobby of my hotel and was thrilled – Erica, my close friend from Cornell!! She came to spend the day with me in London from the U of Birmingham (just an hour and a half train ride North), where she is abroad interning and taking classes.
My first starbucks coffee since September 4th – that grande pike blend with soymilk, was like a healing elixir to the ulcers I am developing from the strong Italian espresso. Erica and I ventured out to the nearby King’s Cross Station and took the tube (I was a newbie to this), which landed right below the legendary Harrods – Heaven. Sorry, I have to succumb to my inner fashionista for a sentence, to give you a visual of my chosen outer apparel. Margaret’s old Burberry trench, a pseudo-denim Louis Vuitton scarf (thank you Cookie), and Via Spiga riding boots - Vogue would probably have even given me two thumbs up. We walked through the labyrinth-like gourmet food booths and treat isles on the first floor and made our way up to the designers. Delightful. Made me feel like I was on a typical marathon Newbury/Saks day out in Boston with the two loves of my life – my mom and Clara – with a sushi lunch snuck in between. Erica and I walked the area around Harrods called Knightsbridge, then headed to view Buckingham Palace and the Parliament houses where we took Blair and Serena style photos on the fountain in front of the palace. After frolicking around London all day, we devoured some take out (drumrollllll here it is ahhh) sushi and wine, and then I proceeded to watch crappy TV for the night and fell asleep early. This was my first day doing something non-academic and leisurely since the beach at Santa Mirinella back in the second week of September. As my dad likes to say, this day was a recharging of the battery.
The next morning I met Alex and Sierra (her close friend who is abroad in London) after another Starbucks healing session at the British Museum, where we scrutinized the Elgin marbles for some time and walked through the collection. Alex and I not only impressed Sierra with our knowledge about everything – but also ourselves. The collection featured Etruscan tombs, terracottas, red figure pots from Southern Italy, temple metopes, mosaics and more – and I knew so much about them. It felt great. We had a lovely lunch at le pain quotidien – a chain that has arrived in NYC recently, and I had a goat cheese salad with roasted veggies and Alex and I split an order of hummus. That evening at 5 PM I boarded the train bound for Birmingham to spend the night and next day with Erica to experience life like a British college student (thanks dad for helping me out when I forgot the sheet with her address on it). She made dinner for me and it was a special treat – warm baguette, smoked salmon, cream cheese, and cucumbers. How English. She arranged a party at her flat for me so I could meet her new friends – they were great and so entertaining – and especially to my treat some others abroad at U Birmingham from Cornell showed up as well. It was a great mini-trip, we went to a club that night and then had a nice breakfast/ talk session before I headed back on the train to London. Later in the week I would be meeting her in another country for a weekend excursion, so it wasn’t a final goodbye.
For the next two days I spent some time on my own and with Alex exploring London. We hit the National Gallery, and then on our last morning in town, Westminster Abbey. The National Gallery certainly lived up to its reputation. The curatorial work/organization is genius (although I was slightly irked that they displayed da Vinci works in a room with the Milenese artists and not Florentines – small details), and the museum was incredibly comfortable especially compared to some of the bootleg archaeological museums in random places in Italy. Sigh… one day I would like to work in a place like the National Gallery … pieces and artifacts, the fruits of their masters, deserve such treatment. Westminster Abbey was really interesting as well. This is no ordinary church. It definitely has the prerequisites for what makes a church cool – innovative baroque architecture, a menacing façade, an ornate high altar painting, large side isles with chapels and several successive rooms marked off by barrel vaults basilica style in the central knave. Within this building there are also hundreds of memorials to figures from British culture from many historical time periods. The abbey features niches that contain gigantic tombs of the early 14th century kings, ornate sarcophagi for each member of the Tudor Family including Elizabeth I, a poet’s corner with tombs and plaques for the masters (Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Shelley and Keats, etc.), statues for Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin, and a chapel and several monuments for the British soldiers of wars from all of the centuries (culminating with World War II). Coming here was yet another indication of how much I have learned at ICCS – I could see how nearly every structure within Westminster has a Roman origination and name it precisely.
- the long effigies on tombs explaining the life of the deceased – these were also featured on and read during Roman funeral processions
- the fact that the effegies were in Latin (this could be due to Christianity as well because it embraced the Latin Language)
- ornate sarcophagi with highly detailed reliefs and figures on top in some cases
- the cloister outdoors where the monks would hang around – an atrium/peristyle possibly
- the basilica floor plan
We had a brief fiasco getting to the Gatwick Airport – the driver we hired to take us did not show up on time, so we had to boot it to the express train (it would have been around the same price since there were three of us) but we got there with plenty of time and as our pilot said, “took a quick trip over the north sea.” This fleuct (flight) was rather bumpy but not too bad, and we made it to the low country and I easily found Erica in the airport. Erica and I took our time storing my bag and figuring out the train situation for getting into the city. It ended up being very simple, we took an express train to the central station and then caught a tram line to our hotel. I was rather disoriented because the Dutch language is so far from anything I have ever heard or studied. It took us some time to find the hostel, but we eventually did. We made the gorgeous guy at the desk, who I learned is named Lloyd, show us our room before we paid. I have never stayed in a hostel before, and this was the first time I picked out a hotel/hostel in a foreign country, so I was a bit nervous that I had failed. I had looked online a few weeks before and tried to figure out Amsterdam and the best region to stay in, and this hostel fell in the perfect location – near all the Museums, a safer area of nightlife in the city, and some nice stores. Thankfully, it ended up working out well – we had a two bedroom private room with two lockable lockers, a strong outside lock, at a quiet location in the building, and our own bathroom. Not to mention the beds were nice. Some of the folks staying there were slightly sketchy and not our scene (they hung out together in a communal room downstairs, weird) – I guess there’s a large traveling culture and hostels are a way to meet other people from places across the globe –
but there were a lot of regular people at the hotel too, even kids and families.
Erica did a great job of keeping me on my toes this trip – she knew how to be safe (Amsterdam and most major cities are places where you have to be on your guard). She taught me many tricks. When we were trying to figure out where to go after getting off the tram at 10:30 PM, she pulled me into a Burger King and told me to be careful about talking out loud outdoors about where we were going, reading a map in public, or asking anyone questions because we could be followed (there were a lot of foreign men out on the move near where we were). The road to our hotel was slightly long and the tram didn’t go on our road, so we got a little concerned about location, but in the end decided it would be an ok place to stay. When we were out and two men offered to buy us drinks, Erica also made me realize that it was 100% necessary to watch the entire process like a hawk (the making of the drink, the paying, and the handing over) to make sure nothing was getting slipped in. She has been a wonderful person to travel with, and it feels so nice to share this experience with someone who I know well.
We had fun the first night as we checked out the nearby nightlife and hung out with some locals. The next morning we went to the Van Gogh Museum which was wonderful – it took me some time to recall what I had learned in Professor Bernstock’s Intro to Modern class freshman year – but then it came back to me. Also to my treat the museum contained a couple Monet’s and Rembrandt’s. We ate a falafel lunch at a place where the woman was cutting the vegetables for her salad bar, frying the falafel, and refilling the condiment bottles of tahini spicy (DEADLY) green pepper in front of us. She let me have seconds on vegetables because she saw me spoil my first scoop with the poisonous topping. Afterwards we did the Heineken Experience (this didn’t make me like beer), which was neat, and then relaxed and went out at night again. After a big pancake brunch (mine was banana with cinnamon ice cream and strawberry sauce), we went to the Anne Frank House. I can’t believe that eight people lived there for three years and barely went outdoors or saw sunlight. The memorial is nice, not too eclectic, but obviously a sobering experience. My third grade autobiography project was on Anne (I read an abridged version of her diary). Her story is how I first learned about the Holocaust. I remember thinking to myself when I was a little girl that one day I wanted to go see where she hid from the Nazis. I also remember my mom telling me she did when on business in Amsterdam when I was in middle school. So there it is – I accomplished one of my hundreds of long-term aspirations.
Tomorrow I am returning to Roma for the next three weeks. It is going to be a lot of work. Before we go on our next week-long Fabio bus excursion I have two oral presentations to prepare (I am already half way done with one), an art history midterm (already made my study guide), and another Greek take home. BUT I am so excited to start learning about the empire!! Goodbyeee Republic, its been a great time. The first week back is dedicated to me and only me – Emperor Augustus. So stay tuned for more, and I promise I will continue to wow you with my studies and adventures in the second half of my time overseas in the Italian lands.
Love and Kisses
Isabella.
No comments:
Post a Comment