I’m in a rut.  I’ve “wasted” (quotes cus I don’t think of any time as actually wasted) loads of time not writing the papers I should be.  And I have this weird complex where I can’t do anything else productive until I at least start the four final papers I have to bust out in the next two weeks. (Oyyy.)  Therefore, I haven’t been letting myself blog at all–Although I have TONS to update you all on.  Perhaps it’s the strongbow talking, but I’ve given myself this one exception and have decided to do one solid update.  

Over the past two weeks I have gained many a stamp on my passport.  Nov. 3-7th was reading week so no classes.  Hmm, what to do?  *twiddles thumbs*  How about Rome?  And Paris?  And Bath? and Stonehenge?  Sounds like a plan. end internal dialogue

On Nov. 1st I travelled to the town of Bath as well as the ancient ruins of Stonehenge.  

An old pile of rocks with mystical powers

the cuteness that is Bath

I arrived back home from that day trip around 9 p.m. only to wake up the next morning at 3:30 in order to catch a 4 o’clock bus to Victoria station where from there we would get on a 5 o’clock bus to take us to the airport.  (All for the love of cheap fares)  We arrived in Rome around noon that day, November 2nd, checked into our hostel, basked in the warm air, ate delicious pizza and brushetta, chilled outside the Colosseum and Trevi fountain, drank some wine on the street out of plastic mini cups and then had more delicious Italian food.  Day two we woke up to sunshine and decided to head to the Colosseum and the Palatino (ancient ruins).  Oh, this was a beautiful day.  Weather, people, FOOD, sights, all just glorious.  I will forever remember the spinach panini like thing I ate for lunch that day.

After all the outdoor goodness, we came back to our hostel and rested up for the night ahead…Spanish Steps Pub Crawl!  For 20 euros we got a t-shirt (best part) and unlimited wine or beer at the first place + 3 shots + a shot for every bar we went to that night which totaled 3 more.  Not a bad deal.  The Crawl was a really good time.  And getting home that night was even funner! /sarcasm.  Okay, so we left the last bar around 2 a.m. and didn’t get back to our hostel until 5.  The trip shouldn’t have taken us more than half an hour and yeah, it took 3.  Long story short, we got on the bus going the opposite direction even though it SAID it was going to Termini (where we needed to go).  So we rode that for like 40 minutes to the end of the stop in the opposite direction, waiting about a half an hour, confused and sitting on an empty bus, and then finally got off and hopped on another one that promised to take us where we needed to be.  From there we probably waited another hour until we got off the bus and had to walk in the rain from the train station to our hostel.  But D’oh! we couldn’t find our damn hostel which was literally only about 4 blocks away from the station.  And on top of all this mess, the boys ditched us.  Still not over that.  We settled in that night errr morning, got us much sleep as we could until they kicked us outta the hostel and then headed off for some museum-ing.  We decided on Villa Borghese where we saw some awesome Bernini statues and other cool paintings and whatnot.  It was a very impressive gallery.  We then wandered the city, entered a swanky area, exited said swanky area, and finally met up with some friends for dinner.  Oh Italian food, how I miss thee…

I woke up the next morning to Caity telling me Obama won.  It was kinda like Christmas…iiiif you woke up 3 hours late for it and were on the other side of the world.  I deeply missed being in Grant Park that night but I enjoyed hearing all the stories from people, especially my mom who called that morning and kept reiterating how a sort of “calm” and soothing feeling had fallen over the nation.  She seriously used the word calm like 5 times…I had her on speakerphone, my trip mates can back me up.  It was cute.  

So that day, day three, we visited the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel.  It was sitting in the Sistene that I heard about Prop 8.  Like everyone else at home, I kinda had that three hours of glee before I learned that although our nation had made great strides with electing Barack Obama, our first African American president, we still have a long long ways to go.  And we always will.  It just horribly saddened me to think that people thought they had the right–and on top of that, they had the WILL–to write hate and discrimination into their constitution.  I have faith, though, that as a nation, and with an Obama presidency, great strides are going to be made on all progressive fronts.  And hey, did you not love Wanda Sykes coming out loud and proud for the first time in public?  “I am proud to be a woman. I am proud to be a black woman.  And I am proud to be gay.  And I love you all, now let’s go get our damn equal rights!”

Hmm…I see that I am slowly going off topic.  Right, so back to day 3.  THE POPE! WE SAW THE POPE! We saw him ride around in his little popemobile!  And we took pictures with him on a screen in the background!

I would have much preferred to see Barack Obama though.  Le sigh.

That afternoon I had delicious food YET AGAIN and then went on a quest for the Pantheon.  On the way, however, we stopped in an artsy piazza where I bought a pretty water color painting from a real perv.  How about that for juxtaposition?  Caity and I bought 2 paintings for 30 euros from this guy and he was really nice and all but when I asked if he’d do 2 for 30, he said something to the effect of “you two?” with a smirk.  I’m dumb when it comes to these instances of fuckery, but Caity and I giggled it off until we came to the realization (yes,after we paid him) that he was making a pretty sexist joke.  

So after that we stumbled upon the Pantheon and then headed back to Trevi fountain for one last look.  We had dinner that night with two more friends from school that joined us all in Rome.  We attempted to go somewhere fancy cus it was our last night there. BAD IDEA.  We ended up at some place that obviously took themselves way too seriously.  It was silent in the restaurant with waiters constantly walking by to see if you needed anything.  And they were pretty rude on top of it.  Needless to say, we felt very out of place, but it’s a story to tell our kids, I guess.  Or well, you, my dear readers reader. 

Thursday morning the boys got scooters and scooted around the city while the girls went omgz shopping!  We got our last meal at some cute Italian eatery where a small chubby Italian man with a lovely smile served us.  It was, again, needless to say, deliciious food.  We then ordered our last scoops of Gelati (we were required to eat one a day) and headed towards the bus stop.  Rome was lovely and although I didn’t throw any coins into Trevi fountain (one for love, one for marriage, and one for coming back to Rome) I do home one day I can return.  Love would be nice too.  Marriage? Meh. We’ll see.

Okay, that was substantial enough, right?

Oh! One more random tidbit about Rome. It was real weird–we kept seeing random people we’d met or seen multiple times on the streets of Rome.  For instance, one of the bartenders at the first bar was on our bus home that same night, although it was like 8 hours later (because of our getting home debacle).  And then we saw one of Caity’s friends she made that night  the next day on the streets of Rome working at some fancy restaurant we passed by.  I did a double take, saw the guy, said hey, Caity ran off, I ran with her, and then we just left the poor guy standing there.  I waved goodbye at least. *shrugs*  And last but not least, while we were at the Vatican, I saw these two girls taking a picture of themselves kissing in front of the Pope which I thought was hilarious, so I took a picture and then the next day they were in line in front of us for the bus back to the airport.  Crazy.

So yeah, overall, huge thumbs up to Rome!

Since this is a really long post already, I’ll save thoughts on my Paris and Amsterdam trip for later.  In other news, I don’t think I’ve shared this yet:  I will be going to Dublin Dec. 9-10th and Malaga, Spain Dec. 15-18th.  I hope my bank account holds until then.  If not, capitalism has granted me with seemingly unlimited credit, so alls well….right?  Right.  Goodnight, people.