Today marks the midway point of my time in London, but I still have 27 more days of adventure! It looks like the month of July is going to be jam packed with trips, which is fine with me! I will be going to Edinburgh on July 9th, Dublin on July 13th, and possibly Barcelona on July 20th, depending on whether or not everyone can actually plan this trip. As you may or may not know, I have quite an extensive bucket list. I was able to cross something off of it this week, but more on that later. One of my to-do items is visit every major country in my heritage. With my upcoming trips to Scotland and Ireland, I will have completed this task, for the most part. After a conversation about my heritage with my mom tonight, I guess my family is polish as well. Melissa and I looked into a trip to Krakow, Poland, but with the political unrest in the country (and little desire to actually go to Poland) we decided it is too unsafe to travel there, as well as too expensive. But I'm still going to check it off my list, since I identify as German (which I visited in High School),Irish and Scottish.
As I touched on before, I was able to cross off something on my list with my trip to Paris. I planned on going to the Louvre the morning I left for London, but when I got there the line was too long, so I got a picture of the pyramid and walked around a bit. Good enough for me, since the one painting I really wanted to see, Starry Night, is in San Fransisco right now. Mission complete. The day before was simply wonderful. I was graciously able to stay with one of my sorority sisters, Lauren Bank in her hotel with her family. I got into Paris around 11pm, and then it took about an hour to get a taxi. Apparently, even if they are open, taxis are damn near impossible to hire. Alas, I somehow found my way to the hotel and crashed. We awoke bright and early the next day to see the Palace of Versailles and the Eiffel Tower. I was so pleased and grateful to be allowed to tag along with the Bank family, and had a great time spending the day with them. The palace was beautiful, as was the Eiffel Tower. We got to it around sunset, and it was stunning, so much bigger than I thought. Lauren's sister and brother climbed to the second landing, but the wimps (i.e. Lauren, Mr. Bank and his girlfriend, and I) waved at to them at the bottom as we waited for a lift to take us up. Since I was only in Paris for 40 hours, I was so pleased to go up there because from it's view I was able to see Notre Dame, the Arch de Triumph, and so much more that I did not have the time to see. I learned 2 phrases in french, "Je ne par le pas Frances" and "Parle vouz anglais?" translating to "I do not speak French" and "Do you speak English?" I did, however, practice my Spanish as one of my cabbies did not speak English, but did speak some Spanish. He was able to tell me that instead of taking me to my destination, the Louvre, he was going to be late for something and instead dropped me off in some random location and gave me walking directions. I guess he did not care that I a)spoke no French and b)had all of my luggage with me. None the less, I found my way there, and was able to walk around the city a bit, something I otherwise would not be able to do. Silver lining, eh?
Yesterday was spent in Oxford, England. Such a beautiful town, with awesome scholastic history. I've always said that Mizzou has the prettiest college campus, but I guess I was wrong, Oxford takes the gold. I bet we have a better basketball team, though :) Anyway, the trip was so fun, and we got to do a lot of sightseeing of Oxford, including a lot of Harry Potter sights, as evident by my "oh Bollocks" facebook album, which is now my favorite British saying, FYI.
This week was also great because I was finally able to talk to my parents. This is the longest I have gone in my whole life without talking to them, so I was thrilled to hear what's going on at home. I was pleased to learn that Jack got a new job, that dad got to see the Hawks parade, and that mom met VP Joe Biden. And who knows what Katie is up to, since she refuses to answer my calls, even though I told her to not ignore unknown numbers. Stop it, Stinky! On that note, if you do get an unknown number coming through, please answer because it might be me!
Stay tuned for more posts!
Cheers!
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