Windsor Castle, Bath, and Stonehenge

What is the meaning of Stonehengeeee? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbyzgeee2mg)

A few weeks ago I went on a day trip with a bunch of Wellesley people to Windsor, Bath, and Stonehenge. Goodness am I behind on this blog, but I'm really determined to get caught up now. I really have no excuses.

We started off our day in Windsor to see Windsor Castle. I know the whole blogging thing is about putting pictures in here but the whole day was cold, wet, and rainy, so my pictures are generally not flattering or interesting. I'll share the ones that were successful though so you can see a little bit. Windsor was not the most interesting of places to be honest. It was hard to hear the tour guide but the general gist that we got was that the Queen comes to Windsor when she's not in Buckingham Palace. It was pretty big, but with the rain we just kind of walked around it until we got to an area where we could eat breakfast. The tour guide had us feed the swans at one point, which I should have known was a bad idea from the start. He told us to put the foods in our hands and put our hands down by the swans. Swans are mean and evil creatures to be certain. They nipped at our hands and their sharp little beaks scraped at our skin. I thought, "Hmmmm, I'll feed the swans to get over my fear/hatred of large water fowl!" Lies. Why I ever thought that would be a good way to stop hating swans and geese is beyond me. ANYWAY. We just wanted to get out of the rain and have some food so we got breakfast at a small little place (It doesn't seem to really fit into the category of bar, pub, restaurant, or cafe, so I'm not really sure what to call it...) after being seduced into purchasing some fudge by some bard-like fudge merchant. The fudge wasn't particularly great, but we talked to the people too long to make it awkward if we didn't buy anything.

We went to Bath next and the weather seemed to lighten up. Bath is one of my favorite places in England so far. We toured the Roman Baths which were really interesting.

View from one of the balconies

Inside the baths we had an audio guide which told me a bunch of fun facts. When we got outside into the part pictured above they had some guys dressed up in togas to "inform" people of things about the baths. I was asked by the toga'd man if I would like to go into the bath, so I said, "Sure, if it ever stops raining." He then asked if I'd wear a toga or go toga-less. Reminded of the japing at the Renaissance Festival, which I always enjoyed, I said I'd like to go toga-less to provoke the smart ass historical remarks. I'm not sure how many people this guy actually gets to go along with his jokes so he just awkwardly said, "Alright, I'll see you in there later then" and kind of scampered away. Oh how I miss the Renaissance Festival. 

At the end of the tour you have the opportunity to drink the spa water, which is supposed to be extremely healthy for you and full of minerals. I drank it and it tasted like what I imagine the water that you boil eggs in tastes like. It wasn't the best flavor but it wasn't terrible. Just in case you really wanted to know.

After we finished with the Roman Baths, we wanted to go over to Jane Austen's house but we didn't have a lot of time left. =[ I guess that's a journey for another trip. In the little time we had left, I found a new bag (finally!) from a vendor just outside of the baths. Usually I wouldn't buy a bag made of leather, but I finally found a bag that I really liked that was unique, functional, and affordable. The bag was handmade in Greece as an old-fashioned satchel and it uses old-fashioned buckles. It makes it kind of a pain to get things in and out of it, but it is definitely secure and it looks nice. The security I get from the way it closes makes up for any struggles I have to open and close it. Plus I'm getting better at that with practice. I also got my very first Cornish pastry! It was super delicious with onions, mushrooms, potatoes, and cheese (if I remember correctly):

Mmmmm...pastries.

After that we waited for the bus to come and take us to Stonehenge! By the time we got to Stonehenge, the rain had picked back up and it was actually really cold. As cool as Stonehenge was, we made our way around pretty quickly so we could get back on the bus and dry out. We got pretty soaked over the course of the day.

Not the most flattering photo, but here we are! Soaked and freezing at Stonehenge.

Unfortunately, I did not discover the meaning of Stonehenge. I wish I did and I'll let you know if I have an epiphany, but in the mean time we'll all have to live with not knowing. Honestly, I really appreciate not knowing what Stonehenge was for, if anything. That was probably the best thought I had about it while I was there. It's kind of a great feeling to know that there are still things out there that we can't just Google and find the answer to. People will always debate and contemplate the meaning of Stonehenge with no concrete answers. I think that's just a really nice thing. Nobody is right or wrong, you can just use your imagination and come up with what seems reasonable to you. 

We made it back to London and Queen Mary fairly uneventfully. It was a great day trip and totally worth it. The tour guide wasn't the best, but it was still fun and informative. You'll be happy to know that since this trip I've bought waterproof shoes and a warmer jacket to survive the London weather. I've also come to terms with the fact that I will never be so lucky as to see good weather when I go places in London. 

Tomorrow I'll try to write a blog post on my trip to Liverpool (Oh Boy!) and then I'll hopefully catch everyone up on events from then until now. Things have been fairly eventful so I should have some good pictures to show for those things!

Woah, a month in London!?

I can't believe I've been here a month! Sorry I'm so behind on my blog everyone! I've been a mixture of very busy and very procrastinate-y so my blog has been a little lackluster. Since I'm very off on my sleep schedule, I think now would be a good time to fix that.

Where did I leave off....

Well I arrived in London on September 14th. Things did not go as planned, but I survived! My flight was delayed and I didn't get in until late that night. My bedding didn't get shipped so I didn't have anything to properly sleep on, it was kind of a mess. Fortunately I got things mostly sorted out on Sunday in preparation for the first week.

This is part of the canal that's right outside my dorm. I'll put in more pictures of inside my dorm room and all that once I clean up a bit. 

My first week here I didn't do too much besides try to adjust and get everything settled in. I needed to do a lot of shopping around for supplies, checking into academic things, getting food. Campus was pretty rowdy as most of the first-years had never been away from home before and they thoroughly enjoyed their "Freshers' Week". I mostly just tried to sleep... I'd never felt like such an introvert/old cat lady until I was surrounded by the freshers. Finally once some other Wellesley students and I got ourselves settled in, we started to be a bit more adventurous.

I'm going to apologize ahead of time for the lack of pictures. It is almost always raining here, as you probably know. When it rains, taking pictures can be pretty useless and miserable. You end up wet, your camera ends up wet, and all the pictures are dark and gloomy. I'd much rather just look and listen if it's raining out than try to take pictures that I know won't come out well, so a great many things that I'm done don't have photos that go with them. I might find some from the web, or just let you use your imagination.

During the first week, the college offered us a bus tour for a really decent price so I went on that. It rained. No photos! =[

Olivia, Sabrina and I (all Wellesley students) went to the mall to pick up some things. It was our first time taking a double decker bus, which was exciting for like 30 seconds. I'm pretty sure it's only really exciting when you get front row seats on the top which has only happened once so far, but we're pretty good at taking the bus now! Not having a phone in one of the biggest malls ever was terrifying. We almost had some incidents where I felt like I was 5 years old because I was lost and my cup broke... (long story, but good news, they replaced my cup!), but once again I survived and we all made it back to campus together.

The first weekend we decided to go do the tour of Buckingham Palace before it stopped being available. The tours only go on during the weekends in the summer when the queen isn't living there so we had to be quick.

Outside Buckingham Palace with the very elaborate gates.

We couldn't get very close to the guards but my camera has pretty good zoom. 

While inside the palace, we weren't allowed to take photos, so I don't have any pictures but it was a pretty interesting experience. We had an audio guide so we got to hear what was relevant about all the fancy things inside. I'd say it probably wasn't worth what we paid for it unless you're very very interested in seeing elaborate decor and vases worth more than your house. It did help me learn a little about the role of the royal family in the UK so that was helpful. 

Before heading into the palace, I had my first fish and chips lunch! 

This isn't the best fish and chips I've had but it was decent.

On our way back, I spotted a photo opportunity I couldn't pass up.

Don't worry, I didn't get caught. 

Olivia and I went on a trip to Harrods, the ridiculously huge and expensive department store. We wandered around in there for a few hours. There's not too much to take pictures of in a giant department store but we found a few things!

GIANT TEDDY BEAR!

Apparently, it's already Christmas season at Harrods... in September. It was nice to pretend it was Christmas for a little while though.

We were planning on heading back to Queen Mary after our adventures in Harrods... We were both pretty tired. Since we were so tired, we figured we should just get dinner and not cook. Great logic! So we headed to Chinatown for dinner. It was actually a pretty neat area. The food was nice and it was dark by the time we got out of the restaurant. While looking for a tube station, we got our second wind. We realized we were very near to Trafalgar Square so we walked through at night. My camera isn't the best at taking night photos but here's my best attempt!

The National Gallery

A glowing fountain... It's so hard to photograph fountains...

I looked up and realized I could see Big Ben. That definitely gave me the energy to start walking towards it. It was so beautiful, I couldn't resist!

This photo seemed to turn out alright! 

This photo isn't so great, but it gives you an idea of the view from the bridge we were on. 

After taking a million photos (for ourselves and for other tourists who wanted someone to take their photo together), we walked up to the London Eye and continued on along the water until we got to another bridge, which we crossed to catch the tube. It was a beautiful night, the weather was really nice, and we got to see a lot of London this way. 

After this, our adventures in London have slowed down a bit. We don't have a lot of work for class, but I've kept myself busy with making travel plans and learning on my own. I've spent a LOT of time working on my resume, which never seems to get better. Oh well, it's a work in progress! The classes here aren't as good as the ones at Wellesley, but I really like my Interaction Design course and I've met some really sweet people in it so far.

A Wellesley alum hosted an event for the Wellesley UK Club at her house in Westminster. All the current students that came were blown away to say the least. It was a beautiful home and a nice event. We're looking forward to a few more events with the Wellesley UK Club in November, so that should definitely be fun.

I have a few more adventures I'll post about when I get a bit more time. It's probably better to keep these posts somewhat short, although this one is a bit long. Please feel free to post questions or comments on here or on Facebook! Let me know if there's anything you want to hear more about or if you have suggestions of things for me to do! We're starting to realize how short our time here is and I need to start making the most of it. I've accepted the fact that I probably won't get to finish a fraction of the things that I wanted to do while I am here, but I'm still going to try to do as much as possible! I will hopefully post again before the end of the week with the rest of the things I've done over the last month. 

Thanks for reading everyone! 

PS. I've finally booked my flight back to the US! I'll be arriving in Boston on the evening of January 1st. 

Florence! (And updates from London)

Hi All!

So it's been a crazy couple of weeks trying to get moved into my dorm room in London. I've officially been here a week and I can't say it's been the easiest week, but I've made it and classes start on Monday. I promised pictures and stories from Florence, so better late than never!

Two weeks ago I took the new fast rail to Florence on a two day solo backpacking adventure! I left pretty early in the morning so I could arrive before lunch. A woman in the station realized I was American and had her adorable little girl (maybe 5 or 6 years old) come up to me and tell me her name and her favorite color in English since she was trying to teach her. Super cute!

When I got off the train I wasn't really sure where to begin, so I started by trying to find my hostel to check in, just to make sure everything was set for the night. The hostel, David Inn, was pretty nice, considering it was a hostel. The location was decent as well, just north of all of the main attractions.

This is the view from my room. You can see the Duomo and the top of Santa Maria del Fiore (which I'll talk about later).

I was super hungry by the time I left the hostel, so I decided to just find somewhere close, quick, and cheap. I ended up picking something that was neither quick, nor cheap, but it was delicious. So it is pretty awkward going into restaurants (especially nice ones) by yourself, but I'm an awkward person so I guess I'm used to the feeling. 

Here's the pizza I ordered. Cherry tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, and basil. Delicious. I did eat almost the entire thing... the only thing I didn't eat was half of the crust. It was a pretty big pizza too, but delicious.

My plan for Monday was to take one of the two free tours that this random website advertised here. Although it may not seem like it, this website is legit. I've found equivalent websites for other European cities as well. Basically you just show up to the location listed on the site and meet up with all of the other people awkwardly looking around and wondering if they've foolishly been tricked into meeting up for some fantastical tour or not. It's great if you're on a budget (which I am) and you just tip your tour guides at the end. The tour wasn't bad at all. It's a really great way to just get acquainted with what's important to see and a little history of what's around you. I'll definitely be using tours like these again in the future. It's also a good way to meet other English speaking travelers. 

On my way to the start of the tour, I went past the Santa Maria del Fiore. I'm going to be very honest right here, when I first saw this church, I actually said "....holy shit..." aloud. This is the type of building that I can post pictures of but until you're standing right in front of it, you can't understand the full experience. I guarantee that my photos do not do this building justice... It's so huge that you probably can't take a picture of all of it from the ground. I'll show you my attempts at capturing the size and detail of this building.

This building is MASSIVE.

You can't tell from my photos but every square inch of this building is detailed. 

I'm not going to say much more about it because what can I really say? It's amazing. The history of the building doesn't seem very important because it's just so hard to imagine this being created by people. The amount of people waiting outside in line was also pretty ridiculous. I moved on to catch my tour from Santa Maria Novella. The tour was all about the Medici family and the history of their political prominence in Florence. It was a pretty interesting tour and it definitely helped me to understand the way that Italians felt about the Medici family some more. I'd always seen Medici related things around, like tributes and buildings everywhere, but I'd never known whether the were liked or disliked as powerful figures and what exactly they did. The tour answered a lot of these questions for me. 

Starting point on the tour, Santa Maria Novella.

Doors to the Florence Baptistry, appropriately dubbed "Gates of Paradise" by Michelangelo. These are replicas because the originals are kept safe in a museum. Apparently these doors took 21 years to finish. 

 One of the Medici plus the Uffizi Castle (There's probably a better name that I can't think of).

The Florentines have all sorts of crazy inside jokes and strange stories. Urban legend says that Michelangelo carved this face of the man who criticized the size of David's nose into the wall of the castle. The portrait was such a likeness that the man couldn't complain about Michelangelo's artist judgment and left him alone.

It was difficult to take an impressive photo of Ponte Vecchio but here's my best shot.

The tour ended after crossing Ponte Vecchio and I knew where I wanted to go after that. Last semester I took a class on the history of the book and one place that always showed up in my research was the Biblioteca Nationale. It contains some of the coolest and oldest manuscripts and it's supposed to be very beautiful. The one thing I wanted to see more than anything else was the inside of this library so I walked over.

Such a huge library!

Unfortunately this is all I would be seeing of the library, as it's closed to tourists and anybody who doesn't have a special pass. Although understandable, this was pretty devastating. One day I WILL get to see the inside of this beautiful library. I just need to get that pass...

I decided to console myself with some gelato so I went off on a quest to find some. On my way back I stopped to take a few photos of a pretty sexy man. 

Dat ass.

The most famous naked guy in all the land (or at least a replica of him), David. 

I didn't go into any of the super famous art museums, as I'm poor and I only had two days in Florence, but I think I got to see some pretty cool stuff. I got my gelato which made me feel better about my library failure, and went to look at some other books in a book tent that was open in Piazza della Repubblica. I found my new favorite book. 

When I have kids, this will be their bedtime story. And they will never misbehave again. I read this book.. it's only like 11 pages long. But they will be terrified of not listening to mom and dad. It's also a super adorable book... It may be going on my Christmas list this year. It's not religiously biased or anything, it's just like a cute way to introduce children to the Inferno but I laughed so much while reading this.  SO good. 

After all of this walking around with my backpack on, I think I had to call it a day. I was pretty exhausted so I started wandering back to the hostel. After chilling out for a few minutes and regrouping, I headed back out to find what was again supposed to be a quick and cheap dinner. Once again, it was not.

I got risotto with mushrooms. This was actually not that great... probably the first time I've been disappointed with a meal in Italy.

This is also when I discovered two things: 1) that I draw older American couples to me. 2) Almost all of the shirts I brought to Europe are Wellesley related. I counted and 6/10 shirts are from Wellesley. 

A nice couple from California chatted to me in the restaurant about their travels around Italy which was really nice, and they asked me about Wellesley. It was nice to see some friendly faces and on their way out of the restaurant they called me Madame President and told me they'd see me on the news in a few years. Does everyone at Wellesley get this response from people, or just me? I'm a computer scientist for goodness sake! 

But I went back to the hostel after eating and the person working the desk had changed shifts. The only place to get Wifi was in the main lobby so I sat down to check email and such. I ended up talking to the guy who worked there, Stefano, for like 3 hours. It was fascinating and a great conversation. He'd traveled a lot so his English was really good and he had a lot of interesting perspectives. He told me how things are different in Florence from other regions in Italy and how it was different from the US. He had a lot of insight on fun things to do and see (which I definitely took advantage of). We talked about how technology has changed things and the role it plays in our lives. It was a really nice part of the trip I think. After a while, I called it a night.

I shared my hostel room with 2 Australian guys and a Brazilian(? I can't remember but I'm pretty sure this is right) girl. It was no problem, everything went well and everyone kept to themselves. I wish I could have taken a picture from my bed (didn't want to seem creepy), but the view from where I was laying was perfect. The Duomo was all lit up and gorgeous in the night. 

I woke up early the next morning and decided to get a head start on all the other tourists to go inside of Santa Maria del Fiore, so I got there at around 9. It was probably unnecessary to get there that early but I was in the front of the line and I could sit on the stairs and just look around which was nice. While I was waiting, two older couples from Wisconsin happened to join me. The two husbands sat next to me while their wives explored and did some shopping. We talked about traveling and the economy and all sorts of random stuff. We were joined by an Australian couple later on and talked more about these things with them. It's strange how the one thing that can bring Americans together is being in a country far from home. If I'd encountered these same people in a grocery store or mall, we would never have exchanged glances, let alone words. It's a pretty interesting thing. I've also found that people love to talk to you when you're traveling alone... they think you're brave and adventurous. It's interesting to be perceived as brave because I might not necessarily describe myself in that way. After we went inside the church, we all kind of stuck together. After, they asked me if I wanted to go to Sienna with them for the day. I would have loved to have done that, but unfortunately I'd already booked my train ticket back to Florence and didn't have another night at the hostel. Regretfully, I parted from them and made my way back to Santa Maria Novella for the second tour. 

The second tour covered a lot of the same ground as the first tour, but ended instead at the Basilica of Santa Croce. 

Many famous people are buried here: Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli. And yes, that is the Star of David in the middle of this church. There's a funny story about that. The tour guide told us that a Jewish architect won a contest to build this church and added in the star without consent. Nobody knew until the scaffolding came down. People were pretty infuriated, but he made his case that Christianity had its roots in Judaism so the people forgave him. When he died, some people wanted to bury him in the church with the other great people of his time, but others were opposed because he was Jewish and therefore shouldn't be buried in the church. Urban legend has that they settled by burying him half in and half out of the church under the front step. Italian logic. 

There's also a big tribute to Dante outside of the church. But we'll get to Dante later.

Near where the tour ended, there as a restaurant that the guy at the hostel recommended to me. I should have taken a photo, but essentially it was the super classy Italian version of Subway. You got some focaccia bread and they put a ton of amazing Italian ingredients inside, all for about 5 euros. The lines were out the door and they had two shops right across from each other. I just went in, told the guy I was a vegetarian, and then he made me this: 

It was huge and I could only eat like half of it. Amazing.

Another thing this place was known for was being able to serve yourself really good Tuscan red wine on the street for 2 euros. The guy at my hostel told me I had to try it, so of course, I did. It was surprisingly good considering how warm it was. After eating I had one main thing that I wanted to do before leaving Florence, and that was to go to Dante's house! It was turned into a museum.

So the museum was actually pretty disappointing. They honestly didn't have anything in there that was solidly connected to Dante or very historical. They had one illuminated manuscript... supposedly one of the oldest ones known about. It belonged to Dante's brother or something like that... but I've held similar Dante manuscripts at Wellesley, so I think it's fair to say I wasn't impressed by much in there. There were a few interesting art pieces dedicated to Dante that I can share though.

This was made out of wood... it was really pretty. There were other ones hanging on the walls but this featured the first canto of the Inferno.

After I made it out of the Dante museum, I was exhausted from being on my feet with a backpack on for two days straight so I thought it was time to head back towards the train station. There's a historical pharmacy where monks made apothecary type products near the train station, so I thought it'd check it out, but the tourism and history of the place made it so expensive and modernized that it lost it's appeal. I went and bought some sweets and gifts from a small shop near there (I had a full comprehensible conversation in Italian with the shop keeper and I was so proud of myself! It's the little things, when you're trying to learn a language, that excite you). I spent the next hour and a half chilling on some benches and I got a cappuccino until my train came!

My adventures in Florence were amazing! I enjoyed getting to visit and see and going by myself was a good experience I think. I had to learn to be independent and resourceful as I didn't have a phone or any electronics that could really function with me. I used a map and navigated the old-fashioned way and I think that's something everyone should do while traveling. Turn off the phone, put away the GPS and take the chance of getting lost. What's the worst that can happen? You have to have a little faith in humanity and ask for directions. It's a beautiful thing to do if you're losing that faith I think.... meeting those wonderful people on my trip was probably one of the best parts. Although I missed my friends and wished they were there, if they were maybe my experience would have been much different. Maybe I would have learned less or missed out on something I wanted to see. 

My last few days in Italy mostly consisted of me catching up on work I needed to do before coming to England, like ordering bedding and fixing up my resume. I know it's super lame and I could have been going out to Venice or Ravenna, or somewhere else equally amazing, but I think it was healthier for me to just take a few days to sit down and get myself organized, considering how little time I'd had off all summer to do that. 

I just want to once again thank Chiara and her family for letting me stay in their house for so long and their amazing hospitality. It was an amazing experience and I learned so much from spending time there. The food was amazing and I even got a few recipes from Chiara's mom, which are now some of my most prized possessions. I can't wait to try cooking up some mushrooms and I already tried a salmon pasta recipe this week. I'm really looking forward to seeing Chiara again soon.

Since arriving in London, things have been a little hectic but I've managed to fit a few fun adventures in there. I'll share a few more photos and some stories in my next blog post, which I will write very soon. 

Thanks for reading everyone!

Weekend Adventures with Chiara (Sunday)

Sorry about the long interlude between posts but I'm back to finish up talking about my weekend adventures with Chiara! Saturday was so much fun, how could Sunday even top that!?

Sunday morning we got up and packed the apartment so we could go off on our next adventure! We hit the road on our way to Sant'arcangelo di Romagna, a small town with a big castle!

The sky was looking kind of cloudy but the rain held off!

Soon enough, we arrived in the town and I have to say, it was definitely one of my favorite places I've visited so far. The lifestyle there is still very traditional and the houses look like they might have come from a historical movie.

I would haved loved to take more pictures of the houses, but people lived in them and I felt like a creeper taking pictures of peoples houses. I think you'd probably feel creeped on too if someone started taking photos right by your kitchen window with you standing there, don't you think?

So we started walking through town checking things out. Unfortuately we didn't find out until we got there that we couldn't get into the castle because it wasn't open for viewing that day. Apparently people still live in these crazy big castles, so when it's open is at their discrestion. It's nearly impossible to take an impressive photo of a castle when you feel like an ant next to it, so I'll include this photo from Google images so you can see what the whole thing looks like in a flattering image.

Thank you, Mario! But our princess is in another castle!

Although we couldn't get in we could still get very near to take some photos and the town was gorgeous so it was totally worth it. Here are a few of the photos we took!

The view of the rest of the town from a high point on our climb up to the castle.

A pomagranite tree!

This is what we could see of the castle from the outside. Super cool!

These ruins were turned into a house or a restaurant on the other side, it was hard to tell.

Chiara took this photo of the clock tower from a pretty cool angle underneath the basket of flowers. 

The doors all over Italy amaze me. This is one of the simpler ones but the attention to detail and the fact hat despite their age, they still remain solid and standing is fascinating. I think the details in every little thing are what make Italy amazing. 

On our way back down to the center of the town, I learned who truly runs the city...

It's definitely the cats. 

This one controls traffic. He was very friendly and let me pet him. They just do whatever they want to and come and go as they please. 

This cat makes the curfews. You can't go out during his napping hours. 

What does he do in the city? The same thing most politicians do... This cat just gives zero shits.

Anyway, we were determined to see a castle and since this one was closed, we decided to go find ourselves a new castle (totally casually...).

It's the Shire! The view on our way up to Castle #2.

Maybe our princess is in THIS castle!

Dozza Castle.

The kitchen had some pretty cool contraptions. We think the wood ones were for something to do with meat preparation. 

On the back wall, you could light fires below the top of it and roast or grill things on the top. 

Super cool collection of lanterns.

After the kitchen, we headed over to the prision. You could walk around inside and look at the writing on the walls. 

Here was the higher security dungeon. We couldn't go down because, clearly from the ladder, it wasn't safe. But apparently if you went down you could see the shackles still on the walls. 

Carvings on the wall by prisoners often said their name and when they were incarcerated. They must have been there a while if they had time to carve the stone out like this. 

Here's some art on the wall by a prisioner which looks suspiciously like the TARDIS... Does anyone else see that or is it just me?

Unfortunately my camera died very shortly after this, but I captured most of the super cool things. We took some more pictures with Chiara's camera which I'll try to upload if I get a chance. We got to go up into the turret of the castle and see pretty far out, which was really fun. I'd post more about the history of the castle, but most of the signs they posted around didn't really make sense, in Italian or in English, but we know it was built in 1250 and a lot of changes have been made over the years. 

After that we headed back to Bologna and called it a weekend! It was really cool getting to go around those two towns and check out the inside of a castle. I can't wait to see more of them.

Sorry I'm getting a little behind, I'll post my adventures in Florence soon! Probably when I get to London as I'll be spending the rest of my day today trying to figure out how I'm going to survive when I get there tomorrow. I haven't been doing too much the last 3 days, just trying to take it easy and get caught up on everything I need to do. Working on your resume is hard! Everything has to be exactly perfect and each word counts! I also had to order my bedding and do some things for work, but now I think I'm mostly caught up! Yay! So tomorrow bright and early I'll fly to London and try to get myself settled in there. So many things to do! I have to go buy all of the necessities, as there are so many things I don't have yet, and move in and get enrolled in classes. Not to mention, I don't even know what books I need yet! Classes start on Wednesday so I have a feeling I'll be at the mercy of the bookstores for book prices. Oh well! We'll get it all figured out over the next few days. 

Good-bye Italy! I will miss you and all of your great people and wonderful food. (Every time I mention going to London, Chiara's family laughs at how bad the food is and how I'll be dying to come back to Italy!) Thanks so much to Chiara and her family for hosting me the last two weeks, it was great and I had such a good time!