Venice, the last trip with my Harlaxton friends

So, if I remember correctly, we left Florence pretty early the next morning, and hopped on the coach to Venice. It was a pretty long coach ride, but sort of relaxing after the craziness of Florence. It got WAY colder - I think it was about 30 degrees. Our hotel in Venice seemed shady at first- it was down an alleyway! - but it was pretty nice. Once again the boys had a huge, awesome room so that was the hang out place. The first night, once again we got there fairly late so we walked around a bit, saw some sights, ate a good meal and then bought cheap boxed wine and sat around and hung out. I think we really just wanted to spend quality time together because we knew this was literally our last hurrah - no more gallivanting around Europe together, being stupid, blowing money, having a blast.

The next morning we set off for Murano Island to look at some glass stuff! Venice, as you may know, is a city of canals, and no one is kidding when they tell you that there are no cars there. To get from place to place, you walk or you take a boat. So the "bus" to Murano Island was a boat. All of us crowded onto it and disembarked at the island. We stopped in a bunch of glass shops, and I found some glass animals just like Judy (my cousin Jordyn's glass dog) so I bought some!

Then we went to dinner at a tiny little restaurant and we had delicious spaghetti and a LOT of wine . . . I think a bunch of us were quite tipsy. Mandie started speaking as if she couldn't say her R's and I pretended I had a lisp and we performed Italian transactions with these speech impediments. We went to the glass museum, Alex stepped on and off a Venetian boat that was docked, and then we made our way back to the bus. The rest of the day I think we just walked around more, ate dinner, then bought more wine and went back to the hotel and started partying at about 6:00pm because it was our last night and still had most of the day the next day to see the remainder of Venice. That night was funny - we watched the Office, got drunk, sang ridiculous 90's songs, and went to bed fairly early.

The next morning we packed up and dropped our luggage off at a shady hotel for storage for the day, then it was time for a gondola ride! This was awesome - although it was freezing. Team Brown Bear and Team Black Bear split up (Team Black Bear rules) and so in our gondola it was me, Alex, Jeff, Cramer, Waner and Danielle. The gondolier was really funny, and we felt like we were going to tip over every time we went under a bridge. He told us a lot of cool things about the history of the city. I have video of it but I have yet to edit it because I am a slacker. After that some people headed over to San Marco but a few of us didn't feel like it, so me, Alex and Danielle just sat in a coffee shop for a long time where it was WARM until it was time to go.

Then we had the long trek across the city to the real bus stop, over the huge bridge and off to the airport. Our flight was delayed so we had to wait a while, but we finally boarded and were on our way back to the U.K.

The next post will be the last about my European adventure, detailing the wonderful night staying in Heathrow airport and the long flight back and then ARRIVAL STATESIDE!

Costume Ball

I'm on a marathon of blogging! Keep it up! (Just motivating myself a little).

Costume Ball was on November 21st. For the longest time I was going to go as Amy Winehouse, but I ended up digging through the old costume stuff and finding the best hat ever. So I decided to go as a suffragette. I went into town and found this ridiculously authentic-looking skirt for £4 and a blouse for 8, and then as we were driving back on the shuttle Anne and I decided that I would go as the crazy suffragette that threw herself in front of a horse and died. So, the end result:

Don't know if you can tell, but I have a black eye and bloody lip and horseshoes pinned on my back, and the other side of my sign says 'Free Bob'. I looked awesome, I can't lie to you. I wish I could have brought it all home with me. I would wear it every day.

Bad ideas turned into bad but fun decisions. We drank boxed wine in Alex's room before dinner, we had a ton of wine at dinner, then we went down to the Bistro and I had like 2 Newcastles . . . yeah. BAD IDEA. But fun. The next thing I knew I was smoking hookah at the smoking bench with about 12 random people. Then, I ended up going and hanging out in SDO until about 4am. 'Would You Rather' is way more fun when everyone is drunk.

Paris and Versailles

Bear with me, I don't remember exactly what we did each day. But I'll give it the old college try.

We left after seminar on the 11th of November. We took a train down to London and hopped on the Eurostar. I do NOT envy Phil Taylor, he had to lead us all over the place and make sure he didn't lose anyone. Poor guy. Anyway, we got to Paris pretty late in the day, so that night we just went to a restaurant, had a great meal and wine, and went to bed fairly early so we would be energized for the morning.

[SIDE NOTE: WE DID NOT HAVE A SHOWER. We had a bathtub with one of those spray things, so in order to bathe I had to squat in the tub and awkwardly spray myself clean. Needless to say, it was a chore. But kind of funny in retrospect, especially when I tried to do it drunk and sprayed the floor.]

The next day we just did a walking tour to see the sights. It was awesome! I mean, seeing the Eiffel Tower in real life and not in a Pepe LePew cartoon was surreal.

We kept walking and saw Arc du Triomph, went to the Rodin Museum, and Notre Dame, and just admired the general splendor. It was awesome! That night we went out to get pizza, and it was delicious, although everyone in the restaurant knew we were American and kept staring us down. Oh well.

The next day, we took a train to Versailles to see the palace. It was gorgeous and insane. I've seen some pretty ridiculous houses/castles/palaces, but nothing could rival this. I can't believe anyone actually lived there. The only thing at Versailles is the palace, so after we saw it we ate lunch and got back on the train. We stopped back at Notre Dame to climb to the top -- like I mentioned before, my ass is in wonderful shape from all the cathedrals/basilicas/castles I've climbed to the top of. The view of Paris was unbelievable.

After Notre Dame we headed over to the Louvre. It was awesome seeing the Mona Lisa, Madonna of the Rocks, Venus de Milo, etc. but all the explanations were in French and we didn't feel like paying for the audio guide. I think we were more excited about the glass pyramid and its connection to the Da Vinci Code. Ahh, twentysomethings.

That night we watched the Eiffel Tower light show in the park with bread, cheese and bottles of wine. It was fantastic!

The next day, we just did some shopping around, more general sightseeing. We ate dinner at the BEST crepe place, the guys absolutely loved us and talked to us for about a half hour.

All in all Paris was amazing and I'm so glad I got the chance to go there!