Day 4-Sunday, March 7th

This was the first full day in Florence. It’s a good city, very old but definitely not decrepit. I started the day by going to church at the Duomo, the Basilica here; technically it is the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fior. It’s absolutely massive, although much more interesting on the outside than on the inside. The Mass was in Italian, and it was a Gregorian Mass, so I had no idea what they were saying, although they did have translations of the readings in English, and in French, and in German, and I believe in Spanish. After that I met up with a friend I know from church at Clemson, Christine Davidson. We got lunch, and then she showed me around the area. We walked around for a while, and then we ended up walking up to the Piazza Michelangelo, or something like that. It was a bit of a hike, but what a view! Seriously, this was one of the best views I’ve ever had in my life. Maybe not quite equal to the Cinque Terre, but it was another amazing spot. You can see the mountains around the city, and get a feel for the more agricultural land right next to it. It’s really a breathtaking way to view Florence, and I would say the best view of a city I’ve ever had. If you go to Florence and it's a sunny day, go up here, it's worth the walk. I will pay you (in dollars, pounds, euros, whatever) if that view is not worth the time. I think it helps that the city looks different, compared to a place like New York City or Washington, DC. So I owe Christine a big thank you for that. I should also mention that there’s another church up there that is interesting inside. More beautiful art of course, like all the churches around here. After that we walked over/through the Ponte Vecchio, which is a bridge with a bunch of fancy stores on it. They’re all jewelry stores, and expensive ones at that.

The Basilica, not a great picture, but you get the idea of the size of the thing. This close building is actually the Baptistery, which I never got myself into (sorry mom):

The view:

I had to get in a picture with the view, although not my best picture:

And then I told Christine I'd tag her on Facebook, so she got in on the picture taking:

It turned out that my new roommates were a 15 year old kid and his grandmother; he was from North Carolina and now lived in Denmark with his family and the grandmother. There were also some older ladies from Canada and two girls from USC (the real USC, not South Carolina like some people in Clemson mean when they say USC). I guess I never looked to see if it was a coed hostel or not. It wasn’t a youth hostel, which I was actually kinda glad about, I feel like a youth hostel might be a little less safe, and a little harder to sleep in at night. The two of them were nice, and went to bed relatively early, which was what I was hoping for.

The room:

Oh and I should mention that I owe Christine another thank you. She and her roommates were making dinner around 7 or so, and so she invited me to come over and have some. I enjoyed her cooking, and it was great to talk to people from Clemson. I guarantee you my time in Florence would not have been as good if she hadn’t been so nice and helpful. Check out her blog (there are only one or two posts up): http://fettucinichristini.blogspot.com/

Overall, another good day.

Day 3-Saturday, March 6th

This started out with a breakfast in the hotel. Of course, breakfast was on the top floor with a beautiful view of some of the surrounding area. It was fantastic to have that in the morning, a nice start to the day and so much better than the drab view from the basement cafeteria in London.

The view:

The Cinque Terre area has the most amazing views I have ever seen in my life. I think it beats any city skyline I’ve ever seen, or any purely man-made object in my life. The Cinque Terre is 5 small Italian towns perched (I think I’m borrowing the word from some website I read it on, but it’s really the only word that works) on these steep hills along the water. The whole area is a National Park, although people still live there, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There are a number of walking paths, biking paths, and horse trails. I took the paths along the water. In some spots you are walking on a path that is built into the side of basically a sheer cliff, with a straight fall down (I was thankful for the railing on the side here). But you have an unbelievable view. It was sunny with very few clouds, and the water was an amazing turquoise color, turning deeper blue as you looked farther out. It’s amazing to see these houses, I can only imagine what waking up in the morning would be like there (I’ll stay in a hotel there someday). It wasn’t too cold out, and I think this was a good time to be there. It isn’t as busy this time of year and so there’s a little more room to stop, or walk fast as I tend to do. I saw Riomaggiore, Manarola, and Corniglia, starting on the most southern one (Riomaggiore) and working my way north. The first walk was very easy, and the second one slightly harder. But it was completely worth it for the views. To get up to Corniglia requires, at the end of the walk, climbing a very very big set of stairs, which did provide some good views.

One of the towns:

The path:

I had a small world moment while getting lunch. In the third town (Corniglia) I stopped and got lunch, after seeing a little church up there and saying a quick prayer. I walked into a small place that looked like it had basic food, and there was a group of Americans. After ordering my food I asked where they were from. One girl said she was from South Carolina, so of course I told her I went to Clemson. She got all excited and told me how she knew all these people who went there.So she ran a few names by me, and I knew three of them: Gray Segars (a ridiculously tall guy), Jenna Guthrie, and Melissa Hulbert (two good friends of mine).

I went back to La Spezia after this, and figured out what time the next train was to Florence.After finding out it was something around 1:30 or so, I had some time left to kill, and decided to walk around. La Spezia, while not all that exciting, seemed like an interesting place. I saw a Saturday market around the middle of town. I tried to get to the water, but one place was a military port (somewhere I figured I probably didn’t belong) and it seemed like every other spot was blocked by some shipping place. So that didn’t work out, but I had fun just walking around. I finally got on the train, saw some more water, but then left the coast behind. I saw some snow-capped mountains, which I think might just be the first time I’ve ever seen snow-capped mountains in my life (maybe I’ve seen some in New York at some point, but I can’t remember).This train ride wasn’t all that exciting otherwise, but I arrived in Florence alive and with all my belongings, which is always a good thing.

This was my first night in a hostel. I was staying with a guy and his wife, both young Australians currently living in England. The husband is teaching in England, and they are traveling around Europe when they can. I settled in, got on the internet (we all had to share a computer unless we had an Ethernet cord for our laptop) and then decided to take a walk around. My walk ended up at the Duomo, or Basilica, basically church with the ridiculously huge dome (which I could see from a window in the hostel). Right next to that is a famous Baptistery that my mom wanted me to check out. Unfortunately I never got around to going in on my trip...

The Basilica:

A pretty good day overall.

Quick Update

Here’s a quick update on what’s been going on here. Over the weekend I went to the British Museum (the Rosetta Stone, mummies from Egypt), which was really interesting. Of course my camera died after maybe 5 pictures.

This week is midterms, so I've been studying for those. But, last night I got to tour Parliament, as part of my British Politics class. We saw a vote in the House of Commons on a Defence Bill (yes they spell Defense differently over here), in which I believe the Conservatives defeated the Labour Party. We then got to see the House of Lords, which was an interesting room but had a dull discussion going on (the word uhhh was used prolifically by the Lord who was talking). It was cool to go in the little passages between the buildings. We started out at 1 Parliament Street, the least fancy of their buildings. From there we went over to the newest building, which I don't know the name of. However, they spent something like 250 million GBP on this building, so 1 million a room. We just saw the center part of it, and it looked really nice. Then we moved over into THE building. Apparently we weren't supposed to take pictures, but I will admit I snapped one or two, I just won't be putting them online anytime soon.

Today is mainly studying for exams, and getting myself ready for my trip. The plan is Marseilles for a night, then on to a hotel near the Cinque Terre (5 little towns in Italy) hopefully seeing one or two of those towns while there. Then on to Florence, then to Venice. And flying back a week from Friday. And hopefully I'll get to go to church in the Duomo, the big cathedral in Florence. Should be an adventure.

Travel writing, a market, a banquet, and Parliament talk

It’s been a while since I’ve updated, I owe you guys something. But first, here’s a little summary of each day:

Friday: Travel Writing Workshop, and Gloucester Arms

Saturday: Portobello Market and Medieval Banquet

Sunday: 7:30 PM Mass, and really nothing very exciting

Monday: Class meeting with Member of Parliament—election talk

We’ll start with Friday. In the afternoon I had signed up for this Travel Writing Workshop, as part of the Travelers’ Tales Festival. It was a whole weekend event, with talks about photography and travel writing for the two days. I just signed up for a workshop. It was located at the building, right down the road from me, of the Royal Geographical Society. So, I took the bus down two or three stops, got off, and headed to the building. It was in a pretty plain, run of the mill room, but the rest of the place looked pretty interesting. In between talks I walked around, and saw some of the maps and paintings they had hung up. Anyways, the workshop started off with a talk by Jonathon Lorie (who ran the event) and Matthew Teller and Sarah Monaghan. Probably three people you have never heard of, but the last two are travel writers, I’ll let you look them up. Now, I should say that most of the people there were pretty serious about travel writing, a solid chunk of them looking to make that their living. So I was sort of the odd man out in that sense. But moving on. The second part was what they called a “masterclass,” really a talk, by Chris Steward, who wrote a book called “Driving Over Lemons.” Now, apparently this guy was the drummer for Genesis when they started playing, but they, or he, moved on relatively early. He was very funny, and interesting, and listed a bunch of books to read, most of which sounded interesting. And then the last part was titled “Meet the Editors,” where they had Sarah Miller, who is the editor of Conde Nast Traveler, and Ed Grenby, the editor of the Sunday Times Travel magazine. It was interesting, I learned that magazine editors have to plan wayyy ahead to make sure they get articles published at the right time. Overall, it was a good experience, and I learned a thing or two from it.

That night, we’re still on Friday here, I went out with some friends to the local pub, Gloucester Arms (pronounced like it’s spelled Gloster). I had a beer and played some cards with those friends, and then we went back and chatted for a little while in a girl’s room. I have to say, so far I’ve found that wine isn’t all that great, and beer is alright, but nothing for me to get too excited about, which is probably a good thing.

Saturday, I slept in, a surprisingly rare occurrence for me here. That afternoon, I went to the Portobello Market. It was reallllyyy crowded. Which is fun in a way. My problem was that the group I was with took their time going through the area, and there was a lot of waiting for 15 minutes for people to get food. We ended up spending something like 2 ½ hours there, a little long for me. I plan to go back, they had some interesting stuff there, but will probably go by myself to get in and out faster. I’m glad I went, I just would’ve gone through faster.

Saturday night I went to the Medieval Banquet. It was a little on the pricey side, but worth going. And of course there were a lot of obnoxious people there, but you have to bet on that when you go to something like this. I feel like I’ve spent the last two paragraphs complaining about different things, so let’s get to the positive stuff. I went with two of my friends, Cameron and Leah. We sat next to some interesting people: a group from Holland on a vacation, a couple from Southampton celebrating their wedding anniversary, and an older couple (the wife seemed like she had had a glass of wine or two before getting there, and they didn’t seem to have such a great night). There were something like 350 people there, but it was in a solid sized basement room.

Sunday was more relaxing. I slept in again, couldn’t really fall asleep the night before. Didn’t do nearly as much, mainly because I had an earache to figure out. I went to 7:30 Mass at the local church with a friend, and then came back and hung out here. The homily was good at Mass, I do remember that.

Yesterday was another day of classes. But, for one of my classes we meet in 1 Parliament Street (the least fancy of the Parliament buildings) with a Member of Parliament (MP). We have people presenting on different topics each week, which he then analyzes, and corrects if need be. Our MP is Mr. John Hayes, the Shadow Minister for Education and Skills, or something like that. He’s a very nice guy, and like any politician can talk for ages. This week we didn’t start till 6:15, and by start I mean we got into the room then. He then talked about what is currently happening in Parliament, as they are about to come back into session in the next week or two (they’ve been in recess recently). I’m actually glad I took this class, especially at this time. There has to be a general election called here in the UK by June, and the Prime Minister gets to decide when the election will be. He has to give a certain amount of notice, and of course technically he has to ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament, but in reality this is a huge tool for him. The current Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, is a few points behind the Conservative (sometimes referred to as the Tory) Party leader David Cameron. Our MP is a member of the Conservative Party, hence being a Shadow Minister (technically this Shadow Government is Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition) currently. So this is an interesting time for him, and for the Conservative party. The lead the Conservative’s had has narrowed, which will probably cause Brown to wait longer to call for an election. Of course, there is talk that even if the Conservative’s win, aka get the most people elected into the House of Commons, they won’t have a large enough majority in the Commons to create a government (a poll recently showed them getting something like %40 of the votes). Their electoral system is different from ours, and so is the way the government is run. But for now, suffice to say, there could be what is called a “hung Parliament” if the Conservatives have a numerical majority, but cannot get enough other parties to side with them in creating a government. This brings the Queen into play, and all sorts of interesting things could happen. I’ll leave you with that, though, hopefully it isn’t all too much to swallow. We had two presentations that day, and we are technically supposed to get out at 7, but we got out at 11:30, not bad considering we didn’t start the presentations until at least 6:30, maybe more like 6:45. Politicians can talk and talllkkk and taalllkkk. I had fun passing notes back and forth with a friend, though. I’ve found that I’ve done more note passing in college than I did in the rest of my life combined. And yes mom and dad, I’m paying attention, for the most part. But on a serious not, I’m hoping that something crazy happens with the government while I’m here, so I’m also hoping an election is called sooner rather than later…

That’s it for now, if I can say that’s it and not sound hypocritical (I feel like that’s not the right word to use there). I need to work on this putting out shorter blog posts idea…

Walking

I just got back from a little bit of walking. There are some really great streets around here, with large townhouses on either side of the road in most cases. The other day I walked from the dorm to around the Notting Hill Tube Station (yes Notting Hill like the movie) which when I looked it up was about .75 miles. Gets me that last bit of energy for the day, and I get to see some more of Kensington.

Last Sunday I went to Westminster Cathedral, which is the largest Catholic Church in London. It was big, obviously, but there were some differences in the Mass. During one I went to (they have six Masses on Sunday, and then a Saturday vigil) they sung some of the parts in Latin, so it was hard to keep participating. The Cathedral has a full-time, paid, choir, which was pretty cool.
There's more on their website: Westminster Cathedral

Tomorrow I am going to some palace, not sure which one it was, but I'll find out tomorrow. And then next weekend is Paris! Although I have a presentation (bad decision to sign up for that one) the day after, so I'll have some work to do this weekend.

Hope everyone's doing well.