Londra

Ciao! Sorry for the lack of posts, but midterms are finally over and I am getting my first real break from work (besides a trip to London, but I was without internet.) Everything is going well. Classes are tough, but I am getting through. We are all extremely annoyed that we have to spend everyday in the library to keep up with work while learning about places/things in Rome. Wouldn't it make more sense to limit the work and actually let us have time to go see the places? Oh well! I am learning a lot so that is good I guess.

This past weekend I went to London with my friend Tyler. Friday was technically the make-up day for wednesday classes, but she convinced the art history professor to let us miss one class and we went thursday night. The weekend was fun, but not without its problems. The hostel was disgusting and an all around bad experience. Luckily we only had to be there for a few hours. We would stay up as late as we could manage and get up the next morning before 7. This did give us plenty of time for exploring, though! We arrived in London friday night after 2am (it was a 10:30pm flight) and went to our hostel, then got up at 7 friday morning and were out early so we could wander the city streets. We went to the national gallery, walked down all the major streets, went to Big Ben and walked around the London Eye (deciding to actually go on at night), and saw Love Never Dies at the Adelphi Theatre. It is the sequel to Phantom of the Opera. I thoroughly enjoyed it even though it was extremely strange. I wasn't a huge fan of the use of videos between scenes, but the overall show was great. We went to meet the actors afterwards. We had to wait until they got all of the crazy copious amounts of makeup off of the phantom's face (he is mask-less for about a half hour in the show), which took about an hour or so. By the time we left, we decided to just go back to sleep. The next day we did a tour of Oxford, Windsor, and Stonehenge. The whole thing was extremely rushed. We literally had to sprint through Windsor. Stonehenge was really neat and the area around it makes it that much cooler. Now, Oxford was the real reason we did a tour. Tyler wanted to see the place where Harry Potter's great hall was filmed. She was so excited to see the Harry Potter paraphernalia. To our dismay, Oxford closed the great hall just for this particular day because of a banquet for students going home for Easter. That pretty much put a damper on the rest of the rushed day, and it seemed like a bit of a fail. When we got back to the city, we went on the Eye, went to Piccadilly, explored some more, and went back to sleep. Sunday we got up early for Mass, got a true English Breakfast, went to Harrods, Hyde Park, and had a delicious lunch. We left for the airport in the mid-afternoon and were back in Rome by 9. Since then, I had been working on an Italian project, studying for a religion test, working on essays, and reading for mythology. I am taking this morning at my morning to relax before I jump back into it all tonight. I will post again soon! Ariivederci!