A visit and a blizzard

Aunt Debbie and I at the Hourglass!

Earlier this month, Uncle Jim and Aunt Debbie came into to London! I got the chance to stay with them from a wonderful night and enjoy their beautiful flat and bed with flannel sheets (I think I'm going to dream about that bed). We had Indian food for dinner! It was, of course, delicious. The next day Aunt Debbie took me to Partridge's super market to show me their American foods section. I was ecstatic to find Kraft Mac&Cheese, Mrs. Butterworth's Maple Syrup, and PACE SALSA. Yea, the Pace was gone in my day 2. I did let my other homesick housemates have a crack at it, but I honestly ate most of it. After that we looked at a cute handbag store Deb liked and then she took me to Harrods: the department store so big that it might as well be its own city. We then joined Uncle Jim for lunch and I (sadly) had to head back to Reading for a class. It was absolutely fabulous to see them, even for the short amount of time that we had, and it was soooo good to see someone from home. I've been really homesick lately.

Uncle Jim and I about to climb in for my first London taxi ride!


Having Indian food. Yum!

Shortly after Jim and Debbie left, England went through a moment of temporary insanity. The cause of this insanity? Little white fluffy objects began to fall from the sky, and then stick to the ground in increasing quantities. Yep, I'm talking snow, and the English just couldn't handle it; I think the whole country owns maybe one snow plow. Anyway, the hoohah was more than a little amusing, and the site was quite lovely.

Sadly, I don't know how much longer the R-MWC sign will be there. We begged Dr. Ivy to make sure they didn't change it while we were still there, and they never did.

141 Whiteknights Rd in the snow.

Christmas

Hello family and friends!

Right now, I feel behind in everything. I'm behind in pictures, I'm behind in updates, I'm behind in Christmas cards (I had enough for everyone, and had even written a few, but they never got mailed...), I'm behind in laundry, I'm behind in sleep. I don't know how, but Decembers always turn out to be the busiest month of the year for me, even thought it's supposed to be a holiday, and this year was no exception. I'm sure you all feel that way, too, on most years. Holidays require so much work!

Anyway, that paragraph was my way of apologizing for being so behind in the things mentioned above, including these updates and picture sharing. Anyway, I hope everyone's holidays went well. As most of you probably know, I didn't go home for the holidays because Tony was coming up to see me in England instead. My last day of classes was on 12 Dec, as was his, and he was here on the 13th. Or at least he was supposed to be, but his original flight was canceled and instead of flying in after 10pm Saturday night he flew in before 7am Sunday morning. It meant spending way too long in O'Hare airport for him, and a lot of fun catching the bus at 5am for me, but it all worked out in the end.

ENGLAND
Our time in England lasted from the 13th to the 27th and was fun, but not quite as adventurous as I'd hoped. I wanted to take Tony to London, Bath, Oxford, Cardiff, and maybe even Lacock; we only made it into London and Bath (not including Reading, of course). This really couldn't have been helped though, because even though we had a lot of time in England I was not only working most days for 6+ hours, but I was also horribly sick with some kind of English plague. I still don't know what it was, aside from highly unpleasant. So a good chunk of the few days off that I had and wanted to dedicate to exploring England were spent sitting around the house, exhausted from work and my illness. Tony took care of me, though, and he never seemed disappointed to just stay in town, so that's good. We explored Reading quite a bit, which was fun, and we spent my birthday in London seeing Avenue Q and doing the touristy stuff (Big Ben, Westminster, Buckingham Palace). Our day in Bath was highly productive and consisted of the Roman Baths, the Fashion Museum, and Sally Lunn's for a delicious bun and a pot of tea.

Tony in Trafalgar Square

As far as Christmas itself goes, we were still in Reading and I was still sick and working. I worked Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, but did of course get Christmas off. We went to see the new 007 movie on the 23rd, and it was there that we saw an advertisement for a Mama Mia! showing/sing along on Christmas Eve for just £2 a person. For whatever reason, the Brits go crazy about Mama Mia! They just can't get enough of it; it's the highest grossing film in Britain of all time. So, for the sake of science, Tony and I decided that we HAD to take advantage of this cultural study possibility and we both got tickets. I personally was highly suspicious of the whole thing. I mean, think about, a theatre full of English people singing? In public? Along with a movie? This was the Vue, not a pub; I just hoped enough people would show up drunk enough to get the ball moving for the rest of the shy Brits in the audience. I'm not sure if that's what happened, but when Tony and I walked into the theatre and it was already rolling, there was singing. The funny thing was that about 60% of the voices were male. I'm attaching a recording I took of Dancing Queen, which was by far their favorite. The whole thing was really a lot more fun than I thought it would be and by far the best way to watch that movie. It was probably the best possible way we could've spent our Christmas Eve.

153's living room, all decked out for Christmas!

The rest of the girls in my house had mostly cleared out of the house by Christmas, with Robin being the last to leave on Christmas Eve, so we had the whole house to ourselves for Christmas day. After getting home from Mama Mia! (we ended up walking home because the Xmas eve bus schedule was so slow) we watched A Muppet Christmas Carol (a must for every Christmas) and went to sleep so Santa could come. The next morning (though I believe it was closer to afternoon) we rolled out of bed and went out in the living room to check on the present progress. It was a little sad to not have any surprises pop up during the night, but oh well. But we DID have several things under the tree. When I was talking to Mom about Christmas presents, she said that she didn't like the idea of us not having anything to unwrap on Christmas morning, so in order to not disappoint her we made sure there were wrapped objects under the tree. To see what they were you'll have to look through the pictures. =D But I did receive an actual package from Aunt Debbie and Uncle Jim! Unfortunately the customs requirement on the outside of the box took away all the surprise of it, but I still didn't know what kind of sweater it was! =D So thank you both for that; I'm wearing it now in fact!

After present opening we headed into the kitchen to make breakfast: pancakes and bacon. It was delicious. We could've made eggs too, but I made so many pancakes that we were too full. We spent the rest of the day sitting around watching movies until the Doctor Who Christmas Special came on, which, thanks to the wonders of webcam technology, Dad was able to join us in watching. It was a lot of fun to share the joy of watching British television actually on a BBC channel in England; every time The Vicar of Dibley or Keeping Up Appearances comes on here, I get that feeling of authenticity and excitement. Once the special and the corresponding Dr Who Confidential programs were over, I went into the kitchen to start roasting the duck we'd gotten at Sainsbury's. It was a sort of crispy Peking duck and it was absolutely delicious. It came with some kind of little potato wraps and duck sauce and was supposed to feed 4 people but Tony and I devoured it just between the two of us.

The next day was Boxing Day, which wasn't too interesting on its own but was spent working and packing for our trip to Spain and France. Hold on, because this email is just getting started. I SHOULD have spent Boxing Day sending out the above in an email, along with pictures, and sending out holiday cards but, well, I didn't. And so here we go.

SPAIN
We left the house early on the 27th for Gatwick airport, a short train ride from Reading, to catch our flight into Madrid. Tony and I packed all of our stuff into one backpack and I was just carrying my purse; we only had a week away, afterall. As we sat in the airport cafe across from our gate with coffee (for him) and a chocolate muffin (for me), we both commented on how stress free we felt about the whole thing. It was probably the least stressful experience I've ever had in an airport, even though we were running late, and I'm not sure why. Maybe because it was such a short distance, or because we only had one bag, or the short amount of time we'd be away, or maybe we're actually seasoned travelers. In any case, the time on the plane, literally, flew by and before we knew it we were in Madrid, taking the metro and trying to find our hotel. I stumbled through my first lines of Spanish in about 5 years to no avail (I was asking a lady where the Hospital was while we were standing right in front of it and she still didn't understand what I was asking her), but we found our hotel regardless. We dropped our stuff and went out to town to find the Hard Rock and get a pin, since that's been a bit of a thing to do since Rome, and ended up eating there after I realized how long it'd been since I actually had a burger. The burger was disappointing, but I got my first taste of normal mustard since August.

Madrid Christmas lights

Madrid was, well, frustrating. The frustration started when we first left the Hard Rock. There was some kind of pavilion set up with a big Jesus on it and a guy standing there saying "Hola, hola. Uno, dos, tres.." over and over again for at least half an hour. We had no idea what was going on, and it was annoying. Next to this pavilion were a few buses with "Madrid A Christmas City" written on them in Spanish where HUNDREDS, if not a THOUSAND people were standing in line in the cold waiting to get on. To buses. For no apparently reason, and they weren't even tourists. I don't know why, and that frustrates me. Madrid was filled with that while we were there: massive amounts of people who were fascinated by seemingly stupid things. We decided to forget it and walk around to see some of the Christmas lights, and eventually got bored with it and went back to the room. We picked up brochures on flamenco dancing in the hotel and I called the Corral de la Moreria, apparently the most renounced flamenco tablao in the world, to reserve us spots to see the show for the next night.

Flamenco Dancing

The majority of our second day in Madrid was spent either waiting to enter or walking through art museums: the Reina Sofia and Prado. We were only in the Reina Sofia for a few minutes before we closed, and had to leave before seeing the Guernica. We stood in line outside the Prado for an hour waiting to get in, but once we did get in we spent another 3 hours walking around, looking at Ancient Roman copies of Greek statues and famous paintings that we'd studied in art classes. By the time we got out it was dark, and we walked around in the general direction of the tablao for dinner. We passed through the Plaza Major, obviously the major plaza, to be met once again with way too many people taking delight in about 50 vendors which were only selling the same cheap crap in every single one. And yet everyone there was going nuts for it all. It was all rather vexing, so we kept walking. We passed the palace, about as exciting as Buckingham Palace, unfortunately, and a cathedral and finally ended up at the flamenco tablao. Everything was rather overpriced, but the food was good and the show was great. Our next day in Madrid wasn't very interesting; we got up early to run into the Reina Sofia and see the Guernica before we leave, and then got on a train to Barcelona.

Pyrenees Mountains for my train window

I love trains in Europe; I think they're my favorite part about traveling there. Anyway, after a 3 hour (far too short) train ride, we were in Barcelona. Our hotel was in a suburb outside the city and was, to say the least, difficult and exhausting to find and get to. But after walking through the rain and cold and crossing highways for an hour, we relaxed in our room, I made a bubble bath, and we ordered room service for the first time ever, and it was wonderful. Then we turned on the tv and saw London once again: protests against Israel in front of the embassy. And that was the first we'd heard of the strikes on Gaza.

La Sagrada Familia: Only one of the many architectural wonders of Barcelona

The next day was sadly our only full day in Barcelona. As much as we were annoyed by Madrid, we LOVED Barcelona. Everything was beautiful, mostly thanks to their architect Gaudi and the SUN (oh the sun!!! I miss it so!!), the people were friendlier, and it accepted tourists respectfully and without all the nice little traps that places like Paris and Rome have for gullible travelers. We did so much there that I'm not even going to get into here; they're hardly the same without a visual, so you'll have to turn to the photos I send out for details of Barcelona.

FRANCE
I'm exhausted, how about you? Thanks for making it this far. Really, I applaud you for it. Anyway, we're almost done. The last leg of our travels was in France, and we spent a whole day traveling from Barcelona to Marseille by train to get there. The train ride was one of the best parts, though the waits between rides weren't great. Anyway, we arrived in Marseille and easily found our hotel (it was only 200 metres from the train station); it was the 31st of December. We were exhausted from waking up early and were going to be up super early the next morning to catch another early train, but we stayed up to try and catch New Year's somewhere on tv. We found a channel that was covering the party in Berlin, and at midnight the street outside our window become a live with honking horns and "bonne annee!"s; that was pretty much our New Years Eve celebration.

The Eiffel Tower on a foggy day

The next day, though, we hopped on a train and three hours later were in Paris. It was slightly freezing and very foggy, but it was still nice to experience the city. It was also a public holiday, though, so most things were closed. We entertained ourselves exploring the major parts of the city (including a baguette and red wine picnic under the Eiffel Tower) until about 16:00 and then went back to the train station to try and get warm again and decide how to kill the next 4 hours before our train came. Since nothing was open and we'd seen all the outside stuff we could manage in such cold, we decided to stay in the station for a bit and book our train tickets for the next day from Paris to London. When we tried to do this, it turns out that all the tickets were either sold out or WAY too expensive. Since that was our only preplanned (though I use that word loosely) way back to England, we were a little screwed. Luckily we didn't panic, and Tony found an internet cafe and, after almost an hour of searching every possible route from Paris to London including trains, planes, and automobiles, he finally thought of a solution to our predicament and we booked ferry tickets from Calais, France to Dover, England. We went back to the train station and an angel in the guise of a ticket lady found a combination of trains that got us to our ferry on time: it meant leaving Marseille at 5:30 and taking 3 different trains to finally arrive at Calais at 15:30 or so. It was our only option, so we took it. We're lucky, too; I'm not going to say whose oversight caused this, but let's just say if we ended up without a place to stay for the night, I would've gotten the park bench and Tony would've gotten on the floor.

So the 2nd of January was our last day in France, and it was one hell of an adventure. We started our morning at 4:30 (3:30 London time) after 3-4 hours of sleep (our train didn't get into Marseille from Paris until midnight), got dressed, and headed dreary eyed down the 200 metre stretch to the train station, got mugged, and got on our train.

I'll go over that again. Up, dressed, walked, mugged, train. Aren't you glad you made it this far now? This is where the whole email gets interesting! Anyway, onto the story of the mugging. I'll say right now that no one was hurt and nothing got taken and Tony kicked a lot of ass; really, that's all you need to know, but since I went into boring detail on everything else I should probably explain this. So we're walking to the train station, no we're right in front of the train station, and these two guys start coming towards us. One stops and asks a question to us in French, and I try and reply that we don't speak French (I didn't want to just ignore them) and keep walking and I make it a little further but the guy won't leave us alone. Tony's a little behind me because he's lugging the backpack and the guy starts walking towards him, saying something over and over again in French, and Tony tries to walk away. He succeeds in putting himself between the guy and me, but the guy grabs his arm and keeps saying that same thing over and over while pulling his arm closer in. From my point of view it just looked like he was trying to shake hands or something and I was just worrying that this guy was going to make us late for our train when suddenly I see a flailing of arms and for a few scary seconds I have no idea what's going on or who's winning. I was about to run in when the guy flew backwards, Tony turned around, and motioned that I should keep walking to the train station as he followed behind. Turns out the guy was holding Tony's arm to try and get at his two pockets; he'd gotten his hand into one of them (there was nothing important in there; we know better than to keep valuables in exterior pockets) and Tony grabbed him by the bag he was wearing, shook him violently, threw him about a foot, and turned to walk away. They shouted back and forth to each other for a few seconds, probably trying to figure out if they were going to go after us or something, but they didn't bother us again; I guess they got the message from the first contact. Anyway, after a quick "you ok?" we walked away from the muggers without pause and made it to our train; we had shit to do and couldn't waste time reacting to a few stupid locals.

The City of Love in the snow

And that was before the grand adventure of traveling began. Our first train from Marseille to Paris lasted 3 hours, and we had a 3 hour layover before our next train so we decided to look around Paris again. It was snowing when we got in and the sun actually came out so we decided to go to see some of the inside of the Louvre that was closed earlier and make our way to see the Eiffel Tower in the sun and snow. That accomplished, we had to rush back to the station and just barely made our next train to Hazebrouck, which then lead to Calais. In Calais I had a hotdog with WAY too much English mustard on it (it was painful) and we got on our ferry to go back to England! The ferry took about an hour and a half and was a pretty smooth ride; we had tea and chips the whole way there. When we finally pulled up and saw the white cliffs of Dover, I was so happy to be back in England I almost cried (in London I almost hugged an Underground sign). But we were still quite a ways from home, and had to get 2 more trains and a bus before we finally stumbled into 153 at 23:00, nearly 20 hours after we'd started our day.


And that, my friends, was my winter break. If you actually made it through the whole thing, you either have an ungodly amount of patience, or that was much more interesting than I thought It would be. FYI, this email took me 3 days to write; I hope it doesn't take that long to read.