Italians don't say "ganole"

Saturday 4/25
The flight to Venice took me over the Swiss Alps again, which are very pretty to view peaking through the clouds. The flight was fine, but they didn’t stamp my passport when I landed – in fact, the guy barely looked at it.

I dragged my suitcase (oy) to the alilaguanas, or water buses, which were further away than I expected. I had to wait about a half hour for one to come, but I guess that’s better than what happened to some other people sitting there – they waited for an hour after just missing the last one. The boat ride was a bout an hour, and the beginning was really pretty: it was sunset, so the sky was pink and orange over the water. Before it got dark, I got a lot of cute views down the Grand Canal and into the little side canals under bridges.


I got off at the San Marco stop and tried following the directions to the hotel. It turns out that the travel agent sent Holly two sets of directions and one was wrong – those are the ones Holly sent me. The directions were right if you got off at the Rialto stop, but it told me to get off at San Marco so I was actually really far from where I needed to be. After about 15-20 minutes of dragging around my 50lb suitcase (literally) and heavy backpack, I was on the verge of tears. I was tired and my arms ached and I had no idea how to get to the hotel. Now, getting lost inn Venice is supposed to be a right of passage – the maps don’t match the streets, the streets don’t have names, etc. – but this was ridiculous. Finally, I stopped on the edge of San Marco’s square to rest for a second and try not to cry, and an American couple came up to me. They knew I was American from my BU t-shirt, so they asked if I was lost and needed help. They took their map out and figured out that I was really far from where I needed to be, so they told me they’d take me there. I told them it wasn’t necessary, but they said they were walking off dinner anyway and it was their last night and they were happy to. They had two kids in college too. It was so nice, and I have no idea what I would have done without them. The husband, David, even carried my suitcase up over the stairs on the bridges, and the wife, Marianne, kissed me on the forehead and said it was a “kiss from mom” when they dropped me off outside of the hotel. I tried to buy them dessert but they wouldn’t let me.

Sunday 4/26
Holly and I went to San Marco’s square first, (I could sort of figure it out from the day before using landmarks, like Cartier, since street sings are useless). It was really crowded since it was some sort of festival or holiday, so we took water bus to Ghetto Nuovo, the second Jewish ghetto ever.

It wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought there would just be a few historical places, like some synagogues, but there was actually a ton of Hebrew on the walls and Kosher food and shops selling Jewish stuff. When we went into one shop, the guy greeted us by saying “Shalom, which really caught me off-guard. He had lots of pretty stuff, and a lot of it was labeled “made by my sister,” which I thought was really funny.

We went on the tour of the synagogues. The tour guide was Italian but spoke English, and it was funny to hear her to say Hebrew words with an Italian accent (like Mount Sanai and beemah). She told us that the German and Italian Jews in Venice were forced to move there in 1516. It got it’s name from the Italian word meaning “to forge,” which I think is “getto” but pronounced “jetto,” because it was the area where metal was forged. The Jews could leave during the day to go to work, but could only have three different kinds of jobs. Guards would open and close the gates in the morning and at night. They also had to wear yellow caps out in public. The only people who were exempt from the curfew and wearing the caps were doctors.

There were five synagogues for different nationalities. The first one we were in was built in 1528; I think it was the German one. A lot of them had more of the original artwork, floors, etc. Adjacent to the Ghetto Nuovo is the Ghetto Vechio, the newer part of the Jewish ghetto.


We had a boat tour scheduled, so we had to run to catch it. We thought we were missing it, but they were running on Italian time so we managed to get there late but with time to spare. It started raining a lot, though, so the boat ride itself wasn’t so scenic. I took us to three islands, though, which were interesting. On the first one, Murano, we saw a “master” make glass. He made this vase thing and a horse, seemingly effortlessly.


On the second island, Burano, we went into a lace shop. The houses on the island were really cute and colorful. They reminded me of Notting Hill times about ten.


The third island was Torcello, where there was a church we didn’t go to and lots of green.


We got lost again on the way back to the hotel, this time in the rain. Some guy Holly talked to earlier said that when the tide went out, it pulled the rain down. Bullshit. It rained the whole time we were there. I think he just wanted to sound smart.

We had dinner at the hotel, where I had some very yummy ravioli and tartufo for dessert. That was the best meal I had in Italy.

Monday 4/27
The next morning we had a few hours before our train to Vienna. First we went to the Basilica di San Marco, which is so pretty and crazy on the inside. It’s all gold. The walls, the ceilings, everything. They also have this thing, the Pala d’Oro, which is just this giant gold and semi-precious stone thing. There was another place in the church where they had pieces of mosaics and walls that dated as far back as the second and third centuries. There was also this crazy-detailed gold candlestick and some jewelery.


We got lunch back at the hotel (it did us well the first time) and then took a vaporetto to the train station. I think my favorite part of the trip was just taking the vaporettos, because I got to see so much: the cute canals, the old buildings, the gondoliers in their hats and striped shirts. During one or two of those rides we passed under the Bridge of Sighs, across which prisoners used to walk to their deaths. It amazes me that this place was once an empire. It’s really cool and pretty, but I can’t imagine living there.


The rest of the day was spent on a train to Vienna. Before it got dark, there were some absolutely amazing views of snow-capped mountains and rivers and valleys with little houses and churches. I wish I had pictures of some of the scenes but it was hard to get good ones through the window. It was just gorgeous.

Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road... except I'm actually pretty sad about it

This past week has been so crazy. Besides 2 classes and a final exam, I've had a ton of getting-ready-to-go stuff to do, like pack (which is quite a project), and a bunch of last-minute sight-seeing. Being my last night in London, I don't have much time to write, so this is a slightly abridged version of my last week.

On Sunday, everyone was very busy finishing up papers before our finals, so I just went to Kensington Gardens and read for a little while. I think I might have said once that I live right on Hyde Park; that's not actually true. Directly to the west, connected to Hyde Park, in Kensington Gardens. It's kind of confusing, but that's the park I actually live on. Anyway, the forecast before the week started was for regular, overcast London weather and rain, but overnight the whole week's forecast changed to sunny! I was very excited. It's been warm and beautiful out, so I got to enjoy the temperature and the flowers in the park.

Monday evening/night I met my friend Steph in Notting Hill for dinner. We went to a pub called the Old Swan (that I realize I had been to earlier in the semester when we got there) and had dinner and drinks for a few hours and finally left when these creepy old Canadian guys were talking to us. It was nice to walk around Notting Hill for a bit because it's a really cute area. Before we went, I wanted to check online for filming locations from the Notting Hill movie to see if there was anything I haven't seen but wanted to. There wasn't, but the site I found said that Julia Roberts' character's final movie premiere is at this theater in Leicester Square that I've been too. I'll have to watch that movie when I get home so I can be obnoxious and point out all the places I've been (like outside the Ritz). They actually hold a lot of premieres in Leicester Square. I don't think I wrote here that about a month ago I was there to see Confessions of Shopaholic and I heard this really loud screaming. Across the square was a huge crowd of girls waiting outside a theater for the premiere of 17 Again, Zac Efron's newest movie. Maybe I did write about that... but it was pretty funny. And loud.

After class on Tuesday I met up with my roommate from sophomore year, Cherelle, and went to a bar in Covent Garden called Dirty Martini. It was really cute, and I got a very interesting Cherry Blossom Martini and a yummy chocolate martini.


Wednesday morning I went to Covent Garden to just check in for the last time because I didn't really do anything the night before but go to the bar there. I did make a little detour before the bar to get a picture of the Drury Lane street sign. Unfortunately, there were no bakeries on the street for me to buy a muffin at. I think this is really dumb; somebody could make a killing off tourists if they had a bakery on that street called The Muffin Man.


I decided to walk to the Mandeville Hotel, where I was meeting Alice, even though it was a half hour away because it was so pretty out, so I got to walk down Oxford Street and stop in at Selfridges again. We met at the Mandeville for our last British afternoon tea, which was served in an adorable room with cute furniture and decor. The teas were interesting, too. Alice got a rose flavored tea that had little roses floating in the pot, and I got a jasmine flavored one. Unlike the other places we went to, they didn't leave the teapots on the table, but instead came and refilled them for us whenever we ran out. There were also, of course, scones (YUM I LOVE SCONES AND DEVONSHIRE CREAM), little sandwiches, and cute cakes and fruit things. It was all very yummy.



I took a little break after that, and then went to check out Little Venice with another friend. I imagine the real Venice will be more impressive. This was just a little canal with some boathouses in it. And no Italian restaurants nearby. I did, though, get to go to the Warwick Avenue tube stop, which was fun because there's a popular song called "Warwick Avenue" by a singer named Duffy, and she talks about meeting by the entrance of the Tube. Except, actually, she pronounces it the way it looks -- War-wick -- but my boss said it's actually pronounced "war-ick" and Duffy is Welsh and an idiot. And the Tube announcer said "war-ick" too. So I guess Duffy just doesn't know what she's talking about.


Thursday started out with my final, and I didn't have time to do anything fun because I had packing and a bunch of other errands to do. We celebrated a friend's birthday that night, though, so we started drinking at around 6:30 -- totally normal by British standards -- and went to a pub called O'Neil's near Leicester Square. I got kind of choked up on the way home because we walked through Piccadilly Circus, which we do a lot when we go out here because that's where a lot of the good nightlife is. It was also the first touristy thing I did when I came here in January, so it was all kind of coming full circle and I got sad.

Today, Friday, I took a quick trip to Shoreditch to check out Spittalfield's Market because I had heard it was great, but realized when I got there that it was the market I stumbled upon a while ago when I was in the area to go to the Madonna exhibit. We got lunch, saw that, walked down Brick Lane, and came back to the Crofton to finish all the crazy errands we had to do, like bring out suitcases to Heathrow to store. I went to the Stanhope Arms, a pub, for dinner with Alice, where a guy questioned us about Americans using ketchup on everything. The whole time I've been here, I never noticed that the Brits don't actually use ketchup. I guess they put vinegar on their fries. Ew.

Also, yesterday some British guy asked me for directions somewhere and I was able to tell him! I was so excited; it was the perfect sendoff. Especially because it wasn't somewhere easy like Piccadilly Circus or Buckingham Palace, but a really obscure place: the Royal Thai Embassy. Granted, it's right down the street from me. But still.

And some last pictures of, respectively, my room, my kitchen, and the sign above a Barclay's "cash point" (ATM):



Now, off to Venice, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, and Paris! I'll try to update if I can!

XOXO

Q: Why is Carly depressed?

A: Because she leaves London in ONE WEEK. :(

Drinking... tea. And other things.

One of my friends, Natalie, has been interning at Paramount Pictures, which is currently promoting the new Star Trek movie. It doesn't come out until May, but she got us passes to a media screening (someone from FHM was going and other press was there) on Thursday. It was at the Empire Cinema in Leicester Square, in the huge theater they use for screenings and premieres and stuff.


The movies was actually really good. Sexified Star Trek. We're Trekkies now... well, maybe not really, and the current obsession probably just has to do with how hot Chris Pine, who played Captain Kirk, is.

The next day, Friday, was my last day of work... or last day at work, as I didn't really do anything. I came in, wrote a review of Star Trek, and uploaded images of girls dressed as Princess Leia until 12:45, when my boss took me out for lunch. From there, we went to a pub called The Cock, stayed there until about 5:30, then went back to the office for a half hour. It was pretty empty because it was Friday and everyone had left early, so we went from there back out to two more pubs (the local O'Neil's and Shakespeare's Head on Carnaby).

My boss told me this really funny story about something that happened at FHM a few years ago. It was before 9/11, and there was a picture printed in the magazine with a caption that had a joke about Islam. Everyone in the office received death threats. At magazines, companies send you stuff a lot -- free samples, etc. -- because they want you to write about them. Somebody got a joke bomb from some company (like fake poop or fake vomit; this was like a silly over-the-top bomb with a timer on it or something) and they thought it would be funny to repackage it and put it on the Editor's desk. Eventually, the Editor comes in and they're all sneaking peeks and watching out of the corners of their eyes to see his reaction. Finally, he starts going through his mail and opens the package. His face goes white. He looks up quickly at the room and then back at the package, stands up, clutches it to his chest, and runs out. Like the hero who's saving everyone from a bomb. I guess a bunch of people ran out after him to tell him it was a joke, and he took it pretty well. Then, he goes to show the fake bomb to the Publisher. He wasn't in his office, and the editor, not thinking (I guess), left it on his desk. A little while later, the Publisher comes back. He comes out of his office and tells everyone to get out of the building because there's a bomb. Everyone laughs and tells him it's a joke -- but the guy had already called the police and the Bomb Squad, who evacuated a whole stretch of Oxford Street (a really busy shopping street, where I work). Hahaha.


By the way, Savile Row is also pretty close to where I work ("Who cares what they're weeeearrrring, on Main Street or Savile Roooooow...") so I took a picture one day on my way home, and also stopped at Liberty, a high-end department store in this cute old building that hasn't been changed since, like, Victorian times.


By the time I went back to the Crofton at 7:30-8ish, I was pretty tipsy (and my boss gave me a bottle of wine, so I had that to look forward to). This was only kind of tough because we were going out later, and I was getting tired. My friend and I went to Ministry of Sound, this pretty cool club (that's kind of hipster-punk, unfortunately) that's pretty famous, because there was a Star Trek promo event happening and her boss asked her to check it out. We ended up getting double VIP bracelets (one at the door for being on the Paramount Pictures guest list and another from somebody in the VIP room), but we left pretty early because half the fun was supposed to be the "green girls" that were going to be there (it's a Star Trek thing, apparently), but they hadn't come by 1am, so we left.

On Saturday, Alice and I woke up early and went to Portobello Road, where there's a really famous market on Saturdays. They have lots of touristy crap and antiques and it's really really busy on Saturdays, so we had to get there around 10ish. I bought all the touristy knick-knacks that I was waiting to buy until the end, but I couldn't find the bag I wanted. There's this one design, on a canvas bag or t-shirt, that's like I (heart) NY, but it's London, and instead of a heart there's an Eiffel Tower. Hehe. They did have a lot of Obama t-shirts, though, which I've seen at all of those tourist stores in London. I don't know why. Strange.


Portabello Road is in Notting Hill, a really cute area with lots of pretty streets. This particular one was our favorite:


When we got to the end of the street, we took the Tube to Piccadilly Circus and walked to Fortnum & Mason. I'm so glad I went back and actually went in this time, because it was A. Dor. A. Ble.


The ground floor has all of this really expensive, cute tea and stuff for making tea. There's also a chocolate counter and a super-cute candy counter, that reminded me a lot of the old-fashioned candy stores... except that everything cost well over a penny.

The floor was carpeted and it was just so cute, but everything was very expensive. Besides the two floors with food, I went to the "gift" area on the third floor, where they had Swarovski-encrusted calculators, scissors, and staplers. By the way, I want them. So if you're looking to buy me a gift... the scissors are only, like, $100 or so.

On one floor they also had an old-school looking ice cream parlor. We decided to get tea and scones (the best ones I've had here; they were so hot and yummy) because it's our last week in England and we really want to exhaust all the British things available to us.


And now I'm back to being depressed. Don't make me leave...

We don't spell it with a "u"

Pushing through the obnoxious Oxford Street crowd on my way home yesterday, I realized that if anything, this internship has prepared me for working at Conde Nast this summer in that I'm now ready to wade through the throngs of tourists in Times Square. Not that I didn't have to do that to walk down 8th Ave. from Port Authority to 57th St. to Hearst, but this might be worse. Or maybe I just have a selective memory. It's definitely not as bad as that one horrible day when that idiot was climbing the New York Times building and dumb people taking pictures and standing in the street almost made me miss my bus. Like, did they want to see him fall to his death?

Also, for your reading pleasure, something I worked on for the US website (I guess people got laid off there and now it needs to be updated from the UK, which poses the obvious problem of not having people who know American grammar/vocab/slang writing for an American audience... lucky they had me this week): Top Ten Rising Stars.

Because I'm a girl and I like pretty flowers

Monday was the last day of my little vacay, and the only sunny day all weekend, so I went to Regents Park, which is northeast of Hyde Park. My friend Steph (from home, who is studying in London with a different program) lives pretty close to it and says she runs there every day, and now I'm officially jealous -- it's beautiful. I took the bus from South Kensington to the southwest corner of the park and just took a walk. The whole southern end was gorgeous, with tons of flowers and a lake and fountains. If I had the rest of the summer here I'd probably go to this park every weekend and just walk or read. Well, every weekend that it was sunny. So not a whole lot of weekends, actually. There was a café that I'd go back to if I had time and a restaurant called -- get this -- The Honest Sausage. I'll let you take what you want from that.





Connected to the north end of Regent's Park is Primrose Hill, a green hill that you can see a lot of London from the top of. It was still pretty foggy out (when I say it was "sunny" on Monday, I mean that the sun was visible and I could feel its heat; that's all) so the view wasn't too fabulous, but they had a little sign that pointed out certain landmarks, like Saint Paul's. The area around the hill, also called Primrose Hill, is pretty cute, and I think a lot of celebs live there.

Great.

So, you know how I said that Brixton was kind of sketchy and dirty and I couldn't figure out why someone recommended it to me at work? I guess I wasn't paying enough attention when Brixton came up, because my boss was joking. When I told him I went to Brixton, he laughed at me. Great. Well, on the bright side... I got to see a different part of London? I guess? I kind of feel like an idiot.

I can't shop? I feel like Oliver Twist...

I didn't do much on Sunday because it was Easter and my plans got a little messed up. In the morning I went to the Charles Dickens Museum and Dickens' old house on Doughty Street.


The house had a lot of his old furniture, including the table that he wrote a lot of his novels on and some of his "desk furniture," like writing implements and a china monkey, which was one of his "favourite mascots."



Of course, there were a lot of original writings (both letters and manuscripts of his stories) and first printings. A letter they had in the dining room inviting a friend to dinner mentioned another person coming, a "man called Thackeray," i.e. William Thackeray who wrote Vanity Fair. There were also some original printings of Nicholas Nickelby in the series format that most of his works were published as. Most of his works were published as installments at the time of their first publication, but the interesting part is that his writing was in such high demand at the time that he had to work very fast, and never in his entire career did he come up with a detailed plan of what would happen in his stories -- he'd just sit down and write them, relying on his "imagination" to get him through it. Isn't that fascinating? Especially because Dickens wrote such involved plots. It's amazing he didn't get lost or end up with a story he couldn't finish logically or well. In 1843, though, he started making short-term plans for each monthly installment of what he was writing.


They also had some of the equipment used for illustrations back then. A lot of it was done by carving a wooden block or engraving a steel plate and sort of stamping it, which I knew, but seeing what they actually looked like was cool -- they were so detailed! On these little pieces of wood! I don't have a picture of that, but I do have a picture of a toilet-chair that's kind of funny:


After Dickens' House I took the tube to Shepherd's Bush to go to the Westfield Shopping Center, which is apparently the biggest mall in Europe. That's kind of cool, but it's actually not as big as the Garden State Plaza, so I'm not too impressed. Oh, I'm also unimpressed because it was closed. Yeah. For Easter. The food places were open, but the mall itself was closed, so I was pretty annoyed that I trekked all the way there and I didn't even get a new top or pair of earrings out of it.

On the way there, though, I noticed those places for people to play music again, and since no one was there I read the sign behind it. It says, "Licensed buskers are playing at this station legally, so please show your consideration." So they do have to get a permit, and probably reserve a time. I didn't know they were called "buskers," but that clears up my confusion over the "No Busking" sign I pass every day.

And on a completely unrelated note, I forgot about the funny street name I saw on Saturday during my shopping trip: Man in the Moon Passage. Isn't that cute?