The Rain in Spain and Sun in Copenhagen

First of all let me apologize for being MIA for so long. These past few weeks have been a series of unfortunate (and fortunate) events that have managed to keep me away from blogging. Here’s a list of those things. I’ll try to keep this post short even though it’s covering several days.

The Unfortunate:

It rained the whole time we were in Majorca, Spain.

I got food poisoning from a suspicious bacon and cheese sandwich in the Majorcan airport.

I spilled chocolate milk on my laptop.

Finals.

Presentations.

Everything being closed on Danish holidays and having no food to eat.

Packing.

The Fortunate:

We went to Spain! And saw a lot of cool things despite the rain.

I am better now.

My computer made a miraculous recovery and saved me a couple hundred dollars.

Only one final left.

May Day.

Tivoli.

No more classes.

Free food.

Ama visiting.

The weather in Copenhagen has been BEAUTIFUL!

Majorca

Majorca was beautiful. Full of sangria and spaniards and pearls and beaches. Oh and home to Nadal of course.

We mostly went around the city looking at the beautiful cathedral and eating a lot of gelato.

We had some delicious sangria and paella for lunch on the first day.

Then we walked down Passeig de Born which is the most famous street in Majorca and home to lots of nice stores and cafes.

After awhile the rain got to us so we spent a day hiding out in Coves del Drach, which translates to Caves of the Dragons.

To get to the caves we had to take a bus across the island which meant driving through the countryside. Even in the rain it was beautiful with hundreds of old windmills and sheep grazing in the beautiful green grass.

We headed back to Palma to get some dinner and walk around some more and got tapas and gelato. I know it must seem like all we did was eat, which is fairly accurate since there wasn’t much else to do since the beautiful beach was shrouded in clouds the entire weekend.

This is my delicious meal of octopus wrapped in bacon and a yummy goat cheese salad.

Finally it was time to say goodbye to Majorca and all of the rain.

This was the view from our hotel and the beautiful beach was a minute’s walk away.

While I’m so happy that I got to go to Spain and enjoy their food and caves, I would not suggest going to Majorca unless it is beautiful and sunny outside. The city is beautiful, but can be seen in a day and the beaches are so beautiful that you’ll want to spend forever on them providing that you have better weather than we did.

Back in Copenhagen

So then we headed back to Copenhagen which consisted of me suffering from food poisoning and having to take an exam the day after we got back. So that was unfortunate.

Luckily by Wednesday I was feeling much better and able to celebrate May Day, which is a national workers’ holiday and as my friend said when I asked what we were celebrating, “I don’t know socialism or something.” Not entirely inaccurate. It was an absolutely gorgeous day and I even got away with running around in a tee shirt!

So after May Day these past few days have been filled with some exams and presentations and packing up to get ready to go home in four days. I can’t believe this semester is over. I’ve just been enjoying my last few days by being outside as much as possible from visiting Tivoli to DIS picnics with free food to reading in the Botanical Gardens.

The DIS picnic with tables and tables of free food.

Celebrating the last day of classes by sitting by the lakes.

Hanging out in the Botanical Gardens which are finally in full bloom.

Oh and lots of ice cream.

Life has been good these past few days. I even got to see Ama for a few short hours since she’s traveling Europe with her family and came all the way up to Copenhagen to see me! I have the best friends in the world. And Allyson just booked a flight to Charleston to see me the day after I get home! I love Copenhagen and Europe, but I honestly can’t wait to get back home to my family and friends and warm SC weather! This semester has made me appreciate the little things from back home like ice, water fountains, bright colored clothes, sunshine, meals being cooked for me. The list has gotten a bit lengthy lately as I’ve been trying to focus on the positives of going home and not the negatives of leaving this amazing place. It will be hard to leave Copenhagen as its finally leaving winter behind, but I know this summer will be filled with so many great things.

Visiting the Motherland with the Ol’ Ball and Chain Bridge

For the second half of my travel break I met up with Will in Budapest to visit the country that my grandma’s family is from. It sounds weird, but I really did feel a connection with that place. I loved the people with their brown curly hair, loud voices and sunny dispositions. I finally didn’t feel so out of place like I do in the land of giant blonde runway models that is Denmark. We had the most perfect weather you could ever hope for. It was sunny everyday with the occasional cloud to cool us down. Our hostel, Lavender Circus, was amazing! Here’s a picture of the lobby that I pulled from their website.

It was the perfect amount of bohemian and messy to make you feel right at home without feeling cramped and cluttered. There were sweet notes pinned up all over the walls and lots of little knickknacks like the old Hungarian passport nailed to our door. The owners were also really fun and helpful and would just hang out in the community room all the time to chat with the guests. They gave us a lot of advice on where to eat and what to see.

That night we just walked around Budapest and then went to get dinner at this place they recommended called Castro Bistro.

On Friday morning Will found the free walking tours and we went on one. Here I am waiting for the tour to start with a bunch of other American study abroad students.

Our guide, Bridget, was adorable and funny. She took us all around the Pest side and then over the Chain Bridge to the Buda side.

This church is St. Stephen’s church which is tallest point in Budapest (the Parliament building is the exact same height). St. Stephen was an old Hungarian king who brought Christianity to Hungary and cleaned up their act since they are descendants of the Huns and were acting a bit too barbaric for European standards. Of course it wasn’t a bloodless takeover of Christianity, but the Church still named him a saint and he’s actually a bit of miracle in Hungary, but I’ll get to the miracle party later when we actually went inside the church.

Below is the Opera house which was gorgeous! Budapest was always in competition with Vienna and constantly asked the king to give them money to fund different projects around Budapest. They begged for ten years for an opera house and were finally granted the money as long as it wasn’t as big or grand as the opera house in Vienna. From the outside it seems like they held up their side of the bargain and made a relatively small opera house.

But when you got inside there was nothing quaint about it. 

After the opera house we circled back around to the church and Bridget took some pictures of us. She said she wasn’t a great photographer and while she’s not the worst I’ve ever seen she definitely wasn’t the best. All the sun reflections give it some character.

After the church we started heading towards the water and we came up to this statue of the artist’s grandfather. Apparently he was quite the lady’s man and rubbing his mustache will give you good luck in your relationships. Will rubbed the stache for a good amount of time. I figured that I’ve got all the luck I need.

I zoned out during this part of the tour so I have no idea what this building is, but isn’t it pretty?

Then we headed over Budapest’s Chain Bridge. Will says it’s called the Chain Bridge because it chains Buda and Pest together. I think Link Bridge would be much more fitting and sound a lot less like they don’t want to be chained together. Link is much more positive. Come on Budapest get with the connotations.

The sculptor claimed that these lions were carved to perfection and he would jump off the bridge if anyone could find something wrong with them. Everyone said they were perfect until one day a little kid climbed up on top and found that the lions didn’t have tongues. The man was so upset he actually did commit suicide by jumping off the bridge.

But other than that sad story it’s a pretty happy bridge.

Then we climbed up the Castle Hill on the Buda side of Budapest. At the top is a giant bird. Bridget kept saying there’s my father up there and we were all very confused. Apparently this bird came to a young girl in a dream and had sex with her and from that the first Hungarian is born so this bird is the father of all Hungarians. I’m still a bit fuzzy on the logistics of how all of this happened and why bestiality is a totally normal way to start a group of people, but hey that’s my father up on top of the hill.

At 2 we got to see the changing of the guard which was pretty cool. There was an old man taking a picture and not paying any attention who almost got run over by the soldiers. Apparently they stop for nothing and nothing phases them. Will and I agreed that standing outside in that outfit and not moving for hours and hours might be one of most terribly mind-numbing jobs.

This church has the special Hungarian tiling on its roof which has a top secret production process. Very few know how to make these tiles and they cost a lot of money. I had been thinking I’d want to tile my house with them, but I think they might be a bit out of my price range.

Here’s a statue of St. Stephen. You can’t quite tell from the statue, but he had an enormously large head. Not in the Napoleon ego type of way. His head was actually huge. They would use his crown in the coronation of all the kings and queens, but never placed the crown on the head because it would have just become a very fancy necklace once their head slipped through it.

After hiking all around Budapest our tour was finally over so we started our descent back down the hill. I stopped to take a picture with these knights.

Will made us take a detour so he could get the perfect picture of his favorite building, Parliament. I must say it’s pretty good. And I guess the building is alright too.

I made Will stop and take a picture of me and one of my favorite things- spring! Also this is a dogwood in full bloom which is the tree my mom planted for me when I was born so I kind of feel like I have ownership of all dogwoods now.

Then we went and got a late lunch/early dinner. I got hungarian beef stew with hungarian dumplings and Will got curry chicken. Both meals were amazing and not only did I finish my plate, but I finished before Will. Unheard of.

For dessert we went to the market and got a kilo of strawberries for about the price of one strawberry back in Denmark. And yes we ate the whole bag in less than ten minutes… We’re starving college students in Europe.

We walked around some more and went back to our hostel and passed out. We woke up on Saturday morning and got breakfast from this great place called Cafe Alibi. I got french toast complete with a milkshake.

 Then we headed back to St. Stephen’s so we could see the relic and Will could climb the dome. So the relic is St. Stephen’s hand which was supposedly mummified, but recent tests have revealed that it was never mummified and yet it has somehow stayed intact. I find it a bit creepy, but many people come and pray to the hand every day.

So then it was time to climb the dome… I was not a happy camper.

But as usual, the view was worth it in the end.

And as a reward I got the most amazing gelato when we got back down! Will bought me gelato from a place that shaped it into a rose!

Then we walked up Andrassy which is one of the main streets in Budapest and was designed after Champs-Elysees. It was beautiful and the trees weren’t even in full bloom yet.

The road ended at Heroe’s Square which is situated between a few museums and is pretty impressive.

Then came the moment I’ve been waiting for. We went to the zoo! My friend in DIS went to the Budapest zoo, which is one of the oldest in the world, and posted pictures of him touching sloths on the first travel break. From that moment I knew that we had to go. I thought the zoo would be run down and gross but aside from the atrocious smelling bathrooms that made the animal exhibits smell like fields of daisies the zoo was in tip top shape. We saw so many types of animals and just about all of them had babies. Baby sloths, baby gorillas, baby goats, baby elephants, baby giraffes. You name it, there was a smaller version of it running around somewhere.

So here I am having my Kristen Bell moment with a sloth.

But then this guy kept teasing the sloth with an apple that it couldn’t pick up with it’s claws and it freaked out and kind of scarred me for life. It also made us further question how this is even legal. Seriously. I was petting a sloth.

Luckily there were several other sloths who were much nicer.

A dream come true.

Here are a few of the other awesome animals we saw and touched. I didn’t include a picture of the bat because it’s honestly too terrifying to see how close I got to it.

I came so close to stealing one of these baby goats.

After our trip to the zoo we walked through the amazing park to the baths. They were beautiful and so relaxing. We just laid in the warm water until we turned into prunes.

Take note of the unnecessary number of speedos. No thank you.

When we left the sun was setting in Heroe’s Square. A storm was starting to roll in and the clouds were perfect.

We beat the rain back to our hostel and then went to Castro Bistro for the second time on our trip. That place was just so delicious. I got a Hungarian beef stew with these special noodles. Again. Again. It kind of became my thing. And I’m pretty sure Will got curry. Again.

They also had this amazing lemonade that had huge pieces of lemons, limes, oranges and mint sprinkled in a sparkling lemonade. It reminded me of a very intense version of Debbie Phillips’s summer muddles.

We went out that night and got to see the awesome Budapest nightlife. We went to a bar called Szimpla which means Simple even though it was very far from it. There must have been at least 20 different rooms all designed uniquely with an open courtyard and several bars. The room we were in had a switchboard that controlled the lights and the ten or so tiny TVs in the room. It was the coolest place.

The next morning we woke up and had to say our goodbyes to Budapest. I know that we’ll be back. We agreed that it was our favorite place either of us have visited so far.

HaKUNA Matata in Split

It means no worries. And in Split, Croatia it took very few kuna (Croatian currency) to be worry free. I traveled with the usual suspects, Lauren and Julia along with Lauren’s friend Susy and Julia’s friends Katie and Taylor. We ended up being a great travel group that was up for pretty much anything. We had to catch a flight at 6AM which required me getting up at 3AM to get my things in order, catch a bus, catch a train, check in, get through security, get through customs, and wait outside the terminal’s closed 7-Eleven with a growling stomach.

We got to Split by 8AM and walked onto the tarmac with our jackets in hand- a monumental moment for six girls who have been weathering one of the worst winters in Copenhagen.

After meeting our adorable hostel owner we headed out to the beach and met up with other DIS kids. We all laid out and soaked up the sun not even caring that we were turning into little lobsters. It had been so long since our arms or legs had seen the sunlight that being a little pink was preferable to being ghost.

Croatia is possibly the most beautiful place I have ever been to so please bear with the absurd number of pictures that are to come. On Sunday Susy, Taylor, Katie and I hiked up Marjan, which is this giant hill in Split that overlooks the harbor and the Diocletian Palace. It’s a bit of a hike, but totally worth it.

After climbing what seemed like a million stairs we came to the top with the perfect spot to see the whole city.

We didn’t stop at the lookout spot. We kept going across the entire hill, which is actually fairly big. The hike is pretty high up, but almost entirely along the water so there is always a bit of blue peeking in between the trees and every few minutes a beautiful view opens up. Here are just a few of the pictures I took.

When we came to the end we ran into a road that wound all the way down the hill. There were these cliffs along the road that were terrifying just to look up at. Luckily we did because we saw some amazing buildings that functioned as Renaissance hermitages in the 15th century.

We also spotted one very brave rock climber.

Down below we saw a beautiful beach which soon got the nickname “The Beach Out of Reach” from Taylor because it was at the bottom of this road that never seemed to stop winding down the hill. It probably took us about an hour and half to finally get to it.

But when we did it was gorgeous. Split doesn’t have many sandy beaches, but the small pebbles were actually pretty nice because we could wear our tennis shoes and not worry about all the sand getting everywhere.

At the end of the day I treated myself to some 6 kuna ice cream. I let the sweetness of cheap delicious ice cream and this sunny beautiful place melt my ice cream and my heart because let’s be honest, it’s hard not to be super cheesy and cliche when you’re in paradise.

We woke up bright and early on Monday to go to the Plitvice Lakes, which make up the oldest national park in Southeast Europe. On our way there our guide took us by Krka, which is another national park known for its waterfalls. Unlike Plitvice Lakes, you can swim at Krka, but it was a bit too cold for that when we went. The water was freezing even though it was in the 70s.

Our ride there was a bit terrifying thanks to our guide’s driving, but it was gorgeous! Plitvice is much deeper into Croatia than Split so you leave behind the Adriatic Sea and head towards (and under) the mountains. Along the way we saw goats scaling the side of the mountains, sheep being herded by a shepherd and amazing views of the snowcapped mountains.

The lakes were gorgeous and home to the largest waterfall in Croatia along with many smaller waterfalls. The water was a beautiful blue-green color thanks to all the algae in it. Even though the trees were in full bloom and green yet, the waterfalls alone were impressive enough. 

We walked over these rickety boardwalks which had water actually bubbling up from underneath them at some points. They were terrifying, but wonderful because there were no railings so we felt like we could just reach out an touch the waterfalls. I loved the abandonment of safety precautions.

At one point we ran into some ducks which had obviously become very comfortable with humans because they were practically grabbing food out of our hands.

When it was time for us to go they hopped back in the water and swam right over these giant fish. The water was so clear we could straight to the bottom. It was incredible.

After a great day we headed back and watched the sunset from the balcony of our hostel, which became a nightly thing.

On Tuesday we woke up and took a bus to Brela, which is the number 6 beach in the world. It was gorgeous and totally empty. We were the only people on the beach and it seemed like the whole town too. It was quite a hike to get down there, but again totally worth the burn. Getting fit and seeing beautiful places, what more could you ask for?

Here’s Susy and I at Brela. 

We brought some Somersbys to the beach. It was the only taste of Copenhagen we needed that day.

Sitting under a mountain on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. Every single day in Croatia was perfect.

On the last day it was just Susy, Lauren and I so we walked around the Diocleatian Palace and went to the next island over.

In the Palace there was a sphinx brought to Split from Egypt.

We walked through the Fish Market which obviously had a lot of delicious smells and sights… Buckets full of dead fish. So appetizing.

With that we headed over to Supetar which is the island over from Split. It was a great ferry ride and we got to see the Split harbor from a whole new point of view.

The beach we found on Supetar was rocky, but we made the most of it with the help of some sunshine, a camera, bread, cheese and Radlers- my new favorite lemon flavored beer.

As always, the perfect day in Croatia.

It was hard to say goodbye to such a perfect place full of five perfect days, but I was headed to Budapest and would soon find an even more perfect place if that’s even possible (and grammatically I know it’s not).

And we’re off

This past week the weather in Copenhagen was beautiful. It was sunny and decently warm. On Tuesday I sat by the lakes and read. It was so beautiful and there were at least twenty swans swimming in the lake I was sitting by.

All the good weather started going downhill on Wednesday. I went on a study tour of the vintage stores in Copenhagen and broke out my Keds thinking that they’d be perfect. By the time the tour ended I couldn’t even feel them. The past few days have been cold and gloomy again, which is actually a nice thing because for once it makes me excited to travel. It’s been beautiful the last few times we’ve left Copenhagen.

The weather in Split seems amazing. I wasn’t even sure how to pack for 70 degree weather. Shorts? What are those again? Is 70 when I can wear shorts? No tights? I packed a few jeans and still brought my Barbour just in case it gets a bit cold. Even Budapest looks nice and warm.

43 Degrees

This has been the best weather we’ve seen in Copenhagen yet. Everyone is loving it and making the most of it. And it’s a whopping 43 degrees. It’s amazing how grateful Copenhagen has made me for South Carolina heat and …

Cadbury Me In London

But really, I loved London and not just because I could get a Cadbury Egg McFlurry (which may or may not be mankind’s most genius invention).

I knew that I would have withdrawals of Cadbury so I snagged an extra free mini Cadbury Egg from the people who were handing them out in the airport. My Copenhagen Easter was actually wonderful. I managed to have enough self control to save my Cadbury Egg until Easter afternoon and then went on a run in the not so freezing weather (upper 30s hallelujah!).

The sun was shining in Copenhagen and I decided to try a new route. I was so happy to find this little piece of art outside of a busy cafe. It says “We want to live together” in many different languages. How appropriate on the Easter after so much traveling!

Now back to London! First of all my lips got so chapped from the London wind that I thought they might just peel off. I dropped a couple pounds and bought this Vaseline Lip Therapy. Best decision of the whole trip. Honestly I could barely eat all the delicious food because my lips were so chapped. Lip and life saver.

On Wednesday we were visited by a partner at Schillings which is a law firm specializing in cases involving privacy. A few of their clients are Kate Winslet, Nicole Kidman, Lance Armstrong, Taylor Swift, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, well you get the idea of whose privacy their protecting. It was fascinating to learn about how they approach privacy cases and the British media. One thing about Britain that is very different than the US is that they hold the right to privacy equal to the right of freedom of speech. This means that free speech cannot totally violate privacy so their cases get very interesting as to deciding which is more important in deciding the outcome of the case. It was also interesting learning about the lack of fact checking in British media which obviously can lead to cases involving slander and such. The way their law and media works is so different from ours and yet so similar. Many of the celebrities are actually Americans and yet they choose to work with Schillings because they are so good at what they do.

After Schillings we headed over to BBC to learn about their program Panorama. While Panorama was interesting, especially because we talked a bit about the Jimmy Savile case, I would have rather toured the headquarters and discussed how they tie in their wide array of programming. I guess hard hitting undercover stories are more interesting than Sherlock Holmes going undercover.

After BBC we went to Chesterfield Mayfair for a spot of afternoon tea. I honestly wasn’t sure if I’d be able to go back to Copenhagen (physically or mentally) after all we ate.

The most scrumptious scones I’d ever tasted with homemade jam took up the entire top tier. Then came a bit of fruit cake, orange cupcake, eclair, raspberry and chocolate macaroon, strawberry cheesecake and a fruit tart. The last tier was left to finger sandwiches including chicken, cucumber, smoked salmon, the works. Everything was perfect, but I’d have to say my favorite were the scones. Oh and the fact that the waiter pulled my chair out for me and made us feel like royalty.

As my mother would say in her horrible British accent, “A spot of tea?” Let’s just say I had more than a spot… maybe a couple cup fulls.

After tea we explored more of London. We headed over to Buckingham Palace to mess with the guards. The palace was beautiful. It reminded me a lot of our palaces back in Copenhagen, just with a lot more gold.

We were quite upset to find out that not only could we not reach the guards, but they were dressed in grey. They looked just like our Copenhagen guards! What a rip off!

 

From Buckingham Palace we walked through a park (I want to say Hyde Park) on our way to Westminster Abbey and Big Ben. It was apparently a wildlife reserve and there were animals everywhere. The squirrels weren’t afraid of anything and would run right up to you. Luckily I was wearing gloves and this little guy wasn’t too mad when he found out I didn’t have any food. I felt like a real life Snow White.

Here’s Big Ben hanging out in Elizabeth Tower with their next door neighbor The London Eye. Livin the life.

The next day we had a morning workshop on social media. It was interesting at first, but there is only so much a 50 year old man can teach a room full of 20 year olds about social media. That afternoon we were sent out on our own to do a social media project on a local business. We found a small sports store that we used as a model for a communications campaign focusing on social media. We also managed to find Harrods and a Whole Foods. So project aside, it was a pretty successful afternoon.

I took a picture of these black and white meringues at Whole Foods for my dad. They are giant meringues (his one love in life) and black and white (just like his other love for black and white cookies). I almost bought one but remembered I’m not going home until May 16th.

By that night it was About Thyme for some dinner. But really, that was the name of the restaurant, sorry for the bad pun. I got a bowl of french onion soup, “Chicken Princess” and a crumble. Absolutely fantastic. It was such a great dinner to be with our whole class. We all got so close on this trip and it was so nice to be with everyone with such a great meal. 

On Friday morning we went to The Tate Modern to see some modern art. We took a bit of a detour and walked past St. Paul’s to get there. It was such a gorgeous blue day. If it hadn’t been so cold outside and we hadn’t been so pressed for time I definitely would have climbed up the dome.

This is the view across the Millenium Bridge from The Tate Modern looking over to St. Paul’s.

This actually looks like a page out of my art history text book. Looks like the class actually did come in handy considering all the art I’ve been seeing the past few months at The Met, The Louvre, D’Orsay, Pompidou and now Tate Modern.

The Tate Modern is right next to The Globe so we got to walk by. The Shakespeare nerd in me was freaking out (shout out to Duke TIP and my wonderful roomie Leanne for not caring how nerdy we were). I would have gone in but the line was long and there was delicious food waiting for us.

Since our reservation at The Tate Modern Cafe fell through we went to The Swan instead which is this pub right next to The Globe. At first I was skeptical. I wasn’t in the mood for a pub on a Friday afternoon right after looking at modern art all morning. And yet again I learned my lesson of questioning DIS and their food choices. Due to the reservation mix up DIS bought us all a round of drinks. Most people got beers, but considering it was barely noon and I’m not a big beer fan I stuck with cider. Turns out it was a giant cider, but it was quite delicious. The perfect compliment to my salad and mac and cheese with bits of bacon. I have been craving mac and cheese since January 12th now so this was quite a blessing. Then we finished off lunch with an apple crumble and ice cream. Delicious!

After such a yummy lunch, Lulu, Derick and I went to the one place we should probably have not gone and didn’t regret it one bit. We went to Borough Market which essentially smelled like heaven. It was a huge food market with the best smells imaginable. Unfortunately we were so full that we couldn’t even eat a free cheese sample.

After overloading our noses and teasing our mouths we headed towards the Tower Bridge to walk over to the nearest metro stop. It was very cool to walk over the Tower Bridge and see all of London from the ground as opposed to The Eye.

On our way to our tube stop we found a bit of the Roman Wall. It brought back many memories of Mr. Howell’s high school freshman history class with one of my still best friends Lauren. How I do not miss that class, but the memories that Lauren and I had suppressed came back so I actually remembered a bit about the Romans and that guy named Caesar. Okay, I remembered quite a bit, thanks Mr. Howell.

Our tube ride took awhile so we didn’t have time to wait in line to have our picture taken at platform 9 3/4, but we at least got to see it. Plus we made it back early to the hotel which turned out to be a great decision because for our last London treat DIS got coffees for those of us who got there early enough. Naturally I ordered a hot chocolate. Will, we have to add the Holiday Inn King’s Cross hot chocolate to our worldwide rankings we have. Still didn’t beat Angelina’s. The hot chocolate was just what I needed after exploring the Borough Markets in the cold.

Then it was time to pack up the bus and say goodbye to London and hello to Heathrow. Just before we got on our flight I snagged some “Tube” socks as a tacky/punny/perfect souvenir.

Goodbye London. I will miss you and the many tubular experiences we enjoyed together.

 

London Called Me

And I answered, “‘Ello?”.

My Strategic Communication class just got back from our trip to London. We left Sunday afternoon for Heathrow. When we got there on Sunday we went to our hotel at the Holiday Inn King’s Cross, which was amazing with giant beds (including labelled “firm” and “soft” pillows) and a well stocked English continental breakfast. You know the weather’s not that great in Copenhagen when we were looking forward to London weather. Seriously though, it’s the coldest winter in Denmark in over 70 years.

When we got to London we went on a tour of the National Portrait Gallery, but unfortunately they didn’t allow pictures so you will just have to imagine pictures of British royalty. By the time we finished that it was already getting dark outside so we went over to the London Eye for the sunset. The sunset wasn’t that great thanks to the clouds, but the view was amazing, especially at night.

Then we got a taste of authentic London cuisine… at the Bangalore Express. Okay so it may have not been fish n chips, but the chicken masala was delicious!

After dinner we all rushed back and crashed in our comfy hotel beds. We had an early morning at Wimbledon the next day. It turned out that we were a bit earlier than we needed to be so DIS treated us all to Starbucks- my first Starbucks in over two months!

After a nice little coffee break we got to go on a private tour of Wimbledon and see how they approach their business from a communications standpoint. Dream job.

Here’s the hill in preparation for June!

Just a selfie at Wimbledon.

We got to see so much history, like where the longest match in tennis history was held. 

This is the state of the art press room. My dad would be so jealous that I was in the same room as Nadal.

And for the grand finale of a Grand Slam tour, we saw Centre Court. 54 million blades of grass go into Wimbledon and this court’s blades outshine and out green all the others!

 

Successful trip! Pound it F. J. Perry!

After Wimbledon we headed over to lunch at this amazing Lebanese restaurant in the area. It was basically just a ton of appetizers and every single one was delicious. I could barely keep up with the food let alone take pictures. Our guide for Hampton Court Palace met up with us at the restaurant. He was Scottish and told us to think of him as Shrek and he actually did look quite a lot like him, minus the green.

The gardens at the palace were beautiful, but a bit chilly for my tastes.

We managed to find a big fire inside and stayed there for a good twenty minutes.

Once we were a bit warmed up we headed to the maze on the palace grounds. On the way there we found a ton of daffodils blooming! Even if it was freezing outside, at least there was some sign of spring!

After conquering the maze we had the left of the evening to ourself. So we decided to conquer the maze of the Tube. Once we did, we had to take a Spice Girls inspired picture.

We took the Tube to find some Chipotle. It brought me back to America and I even got a little extra bit of America by meeting up with a Vandy friend there. 

After Chipotle our whole class decided to go out together to this bar called Barumba. Our class is so much fun and I was so happy we all went out together. It was such a great night!

On Tuesday we had the morning off to explore London on a scavenger hunt. Unfortunately, the directions told us to take a bus that ended up getting stuck in traffic for an hour, but at least we got to ride at the top of a double decker bus!

For lunch we had a yummy tomato and pepper soup followed by chicken topped with bacon and cheese. It filled me up so fast and I didn’t even get to finish it. I was chewing on our way out to our next visit at Bloomberg.

Yet again another place that wouldn’t let us take pictures. I managed to sneak this one picture of inside Bloomberg.

I wish I could have taken more because it was possibly the most amazing office I have ever been in. The top of the escalators had giant fish tanks as did the rest the offices. The story behind it was that Bloomberg’s wife used to give fish tanks to every new employee, but obviously that started adding up so they put in fish takes in the offices instead.

As if the fish tanks weren’t cool enough they had the best food area ever… and we were told to help ourselves. I was searching around for something delicious and got my hands on some chips and cookies, but then we found soft serve chocolate ice cream. Strat Comm was in heaven. That place was incredible. The work they do is amazing, but I was partial to the office space.

After Bloomberg, my smaller group met with RLM Finsbury which is an international financial public relations firm. It sounds really boring, but it’s actually very interesting how they partner with companies such as Shell and work with companies like Bloomberg to produce results related to financial and public relations.

After that we grabbed a bite to eat. I had to try fish n chips at least once.

Then we went over a block for a comedy show with our class at the famous Comedy Store London. The show was hilarious and we definitely kept up with the British humor.

To keep this post from going on for another mile, I’m going to stop here. I’ll finish up with what happened on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday tomorrow! Cheerio!

A Couple of Perks

Real quick here are two perks of studying abroad:

1. This morning I woke up for my 8:30 class not especially looking forward to this snowy day filled with weather and blizzard warnings. Little did I know that less than six hours later I would be booking a flight to paradise. I Facetimed my parents and they told me they would give me an extra nice little chunk of change. I messaged Lauren and we decided to find somewhere to go for our long weekend in April. And then we found it- a flight from Malmo to Palma-de-Mallarco for under $100.

Can’t wait to be sitting on this island paradise!

2. You get priority registration with classes. That means that even though I’m a junior I get to register on the first day of registration. THE FIRST DAY! It is actually a miracle. Thank you Vanderbilt. Thank you.

Life is too good right now. In the words of Morgan Johnson, “We are so blessed!”

William’s First Danish

Okay, so technically it’s a kanelsnegle (which means “cinnamon snail”) but basically the same thing right?

After his plane getting delayed Wednesday night, he got in on Thursday afternoon. I rebelled and skipped class to show around Will along with Lauren and her two best friends from home, Hannah and Julia (aka Hanalia…). After getting Will settled in we went to Nyhavn, which is the part of Copenhagen that you’ve seen pictures of. Here’s Will anchoring down. Obviously.

Here I am with Julia, Lauren and Hannah while figuring out when to get on the canal tour.

It turned out that we had to wait a bit to go on the canal tour so we went to Amalienborg, which is where the Danish royal family lives. See that statue? It cost more than all four of the palaces combined.

Here are the guards watching out for the queen.

Behind Amalienborg is The Marble Church, but more on that later. 

When you walk out of the palace courtyard you come to a giant fountain right at the edge of the water. Lucky for us, it was too cold to keep the fountain running so it was the perfect platform for a picture!

After touring around the palace, we headed back to Nyhavn for the canal tour. We got to sit inside of this tiny little boat as it made it’s way through the canals, which run throughout the city.

Here is a kayaker who must be completely insane because it was freezing and windy out there.

This is the beautiful opera house, which is right across from Amalienborg.

After our canal tour, we went to The Round Tower, which was built by Christian IV as an observatory for Brahe. It was weird climbing to the top since there were not stairs because when the Russian czar visited, he refused to get off his horse so they had to build a flat surface for him to get to the top of the tower.

After The Round Tower, we went to The Summer Palace, which is my personal favorite. I can’t wait for all the snow to melt because when it does everyone sits outside and hangs out in the gardens.

The next day we went to the Carlsberg brewery, which was really cool. We missed our bus stop and ended up walking through this beautiful little park that was blanketed in snow.

It cost $12 to tour the brewery, but that’s not that much considering we got two free beers with the price of admission.

The first thing you come to on the tour are these beautiful Carlsberg horses. We hung out with them for awhile.

One of them even had the same haircut as me!

Our next stop told us all about the history of Carlsberg and the logo. You can’t quite see from this picture, but their logo used to be the swastika, which means “to be good,” but obviously that had to go after WWII.

Upstair was the largest beer bottle collection in the world. There were bottles from everywhere! It went on for rows and rows and rows!

Carlsberg actually gave Copenhagen The Little Mermaid statue and they had a replica in the courtyard. Here’s Lauren replicating the replica.

After a little bit more of a history lesson we got to the bar where we got more free drinks!

Will paid extra for some girly beer made with bananas. But it was pretty good, I must say.

And that was the end of our day at Carlsberg! 

On Saturday we headed over to Christiania in the hopes of climbing up the spiral top of this really cool church. We got there and of course I made friends with yet another bird.

When we got to the church they told us we couldn’t go up because it was too windy and supposed to snow. Will was really disappointed because he loves climbing up things (don’t ask me why), but we still went inside. There was this giant organ that was playing the creepiest music I’ve ever heard. It sounded like something out of the old Zelda games.

Since we were already there, we went to Christiania, which is technically a “freetown” and separate from Copenhagen. Some people here love Christiania. It’s fine, but as Will pointed out, it kind of looks like what you’d expect the world to look life after the apocalypse and people start rebuilding it.

After Christiania we went back to the Marble Church since we never got a chance to go inside. We happened to get there right before they were giving a tour to the top of the dome. Will was totally happy. Here he is climbing through the dark passageways like a modern day Quasimodo.

I made it to the top of the fifth largest dome in the world!

The view from the top was amazing even if it was a bit windy!

On parts of the dome there were arrows pointing to different places in and around Copenhagen. There’s Malmo just across the river!

After all that climbing Will rewarded me with some shopping at Magasin along with one of Angie’s delicious cupcakes and some hot chocolate. I got him a classic Danish hotdog, which was pretty yummy too.

And for our last dinner we made spaghetti and meatballs together like a couple of pros.

 Overall a very successful few days in Copenhagen! Come back soon William! It’s hard “coping” here without you!

The Niceties of Nice

It’s been a long week, but as promised I am finally sitting down to write about our trip to Nice.

Let’s start from the beginning. So Will thought that we were taking a night train to Nice (which we were) and that it left around 11 (which it did not). We got to the train station around 9:30 so proud of ourselves for getting there so early and I sat with our bags while Will checked us in and bought the youth passes. I was waiting for awhile, but was totally enjoying watching a little girl run around the station with a tiny little puff ball, which I soon realized was a dog, and making him jump over a part of the floor that was being redone. Then a group of kids came over to this piano that they had set up in the train station and one girl began banging on it. Soon her sister walked up and played a beautiful and everyone in the station clapped for her. So there I was enjoying these little moments when I get a call from Will telling me that our train left at 9:00 and he had read the dates wrong. Great… So we got back on the Metro to head back to his house after buying tickets for a 6AM train the next morning. Despite having the trek through the ridiculous Paris metro with our heavy bags and no escalators, it turned out to be a good thing. We got to sleep in an actual bed before having to head out for the train station early in the morning. We got to Gare d’Austerlitz with 20 minutes to spare, but then Will checked our tickets and they had switched our station to Gare de Lyon so we had to race through the Metro again and made it just in time for our train. Even though this all seems terrible, we only got to Nice three hours later than expected, which was good considering our hostel wasn’t even ready for us when we got there late.

The weather while we were there wasn’t exactly picture perfect, but we made do. Even by Friday it was still raining. However, I’d pick rainy and 52 over windy and 23, which was what it was when I got back to Copenhagen.

Plus, everyday the sun would poke its way through the clouds and the sky would open up into a beautiful blue. It made us appreciate the beautiful weather that much more.

Once we got settled into our hostel room, which was really nice, we decided to go to Old Nice. This area of Nice is absolutely beautiful, with picturesque fountains, small alleys that Will loved and a famous flower market that I loved.

They had my favorite flowers: anemones.

On such a rainy day, it was so nice to see so much color down the stretch of the flower market. It was gorgeous.

At the end of the market we headed towards the waterfront. Even though there were dark clouds above us, the water was still a gorgeous blue. We walked across the rocky beaches to the waterfront. The moment I saw the water I immediately relaxed. There is something about the beach that always puts me at ease and makes me absolutely happy.

You could go up to the top of the hill for a great view of the whole city and you had the option of elevator or stairs. I was in such a good mood from being so close to the ocean that I told Will that I’d love to go up the stairs even though he hesitated. Entirely out of character for both of us.

Here’s my little tourist after our first set of stairs.

   

And here’s the view of Nice from the first set of stairs.

These are the first of the fine feathered friends that I befriended on our journey to Nice. Will captured this. He’s such a great photographer when I let him use my camera.

  

Nice was actually beautiful once we got into the clouds because the city would disappear into them.

On the hill there is a church with a massive cemetery. These aren’t simple headstones, they are immaculate tombs that are scattered amongst the hill. When standing on the lowest level you are faced with a wall of beautifully carved marble and gravestones. Each grave also has its own unique flowers. I’m not sure who is making the hike up that hill everyday to put in fresh flowers, but I would say it is totally worth it. It was was the most beautiful cemetery I have ever seen.

  

On our way back to our hostel Will got me a giant meringue for being such a good climber and hardly complaining at all. And he used it as an excuse to buy himself a piece of flan.

Wednesday night was supposed to be the closing festivities of Carnival, but due to the weather it was postponed until Thursday night so we got to watch a great firework show!

 

After a quick little train ride we made it to Monaco the next day!

Will gambled away 5 whole euros at Monte Carlo. Big spender.

   

Will wanted to go to the palace, which I was all about until I realized how much walking we’d have to do uphill in the rain. I was not a happy camper.

To add to our collection of pictures of me with small things: a baby cannon.

The Yellow Submarine! Spotted outside of the Oceangraphique Museum, at which Will would only take me to the gift shop.

I was sadder than this orphan lobster.

But then I made friends with another bird so it was all okay.

 

 And then I made friends with another bird. This one had a broken wing and was just huddled up against the wind. 

We walked through the gardens along the coast and saw this statue of a sailor in the sunset. It was so perfect. 

Will deciphered the Latin and we realized that we found Grace Kelly’s grave in the church!

   We said goodbye to Monaco and got back on the train to Nice.

On our last night we went back down to the beach before dinner and watched the sunset through the clouds. The colors were an amazing mix of blues, pinks, grays and purples.

Will kept experimenting on me to get the colors just right. I just stuck with Instagram.

After the sunset Will treated me to a delicious dinner and some gelato, which I had been craving. It was so yummy!

On our last day we just walked around Nice a bit more. Here are a lot of pictures of the city on the most beautiful day we were there (which of course was the last day) just to give you an idea of how picturesque it was.

The sun came out for our final waterfront photos. Perfect timing.

Ain’t he just the cutest?

I have a feeling that this won’t be our last time in Nice. Maybe next time we’ll try to come when it’s a bit warmer and a bit less wet.