For spring break Tiffany, Mary Beth, Meg, Cole and I went to London, Liverpool, Dublin, and Paris. It was a trip of a lifetime. Our trip began as my roommates and I tried fit everything we needed for the ten days into a bag small enough to carry on to our flights. One of the coolest things about Europe is if you play your cards right you can find really cheap flights. The only thing is that sometimes to check your luggage it might cost more than the flight itself, so the process of packing our bags was very critical, as my roommates and I try to do almost anything to save a Euro or two. The bags had to be a certain weight and dimension. All of our bags were borderline on whether they were going to be approved with the strict carry on policies. Each of us let out a huge sigh of relief when we boarded our first plane with our carry on.
Our first plane left from Pisa, so we had to catch a train to from Florence to the Pisa airport. From there we boarded a plane to London. It was strange getting off the plane in London because London is very different than Italy. I feel like London is more like the United States. I was good to understand the signs and billboards and it is funny how at home I felt seeing Burger Kings and McDonalds and Starbucks. I was never in charge of directions, so it always amazes me that we find places through the mess of subways and metros but we found our hostel without much difficulty. At the hostel we met up Colleen, a cool girl from Baylor who is living in England for the semester. AKA the infamous Colleen from the Bologna trip.
Tiffany and I really like hostels. It is such a bizarre experience. We walked in and there are all these random people in the lobby speaking different languages, drinking, and playing pool. Then we checked in and they gave us clean sheets, a code to our room and asked us if would like to put a down-payment on a towel. We got three towels to share between the six of us and headed upstairs to make our bunks. We were in a ten person room, in which none of our roommates were there when we arrived but it is fun to guess if they are a boy or girl depending on the luggage they leave by their bed.
By this time it was getting late and we were so hungry, so we exchanged our Euros for Pounds and we set out on our search for the nearest McDonalds. It was a lot colder in London than it had been in Italy and walking around in the bitter cold after a long day of traveling was just wonderful. All I can say is that I have never loved McDonalds until I arrived in Europe. Eating a hamburger with the big yellow M on the wrapper is in some way comforting. The McDonalds we found was in the train station and the station did not have any walls and we were shivering while eating our fries.
When we got back to our hostel all our roommates were already sleeping so the six of us tried to get ready for bed in the dark as quietly as possible. Tiffany and I took the night shower shift. The showers… you know how sometimes in public facilities you turn on the sinks by pressing in the button and it is always a little frustrating because there never have enough time to wash off all the soup before the water turns off. Well that is the way the showers were. I think I had to press the button thee times to wash my shampoo out. But it is the little things like this that make hostels an adventure.
Tiffany and I met a friend in our hostel that was from the United States who was also studying somewhere in Italy. His name was Andrew. The three of us did not want to go on the city tour so we broke off from the rest of the group and did our own sight seeing. We saw the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, ran through fields of daffodils, and took pictures at Big Ben, Parliament, and Westminster Abbey. We also saw London Bridge, the Tower Bridge, Shakespeare’s theater, and the London eye.
The next day in London we went to the Tate Modern Art museum, which was out of this world cool. Then that evening Mary Beth, Colleen, Tiffany and I went to Hillsong United’s church. It was so refreshing to go to church where people were passionate about God and where we could understand the message. That night we went and ate dinner at the Texas Embassy which had Mexican food and Barbeque. It was wonderful to have a little bit of home.
Then we hopped on a train and were off to Liverpool, the home of the Beatles. Meg set up a Beatles Magical Mystery Tour for us all to go on. The rainbow colored bus full of Beatles fans went to different sights around Liverpool that the Beatles played music at and wrote their songs about. We went to Penny Lane and saw the Strawberry fields. We stayed at this really nice hotel because there are no hostels in Liverpool. We found this website where you can get hotels for really cheap if you book them two days before you arrive. The beds were like Heaven. Best part of Liverpool! We went to this bar called the Cavern. This was a bar the Beatles would play at. There was some guy in their singing Beatles songs. It was such a happy place with people singing along to all the songs and there was some really drunk woman dancing around the room by herself. I think it was this bar that converted me into a Beatles fan.
Off to Dublin, home of Guinness beer! I have decided that I love Ireland! Walking down the streets I could not help but think about the movie Once. I keep looking for guitar players on the streets in hope of finding myself writing music with a stranger in a piano store. No such luck. During one of our days in Ireland, we went to a fishing city called Howth, where we had some amazing food for lunch and then hiked these trails along the shoreline. It was beautiful. The landscapes reminded me of P.S. I Love You and Tristan and Isold.
That evening we went to an Irish Pub that had live Irish music. This Pub literally changed my life. We walked into the pub and there was this circle of musicians with small drums, violins, and guitars. They were not playing to perform music but they were playing because they loved to create it. It was a free for all sort of thing, if you had a song you could start playing it and everyone else would add on. A random woman at the bar asked if she could sing a song, and she stood up and with eyes closed began to sing acapella an old Irish tune. A hush went through the crowd so the girl’s sweet voice could be heard. The men in the circle kept beat by tapping the feet on the wooden floor, and the woman, not caring about the people in the room, sang like she was for that brief moment doing exactly what she was created to do--share her simple beauty and voice with the world.
Then we were off to our final destination—Paris. We arrived in Paris late at night and we had to catch a bus that took us from the airport into town. When we got off the bus we had a couple minutes of confusion because we had no idea where we were and did not know how to find the metro, but once again somehow we made it to where we were suppose to go without any major problems. When we arrived at our hotel we were past check in time and we did not know what to do. I broke into the hotel somehow and found a phone number to call... Oops!
Day 1 in Paris I think Tiffany and I walked 5 million miles trying to save money and not use the metro a lot. We ate the best baguette of our lives, saw the Eiffel Tower, the church of Norte Dame, and went to the Orsay Museum. Tiffany and I both loved the Orsay. It was an impressionist museum with a lot of Monet, Van Gough, and Degas. We met up with Mary Beth, Meg and Cole and had a good dinner that night. French food is so good.
Day 2 in Paris: At our hostel in London Tiffany and I gave our phone number to this French guy name Stefane and he called us and wanted to meet up. He showed us some of his favorite spots in Paris. He took us to get French pastries and then took us to this place that overlooked the city of Paris. Then we met up with some of his friends and got hot chocolate. They wanted us to go to some discoteca with them but we said no because we had to catch an early morning flight.
Our trip ends with a slumber party at the airport, a bus ride from Pisa and then we arrived back in Florence barely able to walk home from the train station. I know this was the longest blog of all times but it still does not capture all that Tiffany and I saw and did. It was the trip of a lifetime. I constantly wonder how I became so blessed to be able to see the world like this.
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