Back Home in London

After travelling Southern Europe for nine days, I arrived in London from Athens on Sunday night after 10 hours and 3 connections on Alitalia. We visited Barcelona, Rome, Florence, and Athens. s I'll soon be posting pictures from and accounts of the different cities we visited. I took more than 800 pictures on the trip, so I'll be spending sometime cutting that down to a more manageable size and posting the good ones.

In Roma

We arrived in Roma yesterday and took naps, then went out for pasta and gelato. Today we hit up the Colosseum, Michelangelo's Moses, St. John Lateran, and the Roman Forum. Tomorrow is the Vatican, Trevi, Spanish Steps, and a sunrise breakfast on a hill overlooking Rome, though not necessarily in that order.

Barcelona was great. Visited Parc Guell and Sagrada Familia, a park and a church by Gaudi, a famous Spanish artist with very organic and somewhat droopy style. Reminded me of Dalì and Dr. Seuss. Pictures inside Sagrada were wonderful, even if it isn't finished and won't be for a long while.

FYI, Spanish is the second language of Barcelona, the first being Catalon (not sure on spelling), a regional dialect close to Spanish.

Well, I'm off to eat a pasta dinner!

Leaving for Fall Break Trip

Well, I should be packed, seeing as friends and I are leaving for a 9 day traversal of southern Europe tomorrow. But no worries, I'll get around to it. Be prepared for plenty of pictures when I get back!

Tomorrow we're heading to Barcelona, Rome, Florence, and Athens. I'm excited!
But first I have to write a 1000 word review of two of the plays I attended for class.
W00t. Pack. Sleep. Alarm. Shower, Tea, Toast. Class. Fall Break!

In the meantime, here's an ominous picture of London's omnipresent CCTV system. London is the most CCTV'ed city in the world, thanks to IRA terrorism in the 80s. You see these little things all over the place.

Dinner and Vanilla Ice

Last night two of my flatmates and I made a feastly meal consisting of pasta and sauce, rosemary chicken, rosemary fried potatos, sweet corn, and bread. Then we left to see Vanilla Ice in person at a club, which was great except for it being too crowded to be enjoyable at all. He did some newer stuff and then, of course, 'Ice Ice Baby' and the 'Ninja Rap' from the live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie of the early 1990s. Enjoy the food pics!

Schoolwork!

I haven't posted anything lately because I've been super-busy. I have two papers due within 4 days of each other, but come early next week I'm planning on catching up on a bunch of topics.
Thanks for your patience!
In the meantime, here are a couple pictures from our trip to Windsor a couple weeks ago.

Field trip to St. Martin's-in-the-Field

For my 'Christianity in Britain' class today we went to the church of St. Martin's-in-the-Field, one of the first churches built expressly for Anglican worship, as opposed to being appropriated and modified from Roman Catholic roots. It is located on Trafalgar Square and is currently in the final phases of renovation.

Many elements of the Church of England's style of worship are evident in the design of the building. First, the building has excellent acoustics due to Anglicans' emphasis on sermons and 'the word'. Second, there are 'box seats' of sorts, balcony-level seats that face inwards where nobles paid annual rent for their seats. The main body of the church was for the plebiscite masses and had no pews. There is also the Monarch's Box and the Admiralty's Box, special seats for those two entities when they attend the church.

The church is very plain: white with gold trim. The trim was a sort of low-key version of the kind in St. Paul's.

Today the church has a strong social outreach program which has its origins in WWI. British soldiers would leave for and return from the battlefront from Charing Cross station in Trafalgar Square, and so St. Martin's ministered to the soldiers while they were waiting for trains.

The church is also used almost daily as a concert hall for classical music, as a way to raise money for its £2m in annual maintenance costs. It also operates a restaurant on the premises.