The Blonde Excuse: June 2007 Archives

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June 30, 2007

London Intro.

First, I'd like to apologize for how bad I've been about updating my blog lately. Internet in Europe is hard to find and very expensive. Clearly I have internet now, but it's on Brent's computer which doesn't have any of my pictures, so this will have to be a picture-less entry.

Also, I've decided to skip the end of my Italy pictures (Rome, Pompeii, Florence, Tuscany) until I have more time to post. Italy is no longer fresh in my memory while London, Berlin, and Paris are (I'm currently in Paris by the way) so I'd rather post about more recent things and then fill you all in on my Italy adventures with Brent once I'm done traveling.

Anyway, Brent and I flew from Rome to London where we had an amazing trip. It got off to a bad start, though, with the WORST hostel I have ever seen (not that I've seen many). It was the St. Christopher's Inn in London which is actually a top-rated hostel chain throughout Europe so we were very surprised at how disgusting it was. When we arrived, we checked into our room which had some man in it fixing the broken door handle. The room was actually about the size of my closet at home and I'm not even exaggerating. It had bunk beds that you had to shimmy around to get anywhere (so basically it was about 2 feet larger than a twin size bed). There was half-eaten food everywhere and black curly hairs all over our beds. Also, the window was broken and wouldn't close so it was pouring rain INSIDE our room. It took us about five minutes to collect our refund and walk out the door.

We found a Holiday Inn on the other side of the city (the only hotel left in London with any vacancy... apparently we were there during Wimbledon weekend) and paid the 20 pound ($40) cab fare to get there with our gigantic unwieldy backpacks. The price online was 190 pounds for the entire three nights we were going to be there which is about $380. We thought this was a little expensive for a small room in a Holiday Inn but it was all we could get so we took it. Once we arrived, though, our 190 pound weekend was suddenly a 480 pound weekend (??????) which is almost $1000 for 3 days on our budget backpacking trip around Europe. We got a refund for the second two nights but still had to stay for the first. The hotel was fine, but we were then homeless for the next two nights of our stay. My parents tried to find us a place to go but also discovered that everywhere was booked but luckily Brent's dad is a hotel points member and was able to save us with the next two nights at the Sheraton Park Tower in Knightsbridge, London which was absolutely beautiful.

I don't want to get too much into all the things we did in London because I'd like to save that for when I have pictures (hopefully tonight or tomorrow I'll be able to get my computer on the internet for a while) but I hope this will hold you all over until then! Thanks for not abandoning me in my blogging hiatus!

Posted by lauren at 08:48 AM | Comments (5)

June 27, 2007

Still Alive

I'm still alive, for those of you who may have been wondering. I haven't had internet in days so I haven't been able to post at all. Brent and I are in Berlin right now after London for three days which was amazing. We have yet to fall in love with Berlin (except for Knut the baby polar bear at the zoo) but we're going to try to get some sightseeing in today. I would post pictures right now but the internet here is awful. I think it's because apparently, we're on the WRONG side of what used to be the Berlin wall. We're walking westward immediately, don't worry.

Anyway, we're going to be in Paris tomorrow where I plan to purchase real internet so hopefully I'll be able to post for real soon.

Sorry to keep you all waiting!

Posted by lauren at 04:51 AM | Comments (3)

June 21, 2007

Capitoline Museums

For my art conservation class (what I'm here for), we all went on a field trip to the Capitoline Museums which I was really glad to have seen. We walked there and came into a big square where the two buildings of the museum face each other and are connected by a tunnel underground. If I'm remembering correctly, this is a Michelangelo fountain in the square:

Across the square:

The non-museum building in the square:

Replica of a Marcus Aurelius statue (the real one is kept inside):

We went to the little café on top of the museum where we had this beautiful view of the city which has an astounding number of domes:

Brent:

Inside the museums:

Bronze horse on display inside:

Sculpture of one of the popes:

The real Marcus Aurelius:

Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome who were raised by a wolf:

Large piece of an ancient basement:

Purple marble was used for this sculpture to look like bruises from a beating:

Chariot:

If I'm remembering correctly from high school, I think this is a Greek statue that depicts a "Mother Earth" type of deity who had many breasts because she, quite literally, fed the world:

Medusa:

LOVE this picture:

This depicts Hannibal who invaded Italy with "war elephants":

HUGE painting:

These remind me of some lamps we have at home:

Brent and Me:

Across the square:

A nice view:

Brent and Me:

Before going to the other side of the museum, we went to one of the nearby churches, Santa Maria in Aracoeli.

These were all over the floor:

Now for the other building of the museum:

Statues currently being restored:

Ruins everywhere:

The Roman Forum:

On the way home:

Despite these posts being about my first week here, I'm actually leaving Rome tomorrow and heading off to London with Brent. We're very excited to be going to an English-speaking country for a while. Wish us luck!

Posted by lauren at 03:39 AM | Comments (5)

June 18, 2007

San Clemente and San Pietro in Vincoli

I've been having a great time here in Rome and have been doing a lot of sight-seeing, so I'm sorry for how long it takes me to get my pictures ready and up on my blog. Also, Brent and I spent the past weekend in Tuscany where there was no internet, so now I'm even more behind, but here we go....

One night, Brent, Nini (my roommate), Nina, Kelly, and I went to Perilli's, a little restaurant down the street from our hotel. Nini is in the 3 week program that Brent and I are in (for art conservation) and Nina and Kelly are in the 6 week program. Nini goes to Trinity and is from New Canaan, Kelly goes to Princeton and is from Malibu, and Nina goes to Mt. Holyoke and is from Norway.

Nina, Nini, Me, Brent, and Kelly at Perilli's:

We made quite a scene because Nina asked for espresso before dinner because she was tired, and apparently you do not do this in Italy. Our waiter (who was really nice and very patient with us) told us that never in his life had he ever seen a person order espresso before dinner. We had a great meal and hopefully will return before we have to leave.

Here are a couple pictures I took around the Trastevere area of Rome:

Me in the nearby Rose garden (no longer in Trastevere):

Brent in the rose garden:

Catnap:

One of the hotels on our street (not ours):

Brent, Bobby, Katie, Matt, and I decided to go sight-seeing a little while ago to see San Clement and San Pietro in Vincoli. Well, it's not really "sight-seeing" because for our art conservation class, we have to go to 13 different places and look at artworks and talk about how we would conserve them. I guess it's still a good way to see the city.

We wandered around looking for San Clemente for a while (that's Bobby leading the way followed by Brent):

We got lost for a little while and a group of 8 year old kids with a soccer ball (yes, it's called soccer) said in the most scathing tone, "Americanos...." They dragged the word out as long as possible and glared at us fiercely as we walked through their impromptu soccer game in the middle of a sidewalk. We Americanos are so so rude for using sidewalks for walking like that.

We finally found San Clemente:

Cute puppies on the way across the street:

Beautiful mosaic in San Clemente:

I said for my paper that I would use bathroom tile cleaner and a toothbrush to restore this masterpiece. It's ok though, the early papers are supposed to be really bad....

Ceiling:

Underneath the church is an old Roman house (as I mentioned in a previous entry, ancient Rome is underground). We all went down to look around and I took a few illegal pictures:

Bobby in the background:

I got lost in one of these little passageways for a couple minutes while I was exploring for good photo opportunities when I heard footsteps and ran. It turned out it was Brent looking for me... oh well:

I guess "back in the day" houses used to have water running through them, so it was really cool hearing water rushing around all the time and actually seeing it below some grates. I don't have any pictures, but I'm sure you can all use your imaginations and figure out what water looks like.

Back above ground and wandering in the general direction of San Pietro in Vincoli:

Back of the Colosseum:

This is actually a school, isn't it pretty:

Inside San Pietro in Vincoli:

Creepy:

Ceiling:

Michelangelo's Moses:

St. Peter's chains, the church's relic:

Those are the actual chains that bound St. Peter in Jerusalem which is pretty cool.

Gate outside:

The ceiling outside:

On the walk back to the hotel:

Pigeons kissing:

Colosseum:

Horses:

Arch:

Colosseum:

At the Circus Maximus:

Italian parking job (this car was left here, just like this, for days):

Apparently not a popular guy in Rome:

When we got back to our little neighborhood, we accidentally walked right through a movie set:

If anyone recognizes the actors or what movie this is, let me know so that I can see if I'm in the background when it comes out!

Cute windows:

Our street:

Well, I'm off to do laundry now! How fun!

Posted by lauren at 11:20 AM | Comments (6)

June 14, 2007

The Palatine And The Colosseum

A while ago, Brent and I went to the Imperial Palace (the Palatine) and the Colosseum with Matt and Katie. Katie is one of my roommates and Matt is Brent's and, coincidentally, they're also dating.

Before any of that, though, here's a picture of the Tiber at night:

First picture of Brent and me in Rome:

One of the many cats here:

The Circus Maximus:

Interesting fact about the Circus Maximus, the stairs/bleachers that surrounded it are underneath the surrounding hills but no one wants to dig them up because they might be "dangerous." Also, that's the Palatine behind the Circus Maximus.

Always a beautiful view of something:

This is apparently where Mario and Luigi retire to:

It's weird to think of how old this stuff must be:

Katie and Matt:

Brent and Me:

Palatine Museum in the background:

Who knows what this is:

My favorite picture of the day:

It's amazing to me how much you're allowed to touch stuff here. At home, this would all be behind velvet ropes with security guards wielding taser guns:

Window? Gunnery hole?

The birds here are terrifying:

So happy:

Inside the museum:

We were all really tempted to pull the chain on this bell... but didn't:

It's funny that you see these dresses on the Red Carpet now:

View of the Colosseum:

Brent and Matt don't look very happy for some reason:

Through the arch is the building where the Bush protest was:

Birds:

We tried to make it to the Colosseum before the storm hit too hard:

Wow:

Brent and Me:

Matt and Katie:

It was definitely a good day to have all the awesome camera lenses I got for my birthday!

Anyway, I'm way behind and need to blog more... but Brent and I are spending the weekend in Florence, so I don't know how much time I'll have. Maybe I can get another entry done on the train or something. Until then, enjoy!

Posted by lauren at 07:31 PM | Comments (4)

June 13, 2007

Roma

So I'm finally starting to put up some of my real Rome pictures. It's definitely going to take me a while to catch up, but hopefully I'll be more "on schedule" soon.

As I began my descent into Rome's Leonardo Da Vinci Airport, there was some pretty terrible turbulence. I don't do well on airplanes, especially when they're moving too much for me to pretend I'm on a bus (you know it's serious when it's preferable to pretend you're on a bus). As we were descending, we hit some "bad air," whatever that means, and the entire plane "dropped." Literally, if we all hadn't been wearing our seatbelts, we would have hit the roof of the plane. Everyone screamed and I turned to the man next to me and almost grabbed him but in an unprecedented display of self-restraint, I held back and quietly turned back towards my window.

Once I landed and waited for two hours for the Italian airport crew to discover the luggage from my plane, Brent and I discovered that the choppy air I had been landing in was a thunderstorm that spawned a tornado right as our train to central Rome pulled out of the station. I was to excited to 1. Be on the ground and 2. Be looking at a tornado to get my camera out in time, but I did get a shot of it pulling back up into the sky. You'll just have to take my word for it that it was a legit. tornado:

Train to our temporary home:

A bunch of pictures from around the hotel we're staying at:

There are cats roaming around everywhere in this city and they're all so sweet and friendly:

We go to school in a convent so we see a lot of nuns, priests, and monks wandering around:

Right up the street from us there's the famous "keyhole." It's a keyhole that you can look through that perfectly frames St. Peters and lets you see three countries at once, Italy, Malta, and The Vatican. Here's Brent sitting by it:

View through the keyhole:

This is a park up the street with one of the most beautiful views in the city:

Wedding with St. Peter's in the background:

The water fountains in Rome are really awesome. There's constant running water to rinse off your hands, but then when you plug the faucet with your finger, it springs up on top to drink from. They're also just really pretty:

The cars here are all ridiculously small for better maneuvering, gas mileage (gas is 9 euros here!), and easier parking. Personally, I think the Italian government, in light of the driving skills of most of Italy's inhabitants, decided to have cars made as small as possible to give pedestrians a fighting chance:

If we saw a car like this at home, heads would turn... but here, when people see a random Range Rover driving around, that's what people stop to see.

Our hotel and school (the convent) are in a really beautiful residential neighborhood with Connecticut-style real estate prices, so we definitely got really lucky with our location:

I was definitely expecting for some reason to come to Europe and have everything be so inexpensive. I was wrong. The US dollar is nothing compared to the euro, and everything is priced here the way it would be in America in dollars... so my money is disappearing at an alarming rate. That's probably one of my biggest problems here in Italy, remembering that 1 euro is not 1 dollar. I keep seeing prices and thinking "Okay, 10 dollars is a little expensive for getting into the basement of some random church, but not ridiculous..." but of course it's 10 euro which is more like 15 dollars. Oh well, at least it's not as bad as when Kristina and I were in Mexico and rather than learning the conversion rates for things, chose to tip 100 pesos for someone to take a picture of us.

A lot of the stuff in Rome is really old looking in an awesome way, which shouldn't come as a surprise since Rome is quite old:

I was about to say something lame about Rome being like the grandmother of the world, with a lot of world culture originating here, but then I decided that was dumb because, if anything, Rome is just a dirty old man walking around pinching girls' butts. Just how we like it!

Our hotel at night:

The cats at our hotel are especially mangy. Brent and I want desperately to shave this guy and give him a bath:

This is what all the city streets are paved in which isn't much fun for girls in high heels, but is definitely a lot prettier than pot-holed pavement:

Everyone here drives around on little Vespas, hopefully not melted from some sort of fire/explosion like these:

Next to the Tiber River:

An extremely unflattering view of the Tiber (better pictures coming soon):

Cool fountain (one of many here in Rome):

Willy Wonka graffiti (Brent's picture):

There are lots of horse-drawn carriages around the city:

I hate all the graffiti:

There's so much ancient stuff here that places like this restaurant sometimes have random old arches sticking out of them:

Apparently, most of ancient Rome is still buried, but no one cares enough anymore to dig it up. That's not entirely true, but apparently Rome keeps trying to dig a subway system but can't get far because every direction they dig in, they run into underground ancient Roman stuff. If I owned Rome, I wouldn't be able to resist, I'd want to see it all, but that's just me.

Cute pink house near our hotel:

This is the mangy cat that Brent and I named Fizgig. We feel bad for him too and really want to give him a bath. He's really grumpy and will snarl at you if you don't pat him enough, but once you start rubbing behind his ears he just melts at your feet and will follow you around if you try to leave. What a face:

Here's the common area inside our hotel where Brent and I read sometimes:

Out the window:

The place that we live in is very tropical and we're all always laughing about the noises we hear outside. First of all, the seagulls here own the place. They're the most terrifying birds I have ever seen or heard in my entire life. They spend the entire night SCREAMING. Not like normal seagulls, but literally screeching to the point that on the first night here, my roommates and I actually checked out the window because we thought some little kid was screaming for help. Once the birds get started, they get the dogs all riled up and, as Brent pointed out, the dogs sound a whole lot more like wart hogs than anything else. Of course when the dogs get going, the cats start howling and we all lie in bed wondering what kind of terrifying other-worldly rainforest we're living in.

Last, but certainly not least, the vending machines here at the hotel sell beer; something new to most of us Americanos:

That's the end of the beginning but I'll try to update more regularly so that I can catch up! I'm off to dinner now (It's 7:45pm here). Goodnight!

Posted by lauren at 12:40 PM | Comments (9)

June 11, 2007

Anti-Bush Protest in Rome

I'm going to be blogging way more Rome pictures in chronological order soon, but I thought it would be a good idea to stat with the anti-Bush protests since they're a "current event."

On Friday afternoon, Brent and I were looking for a nearby museum, just casually walking around the city, having lunch outside, etc. when we noticed a number of police officers gathering nearby:

We obviously had to investigate:

They seemed to be surrounding the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II which holds the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier:

President Bush was scheduled to pay his respects to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier that day, so of course there was a protest. If we had known this, we certainly wouldn't have stuck around, but of course we were getting our information from little bits and pieces of English overheard from other American tourists walking by who were all under the impression that we were gathering to watch Bush walk up the steps to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a photo-op I had no intention of missing.

Lots of police presence:

The monument:

Reflection in Brent's sunglasses:

Crowd of onlookers:

A wedding driving through:

A news photographer chatting up the Carabinieri:

I'd be so embarrassed to be on a Segway tour:

When these tank-like vehicles came in, I think we were all starting to get a little confused....

Especially this cute little tripod dog:

They certainly didn't make me nearly as nervous as this woman's neck:

More cops of various varieties filtering in:

Nice cutoffs:

Helmets on:

At this point, we were definitely getting a little confused about why the riot police were getting all geared up for a fight. All the onlookers were tourists with cameras who didn't want any trouble. That's when we discovered that we were trapped:

The city square that we were in had been completely blocked off by those tank-like vehicles and human walls of riot police with shields. That's never a good situation. We figured that if we were trapped anyway, we might as well get front and center for the best photo-ops:

Uh oh... starting to think something other than a quick in-and-out Bush visit might be going on:

There were 10,000 police officers there that day and close to 150,000 protesters (according to various news sources although the police say there weren't that many protesters).

Protesters arriving:

I thought the whole thing was absolutely hilarious.

More protesters:

The "Bush = Hitler" sign was a little crazy:

The riot police started using tear gas bombs:

Here's a video of one group of protesters playing the Darth Vader music from Star Wars for Bush. To me, this doesn't quite get their message across because probably about 90% of American guys would love nothing more than for their "theme music" to be that of Darth Vader:

This pink and yellow art project read "Push Bush Out":

Pirate flags? Darth Vader? What more could a guy ask for!

These lucky onlookers weren't trapped like the rest of us:

I guess they get them started young here in Rome:

This one said "God Smash America" which I thought was more than a little unfriendly:

The guy in front of this banner was masked and carrying Iraq's flag:

Finally we escaped and immediately went and got dinner at a little American bistro (certainly not called McDonalds or anything...) to re-Americanize ourselves.

Posted by lauren at 08:57 AM | Comments (7)

June 09, 2007

Wrapping Up

This entry will wrap up all my pre-Rome pictures so that I can get to what you've all been waiting for really soon.

First, waiting in the airport on the way home from Florida, we saw this woman's crazy hair:

The plane:

Pretty sky at home:

I went to the beach with my parents and got stuck behind the SLOWEST driver ever:

In other news, my parents got a Mac!

Also, May 31st was Jenn's birthday. She was having her party with Vanessa a couple days later, but after watching a couple hours of old Nickelodeon game shows (Legends Of The Hidden Temple, Figure it Out, etc.) a bunch of us ran over to Sundown Saloon on Greenwich Ave. so that Jenn could order her first drink at midnight when she turned 21. The bartender was really nice and gave us all free drinks and the band sang "Happy Birthday" for Jenn:

And lastly, I miss my pets so much. Here are the bunnies in the wonderful setup they have in my bedroom:

And Frisky taking up residence in my dad's briefcase:

I miss Chloe too, of course, but I don't have any new pictures of her.

Rome pictures coming tonight if I don't fall asleep first!

Posted by lauren at 04:39 PM | Comments (3)

June 06, 2007

Gator Golf

Still in Florida (but I promise Rome will be coming soon!) I have a ton of pictures but no time to caption all of them, so I'm going to go with the "A picture is worth a thousand words" phrase and let the photos tell the stories for me for most of these pictures.