The End!

On the top deck of the boat at our end-of-term river cruise

      Classes are done. End-of-term parties are done. Seemingly-endless evaluation forms are done. The first goodbyes have been said! I leave London on Monday morning and am quite literally counting down the hours (33, fyi). And as of this afternoon, all of the necessary arrangements for my trip have been checked off the list.
      I just spent 14 weeks in London, studying Monet and Turner by standing in front of original Monets and Turners, seeing more than 30 theatre and music shows, exploring an enormous city full of everything you can imagine, and living independently in a beautifully awkward flat with an amazing group of people. (And, and, and.) And now I'm going to spend three weeks traveling in Hungary, Croatia, and Italy with my boyfriend, before I go back home and have summer in Portland working a sweet part-time internship for the symphony.
      The only two coherent thoughts in my brain:
       1. How did I get this lucky??
       2. Helllllllllllll yes. :)

Travel Plans

I just confirmed my travel plans for when classes end! I have 18 days between when I have to move out of my flat and when I fly home on May 3rd. I'll be flying from London to meet up with Nik (who is currently in Germany and heading towards the Czech Republic and Poland) in Budapest on April 16th. We'll be spending a week (give or take) in eastern europe, ending up in Dubrovnik, Croatia, and then going to Italy for a little more than a week. I have about a million things I want to see in Italy, starting in northern Italy (Verona, Milan, the Lakes District, etc) and working my way down through Tuscany and ending in Rome. Now that I finally have a framework plan figured out, I'm so excited! I've got a rail pass that lets me go anywhere in 23 European countries and not nearly enough time (or money) to see them all, but it's going to be an amazing trip.

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Lake Como, Italy

Anyone who has traveled in Southeastern Europe or Italy! Where should I go and what should I see (on a very limited student budget)? Especially helpful would be specific suggestions, i.e. restaurants, attractions, museums, hiking trails, etc. Thank you!

And also starting a countdown to arrival in my beloved Portland: 27 days!

Wales!

      Wales is now one of my favorite places on the planet. I had a list of about ten places I wanted to see and only two days to spend there - so instead of trying to pack things in, Nik and I chose to just go one place in the countryside and have a nice weekend absorbing some vitamin D and relaxing. And. It. Was. Blissful.
      I get so tired of constant big-city London, and breaks to places like St. Ives, Ireland, and Scotland have been really refreshing. But Wales was the antithesis of big city - green fields as far as you can see, tiny villages, friendly people, affordable costs, and at night more stars than I've ever seen in my life. It was such a welcome change, I wanted to buy a house right there and never leave.
      We took the train down from Liverpool to a little town called Chepstow near the Welsh-English border. We picked Chepstow because it was near Tintern, a spot I'd been wanting to visit for ages, and because I stumbled across the most adorable and charming B&B, the Willowbrook Guesthouse, online and desperately wanted to go there. That night when we arrived in Chepstow everything was closed, so we got some groceries and took a cab to our B&B, the Willowbrook Guesthouse, about 2 miles outside the town. We walked up to the B&B, met our host who was just as friendly and bubbly in person as she was on the phone, and went up to our room. The B&B was absolutely everything I had hoped it would be. Our room looked out towards a giant open field with a little brook running through it and all sorts of things growing. The room itself was big and comfy, it even smelled good. The little kitchenette in our room didn't have an oven, so we microwaved the chicken pot pie we'd bought, stirred in our frozen peas and corn, and turned it into an interesting sort of creamy chicken soup... ish. It was dinner if you didn't think too hard about it, and we sat eating it and staring out the window at the amazing number of bright stars (and Jupiter and Venus) we could see from our bed. And giggling at the perfection of it all (more me than Nik, admittedly. But he liked it too).

The view out our window

From our landing, looking down at the breakfast room

       The next morning we had a delicious breakfast, walked into town, and took a bus to Tintern. Tintern is a tiny town at the base of Tintern Abbey,  a ruined monastery which has foundations dating back to the early 12th century. I have wanted to go there for years because my favorite poem is William Wordsworth's Lines Written On A Hill Above Tintern Abbey. The poem tells of the beauty and serenity of the area and the view of the Abbey, and it had me completely captivated from the first time I read it. When the bus turned the corner around a hill and all of a sudden the Abbey was right there in front of me, I got all goosebumpy - the kind when you can't believe something is actually happening, it's all too perfect that it's overwhelming. Nik pulled out a copy of the poem and handed it to me right then and I just started crying and laughing because I was so happy. Boyfriend points to you, Nicholas!

       We spent the entire day basically just lounging in the sun and staring at the Abbey. The picnic tables of the Anchor Pub, right next to the Abbey, became home. We had a cider at the Anchor, walked along the Wye River for a bit, went back to the Anchor for another cider and then wandered through the Abbey itself. And then went back to the Anchor for another cider. Lots of liquid calories that day, but it was ok because we found that in the middle of nowhere, nobody takes cards except the Anchor, and therefore liquid plus the granola bars in my backpack were the only options.

      Walking around inside the Abbey was a completely surreal and beautiful experience. It's now entirely overrun by wildlife. They had removed the ivy from the stone to preserve it, but it was carpeted with grass and birds were roosting in the windows. The sky through the holes was perfectly blue and I couldn't help but think it was prettier than any stained glass. It was still a temple, but now like a temple to nature. Somehow the juxtaposition made a very profound statement for me. Sitting in the grass, leaning against the stone wall, and reading Wordsworth's poem now ranks among my top five most amazing moments of my life. Definitely the highlight of my semester abroad. I can't explain why or how, it just was everything I had imagined it to be and more and I'll never forget it. We took the last bus back to Chepstow, got some sandwiches, and went to catch our train back to London... and we missed it. I blame Wales for being so pretty, rather than us being stupid. But we misjudged by ten minutes and I cannot express how happy I was not to have to go back home. So we called to see if our room was still available and walked the two miles to the Willowbrook. On the way we stopped and sat in the middle of a field and watched shooting stars. You could not have written a script for this.

       The next day we wandered around Chepstow, taking a long walk through the field behind our B&B and discussing the merits of buying a bit of farm land and growing our own food. Screw a performance career, I'm gonna raise chickens instead. But, alas, we eventually got on a train and made our way back to London in time for my evening politics class. First things I heard when I walked into class: "You're alive!" and "Woah, you're a little bit tan!" Can you believe it???

Liverpool

      Nik and I went to Liverpool to see John Lennon's and Paul McCartney's childhood homes. We had a tour booked to spend an hour inside each house, and that was the only thing we knew about or had planned. Anyone who knows me may be surprised that I actually went into a situation willfully unprepared (not my usual style) - but discovering the cool things to see and do as we went turned out to be really fun. We basically spent two days exploring and visiting everything Beatles-related we could find.
      I grew up listening to my dad's music so I knew quite a few Beatles songs. I knew that they were a big deal in the 60s. But when I first started spending a lot of time with Nik two years ago, it became very clear very quickly that I needed to know more than that - especially after the first time I went with Nik to visit his parents in Boise. Nik and his dad could and do spend entire days in their (amazing, gorgeous) music shrine playing Beatles music together and every other conversation includes a Beatles reference or two. I almost needed notecards to keep up! (A great deal of the 8-hour drive to and from Boise is usually devoted to a Beatles album or two, so I get some serious study time.)
      Here in the UK, though, I've gotten the full story. For my politics class I wrote a paper on the Beatles, outlining their history and analyzing their socio-political influence. I visited Abbey Road Studios and took the infamous picture in the crosswalk. In Liverpool I visited John and Paul's homes, Penny Lane, the Cavern Club, and the John Lennon peace memorial. And the big finish - I saw Paul McCartney perform live at the Royal Albert Hall. So next time I visit Boise, I am all set!

Chinatown

      The train station in Liverpool is beautiful and the area surrounding it is the focal point of Liverpool nightlife - so arriving at 8:00 on a Saturday night, we instantly loved what we saw. We walked part-way to our B&B, just to see what we could see, and then took a cab the last couple miles. Along the way we stopped and talked to a hilarious group of guys outside a pub who were looking for a good baby name. They didn't like Nicholas or Leslie but they were fun to talk to! Once at the B&B I finally gave in and admitted that I was, in fact, really sick. I fell asleep in record time and Nik went out in search of interesting things (aka beer). About 2:30 in the morning our neighbors drunkenly buzzed our room a few times before figuring out they were in the wrong place and we also lost an hour of sleep for the UK's daylight savings that night, so we felt pretty awful the next morning. But we were off to see where the Beatles first began, so it was ok!
      The Beatles' Childhood Homes tour was pretty awesome. Both houses had been restored to how John and Paul would have known them, based on memories and pictures. At each one the caretaker took our pictures outside, took us through the rooms and told stories about what their lives were like, and then let us walk through on our own for a bit. I really enjoyed seeing what it was like - especially when the caretaker at Paul's house told me I was sitting in the very spot where the Beatles sat and sketched out Love Me Do in the back of a biology notebook. That gave me goosebumps. But I think my appreciation was nothing compared to Nik's. He could have died happy right there!

Mendips, childhood home of John Lennon

20 Forthlin Road, childhood home of Paul McCartney

Setliffe Park

    
      After the tour we got lunch and then went to check into our next B&B. It was an old Victorian house which, appropriately, used to be the childhood home of Stuart Sutcliffe, one of the original Beatles from the Hamburg days. It was a beautiful house right on the edge of a huge park a few miles outside the city center. We dumped our stuff, got ice cream cones, and spent the afternoon wandering through the park in the sunshine and walking along Penny Lane. Back at the B&B, we enjoyed a drink on the patio and then walked to Lark Lane (adorable little row of fun shops and restaurants) and splurged on a nice italian dinner and a bottle of wine. After dinner we went into town and went to the Cavern, the club where the Beatles first started playing shows. It turned out to be a hotspot for very drunk mid-life-crisis tourists, but we had a lot of fun singing along to the Beatles cover band guy. And I knew every single song, thank you very much.

      The next day we had the full english at the B&B (baked beans for breakfast is the best idea the Brits ever had), checked out, and went to the waterfront for a last morning in Liverpool. It was still sunny and summery, so we walked into town. We window shopped in Lark Lane on the way so it took us about three hours to get there. At the waterfront we sat on a patio in the sun (theme for the weekend) and shared a pizza - goat cheese, spinach, and sundried tomato, yum. And then went on the ferris wheel at the Albert Docks! It was huge and kind of terrifying, but also awesome. Then, sadly, we had to leave to go catch our train. I really didn't want to leave because we'd had such a great couple days and Liverpool was such a cool and beautiful city. There was a lot more I wanted to see and try out. But I couldn't be too sad because our next stop was an adorable little B&B in the-middle-of-nowhere Wales!

Byebye Liverpool!

   

Last week of classes

My class work in the last two days:
1. Heard a seminar on Sarah Kane, contemporary playwright whose work deals with violence and physical and psychological torture. I.E. eating babies.
2. Saw a stage production of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, a story of teenage ultra-violence, rape, and murder.
3. Heard a seminar on Punch and Judy, the traditional English puppet show which portrays brutality and domestic violence for the sake of humor (the early beginnings of slapstick humor).
4. Studied English atonal music, specifically an atonal opera setting of Punch and Judy, and Peter Maxwell Davies' 8 Songs for a Mad King which portray George III's decline into insanity.
5. Heard a lecture on the brutal Jack the Ripper killings in 1888.
6. Heard a lecture on the Kray Twins, the untouchable professional gangsters who ruled East London in the '60s through blackmail, political corruption, and blatant murder.
I CAN SEE WHY THEY WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE TO TEACH US ALL THIS STUFF!

In the last two days I've also submitted 40 pages of writing for the end of the term and presented a seminar on avant-garde contemporary playwright Mark Ravenhill. Oh, and had a brief crisis over registering for next term's classes. First final exam tomorrow.
I can tell you that in the last two days I have NOT showered or eaten a regular meal. Ten days left in London and I have no idea what to make of it.