Pisa and Florence Weekend

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Benvenuto to Italy!


      I apologize for the lack of posting recently. After travelling on the weekends and preparing for finals, it's been a little busy here! But here are some of my adventures in Italy:

This past weekend, a group of six of us whisked off to Pisa, Italy on a Ryanair flight (and $80 flight may I just add, roundtrip. A student's saving grace.) We landed late Thursday night and stepped off the plane to the warm, Italian night air. It was a refreshing change from the chilly spring of Gothenburg. In fact, a Swede once told me spring or fall doesn't exist in Sweden. Just a long winter and a short summer.

The next morning, we went to catch an early morning bus to Florence. We mixed up the times, so of course we had to occupy our time feeding the cats pastries waiting for the bus to arrive.



Driving through the Tuscan countryside to Florence was almost a relief to us. The color green still existed! Plants grew lush and the sun shone bright overhead. We hadn't seen that sight in a long time.

I've been fortunate enough to have visited Florence once before, and I immediately recognized many of the sights. Even walking through cobblestone streets gave me a sense of deja vu.





Florence is a beautiful place. It seems to have embodied the idea of a city without losing the quintessential Italian charm the world adores so much. It's lively and calm all at once. No one seems to be in a rush. Their pace is slow, except for when they speak. They love to yell and talk. Not angrily, but passionately.

Our first stop was the Duomo, one of the most famous sights in Florence. I remembered visiting it during my high school trip two years ago and being equally awed.


Then we climbed 414 steps up Giotto's tower, the tower in the center right. The view was this:


It may have been the desperate need for rest from the climb or because of the fabulous view, but we spent over a half hour looking out over Florence from the top of Giotto's tower.

After a quick gelato break, we meandered through the streets to the Ponte Vecchio. The Ponte Vecchio is famous for it's expensive jewelry shops. Our group spent less time looking at the jewelry than we did looking over the canal.





Day 2: Pisa

   On our second day, we explored Pisa, where we flew into and where our hotel was. In the morning, we were greeted with a downpour as we walked to the Leaning Tower.



After we sought shelter in a restaurant for lunch (where I had my first creme brulee!), the weather cleared up. We spent the entire day in and around the Leaning Tower of Pisa. As we climbed the spiral staircase up the Tower, it was a little disorienting because of the tilt. The Tower was built as a bell tower in 1173 and took 200 years to build. It started to lean while it was being constructed. In recent years, however, they'd stabilized it with cement below the ground which is how we were able to go up it. The view, like the view of Florence, was incredible.







Since there was not much else to explore in Pisa, we sunbathed next to the Tower with, of course, gelato.



We also entered the cathedral next to the Tower and the 3 museums in the surrounding area. They offered us some history and insight into what the world was like back then.




We topped off the day with a fantastic dinner of real Italian pizza. The next day, though I was happy to return to Sweden, I knew I would miss the warmth and the happiness of Italy.

This weekend, I am unbelievably excited to go to Stockholm, which I've heard such good things about. Be sure to expect a post on that sometime next week!
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Glad Påsk: Happy Easter in Sweden

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Happy Easter everyone! Glad Påsk!

Easter in Sweden is a big deal, though it's more celebrated the day before Easter than actually on Easter Sunday. Here a few Swedish traditions for Easter that I've noticed:

1. Little children walk around with bags and do their version of "trick-or-treating" on Easter, what we do around Halloween. They dress up as witches as well.

2. Witches are everywhere: hanging off ceilings, sitting on tables, etc. Clearly, they have importance around Easter.

3. Candy. Candy everywhere. Not much different from the US. But most stores have bowls of candy that you can just take and eat at your leisure while shopping at their store. Easter bunnies with baskets of jelly beans walk around the mall too.

4. Easter weekend is long. Like in the US, most places have Good Friday off, but here many places are off on Monday as well.

5. The big Easter meal is the day before. Most people have the traditional family get together and meal the day before Easter. The meal usually consists of fish and is in a smörgåsbord (buffet) style, like most big Swedish meals. My fancy Easter meal consisted of microwaveable pizza.

6. Some food around just for Easter: Semla, the cream puff type pastry that I mentioned in a previous post and påskmust, a cola drunken only around Easter and Christmas.

On Easter, I decided to experience some of the culture of Sweden and went to a Catholic mass in English, even though many Swedes aren't very religious.
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London: Where I Fell in Love with Everyone

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Two weekends ago, I visited London with my friends Mikaela and Alexis, and I'm not exaggerating when I say it was one of the best weekends of my life.

Thursday night after classes, we started our journey by taking a bus to the airport and hopping on a Ryanair flight to London Stansted airport.
I have a love/hate relationship with Ryanair. On one hand, it's a student's best friend because most of the flights are cheap. However, you get what you pay for. They have strict carry on requirements and you can't check baggage unless you want to pay extra for it. The seats are slightly cramped and the company doesn't usually fly to the main airports but the ones farther away from the destination (London Stansted was an hour and half bus ride to the center of London). But none of that really mattered. We didn't care. What's a few hours of discomfort for a weekend of crazy fun.

When we got to the hotel at 2 am, we were able to pass out for a few hours until we had to get up to hit the city. We stepped out onto the London streets to a rainy and snowy day. Our first destination: Buckingham Palace.

All I kept thinking of when we walked up to it was the image of Prince William and Kate after their wedding standing up on the balcony waving to the people.




The people in London are obsessed with Prince William and Kate, and Harry. The whole family, really. More than I am! In shops and stores, their faces are plastered on mugs and pot holders and pens. Their names are always in the newspapers. Sometimes that makes me glad that I didn't marry Prince William.

    Our next stop was 10 Downing Street, which I was a little more excited about than my friends. It's the residence of the Prime Minister David Cameron. Mostly I was excited because of what a great political leader he is, but also because One Direction filmed a piece of their music video in front of the door. Just to confirm, there were no One Direction sightings while we were in London. Unfortunately, they had a concert in another city in England that weekend.
   We weren't able to see the famous front door with the number 10 on it because of the security around it, but I did take a picture of the street sign.



From Downing Street, we walked to Big Ben, which was absolutely massive and for some reason, so much bigger than I expected.



Fun fact: 'Big Ben' actually refers to the bell inside the tower. We heard it's deep and booming chimes when the clock struck ten. And last year, for Queen Elizabeth II's jubilee, the tower itself was renamed Elizabeth's Tower.

Right across the street was Westminster Abbey, another thing that reminded me of the lovely William and Kate wedding (which I got up at 4 am to watch back in April 2011). The church was massive and intimidating. Unfortunately, we didn't go into it because it cost more than 20 pounds. We tried to circle the church to take in every bit of architecture that it offered.



 For the next few hours, we ate lunch and walked freely around London. Everyone we talked to, whether it was a random businessman we asked for directions or a shop owner, was extremely nice. The snowy weather didn't affect their personalities. The businessman told us we absolutely had to visit the Spitalfield Market because it boasted an array of fashionable clothing and art. The shop owners had fun trying to guess what nationality we were. They commonly though I was German until I talked in an American accent.

I fell in love with every person that passed by me, solely for their accents. It was music to my American ears. I would listen to people's conversations just to revel in their voices.
The London Eye



We bought Underground Day Passes, which makes it easy for day trippers or weekend visitors to buy a subway pass for a day or two. After getting lost (we would become pros at navigating the London Underground by the end of the weekend), we hopped on the subway to the Tower of London, the home of the Crown Jewels.

The Tower of London

I parted ways with my friends at this time. While they took the tour, I walked around a park, visited a bookstore and walked to London Bridge, where I got an unbelievable view of the Tower Bridge.

The Tower Bridge
I met up with Mikaela and Alexis after an hour or so and we went back to the center of the city through the Underground. We went shopping for a bit, grabbed a bite to eat and prepared ourselves for our night tour of London.

The night tour was exceptional, and I loved it because we got to learn the history and facts of London. For example, there are 32 boroughs of London, and the river Thames splits them in half. My favorite fact was about the London Bridge. In the 1970's, they replaced the bridge with a new one, and a man from Arizona bought the old bridge and reassembled it, exactly as it was, somewhere in Arizona.

After the tour, we walked around Picadilly Circus, which reminded me so much of Times Square.




Alexis and I woke up early the next morning to go to King's Cross and see Platform 9 3/4 from the Harry Potter movies, while Mikaela, not a Harry Potter fan, slept in.


We then made our way to Abbey Road. Traffic doesn't stop on Abbey Road, mind you, so tourists scramble onto the crosswalk when there's a break in traffic while their friends take pictures in record time before cars come passing through again.


We met up with Mikaela and had a little time before we had to go to the concert, so we visited Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery. It was named Trafalgar Square in commemoration of the Battle of Trafalgar in the Napoleonic Wars.
The National Gallery 

Trafalgar Square


And now for the best, made-my-life part of the weekend: The Script and the Original Rudeboys concert. I expect most people to have heard of the Script because they've been around for a few years, but the Original Rudeboys are new and formed last year or the year before. Their music is a mix of acoustic and rap. I stumbled upon them on the internet looking up Irish bands and have been obsessed ever since. Here's a clip of them from Youtube if you want to check them out:

Stars in My Eyes by The Original Rudeboys

The Original Rudeboys opened for the concert and I was fangirling the entire time. I blew my lungs out singing along even before the Script came on. The Original Rudeboys were absolutely amazing, and I was so lucky they, of all bands, opened for the Script.

The Original Rudeboys
Then the Script came on and the entire stadium went wild. They put on the most amazing show ever, not only playing songs from their new CD, #3, but also other ones. When they performed "Nothing", Danny asked a fan to call her ex and sang the song into her phone. I was introduced to "I'm Yours" which the lead singer wrote at 4am when he had nothing to his name. And of course they performed favorites like "For the First Time" and "Breakeven".
Favorite photo from that night
After it was over, we made our way back to the hotel, exhausted and quite in awe of the night that just happened. We had to catch a 2:40 am bus to the airport for our 6:40 am flight, so again we were only able to pass out for a few hours. Before I allowed myself to close my eyes, I tweeted to one of the members of the Original Rudeboys telling him what a great performance it was, as most fans do. What I love about the Original Rudeboys is that they sometimes respond to their fans, and I was one of them! Needless to say there was more fangirling. 

Screenshot of the twitter response
We arrived back in Gothenburg around 10 am Sunday exhausted but happy.
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