"There was nowhere to go but everywhere."

I haven't yet had the time to write about my 10-day trip across Europe....

On Friday, the 6th of Nov., I woke up early after being awake for over 24 hours the previous day (5am to 5am) because I'm a horrible procrastinator - but my grades don't count, so why would I start fixing my bad habits now? I had to wake up early so that I could meet up with my friend Paul, from Villanova. Paul was making the move from the states to Hong Kong for a super sweet job he landed right after graduation this past May so he got the chance to stop in London for the weekend and we were able to meet up before my flight later that day. The afternoon was so much fun: we went from pub to pub, he recalled his London memories, gave me advice on travelling to Paris, and we both spoke lovingly about Villanova and everything we miss about it to someone who actually understands ... it was great.

However, by the time I left him, I only had about an hour to buy a new camera, pack for a 10day trip, and make it to the tube station.... and I was certainly not sober after so many pubs. Luckily, I accomplished everything - I picked out a camera with the help of the man at PC World - I made him convince me 20 times it was the best one, and I packed and made it to the station on time ..though I only packed three pair of socks for the whole week (gross) and forgot any type of pajama pants and some of my eye makeup... other than that, I was pretty proud of my effort and it was worth it to hang out with Paul.

I flew out of Heathrow with two of my friends from UCL to start what they call "reading week" and what I call "fall break" in Athens. On the plane, my friend Sarah and I got lucky enough to sit in the same row as a Greek psychiatrist who we spoke to throughout the entire three hour flight... despite the fact that I was slightly hungover from the afternoon and exhausted from the day before. He gave us great advice about where to go in Athens... and where not to go - he was very concerned for our safety.... which was comforting? We also talked to him about the world - we asked him about the EU and what he thinks of it... he wanted to know if we like Obama - he's a Bush man himself... which is the only foreigner I've ever met who had that opinion, I'm pretty sure.

He had some interesting insight to share on the US and its perception internationally: he finished talking about how he was skeptical of Greece and the rest of Europe becoming engulfed in th EU because it's strongly run by Germany & France (his words) and it wasn't too long ago that Germany was ravaging the entire continent and trying to take on the world and went on to say something that made me truly proud to be an American. He said something to the sense of - ya know, people see America and sometimes they think they're big & bad but they forget that it was young Americans who have fought numerous battles on European and Asian soil without even being able to pronounce the names of the people who lived there... they left their families and young lives at home and fought for the good of those people, who they had no ties to. Now, regardless of whether we (as a state) were supposed to be fighting those wars... this moment still brought me tremendous pride in the midst of gaining yet another new perspective (one of my favorite things about being abroad).

Greece is gorgeous... absolutely stunning. The city of Athens itself isn't the most magnificent city in the world - it's not extremely clean and its buildings are close together and the architecture is nothing particularly special. However, there's something to be said about a city where you can be walking down a random alley and see the Parthenon at the Acropolis: you're instantly reminded you're not just in a city - you're in the midst of what was that great ancient Greece. The Acropolis is in the center of the city and the view from the top is absolutely unforgettable. From the top, you can see the Temple of Zeus and other ruins in the middle of city blocks and neighborhoods that seem they would go on forever if not stopped by the water on one side and mountains on others. The weather was perfect - a nice break from the chill inevitable in London.

We went to the Acropolis Museum, which was honestly kind of boring - it was just statues and urns and I probably should have been more interested... but I wasn't. One thing that did strike me, though, was an ancient stone that had Greek writing inscribed on it. I couldn't read what it said because I don't speak Greek but there is an entire country, a whole population of people who can read and understand what the people who wrote on that stone milleniums ago had to say. That's rare, considering Latin is no longer a viable, spoken language (though I did take a year of it in high school: Cornelia sedet sub arbore... Cornelia sits under the tree.. that's all I got).. so it was cool to be confronted with something like that.

Later that night, we ate dinner and had wine in the middle of this quaint square in an authentic part of Athens - Psiri, as recommended by our Greek airplane friend. The service is slow so we just kept getting more and more wine and maybe it was the atmosphere of being in the land where philosophy arguably started.. but for some reason, many conversations my friends & I had were quite philosophical... not about Plato or anything, just about life. It came up a few times so I'm going to post it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McvCJley78A. It's a video called "The Good Life" and it gives a new perspective on the business world and chasing a dollar.. definitely worth watching, it's about 3 minutes long & it solidified what I've already come to decide about what life I want to live. Anyway, back to Greece.. after a lot of wine we headed down the street and no joke - it was lined with hookah bars. We picked the busiest one and got a table in the corner... no one there spoke English. It was legit.. the servers had to find someone at a random table to come speak English to us, which those people loved but it was kind of embarassing. We had more wine and smoked a lot of hookah and after being harassed by the table next to us for some wine, we somehow didn't end up getting back to our hotel until 5:30am. When we came out of the hookah place.. the Acropolis was lit at the end of the street ... a beautiful reminder that I was in Greece instead of NYC stumbling out of Sahara East on the lower east side.

The next day we took a trip to Sounio, the tip of Greece, where the Temple of Poseidon stands on a cliff overlooking the Meditteranean. We took an hour and a half bus ride along the coast to get there and every moment was completely breathtaking... the sun started to set during the ride making the horizon colorful and the views even more fantastic. It was pefect... until, we got to the Temple of Poseidon and the woman at the gate decided to close it - so we weren't able to go up to the temple but we did get to see it at every stage of the sunset from a little further away. It was so peaceful there... you could see so many angles of the ocean, the temple, the villages surrounding. We ate grape leaves, tzatziki, and greek salads at the restaurant next to the temple before heading back to Athens for the night.

On our last full day in Greece we took a speedboat ferry to Aegina, an island off the coast of Athens. It took us forty minutes to arrive in the cutest, quaintest Greek island you could imagine. Accompanied by the grace of more good weather, we strolled around the pier, sat on the beach, wandered in and out of churches and shops, and ended up spending a lot of time enjoying tzatziki and wine in a restaurant overlooking the pier. We spent so much time there that we almost missed our ferry back... so we sprinted to the pier in the dark to catch the last ferry back to Athens only to find that indeed our ferry had been cancelled. So we ran to the ticketbooth to collect tickets on another ferry - the non-speedy one - and ended up walking on to the car plank to the ferry literally in a scene from Titanic with angry little old ladies screaming in foreign languages presumably about having the wrong tickets due to the last minute cancellation of the speed ferry (due to "weather conditions"...was it too nice out?).. but we ended up back in Athens where we discovered - not even to our surprise at this point - that we had been ripped off by an earlier taxi. Taxis in Athens just decide their own prices - the meter says one thing, they say another and ask if you want a receipt. But honestly, would it be a good trip without being ripped off by a cab driver? It's pretty expected by now... I think it's happened in every city I've travelled to.

Oh! The food in Greece was incredible.. I've already mentioned it a few times BUT it made me think of NY diners .. the Nautilus in particular. You know how diners are great because you can get absolutely anything - Greek food, fries, pizza, pasta, meat, dessert, drinks??? Well after visiting Greece it's not surprising that diners are typically owned and operated by Greek people because that is exactly how most Greek restaurants are - they offer everything.. no matter how nice the restaurant.. it's just their style... it was so cool to make this realization! Brought me back to days, nights, and mornings at the Nautilus in Massapequa. Also, I made an even better correlation.... you know the bread sticks they have there - the crunchy ones covered in sesame seeds that you know you love to dip in butter?! Well, those are Greek too! Just how NY has a million hot dog stands on the streets, Athens has these circular bread things covered with sesame seeds - we decided to try them our first day there -and they taste EXACTLY like those Nautilus/diner breadsticks only less crunchy... had them every day after that - it was so great! I miss the Nautilus <3

On our last day in Athens, we strolled around the streets and back-alleys of Athens to find the perfect souvenirs before heading to the bus to the airport. I can't wait to get back to Greece, it was definitely a vision of the good life.

Next stop on our trip was Budapest... but because of the airlines Hungary was not our first stop - we had a layover in Geneva, Switzerland, which ended up being perfectly okay. Swiss Air was the cheapest and provided us with plenty of wine and chocolate and funny videos thorughout our two flights between Greece and Hungary. Though I didn't get to spend much time in Geneva .. and my bank account doesn't afford me to go skydiving on this trip :( ... the flight over the Swiss Alps was enough to satisfy my fill of Switzerland for at least a little while. I literally felt like I was in heaven. Between the enormity of the snow-capped mountains surpassing the clouds that were glowing with the light of the sun, I snapped a million pictures to make sure I wasn't dreaming about the afterlife. The aerial view was nothing short of spectacular. Once we passed the Alps, a pristinely white sheet of clouds was the only thing beneath us and as we started to descend into the Geneva airport, I actually felt as though we were making the transititon between heaven and earth. Once beneath the sheet of clouds, Geneva was gorgeous - so green and clean it seemed, even from the sky.

We had one full day in Budapest so we took a sightseeing bus to ensure we didn't miss a thing. Budapest is a pretty luxurious city ... it seemed really clean, very organized, and Eastern European (rightfully so). On the tour we stopped at these baths that were so pretty... it was raining, windy, and cold the whole time we were in Hungary.. yet people were still swimming and relaxing enjoying these baths... the steam that came off of them was enough to fog up the city.. it was so cool. We went to Sleeping Beauty's castle (or what it's supposedly based off of) and saw a great view of the city from a high mountain. They had an Elizabeth bridge there! ... wasn't really that cool. I don't know what else to say about Budapest as a city.. I had a really good time and I'm glad I went.. it was different in good ways.

We got what we thought would be lunch at a traditional little Hungarian restaurant... lunch turned into dinner & dessert & drinks over the span of five hours, however. We spent all night at this Hungarian restaurant doing I don't even know what but we got there before the dinner rush and left after it... I'm sure the people trying to eat just loved us. It was my three friends & I and we quickly made friends with our waiter who kept suggesting the 50% off cocktails - though we insisted on ordering more and more bottles of wine. After four bottles of wine and our lunch, we decided to take him up on the half price cocktails and ordered a pitcher of some type of rum and coke thing... maybe it was tequila... not sure. Expecting a little pitcher, he shows up with this monstrosity with probably ten three-foot neon straws coming out of it... which is legit when we turned our table into spring break, sucking everything out of it. One of my friends even fell off her chair trying to give my other friend a kiss on the cheek... it was absolutely hilarious & completely not the right place for us, but the perfect place all at the same time.. it was so much fun. After our lunch, we ended up ordering dessert, and then pizza... and then some Hungarian shots at the suggestion of our waiter friend.... I think the Hungarian shots were tequila, but at this point - who knows. When we finally left the restaurant/our home in Budapest we decided to get more dessert at a coffee place and stayed there until closing. So Budapest treated us well... great times.

The next day we strolled around Budapest for a little while before hopping on the slow train to Prague. It was difficult to buy tickets because hardly anyone spoke English in Budapest... but we found them and settled into a little cabin thing readying ourselves for the seven hour trip through eastern Europe. It was dreary and bare and covered with graffiti and looked sad.. exactly my perception of what Eastern Europe would be... it was actually kinda scary - I couldn't read any of the writing and they're not the friendliest people. We passed through more of Hungary, the country of Slovakia - including the city of Bratislava, and some of the Czech Republic before I got to meet up with Molly & Colleen in Praha!!!

The weekend of craziness started that night almost immediately after I arrived... which was fine with me after a seven hour train ride. Coco, Viv, and Lulu (our alter-egos) were reunited and made their best displays at a Czech bar. The next day we had a classically long breakfast/lunch - reminiscent of time spent at the Pit after a long night (awww, can't wait for January!) - before hitting the streets of Prague. We ran into my friends from UCL on the Charles Bridge and all went to the Lennon Wall together, which was soo hippy-cool... it was started after the fall of Communism... the Czech people loved the ideas of peace Lennon sung about... the whole wall is covered with references to "Imagine."

Colleen is studying in Prague for the semester so it was so nice to know where to go right away and not to have to look at a map once the whole weekend. The streets of Prague are so Eastern European - it reminded me of being at Busch Gardens or on a movie set with the old color buildings that are meat to represent eastern european cities... except it was like that throughout the entire city. Prague was one of the only European cities not to be bombed during WWII so all of their buildings date back to the 1600s and the gold that decorates a lot of the buildings is real since they were built so long ago.

It's a gorgeous city. So gorgeous that everyone needs to take pictures - and in taking pictures of these sights, we noticed - and Colleen pointed out - that the Eastern Europeans and techno Italians take pictures very differently than American tourists. Instead of smiling and capturing the great time they're having, these people make their best efforts at sexy poses in front of statues of old kings, or they're just completely stone-cold serious and point to the landmark they're getting in the picture with. It's absolutely enthralling to watch. Even more fun than watching, though, is trying to imitate this genre of posing.... which is what we did the entire weekend. It was so much fun - especially since we had to get people to take these pictures of us... it was great seeing their reactions to us being super serious in pictures and then dying of laughter after. The Euro-posing just did not stop... did it during the day, at night, with people I know, with people I definitely don't know. Actually, I almost got killed because of the euro-pose frenzy. Coming home on the tram on our last night in Prague at 3am (had to leave for the airport at 6:30, good) there was a sleeping man - who I swear looked pretty homeless & dead asleep - so naturally, I wanted to pose with him. Well, I guess I came too close to him or something because the guy - who was much scarier looking awake than sleeping - sprang up as I curled into a little ball in my seat trying to act innocent. He was not happy. I saw my life flash before me. I almost died. Over-dramatic much?

This incident happened after a night spent at the five-story club on the river, which attracted crowds of every age & background - super cool to see old people at this neon-lit floor... it was great haha. Another night we went to Lucerna, where they play 80s and 90s music in this big room - there was this sweaty drunk/high/intoxicated/drugged guy on center stage among much younger people dancing, playing the air guitar and pretending to be the star of his very own concert at the Garden... it was soo entertaining to watch & he looked like he was having so much fun, I wanted to be him for a little bit.. would have been fun.

Even though you can smell the hops from the breweries in Prague, the theme of my trip was definitely Boskov vodka ... Czech? I don't know.. but it made for plenty of good times. Oh and as a result of my trip to Prague, I'm now pregnant..... with a food baby. I think I gained a million pounds (no over-estimation here).. we had delicious Mexican food, bagels, pizza, chips, McDonalds & Burger King (very cultural & healthy).. and that was all before we went to the markets at Old Town Square. We had these ginormous hot dog/sausage things that were delicious & then went on to have fried dough covered in nutella... picture 20 freshly fried zeppolies connected with hazlenut chocolate... heart attack or love of my life? Both. After my trip around Europe and trying all its food, I came back to London, bought a family sized bag of vegetables and a big pack of clementines and tried to restore some type of nutrients to my body. Whatever, food is a part of the experience - my body can recover later... I hope. Oh! But the Athens Classic Marathon was taking place while we were there and we ended up getting free posters and blow up bananas and real bananas and it was soo cool to see the excitement of the runners the day before the marathon that I decided I really want to run a half marathon sometime in the coming six months... so maybe that will help the cause to abort the food baby. This is gross, I can't believe I just said that... too lazy to backspace.

So there's probably more to say about all of these trips that I'm missing but I think I've rambled on for long enough and that I'll be able to remember other things if I look back at this. Overall, successful Eurotrip for sure. It was great to see Colleen in her current city. I'm leaving for King's Cross station in just a little bit to take the chunnel to Paris for the weekend, where I'm meeting Eileen, my friend from high school :) We're so excited - I picked up Tesco's (cheap convenience store) finest champagne for our arrival. This is my last trip of the semester so it must be good... and beyond that, I'm excited to spend the rest of my time here truly in London, though I'm sad that it's come to this point so soon. My whole family is coming on Wednesday for Thanksgiving break & I am beyondddd looking forward to seeing them and showing them around this city I love. Oh went to the Burberry outlet yesterday, if you see this and you need anything from there - let me know, they have AMAZING deals. Random. I'll miss being in NY for Thanksgiving and seeing my friends at home.. but I'll see them pretty soon over Christmas break anyway :)

Oh and the title of this post is in reference to a quote from Kerouac's On the Road, which I appropriately started reading during this trip... makes me want to go cross country... maybe this summer before I head back to Villanova at the beginning of July... any interest???

loveeeeee<3