You can clearly see I'm learning a lot in Italian class... Anyway, this past weekend we were in London. In case you were wondering, I had the urge to go up to everyone and say in a British accent, "You sound like your from London." Needless to say, I did not pursue this endeavor.
Our flight to London was quite easy. We flew Alitalia, which has now been downgraded to the worst airline ever. We had no problems getting to London, and everything worked out quite nicely; however, on the return flight, Alitalia changed our flights and didn't notify us. I checked our flight from Heathrow to Rome before we left for the airport and everything was looking fine. We get to the airport and we weren't able to check in. Apparently the Florence airport was shut down and since we were flying from London to Rome, then Rome to Florence, Alitalia moved out entire reservation to the next day and told us that we would get into Florence on Monday evening. The supervisor told us that it was Orbitz's fault, Orbitz told us that it was Alitalia's fault. For the record, it was Alitalia. After much yelling and screaming and kicking and crying, we finally got onto our original flight to Rome, and we had to take a train back to Florence. It was quite a stressful few hours, but I told everyone that we would all laugh about the experience in five years. Maybe by then, Alitalia will figure their internal shenanigans out.
Besides for the flight situation on the way home, London was amazing. We first went to the National Gallery to check out some art. I hung out with my man, Rembrandt van Rijn, chilled a little with Aelbert Cuyp, said hey to Jacob Ruysdael, and gave Nicolaes Maes a quick high five. The was a Rembrandt there entitled Belshazzar's Feast and it had God's hand writing Hebrew words in the sky. Quite interesting. Here is the link: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/rembrandt-belshazzars-feast
We then went to the Churchill War Rooms under the Treasury building which was really interesting. That was the place where Churchill conducted business during WWII. Churchill is seriously one of the coolest leaders ever--he has a great sense of humor. My favorite Churchill quote is: "I'm easily satisfied with the very best." Couldn't be truer. Below you will see Clive. He's a statue. I presume he did something pretty big at some point.
Spent a lot of time at Harrod's. I almost bought a traveling trunk for the back of my luxury buggy for £18,000. But then I thought to myself, "Self, Dad probably wouldn't appreciate that charge on his card." So with all my might, I refrained. (I hope you picked up on the sarcastic tone of the previous few sentences.)
For me, the highlight of this UK trip was Saturday night. We saw Billy Elliot, which was actually fantastic. I highly recommend checking it out if you are in the general area of London, or New York (is it still playing there?). After the show, we ate at The Ivy. I had a truly fantastic dinner--some of the best sashimi I've had in my entire life. If you are a fan of barely dead fish, I highly recommend the sashimi.
Per my father's advice, we ate a lot at Tesco. Got the mini bread things with chocolate chips in them £1.17. And just like last time, got sick of them pretty quickly.
Kind of a funny story: We got off the tube and saw a staircase, so naturally we went up it. However, we missed this sign:
It was the equivalent of climbing a 15 story building. I needed the exercise. Also, we speculated that if there indeed was an emergency in the tube that required people to climb 193 stairs, everyone would die.
I also got to chill with a few of my friends from Homecoming Committee at school. It was really great seeing all of the abroad members (minus Elliot, who kinda decided not to leave the dark abyss of Helsinki). Aimee is studying in Seville (you can check out her blog here: http://chasing-aimee.blogspot.com/), Katie is studying in Dublin, and Lizzie is studying in London. I had a lot of fun dodging birds, and chilling with my HC buddies.
By the way, the pigeons in London are absolutely fearless. They will literally fly over and grab things out of your hands (that did not happen to me). It is absolutely ridiculous. They are relentless.
Still don't know where we are headed this weekend...gotta figure that out soon. Palermo possibly? Ciao.
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