Home Sweet Home

I made it! 8 and a half hours later I landed in the great US of A. Looking back on my trip it seems impossible that we were able to pack so many experiences into just 20 days. Edinburgh, Florence, and Paris were definitely my favorite cities and I'm already plotting when I will return. A few days later, this is how I have characterized each city in my head:

Italy: Since the economy is not doing too hot, there a lot of desperate people trying to earn some money. This results in bombarding tourist to buy your selfie sticks on every single street corner. In Italy (especially Rome) it was more of a walk-quickly-through-the-streets-with-my-bag-and-not-look-at-anyone mindset. The people in general were nice, but that was only if you were brave enough to sit around and try and strike up a conversation. Rome as a destination is a must because of all the incredible history and sites to see, but Florence was so much more enjoyable to walk around. I think only three people tried to sell me selfie sticks and overall the city was just much cleaner and easier on the eyes. Also, Florence was small enough to where you could walk the whole city and not have to worry about trains or the "sketchy side". I will never forget the pizza and pasta that I had in Italy <3 or the memories, those are pretty good too. 

France: Ohhh France. I think this fun fact sums up the French quite nicely; in the French language, there is no word for you are welcome. (At least not a common phrase that I have learned)  Now I'm basing everything that I say off of two days spent in Paris, so if any of your friends are French I'm sure they're lovely and please don't show them this. From my experiences, everyone in France just blows you off. It's not even that they're rude, they just couldn't care less if you exist or not. While shopping no one asks to help you, if you are lost no one gives good directions, and at resturaunts they give you zero reason to provide a tip and ignore you except when dealing with the check or bringing you food. Even though the people may not be the most welcoming, their city is beautiful enough to make up for the people and I can't wait to go back and explore more! Paddling through the canals of Versailles, hiking up the Arc De Triomphe, and having a picnic dinner while watching the sunset over the Eiffel Tower is hands down the best day of my life.   

England: This is the home of Harry Potter so I don't have too many bad things to say about it. The people in England are friendlier than the French in the sense that at least they'll talk to you. Now, once they get going it's debatable whether you are glad they're talking to you, but hey A for effort! In Britain people are very crude. They drop F word on the reg and don't think twice about cursing in front of children. As a sweet southern bell from the good ole Bible Belt, this was very strange and I never quite got used to it. We didn't get to spend much time in London since we spent our free day on the Harry Potter set but let us not forget getting rejected from "the clubs" because our footwear was not stilettos... Not cool London. Not cool. One more time though, Harry Potter was awesome, the people were awesome, the set was awesome, I should have gone to Hogwarts. 

Scotland: Edinburgh, the southern gentleman of Europe. What a great place! I have nothing but great things to say about Edinburgh. The people were so friendly, the town is not too big not too small, and the history of the town is hilarious. I remember when we walked into this old mans candy store and he was throwing candy at us, asking us to try all of it telling us how he made it in the back. He was trying to help my friend find the perfect candy for her dad, so sweet! The people who served us during dinner were always asking if we needed anything and joked around with us all night. Even the people in Starbucks were nice! I bought a mug and accidentally dropped it while I walked away from the register and they let me pick a new one no charge! I wish we had spent more time there, but good thing I'm going back! (Eventually)  

Ireland: The Irish are a spirited bunch I'll give them that! Refer back to my ferry post to refresh your memory on how rambunctious the Irish were on the ride back from their football game. The Irish are a mix of the English and Scottish. They are just as crude as the English, but they're definitely nicer. I had a great conversation with our cab driver on the way to the airport. He was very well-read and knowledgable, I actually learned a lot from him! Dublin is such a touristy area most of the people we interacted with weren't even Irish, but our waiters were always very nice and helpful. In one pub where we were enjoying some nice live music the singer started asking us where we were from. When we said Georgia he smiled real big and said, "now yall come back now ya hear!", along with a big strum on his guitar. Thank you mr Irish singer, thank you for that. 

My mom and Ryan greeted me at the gate (they weren't even late!) and helped me gather my many goodies to head to the car. I should probably mention that I didn't sleep at all the last night in Dublin because I wanted to savor the last night with friends. Also, I could totally catch up on sleep on the plane. Turns out, we were chasing the sun all 8.5 hours and I got zero sleep on the plane. It's also about 10 pm Europe time and 4:00 pm America time by the time we are heading out of the airport. So exhausted Emily and crew heads to the parking lot. While I'm mindless talking we are walking around the parking lot and my mom and Ryan start talking about how they can't find the car. I'm more concerned with the fact that I'm in yoga pants and its 85 degrees outside. My mom asks me to pick a car any car that I want to drive home - brain still off I immediately say (and point) "that white rav 4". Because duh who wouldn't want that.  My mom then clicks the keys and it unlocks. At this point I'm thinking "oh isn't this nice lets play tricks on the sleep deprived Emily that's been gone all month ooo hoo hoo!"  Not cool guys. It must be a rental car because my moms is broken and this was the car they picked to drive around. You can't fool this girl, nice try though. I jokingly ask Ryan if my mom bought me a car, LOL like that would ever happen. I'm already indebted to my parents more money than I have because of my trip there's no way they like me enough to get me a car... After some stammering and lots of very incoherent sentences with grammar that would make lit teachers/Kelly cringe everywhere it was somehow relayed that yes this is my car, no it's not a rental, no this is not a midlife crisis, no there is no catch, yes Sam crashed your car. So while there is a small loophole being my brother crashed my car while I was gone, he's ok and I am not upset about it! Meet Ronald the rav 4 everyone!!! 

I would like to thank my mom and dad at this time for being so supportive through my whole trip!!! I would like to thank Wendy, for knowing the perfect car to get. I would like to thank Ryan, for recording the whole thing even when I told you, "Ryan put the camera away this is a serious matter, is this really my car?". I would like to thank my mom again for not listening to my dad when he told her to trick me and tell me it's Sara's car, and then say just kidding it's Sam's. Also thank you dad for making me write these blog posts and always saying nice things about them! And getting me a car! May has been a pretty amazing month! 😊

Goodbye everyone, I'm sure you'll hear from me again in Austria! 

~emily 

Where's my 4 leaf clover?

Now that it's finally time to go home, I'm beginning to be jealous of Janae for getting to stay an extra week. I can honestly say the only negative thing I could think to say about my past three weeks would be about school; and since it's school I don't even feel bad about saying that. I'm going to be extremely sad to say goodbye to what my dad has been referring to as my "luxurious European vacation". Little did he know if was half school/boot camp.

This morning was no different than the others ones. We got an extremely above average breakfast and hopped on a bus. For breakfast I had a croissant with chocolate inside (they actually call this pan and chocolate or some variation of that depending on where you are), eggs, rice crispies, and a nice apple for the road. In Rome and France they didn't drink cold milk so now whenever it's chilled/about room temperature we think we're living large. The first garden we went to it was very cloudy and started to rain a little; it was styled to look like a French garden. The second garden was styled after an Italian garden which I have decided are my favorites. Italian gardens have stairs, changes in elevation, water, and evergreens (my teacher would be so proud right now). These gardens always have really pretty views and that's why I like them! I'll have to keep this in mind when I buy a mansion and need to design my garden. 

I must say Dublin has not blown me away like I thought it would. Everywhere in town is always so crowded and extremely over priced. Today we met some nicer people than yesterday though and that did improve my feelings about Ireland. I feel like the cities outside of Dublin would be amazing, next time I'm in Ireland I'll be sure to adventure out more! After we got back to the hotel, we packed up our bags and went to go explore. The cab cost everyone 5€ to take us from the hotel, to the city, which is pretty pricy. Some of my pizzas in Italy cost less! We walked around the town trying to help our friend Katie find her O'Connell family crest.  All the stores were tourist traps but they didn't even have cute stuff, #disappointing. We ate our final meal of overpriced chicken fingers and French, listened to some live music for a while, and then headed home. I didn't think I would be this tired but everyone was pretty sleepy too and ready to call it a night by 10:30. It is officially time to pack up all the goodies I have collected and head on home! My alarm is set for 5:45 and taxis are coming at 7:30. I am now riding solo since the teachers are not on our flight home, but I'm riding solo with about 29 other students so it shouldn't be too scary. 

Queso here I come!!

~emily 

And then there was one {day}..

I cannot believe that tomorrow is our last day. WOW! Just to change things up a little bit, we woke up and got straight on a bus. We did get to enjoy a delicious breakfast first though where I smuggled out 5 prepackaged jellies because they were in cute jars. Gotta take advantage of those free souvenirs since I'm broke now. (I'm actually scared to look at my bank account) Our bus took us to two gardens, the first one being Mount Stewart and the second one was the Dillion Garden. We had our last quiz after the first garden so we mainly just walked around and took in the scenery, nothing too exciting. At the second garden the owners gave us tea and cookies, they were super old and super adorable!

Mount Stewart 

I'm pleasantly surprised about how much warmer Ireland is than the last day we had in Scotland. It's been cloudy but the wind isn't too strong or cold. I have to say though, Dublin did not blow me away. We walked from our hotel to the heart of the city and spent the evening getting food and listening to live music in a popular pub. The city is flat and the people are not the nicest we have come across. Maybe it would be different if we hadn't just come from Edinburgh, but I just fell in love with that city! No one here has been terribly mean but we haven't had one friendly interaction with an Irish person. The city is very interesting from what we were able to see to see tonight. There is live music everywhere and lots of resturaunts to choose from! (i.e. Hard Rock Cafe and McDonalds) We all got some cider in the spirit of being in Ireland, and the pub also had some fun festive hats we could wear too! Since tomorrow is our last day and we still have to wake up early we called it an early night and spilt a taxi back home. Our taxi driver was the nicest person we have met here yet! 

I'm taking buzzfeed quizzes while Janae and Liba pack up their bags. Janae has to pack to leave for the next part of her trip, she's going to Spain! Wish her luck that she makes it there with all of her stuff ❤️ 

I refuse to believe this trip is coming to an end... 

~emily 

Thanks Obama...

So I don't know if I mentioned the weather in Edinburgh yesterday, but it was absolutely beautiful! Our teacher had warned us about how cold it would get and in our minds, he could not have been more wrong. We were sweating in sweaters and joking about how we might need to break out some shorts again! Jokes on us, it broke records fort their warmest day of the whole year. This morning was cloudy, 40 degrees, and wind at least 13 mph. It was like waking up in Antarctica but expecting California. Gimme that nice Georgia humidity I know and love, at least it's reliable ❤️

We started off our day with what has become a pretty basic routine. Set an alarm for an hour early, snooze said alarm repeatedly, remember you have to pack up your entire room, frantically hop out of bed and hope you don't forget anything. If I make it back to the States with the same stuff I left with and all souvenirs in tact, it will be a miracle. You would think I would be better at getting everything together by now, but I guess when you constantly go to bed at 2:30 am that's a good enough excuse as any to be scatterbrained. We got on a bus and drove to the botanical gardens in Edinburgh.  They weren't that interesting and everyone headed for the cafe as soon as our teacher stopped talking. I'm not going to say the lack of excitement and energy of the group was due to the pub crawl that took place the night before, but I also won't say it's not. We left the botans and I had a semi comfortable nap on the 2 hour bus ride to or next destination, Little Sparta. This experience was also not very enjoyable. Our teacher lined us up next the girls in our sorority (talk about letter your letters define you, gosh) and put us in groups of three with other members of the group. As a group we had to walk around the garden and try to relate it to the other gardens we have seen. If it hadn't been so dang freezing it probably wouldn't have been so bad! The garden was in a really pretty part of Scotland though. It looked much more similar to the image I had in my head of what Scotland would look like, rolling green hills full of sheep and cows frolicking about. Very pretty. Very cold. 

It was about 3:00 when we got back on the bus to defrost. We were headed toward the coast to catch our ferry ride that would take us to Ireland. I've never been on a ferry, so I didn't really have any expectations. Our boat was a cruise ship!!! There was an arcade, a spa, resturaunts, a gift shop, a coffee shop, even a movie theater!!! Unfortunately, the main difference between this and a cruise is on a cruise the stuff is free... 

It just so happened that almost everyone on our ferry was returning from the biggest soccer tournament for Ireland! From what I understand, it would be the equivalent of UGA beating Alabama in the SEC championship. All the Irish people were singing songs and drinking for the full 3 hour ride. It probably would have been annoying if it hadn't been so entertaining!! When I read Harry Potter, that was how I imagined quidditch teams acting and carrying on. The people had scarves on and big hats, everyone had on a jersey, some had face paint, and even the little kids were decked out. I find their spirit quite admirable and I think we could learn a thing or two from them! Toward the end of the ride the crowd started getting a little rambunctious. A man came up to me in my chair and started yelling very closely in my face about how much he hated Obama. He was going on swearing about how he is a disgrace to our country and we should be embarrassed, give or take a few F bombs and some Irish slang I don't understand. Lucky for me another man yanked him back right as I was about to fall out of my chair from leaning back so far. He kept inching toward me whenever I backed away; as if it was my fault that Obama was president. Thanks Obama.    

I wish I could upload the videos I have of their chants!! 

We are at our second to last hotel of the trip and it is blowing my mind. It's the nicest one we stay in all trip, so it's also the nicest breakfast we are having all trip :) My diet plan isn't exactly going as expected. I thought I just wouldn't eat once we got to London since no one every has anything nice to say about the food in the UK, but instead everyone just eats American food. More fries and more burgers. I am pumped to eat some fruit and non-fried food! (Did I just say that?) 

Time for some beauty sleep! Next stop, Dublin. Goodnight everyone! 

~emily 

Edinburgh, the Southern Gentleman of Europe

Edinburgh is AMAZING! I never would have thought to come here on my own but I'm so happy it was a stop on our trip. The buildings are all gothic and very different than other cities we have been to and the green hills and and trees everywhere make it so pretty. All the people are so nice too, especially after coming from London and Paris. Multiple times I have seen people stop to help strangers and just smile at people passing by. It's awesome.

To start our day we woke up and did a free walking tour of the city. Our tour guide was David but we called him, "Australian Dave" for short.  He was hilarious and made learning about the city so fun! This is what I learned: 

JK put her hands here. I put my hands here. I basically helped write Harry Potter.

 One day the Scott's wanted to be Egyptian. They started creating Sphinx statues like these and putting them on their building. Later they decided they wanted to be Greek so they made their statues wear togas. LOL Scotland LOL

The tax office put a heart on the door to make it more appealing and approachable to the people. When the building was torn down they moved the heart to this spot in the street. Today, Scottish people spit on it as they walk by, in loving memory of the tax building! One time when a tour guide was telling this story, a couple burst out laughing. When the guide asked him about it later the man said, "I proposed to my wife on that heart. I thought it was romantic". He proposed on a heart of spit! 

***** imagine a golden chicken******

Whenever a new person would come into power, it wasn't uncommon for them to change the nation's religion. Every time it changed they would have to change all the steeples on the churches. The Scott's got tired of changing it all the time so they just put golden chickens on top instead of steeples; the chicken represents laziness. 

This was the street that JK modeled Diagon Alley after in Harry Potter. 

Edinburgh castle 

The graveyard JK walked through to help her think of names for her characters. 

Tom Riddles' tomb stone! It's spelled differently in the books but this is the original name. (Tom Riddle is Voldemort's real name) 

After the tour we just walked around and tried to spend the rest of our pounds which will soon be useless in Ireland. I can't believe I'll be home in only 4 days!! 

A park we walked by right in the city. 

Tonight a large group of the students are going on a "pub crawl" to see all the different kind of pubs in Edinburgh. I'm broke so I will do more observing than participating but I'm excited to hangout with everyone as a group and see what the city is like at night!! 

Ttyl, hope all the Colorado people have a safe plane ride!

~emily 

Welcome to Scotland

Today was an eventful day to say the least. I woke up this morning to a knock on our door from our teacher. My immediate thoughts were "oh my gosh we are the last ones we are so late we are holding up everyone he is going to fail me, ahh". He ended up telling us that we were going to store everyone's bags in our room so we should be ready by 8:30. He was an hour early. I woke up before my alarm. 😁 This morning was great though because we got to walk everywhere. I love waking instead of taking busses, it's just another chance to take in and experience the city. I am so sick of coach busses and underground trains! It's funny because today we walked a TON but in comparison to Italy, specifically Rome, today was nothing but enjoyable. I am going to have feet of steel  by the end of this trip.

A pretty park we walked through 

During our walk we went to two museums. Honestly, at this point they all look the same and I can barely appreciate the artwork inside the museums. I think I'm alone in that mindset but I'm just speakin the truth! We are shown so much art and history in three weeks it all just runs together. While we were at the British museum someone pulled the fire alarm and we had to spend 20 minutes outside waiting for them to fix it. Because of this delay we only had around 30 minutes of free time to walk around. This was my favorite painting that I saw in the museum...

We arrived at the train station, King's Cross, around 2:00 pm. Both teachers were extremely stressed out and basically sprinting through the streets, not caring if traffic split up the group. Eventually we all made it to the station, grabbed some lunch, and waited for our train. Just our luck, everyone had to evacuate the train station because of "suspicious activity" that no one could tell us about. It also didn't help the situation that one teacher had recently mentioned how ISIS was destroying major historical sites. After 30-45 minutes we were all let back in and our stressed out, rude teacher led us to our train. I honestly believe it's a miracle that we didn't leave anyone during that transition. 

The train ride was 4 hours long and not very comfortable. Everyone was surprisingly awake during it, so people were chit chatting, playing games, and joking around. The time passed much faster than I thought it would and by 8:45 we had arrived in Edinburgh. The city is insanely beautiful and way different than I expected. I thought it would be rolling hills of green and sheep everywhere! I was so wrong. 

Tomorrow is a free day so we get to walk around and do whatever we want, I'll keep you updated on what happens 😊

Goodnight! 

~emily 

Next time I'm in London, I'll remember to bring my stilettos

Free days are by far my favorite days! Today we slept in way later than we should have, and did a terrible job of managing our time, but it was still an awesome day. We ate breakfast in the hotel and left around 10:00 am. We bought tickets a while ago for the Warner Brothers Harry Potter tour but we never really figured out the details on HOW to get there. We tried to ask multiple people for help, like our hotel concierge and different waiters, but no one had a clear answer. You don't know how much you miss Google until it's gone! Not really concerned about this dilemma we decided to start our day and figure it out later. We dropped Janae off at the Tower of London; Katie, Liba, and myself were too broke to spend the 18£ it cost to get in. London is so expensive for Americans spending money hurts. While she was in the palace we got some Starbucks and saw the London bridge (it was not falling down). London looked very different than what I thought, it's much more modern and has lots of all glass buildings. There is also construction going on at every corner. Eventually we made it to some sections that looked more like Paris, but the majority of the city that we saw was the less historical part.

The London Tower 

After we met back up with Janae we headed to see Big Ben (he's not a person FYI, I know some people get confused) and the Eye. Liba has become a master pro at figuring out all the underground subway routes in various cities. She is the reason we make it where we need to go, thank goodness for Liba!! We didn't actually go on the London eye but we got some fun pics and walked around the area for a little bit. While we were walking along a bridge we saw about 5 guys scattered along the bridge getting people to place bets of 40£ at a time to guess which cup a ball was under. The game was similar to the ones they play at ball games where you just keep your eye on the ball. If you won you doubled your money, but if you lost you were out 40£. We were a astounded people had 40£ + to gamble away on a game! Then again we are broke college students, so what do we know. 

So now to the good part, Harry Potter. Turns out the studio is about 4 trains and a shuttle away from the city of London. We had to ride trains for an hour until we got to the stop where we got on a shuttle. Our tickets would only work for an entry between 4:00 and 4:30, we scanned our tickets at 4:25; it was a close call. We spent four hours in the studio and it was absolutely AMAZING! It's actually kind of depressing because Harry Potter and Hogwarts are so real and all the characters are real people, it's like another world at your fingertips... Until you think about how it's not real and you will never make it to Hogwarts and your dreams are crushed forever. Something I was really surprised at was how small everything was! The costumes, the beds, the rooms, the couches, everything was very small. The workers there are absolutely incredible, there was so much intricate detail put into the set and a lot of it you would never notice unless you saw it up close. I must have taken over 200 pictures. Everyone in the studio was overly nice and helpful which contributed to the overall experience. No one rushed you or told you not to take pictures, they encouraged you to stay as long as you wanted and ask questions. At the end there was a HUGE large scale model of the grounds at Hogwarts and I think this was my favorite part. Looking at it you could imagine where different scenes took place and it connected all the movies; it made Hogwarts seem like a real place and not just the school where they went to class. I just love Harry Potter and I'm jealous of everyone who hasn't read them because they still have the chance to experience it for the first time ❤️

(If anyone actually starts this journey, watch movies 1-3 and start reading the 4th book. That's the best way to do it) 

We may be muggles but we are determined!

They had a place where you could learn different wand fighting techniques .. Clearly we were naturals.

Us with our butter beer in front of the Hogwarts bridge!

 We got to take pictures on a green screen! We all got this picture printed out for only 6£, it's a big picture too!

The replica

Time for a joke. What do you call 4 American girls looking for a place to dance in London? Underdressed. After dinner we wanted to go to a dance club or something to continue our happy-high we had after leaving Harry Potter. We got directed by these girls we met to a club whose name I forgot. When we finally got there, two minutes before the cover charge started, we were told that no where would let us in with the shoes we were wearing! We all looked down at our white converse that had trekked through the dirt in Pompeii, and the mud in the Paris Gardens, and were highly offended. Clearly this bouncer did not understand these were "going out" shoes in Athens. We took this as a sign to head home and once more got on the tube to go back to King's Cross. Next time I'm in London, I'll remember to bring my stilettos. 

Tomorrow - Edinburgh! 

Excited to almost be home :)

~emily

Life is more fun in the sun

So just to reiterate one more time, England is COLD. I am a firm believer that life is more fun in the sun. Maybe next year they should consider adding a nice side trip to a warm Spanish beach!

Last night was absolutely fantastic. I got 9 hours of sleep in a super comfy Travel Lodge bed. For breakfast they had eggs, muffins, toast, cereal, delicious jams and jellies, and some mandarin oranges. Between me and Liba I think we had around 6 muffins that we walked out with as snacks for the road, we are resourceful. Also, London is insanely expensive!!! I took out 80£ (I think that is the pounds symbol) at the airport and it charged me $136! I don't know how people do whole semesters at Oxford.. The one perk here though is the free water, their existing fee is slightly less than that of Italy and France. 

During the day today we saw two gardens and the rest of the time I was asleep on the bus. The first garden was really pretty and had lots of different levels. A super cute old man explained everything to us and his accent made it more fun to listen to than our other lectures.

 

The next garden didn't have very much variety and looked more like woods than a garden. It had a creek that went around it though and a beautiful swan was swimming back and forth in it. Today was pretty overcast too, no rain, but I think gardens are prettier when you have the bright green against the bright blue. In the second garden our teacher made us walk around by ourselves in silence for 30 minutes to soak in the garden. In theory this is a good idea, but I don't know if this was the garden I would have picked for that. Personally, I like gardens with a view rather than woods. It was pretty walking around in the silence though, that's not something I would have thought of to do on my own. 

On the way to London we watched the second Hunger Games movie, Catching Fire. Liba gets insanely emotional about movies and cried at least 3 times in the first hour. It was pretty hilarious. Looking back the only negative aspects of the trip have been because of the school portion. I have so much fun with all of the people here; everyone is always laughing and being silly. I'm going to miss being with Liba, Janae, and Katie all the time when I get home 😢. But at least Liba and Janae both will be back at UGA in the fall, Katie just graduated and has a real job with Bank of America starting in August. We all think this is hilarious because, in case you forgot, she is the one who basically pees her pants if she laughs too hard. She laughs at everything, it's not that hard to make her laugh "too hard". We all joke that she is going to need to bring an extra pair of pants to work with her, she's not mature enough to be a real person in the real world with a real job. 22 is too soon I'm staying at UGA forever. 

Liba crying because Katniss and Gale have forbidden love and can't be together.  

Also side note- the English country side is surprising beautiful. It's like rolling hills with trees and flowers sprinkled everywhere!

Tomorrow we go see Harry Potter, Buckingham Palace, possibly the London tower if it isn't too expensive, and London bridge. If we get some coffee in the morning it's going to be a great day 😊 I'm sorry, tea. In London they drink tea. I'll keep you updated on how it goes! 

See you in 7 days... 

~emily