Lazy days and if you weren't on a bus kid I'd beat the freaking crap out of you

Thank all that is divine and holy in this world that I only have 3 days of class left in this term because my classes SUCK. They suck harder than anything I could ever imagine. Today I spent 5 hours (not 6 b/c I refused to go ferment for an hour in my genetics seminar) in class basically trying to pry my eyelids open. How do you say B-O-R-I-N-G in multiple languages so that I  can cover all my bases? Seriously, hard core suckage.  Even more annoying is that it is actually sunny here now and all I want to do is run and frollick in the parks.. ok, more like sit in the sun, take a nap and read... kind of like I did on Sunday.

Sunday was pretty much the best day ever  because I slept in late, the sun was shinning brightly and I decided to pack up a towel and a book and head to Regents Park. Love.  It amazes me that as soon as the sun is shinning, Londoners flock to the parks like it's going out of style. You see people laying everywhere napping, having a picnic or just hanging out with the friends. It's fantastic!  I mean, who wouldn't want to hang out in a place that looked like this!

The English Gardens at this place are RIDICULOUS. And by that I mean I want to uproot them and plant them in my very own little garden that I will some day have.  The flowers are all in bloom (because most likely they were just planted) but the colors are so freaking vibrant it almost hurts your eyes.  Check out these amazing fuchsia tulips. No, this photo has not been photoshopped, it is just THAT amazing.  I want to spend every day in the park (well, so long as it's sunny and not raining, really, that's no fun for anyone.

I told you, amazing flowers.  I can't wait to check out all the other parks and gardens in May, as I'll have a lot more time in the city since most of my travel will be done.  Speaking of travel, I'm off to Paris on Thursday and will be gone until Saturday.  Yay! We're taking the Eurostar, so that should be interesting.  This is one of my last big trips.  I'm going to Ireland in May and that's it.  I will be doing some travel within England still though, but mostly I want to soak up as much of the city as I can be fore I head back to the good ol' US of A.

Moving away from the beautiful part of this city, here are two things that happened to me while I was waiting for/on the bus today.  This morning as I waited for the bus grumpily to head to class, a tour bus passed by and I didn't even glance in it's direction.  Except, just before it passed by I flicked my eyeballs up, and I was wearing sun glasses and didn't move my head so it was totally a sidelong glance, and some bastard teenage kid was flipping me off!! What the hell yo?! I'm just minding my business, waiting for bus numero 43 to lug my ass to campus so I can sit and ponder stabbing myself to stay awake and YOU Mr. I'm 15 and on a freaking lame-o tour bus at 9 am in London are going to flip me off?! Oh, such rage... which was sucked into the abyss of boredom shortly after.

Then, on my way home I was sitting on the upper deck of the bus and glanced down.  What do my eyes behold but a man looking much like a Public Enemy reject complete with the flat top fro with designs on the sides and BRIGHT purple high-top reeboks.  I laughed my ass off.  If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then you're missing out.

OH, also, the girls and I met up with some friends at a pub on Saturday night (which would be why I slept in) and decided to dance for a little while on their dance floor. I kid you not they freaking played "Ice Ice Baby". I about peed my pants laughing so hard as I boogied to good ol' Vanilla Ice. Bloody fantastic.

The Longest post ever, Part Deux. (But you can read it first if you don't want to scroll all the way down to part one, really.)

And here we go again, here are some photos from Greece.  Starting with Athens. (Please disregard my SERIOUSLY nasty hair from the first day, which of course is when we took most of the photos, but I did not have access to a blowdryer and well, you'll see the results below.)

The Italian Alps out of the plane window.

Walking around Athens after we arrived.

In the scary, tiny, mirror covered lift at our hostel.

Ancient Agora beetoches!

So puuuurdy.

Next stop, what? Acropolis!

The Parthenon

Shot of Athens from the Acropolis

Another shot of the city and my crazy mug.

A theatre at the base of the Acropolis which is still used today for concerts.

What up Zeus?!

Zeus' Temple

Some random stadium we happened upon that had the olympic rings, but isn't in the olympic town from the 2004 olympics, hmmm...

Athens = walking around random corners and being smacked in the face by awesome ancient ruins.

On the roof terrace of our hostel, you can see the Acropolis in the back on the left.

On the ferry in the morning to head to Santorini. What this picture doesn't illustrate: how stabby I'm feeling b/c I only got 2ish hours of sleep, the metro wasn't working and I had to take a cab and more importantly, about 150 Greek teenagers are banging on drums and chanting and it's only 7:30 in the damn morning.

Out to see on the Aegean.

One of several greek isle ports we pit stopped at.

Alas, 8 hours later, we made it to Santorini and the man who ran our villa picked us up, and this is the view from our room.

The steps down to the old Fira port, 588. File this knowledge away for a future photo.

I'm on a boat! :) We took a little boat out to the volcano that formed the island and to a hot spring, which was not so hot.

Volcano!

It was a little windy up there.

Remember those 588 steps? Yeah, this is how we got up. Donkey ride! I felt so bad for the little fellas though.

Some building on the way from Fira to our Villa

Day 2 in Santorini = us renting a car because it was intermittently raining. I forgot my license so Alexis was driving, and well, this is how I looked for most of the ride.

Shot of Oia (pronouced E-ya) which is on the tip of the island.

Perissa beach! Check out the black sand. This picture does NOT do the beach justice. The water was freaking teal.

Being a goober on Perivolos, the other black sand beach.

Our tiny little egg car!

The red beach

Shot from the car while we were driving around the island. See why I loved this place.

We found a little turn out to stop and take a photo.

Another shot of Oia, in the sunlight. Love it!

Blue doors, everywhere.

*sigh* I want to go back.

This little fella befriended us while we were having a snack in Oia. He was so friendly and check out those eyes! I wanted to take him home so bad!

And there you go, that's my spring break in a few photos. I hope you enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed taking them. It has been nice to be in one spot for awhile though, and have clothes that don't smell like my suitcase on, but I had so much fun. Especially since all I've done since I've been back is sleep, grocery shop, do laundry and homework. Ugh. But I only have 2 weeks of class left, crazy!, and then the week after that I have 3 papers do and an exam and I'm done. I can't believe my time here is coming to a close so rapidly, it's insane.  

I'm still keeping my eye out for those gnomes, they're still on notice, and I don't want anymore train/bus flying incidents. Off to work on some classwork, shalom.

The longest post ever, Part One.

I set out to post just a small smattering of the pictures from my trip and realized that if I put this small smattering in one post, it would literally take longer than most people want to waste to skim through, so it's coming in two parts. And mind you this really is a small selection, as I took about 1,000 photos in two weeks. Yikes! :) So, the fact that I originally intended to do it all in one post will explain why Italy is posted before Greece, even though I went to Greece first.

And since I've been back, today is the first day I've seen the sun. Talk about a shock to the system after almost 2 weeks of sunshine, I return to London where it's, of course, raining. And what did I have to do on this sunny day? Go to the library and work on my lap report due Monday (which is done and done!) and now I get to work on some other stuff, but at least the sun is streaming through the window.

Enjoy Italy, I know I did!

On the plane from Athens to Rome, happy to be moving after a 6 hour layover!

Santa Maria Maggiore Church in Rome

Claudia, me and Alexis at the Colosseum!!! Weeee!

BAM, Colosseum comin' atcha.

Inside the Colosseum

Come on Claudia, get in there!

View of the Colosseum from inside the Forums.

The Forums in Rome

Inside the Forums

The Pantheon in Rome

Rafael's tomb inside the Pantheon

Trevi Fountain!

Vatican City, wow is all I can say.

On the way to the Sistine Chapel you pass through so many hallways and rooms, all with amazing ceilings, here are a couple of them.

This is inside the St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican.

Hanging out by some bridges just outside the Vatican.

The Spanish Steps!

Taking a breather on the Spanish Steps, the three of us totally took a nap on them, uh, haha, awesome.

Now we leave rome and head to Fabriano where my friend Claudia lives with her awesome family that let us invade their home for four days. We also spent time in a nearby city called Gubbio.

In Gubbio standing outside the house that Claudia's boyfriend is building.

Town square in Gubbio

FABRIANO!

Crazy tiny little streets in Fabriano. I didn't think I could see any crazier or weirder ones... and then I went to Venice.

Me and my cute new little Italian family!

From Fabriano we went to Florence. We were there less than 24 hours but basically saw what we needed to see.

Alexis and I walking around in Florence.

The Duomo, so huge and gorgeous!

Duomo

A piazza that had a ton of sculptures in it.

The Ponte Vecchio Bridge.

Me touristing it up on the bridge.

I don't remember the name of this church, but it was beautiful.

Rocking out in a 99 cent store!

Last stop in Italy, Venice! We spent about 2 days here.  It's crazy there. There are no cars, just tons of boats, the streets are a maze of little alley ways and the gondola guys stand around chanting "Gondola, gondola, gondola" at passing tourists.

A typical Venice scene.

Posing on one of the MANY foot bridges over the small canals.

San Marco church

Lots and lots of gondolas

More footbridges.

The Rialto bridge, pain in my ass with my luggage, let me tell you.

Us doing some shopping around the Rialto.

Riding a gondola ferry across the Grand Canal.

I loved this shot! With the water and all the laundry, it was great!

The first Jewish Ghetto in Europe.

From the restaurant we ate dinner at our only night there.

See, boats, water, footbridges.

 This is from the other major footbridge that crosses the Grand Canal, I believe it's called the Academia bridge, or something similar to that.

On the bridge.

The basilica we crossed the water to see.

Hanging out on the church stairs.

I took this while we were waiting for our gondola ferry ride back.

Bored, waiting for Alexis to finish up in a shop.

And there you have it, a small taste of my week in Italy. I'll start on Greece, stat.