the fam -
thanks for the little movie thing that you all made on thanksgiving! my dad emailed it to me today so that was fun to watch. of course i was laughing in the very silent part of the library which is kind of embarassing, so good work. yes, thanksgivning in lebanon, er i mean paris, was interesting - i had chicken instead of turkey, but what can you do. anyways, see you all christmas eve!

i am completely caught up on pictures now! the ones from austria and paris are all online at: http://community.webshots.com/user/ashalay23

paris, baby

so on wednesday i almost missed my train to paris, it was a close one. eurostar is quite nice, i like traveling in style by train. when i arrived in paris i took the metro to the hostel we were all staying at (the 3 ducks, on the corner of commerce and entrepreneur, next to the church at the end of commerce), dropped my stuff off, then checked out the shopping on commerce street for an hour while weitzel came back to meet me at the hostel. we then did some stuff which i cant remember right now. that night the whole groupie of stanford kids and i were together and we ate at a posh and trendy resaurant (charlie birdy) which is right by our hostel, then we walked to the eiffel tower, rode the carousel in front of it, and got crepes! later that night we went to le queen - a gay club on the champs! haha it was pretty awesome i guess, it was my first club in euorpe and my first gay club ever (luckily it was 'ladies night' so we got in for free). (Note: gay men, straight women)

the next day (so thanksgiving) we shopped around commerce (weitzel was quite successful at h&m) then john, weitzel, alex and i went to grab lunch in the saint germain area (i think). we then walked along the seine to the musee d'orsay. although we passed it somehow. then we came back to it, waited in line for a bit, then finally went inside. i think the d'orsay is the coolest museum ever because it is in a train station, and i like train stations. and it holds the most amazing collection of impressionism art ever. so yep, we had a good time there. nel, one of weitzels friends who is quite cool, made reservations for thanksgiving dinner on teh champs, but due to a few disagreements within the large group and our smaller one, we ended up bailing as a whole and going to a lebanese restaurant. so needless to say, that was lame. that night we hung out the in smoke ladened air in the bar in our hostel while i tried to not think about the fact that it was thanksgiving and i had a kebab. (although, fridays dinner made up for this one)

friday we woke up, grabbed a baguette for breakfast from teh hostel (fresh french bread = sooooo good), and headed to the eiffel tower. we paid the €3.50 or whatever it was, and took the stairs up to the first and second levels. which was fun since it was raining and really windy. but i actually went up it! unlike last time i was in paris when we kinda walked by it...lame. anyways, weitzel, jordan, and i took the elevator up to the top where there was pretty much no visibility through the clouds and rain. weitzel and i took our pic at the top then booked it back inside since we were getting soaked. inside was grrreat because it smelled really bad (brushing your teeth and using deoderant isnt such a bad idea....oh well, these people are french...). we came down adn our group of 6 (john, jo, weitzel, alex, jordan, and i) went to montmartre, my favorite part of the city since its on a hill and it has personality. we walked past sacre coeur (weitzel started singing the sacred heart song which is in french, so that was a little weird to hear. she also had to memorize it for st joes, whereas i only know the fun little part since in high school they know they cant get students to actually sing that song), and then down to the main area where we had lunch which was yummy. we then took the metro to the champs to check out the arc de triumphe. weitzel, john, and i went back to the hostel for an hour to take a quick nap. we pretty much passed out and it was good. at 6 we arrived at the louvre because they had a special deal where if youre younger than 26 you can get in for *free* after 6. which was great! so we ran around the louvre checking out the winged victory and mona lisa in the denon wing, then we cruised on over to the richelieu wing because weitzel wanted to check out the vermeer paintings (of which there are 2 aparently). we also walked through the napoleon apartments which were....hmm...a little overkill? there was a bit too much gold for my taste. after leaving the louvre we were supposed to meet jo at chez clement in saint michel for dinner. however we could not get a cap. we tried for 35 minutes. it was amazing, and stressful. we then took the metro which has a stop right outside of the restaurant (?!?!) and then had a great dinner. with great wine. its nice being able to order a couple of bottles of wine and have a nice time at dinner. soon enough i will be able to do that in the states.

so yes, thats pretty much my trip in a nutshell. although i can say that most of the stereotypes towards french people (at least parisians) are true: they are generally rude, they smoke a lot (its amazing theres still anyone left), they dont like anyone who isnt french. so yes, those are my generalizations of an entire country. oh something else i noticed - the other euorpean countries have things in english around town, like on signs and stuff. in france, there is french. unless they have to have english. oh well

this trip also made me fully realize how important it has been for me to study at an enlish school (one where i go to class with brits) and travel around london, enland (like oxford, bath, and brighton), and across euorpe. ive always known taht ive wanted to study in london, even looking at colleges we looked at their study abroad programs in london. and now that im here i see how important it has been for me to live with other british students in a flat, to get to thouroughly know london (its pretty dang big), and to go to other countries (italy, spain, austria, and france. im also going to try and fit ireland in there somehow....)

anyways, its crunch time now. im coming home in 3 weeks! but that means that within that time i have to finish up all of my schoolwork, do more things around london that ive been meaning to do (there is so much to do here!) and try to go to dublin. we'll see how this all works out! home in 3 weeks! yes! and ps its officially christmas time!

so i have put up a bunch of pictures: all from florence and spain (there are about 90 pictures from the alhambra, so watch out), but i still havent put up pictures from austria (my computer's battery is about to die). in case you want the site its http://community.webshots.com/users/ashalay23 (i hope it works, sometimes its moody)

anyway, im off to paris tomorrow morning till saturday! i hope you have a fantastic thanksgiving! i really wish i could be there

<3

yes, i am still alive. and due for a long update on my european life! so im going to start with this past weekend in austria, then go back to spain and finally to florence. so here we go...


on thursday mary and i almost missed our flight to salzburg because i cant read military time and i was incredibly tired from writing an essay over the past two days (an essay which my entire grade in the class is made up of, so yah i was a bit stressed). i saw that our flight left at 13:40 and got into salzburg at 14:40 which is interesting because of the hour difference between england and continental europe - so thats the same time. i knew something wasnt adding up. then it hit me and i freaked. once i was able to breathe again i scrambled for my phone, called mary and told her we had to leave, since it was a little before noon. luckily we made it with 10 minutes to spare! yep, we know how its done. i would just like to tell you that i found amazingly cheap flights online to austria when we were in spain - £20 round trip (£10 each way, and there werent any taxes on flights, winner!). so yes, we arrived in the alps at sunset and we fell in love with the place, although we were kind of worried about the whole not-speaking-the-german thing. we hopped on the train to vienna that night and got in around 11, went to our hostel (the wombat - if you go to vienna, stay here), then went out for dinner and we both had our first wiener schnitzels! neato! which were nothing like we thought they would be, but whatever, we were emmersing ourselves into the culture.

friday morning we woke up and took the subway and tram systems to get to the huge cemetary in town. something about people in vienna - they like to be burried nicely. so theres this HUGE cemetary (along with other smaller ones around the city, well theyre not small, but compared to this one...) which you definitely need a map to navigate around in. we looked at a map to find where composers (ehrengraber) are buried, then got to that general area and wandered around for about an hour. by this time mary and i were cranky in our own ways, but luckily right before we had given up hope we found the section and took pictures with beethoven, strauss, liechtenstein, schubert, and brahms' graves. we got back onto the tram to ring road (a road that goes around the center of the city) and walked part of it, including past the winter palace, various museums, and parliament. we had lunch (a poor excuse for a lunch) at the cafe central - "Cafe Central is one of the most famous coffeehouses in Vienna. It was originally opened in 1876 and during its heyday was a meeting point for writers, politicians, and intellectuals. Viktor Adler, Theodor Herzl, Leon Trotsky, Josef Stalin are just some of the names that used this cafe at the start of the century. Adolf Hitler used to come into the cafe and try to sell his paintings before he was rejected by the art school." that evening we went to the schonbrunn palace (a nice baroque palace) to check out the gardens (although it was dark when we got there; gardens are boring when you cant see them), grab dinner and go to a mozart and strauss touristy concert. in front of the palace there is a big christmas tree(!) set up and around it there are little stalls for the christmas market! people were setting up, but that didnt stop me from taking part in christmas shopping! yay christmas. so the thing we went to that night was made up of an 8 piece orchestra and during some pieces two opera singers would sing (the man was horrible) and during a few other pieces two dancers woud come on stage (they were horrible, especially the guy who didnt spot. who does that?? the choreography was bad too, just like their form). in the end i wish it was just something that focused on the music alone, but oh well.

saturday morning we woke up and took the early train to salzburg. the three hour journey was awesome becasue we went through the austrian countryside which is beautiful. when we got into salzburg i instantly liked it more than vienna - salzburg is tucked away in the alps, its clean, and unlike vienna it doesnt feel tired or overused in a way. its so cute! ive now decided that if i were to study anywhere else in europe, it would be salzburg. so we went to our hostel which has lots of annoying middle school boys who think theyre awesome (im guessing they were on a field trip) then walked around the old town (so cool!). then we took the sound of music tour!! which consisted of cruising around in a bus with the soundtrack playing and checking out where they filmed the movie. sometimes we would stop and get out to take pictures (like where the gazebo is set up now, the palace on the lake which they used for the interior of the house and the back to use the lake). we also went up into the lakes and mountains district (so pretty!) to see some of the shots they took of the mountains and the church that they used the interior for the wedding scene (although it looks like its part of the abbey in the movie...tricky). after that we went and had dinner then watched the sound of music at our hostel (the show it there every night at 8:00)! sunday morning we caught our flight back to london, and then i took a very long nap, watched some greys anatomy (you cant stop this obsession), and went to bed.

ok so spain...where did i leave off?....
ah yes, so we got up really really early to go to granada. when we got there our hostel didnt have our room ready, so we walked around the town for an hour. after we came back and put our stuff in our room, we started to wander in the general direction of the alhambra. we ended up stopping at an moroccan restaurant which was freaking amazing. probably the best meal in spain that i had at that point. we then took a taxi up to the alhambra and walked around there for a few hours. the alhambra was the best part of the trip and really made all the other lame spainish stuff worth it, it was sooo cool! ill put up my pictures tomorrow so you can see how amazing it is :) that night we went to a flamanco show in a cave! which was neat as well, and they had good sangria which made it better.

friday was lame because we couldnt book a hostel in madrid (not that we really wanted to go back there, but oh well), so we booked another hostel in granada for the night up in the hills overlooking the city. when we got there they said there wasnt any room at the inn (haha i feel like im telling the story of baby jesus), so mary and i had to stay in the barn in the back (weird, mary is actually my friend, not jesus' mom). oh wait, no. they called their friends at another place and hooked us up. this place was in the same residential area up in the hills (lots of white houses with blue doors) but it looked out to the alhambra, which was sweet. we decided not to go into the city anymore because it was peaceful up there which is soemthing we hadnt experienced in a while. i even took a nap. something you should know: you know youre in spain when the city is under construction and cranes dot the skyline. its nice too, because they have chain link fences up to protect you from the construction, but things can come flying through that at you. yay shrapnel! the spanish really think things through, dont they uncle frank? anyways, that night we hung out with other kids at the hostel, went to a cafe in the area and had a bunch of sangria and dessert.

the next morning we took the 6 hour train to madrid then took a taxi to our hostel. oh wait, theres a story here. so we booked this hostel the day before in granada because it said it was a few minutes away from teh airport and it was cheap. so after our 50 euro cab ride out to the middle of nowhere (or rather, the town of daganzo) we realized that the hostel lied. and we were mad. we told the old lady who owned the place that their website lied, and she said that the airport is close, its only 30 minutes away. liar! not close! no matter how hard we tried, spain didnt like us. and we're not too fond of it either anymore. once we cooled down i took a nap. of course i was woken up by a circus. seriously. there was a circus set up for teh weekend outside of our hostel. lame. that night mary and i werent happy campers, so we went to the burger place a few blockes down (we reached our breaking point, all we wanted were burgers. tapas? no thank you). we woke up around 5 to take an expensive taxi to the airport and thankfully fly back to our beloved london - a multicultural city where you can get anything and enjoy so much, all while you speak the language and engage with nice londoners.

monday and tuesday should have been spent recovering, but i wrote that essay i told you about before. then wednesday i went to class. adn thursday mary and i went to austria!

ok so florence. before i had mentioned that weitzel was going to write up where we went, which she so nicely did, so im just going to copy that directly into my blog now


you stayed on via dei conti. lol. heads up. (which is 2 blocks from the duomo)
we went to the restaurant the first night called i ghibellini on via degli
albizi
the bar, Rex, is on via fiesolana
vivoli the gelateria is on via isole delle stinche
the good shopping i.e. zara and the market where i bought scarves is on via
roma
sasche is on via porta rossa
the san lorenzo market is err in san lorenzo.. several streets- near santa
maria novella
mercato centrale where we ate lunch that day doesnt have an address either i
dont think- its called piazza mercato centrale
festival del gelato (!) is on via del corso
chiaroscuro is too- tho we didnt go there, anyone who goes to florence
should go
moyo is on via dei benci, right near the arno/ponte delle grazie
the place we went on sat night for dinner should not be mentioned.. horrible
err and the stanford center is in piazza santa maria sopr'arno! woo!
dinner sunday was at gilli where we also grabbed dessert the other night


phew! ok im going to put pictures up tomorrow hopefully (wireless at school has been rather sketch lately, something about a powersugre messing it up a week ago). im off to paris on wednesday!

on monday i flew out of florence airport in the morning to madrid, and then i spent the rest of the day in the airport in madrid waiting for mary´s flight to get in. after an hour of trying to find each other, we left the airport at 9 (so i had been there for 8 hours, im so glad i had a book). we finally made it to our hostel in the center of madrid, and it was very cool, except for we were in a room with 14 beds, 10 of which were filled. the room didnt have any windows so it became really hot, suffy, and muggy really fast. and some drunken frat boys came in at 5 and decided to talk and hang out (way to go guys, i think you have sucessfully woken everyone up). a few hours later a few people started waking up and turned on the lights, which was a nice finishing touch. we decided to stay in madrid another night, and requested a different room (with 4 other peope and a huge window!).

yesterday mary and i met up with mary´s flatmate tags who has lived her life in madrid and beruit. shes super cool and she showed us around the center of the city. the only lame thing was that it rained all day (london came to madrid). we ate at random times (which is fun for hypoglycemic me), but when we did eat we ate rich food. when dinner rolled around we were hungry but we were tired of eating out. we ended up asking our friend (really awesome, funny, gay guy) at the reception desk where we could go. we went to VIPS, which is a chain and the food looked like it was reheated. we had bland chicken and rice. it was amazing, exactly what we needed.

this morning we woke up early and caught the train to seville, where its sunny and quite warm! its such a beautiful city. at the train station we hopped in a taxi to take us to our hostel, but the driver had never heard of the street. in the end he called the hostel, and it turns out its the one i booked in granada (where we´re headed tomorrow). so that was fun. we wandered around with our bags looking for an internet cafe to look up a hostel, but luckily we found one - where we get our own room! its been an interesting trip because its not like things go really wrong, but everything of inconveince has happened.

we met up with mary´s friend alicia and her friends, including emma feeney - who i did ncl with in high school. so that has been awesome to hang out with her! after lunch we walked to alicias neighborhood which is really nice. tomorrow mary and i have to be at the train station a little before 7 to catch the train to granada - we´re going to see the alhombra tomorrow afternoon! neato. and we have a place to stay, even better.

im getting tired but im hanging in there, its weird to think that ill be getting up around 6 tomorrow - so 9 pm in california (i wish i had money on my phone to call people, that would be convenient)

whatup. im in spain! and i spent the day in the airport waiting for marys plane to arrive, but im chilling at an *awesome* hostel with cool people and a cool atmosphere. and i think im off to bed soon bc im hella tired.

paz

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot...

yep, its guy fawkes day in england! go see v for vendetta if you dont know who taht is. anyways....

ciao! so little known fact - "ciao"works the same way as "aloha"because it means hello and goodbye...oh the things you learn when you are in italy!!

so yes, i am here in florence for the weekend and it is freaking sweet. so much culture, old buildings, and goooooood food. italians know how to do food, brits know how to cover bad food in mayo.

i am here with weitzel (aka laura, aka tall blonde) and soon she will write down everywhere we have been because i want to document everything and i dont know exactly where we have gone. my hotel is right by the duomo (seriously, maybe a minute walk along a side street), so pretty much im staying right in the center of the city. we have hit up a few markets in the past 2 days, been to a number of restaurants and gelato places (gelato = one of the 7 amazing wonders of the world), and hung out a bunch which has been quality. i will have a very detailed update of my trip soon.

tomorrow i leave for madrid and meet up with mary there (who is flying in from dublin)! although i am still bummed we arent making it to lisbon, we are planning on going to madrid, sevilla, granada (hopefully we will see the alhombra or however you spell it) and maybe have a few othr stops along the way. we dont really have plans, we just know the train we want to get on and general cities we want to go to. luckily we both know people who are studying in spain so they can help us out with which hostels to stay at. we're totally winging it which is exciting!

heres a quick update on my week:
- monday i went with a bunch of my friends to see 'the history boys' which was good and had the original cast in the film from the national theatre. when we were taking the bus back someone set off a little popper which made a loud sound and everyone outside ducked and ran for cover. so yah, that was fun.
-last night i went with my theatre class to see kevin spacey in 'a moon for the misbegotten' by eugene o'neil at the old vic (which spacey actually owns). sitting a few rows behind me was sir ian mckellen(!) and natalie portman(!), although it didnt look like they were together. ian is really cool and natalie is so freaking pretty
-my lovely cold has come back in full force today
-november = things get cold in england (seriously, all of a sudden it got cold here, but luckily is sunny, so its kind of like boulder)
- its time for all of my flatmates to get out before we snap (at amy)

thanks jill and sarah from rocklin for the letters! and ashley thanks x2! youre a letter writing machine! i love it!

im off to florence tomorrow! peace out!