Having more time than I realized for winter break, I decided to spend six days going north to Scotland. I spent two nights in Edinburgh, the capital, two nights in Inverness (to see Loch Ness), and one night in Glasgow. Edinburgh was beautiful and charming, a city full of many interesting stories like Blackfriar's Bobby. I also went to the Edinburgh zoo and got to see a panda and some koalas, along with a bunch of other animals I had never seen in real life. Inverness was a much smaller city; in fact, it only became a city in 2001. I found it very welcoming (though colder than any place I've ever been) and was able to take a bus to Urquhart Castle, the third most famous castle in Scotland that sits right on Loch Ness. The Scottish Highlands are truly striking and I plan to spend more time there one day. I spent the entire train ride down to Glasgow staring out the window in awe. Glasgow was a grittier city with a lot of artistic influence. I really enjoyed the modern art museum there. It felt like I was constantly going uphill in that city, but it was a nice way to end my tour.
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I ended my tour with a second visit to London. I did some more of the touristy things and focused my trip around Sherlock and Harry Potter hot-spots for the most part. I also wandered along the Thames quite a bit because I really like how water looks at night. It was a peaceful way to end my tour and the adventure of a lifetime. When we told our new friends in Rome that we were going to Naples, they grimaced and told us to clutch our bags. Keep in mind, these are people from Rome where you already should clutch your bags. Naples seemed to be the brunt of Roman jokes and and suddenly, I wasn't sure what we were getting ourselves into.
While I tried to go in with an open mind, Naples was probably my least favorite of the places we visited, though that's not to say it wasn't fun. The town felt like a more crowded and dirtier Rome. However, the people and activities of the city were wild. For example, Italians and especially Neapolitans do not car about road laws. Busy intersections would have no traffic lights at all and the best way to cross the road was to just go for it. Mopeds zoomed up all roads and sidewalks, giving you a beep and about four seconds to jump out of the way. The was a lot of graffiti in Rome and it honestly looked clean compared to the streets of Naples. We went to Pompeii, which was a bit overrated. The preservation was amazing and the casts of bodies were haunting, but the novelty rubbed off pretty quickly. I think my favorite part of Naples were the two castles we visited against the coast. Even that view wasn't super great because of the heavy smog that had settled on the mountains in the distance. It was an interesting city and worth visiting once, but I don't think I'll be hurrying back there any time soon. Back in a big city, another one of the capitals of the world, wandering Rome was a different feeling than London or Paris. Less clean, crazier streets, and it felt so much older. With every turn you encountered something new: ancient Roman ruins, giant churches, scars from world wars, and another "country" aka the Vatican. It became a joke as we walked around, if we saw a big interesting building and wondered what it was: "Probably a church." We were almost always right. We had the opportunity to meet up with Raoul, a friend of Lórien's who has lived his entire life in Rome and kindly invited us to his birthday dinner. He supplied multiple English speakers for us, so we learned some Italian and what life is like growing up in Rome. New Years Eve had that spectacular big city feeling you always see on TV. Strangers crowded on the streets and we casually passed the Colosseum a few times, which was an odd and powerful feeling. On New Year's Day we happened upon an arts and music festival along the river Tiber. There were performances from every genre: jazz, classical, rock, indie, Italian folk, opera. Oh, the opera. Everything was in Italian so I'm not really clear on the plot, but it was one of the best things I've ever seen. The people in Rome are kind of a combination of the traditional "rude" city people and the loud Italian stereotype. Combined, they possess a type of exaggerated energy that is wonderfully terrifying. Along with that, they enjoy messing with you- we had multiple waiters make fun of our attempts at Italian. Maybe it was the company, maybe it was the fact that I am enchanted by big cities, maybe it was simply the fact that I get to say that I spent New Year's Eve in Rome, but there was something special about the place. I'll definitely be back one day. The next segment of my trip has a very obvious pun in the name, so we will move past that as we made the joke at least five times a day. The coast was bright blue water splashing against smooth rocks to make a unique song. The buildings were happy shades of yellow and red and orange and in the old city where we stayed, all the shingles matched with the same shade of orange. We took a day trip to another country (though it has about the same population as a large university) and checked out Monte Carlo, Monaco. It was a lovely way to spend time between Christmas and New Years.
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Amy Golden
Amy will be spending the academic year at the University of Sunderland in England studying journalism. Archives
February 2018
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