an italian adventure

so i came back to the room last night and nobody wanted to get quiznos anymore... in that case, we walked around looking for an italian place without a wait. after walking around for about 25 minutes, we came across the most distinguished place that we could find and decided to go with it. it was called pizza hut. yes, we ate at pizza hut in london. greg, scott, and i got the following food for 24.99 pounds (about 46 dollars).

• 4 soft drinks
• 2 appetizer of our choice (garlic bread and chicken dippers)
• 1 large pizza (cheese)
• 1 medium pizza (chicken)
• 3 bowls of ice cream from the ice cream bar (with optional chocolate wafers as toppings)
  

now that's a lot of food. with tip, we decided to give 10 pounds each (20 bucks). i bet i'm the only one that can say that i spend 20 bucks at pizza hut by myself.

on a different note, i finished all of my papers and my pixel playground project, and now it is time for some sleep. goodnight all.

quiznos maybe?

mmm toasty! i love quiznos. i've been writing all day while doing laundry. it's been a very productive day if you ask me. here's what my paper looks like: "BS, commonly known as BS, is BS." i have such good sentence structure! 3000 words down, 1500 to go. i've made some good progress through this stampede of papers that i've been assigned.

back to what's important... quiznos. greg's blog reminded me of this story because i believe that i forgot to write about this miserable day in my life. last sunday, we were sooo excited for the Q. since the underground lines that we would normally take to get there were closed, we had to take an alternate route (which made the journey about a half an hour or 45 minutes). the suspense was building up... was there really a quiznos in london? in fact, there is, but we got there 15 minutes too late. it was 7:15 and apparently, they closed at 7. what kind of franchised establishment closes their doors at 7 PM? i would've assumed 9. i think we're going to attempt the journey again. i'll let you know how it goes. all i know is that they don't have turkey ranch and swiss (since there's no ranch dressing in the UK).

papers galore

i think that if there was one thing that teacher could assign me that would make me mad it would be a research paper. i cannot stand writing papers. it's kind of ironic that i love writing in my blog, but i hate writing for class. maybe i should start typing my class papers on my blog and then i'll actually get something done... or maybe not.

so the deal is that i have 3 papers to write before we leave for italy on spring break. 2 of the papers have to be over 1500 words, and 1 of them is a measly 500 words (which will still be challenging for me). i guess the kelley school of business has been spoiling me with no writing assignments except for in the I-CORE case this past semester. if anyone wants to write my papers for me, let me know... just kidding mom, someone else already wrote them for me.

on a different note, we just booked our trip to barcelona. i don't remember the dates but it's sometime in april so we can sit on the beach all day. i can't wait until michelle, jeff, and jason come to visit us in 15 days i think it is? we're going to have to start planning what we're going to do with them so we're not bored the whole time. i think it'll all work out beautifully.

wow, it's a shame i can't use this for my 500 word essay because i'm getting close to that long now! ok i'll let you go now... g'day.

changing of the guard pictures

pictures are now posted on shutterfly!

changing of the guard gallopings

this whole alliteration thing is getting kind of hard... gallopings? is there a horse running around? wtf mate! so this is supposed to be about the changing of the guard so i'll get right on that.

this morning we went to see... you guessed it, the changing of the guard. kind of funny story...

podo (a friend from home) told marc that we should stand by the right gate outside buckingham palace in order to get the best view of the ceremony. right when we got there we did just that and camped around the right gate. since the first set of guards entered through the center gate, we move over there and lost our places by the right one, thinking that we were right and podo was wrong. shortly after the first group of guards came the rest of the parade. yep... they went through the right gate. therefore we had no view of what was going on and pretty much missed the whole thing. it was so crowded that in order to see what was going on, we had to take pictures with a full arm extention and look at the pictures. sooo, we'll probably have to go back and do the whole thing again.

pictures taken with full arm extention

the moral to the story is listen to what people tell you because you're probably a moron and they'll say i told you so.

windsor wallopings

yesterday was pretty timmy (that means good in "growe language) if i might say so myself. marc, taz, greg, bock, scott (not scotthand), tony, and myself went took a train to windsor to check out the infamous windsor castle. it was gi-normous. right now i'm writing a paper for my "modern britain" class and i'm realizing that i should stick to blogging, because i absolutely suck at write essays (that's why brittainy is writing my paper for me)(just kidding mom). i'll post pictures when i get a chance.

amsterdamian adventures

halo. (that's dutch for hello)

overall, it was a good trip. we stayed at the stayokay vondelpark hostel and i definitely recommend it to anyone going to amsterdam. now i'll fill in some details of some things that we did while there. but first, lets start our with a picture of the smallest car i've ever seen...

thursday, we went to ann frank's house to see where she wrote her diary from. we also went on our own little canal tour. if you didn't know, amsterdam is kind of set up in a big circle. pretty much everywhere you can get by road, you can get to by canal. therefore, we decided to take paddle/pedal boats down the canals... it was about an hour ride. at one point we got lost and had to ask for directions from a man that happened to be taking a biking break on the street by the canal.

learning our way around the canals

it was at that point that we realized that we were headed the wrong direction. greg and i had to make a U turn in a boat with a hand rudder... we should be professional pedal boat drivers cuz we made that U turn look good. as greg and i were driving like pros, scott and shira weren't have too good of luck with their boat. in order to go straight, they were pedaling back and forth... it was pretty damn entertaining if you ask the people on my boat. something tells me that if you just go straight, it's a little less work. greg and i's words of wisdom paid off and by the end they were driving almost like amateurs.

friday, as i mentioned, we went to the heineken brewery. that's pretty much it.

saturday, we ate at an italian restaurant pretty close, if not in the famous red light district. since they don't serve tap water at restaurants, we had to buy a bottle for the table... it was 6 euro per bottle. that's like 9 bucks. on to the RLD... the only word that i can think of to describe the red light district is bizarre. there were women standing in the doors of "stores" wearing practically nothing starring at you as you walk by. i mean it's kind of cool but still bizarre. we walked into a sex shop out of curiosity and saw every sex toy and video you can imagine.

red lights everywhere!

sunday was pretty relaxing... all we really did was walk around and then leave. the fun times then came to an end.

*the link to my pictures is in the previous post.*

amsterdamn pictures

pictures are now posted on shutterfly!

amsterdam

hello again. i got bored with sitting in the hostel room while people get ready and take naps so i'm going to write another entry. today we talked around the city a little more and found a pancake house (pancakes are like huge crapes here). the pancakes were amazing since they come with toppings. i got eggs and cheese and onions on it and rolled it up like a wrap.

not mine, but still looks yummy!

i bought a map so i've been the person that leads us to our next location and it's kind of fun being in charge. shira and i are acting like the parents because if anybody isn't with the group or is being stupid, we set them straight. don't mess with us.

after the pancake house, we went to the heineken brewery and went on the tour. it was sooo amazing and so much better than the jameson distillery in dublin. they had these things like in disney world where you stand in a room with a big screen and the floor skakes, making it like you're in the movie. it was awesome. also, we had 3 free beers each and are all kind of tipsy.

the group at the brewery

time to get going since my time on this computer is running low. i'm going to finish off this vacation strong with some clubbing tonight so talk to you later.

cheers.

quickest post ever...

i have 2 min and 30 sec left on the counter in the pay computer workstation... here's the run down of what we've done so far:

• went to the Ann Frank House and saw all of the history behind it
• went to the Van Gogh Museum and admired all of the lovely paintings
• ate at an American Sports Cafe (just can get away from those bars called Sports)

times-a-running-out... i'll talk to you when i have more spare change to use the computer...

off to the netherlands

last time i posted was on monday, the day after we got back from scotland... now we're off to amsterdam for the weekend. i have no idea what to expect but i hear that it's a pretty nice city. we're leaving at about 3 PM to get to the airport since it's not the main airport in london.

greg got a package that's the size of our room today... and his parents sent us sleeping fleece sleeping bags for our stays in hostels... sooo comfy.

ok that's enough rambling, i'm going to go pack now. i'll try and post when we get there.

cheers.

scotland pictures

pictures are now posted on shutterfly!

scotland snippets

scotland... where do i start?


the boys and i at edinburgh castle
look ma, i'm in a canon!

first, i'm going to address the bus ride. after being told by the people in charge that there were not trains running that day (resulting in us taking two 11 hour bus rides), we decided to go to the train station and check the facts. we were lied to! the trains weren't running 2 weekends ago, not this past weekend. and if you book them a week in advance the tickets are only 24 pounds. since we went to the station the day before we were leaving, the ride back would've been 90 pounds. that threw out the idea of returning to london on a train... in conclusion, the bus rides sucked.

here's a little humerous story... i decided while i was in dublin a few weekends ago that i wanted to buy a map at each of the cities that were so lucky to have us. i was in a store in scotland that had a bunch of maps so i decided that i would purchase one. it was 3 quid (3 pounds or 6 bucks). sidenote: quid is like saying bucks. anyways, i went up to the counter and wanted to pay with my debit card since i had no cash and the cashier told me that i needed to spend at least 6 pounds. i said fine and picked up a pack of mints and a bottle of water. still only came out to 5.45. i had to buy more... i now picked up a candy bar. now it was like 5.95. still not being over 6, i let greg get a twix as well. the total was now 6.50 which is over 12 bucks! rediculous! after making this big purchase, i found the actual map that i was looking for for about 2 quid. that just topped off the whole mess. instead of walking out with a cheap map, i walked out with an expensive bag full of crap.

during the day on friday, we went to edinburgh castle (a medieval castle built on a volcano). the castle houses some of the crown jewels and has canons that are aiming all around the castle. the view looking out from the castle is amazing since it overlooks all of edinburgh. great for pictures.

on saturday night we went to a pub called "brecks" and the bar tender was giving us free shots like it was his job (well, it kind of is his job). he would make us anything we wanted and would pocket every penny we gave him. shady shady business for them but we loved it.

on sunday morning, before we left, we went to see the queen's old yacht. it wasn't as glamorous as i was expecting but it was still pretty amazing since it was owned by one family. wasn't allowed to take pictures on the inside of the boat so i don't have many pictures of it.

this post is just kind of random stories. sorry it's so long. i'm sitting in a computer lab that's about 105 degrees right now so i'm going to go now... peace out home slice.

don't worry, pictures are on their way!

11 hour bus ride

the day started at 4:45 when we woke up and had to catch the bus. the 4 hour train ride turned out to be an 11 hour bus ride. i slept probably 4 or 5 of those miserable hours against the vibrating window. we just got to our hostel and all i've seen so far is the bar that i'm sitting in right now.

so far i've seen the edinburgh castle, which is built on the side of a volcano, from a distance. pretty amazing. i'm not sure whats going on for the rest of the day but i'll fill you in when i get a second. time to go check out my room.

cheers.

edinburgh, scottland

right now i'm sitting with greg, marc, and taz and we're working on marcs video production class project. he's making a video of all of the things that you can do with a can of fanta (my favorite). he had me chug a whole can of soda (or pop for you chicago people) and then crush it. i have to pee now. now on to this coming weekend...

here's the deal. we were supposed to take a 4 hour train ride. apparently, they don't even have a train going to scottland that day. so, we're going to be taking an 8 hour bus ride instead. but wait, it gets better... the bus is picking us up at 5:45 tommorrow morning. sooooo early.

in addition, they told us that we would be staying at a bed and breakfast. nope. we're staying in a "party hostel" now. can the plans get any more ghettofied? i think not. i understand that these are only minor details of the voyage to edinburgh so i'll stop the complaining... i'm just a little frustrated.

i'll post the pictures on my shutterfly when i get back.