Off to Manchester

So I don't really have anything exciting to report...since we last spoke, I've just been trying to get over a cold, therefore spent all day Tuesday lounging around.

Wednesday I tried to make up for it by venturing to the London aquarium, which was AMAZING. I realized i didn't know when the last time I had been to an aquarium was, and i really ended up enjoying it...except, of course, for the annoying little children. Now if these kids were just well behaved children looking at some fish I wouldn't be complaining about it right now, but no, these kids were terrorizing these poor fish who had no options but to swim to the back of the tank to escape.

I was standing in front of this tank, just minding my own business, when this 7-year-old boy came up and practically glued his face to the glass tank and started making a fishy face, then preceeded to follow his poor fish back and forth along the tank making the face, and stepping on my feet as he paced back and forth the 6-foot-long piece of glass, with his face still stuck to the tank. I think it was the first time in a while I really felt bad for an animal...oops?

Anyway, i took some pictures! The others aren't up on snapfish yet, but I'll put them up next week.

Bright and early tomorrow I'm off to Manchester for the night with my "sociology of sport" class to see a rugby game! I'm actually really looking forward to it but it's going to be really cold

Speaking of cold, do you know who's not cold this weekend? thanks for the bermuda pics dad, remind me to send you pictures of the sleet and rain here.

Oh, Mom, thanks for the easymac, it's already gone...

Today we went on a field trip around the city with my Photo class...we took a boat to the tower of london, then walked around this dock area, then crossed over the tower bridge to this really cool market, Borough market... here are a few of those pics...

Pictures

QUICK UPDATE: I uploaded all of my pictures to Snapfish...so here's how to see them:

Go to http://www.snapfish.com/
Log in: nic20su@gmail.com
Password: london

and you should be able to see my pictures, right now there should be 2 albums, one of all London pictures and one for Prague.

p.s. if you have facebook they're all on there as well

Praha!

So this weekend was my trip to Prague, aka, Praha.

The weekend started with a VERY early flight, and thanks to maggie, you can pretend like you were there:

Jackie and I left my flat at 2:15 am to catch a night bus to the Victoria bus station, where we took a 3:10 am bus to the London Stanstead airport for a 6:25 am flight. Luckily everything went along smoothly, not so much for the school trip to Istanbul. Apparently there was a British Airways computer glitch which led everyflight from about 7 am on to be cancelled out of London, so everyone had to stay in a hotel and got one less day in Istanbul...the early bird catches the worm!

About an hour after we landed Bri arrived with her roommate from Galway and a friend who's studying in Dublin, both from BC. We took a shuttle to our hostel, which turned out to be really nice! It's only been open for about 2 months so it was very clean, etc., and they were able to put the 5 of us in one 9-person room, with a few other random people.

We then made our way to "Einstein Pizza"...which was about as good as it sounds...Czech pizza just isn't what I've been craving for the past month, but it got the job done. Since we all got little to no sleep the night before we kind of just walked around and took it easy the rest of the day.

Saturday we booked "THE ULTIMATE TOUR"...mainly just because I liked the name. It was a 6-hour tour which included:

a walking tour through the old town, which was the cute, european area

(my favorite buildings in the whole city) a 1 hour boat tour on the river by the charles bridge

...you're welcome dad!

a 3 course czech lunch...beef goulash!

(youre welcome dad again)

and a tram ride up to the Prague Castle, with a cathedral and gardens overlooking the city

We then met up with Bri's other friend from BC who's studying in Venice, and a few of her friends from BC as well, and went out for more Czech food.

I mean, I'm a big fan of "when in rome..." but if i have one more czech meal i think ill scream. The last night i caved and ordered spaghetti, and it came with these questionable green things on top, kind of like weeds:

...but that's what i get for ordering italian in the czech republic. which is why i resorted to this, and lucky for you bri documented it:

anyway, saturday we attempted to find the bus station to catch a bus to a concentration camp and tour around but we never actually found it so we just gave up and walked around the city. we walked over the charles bridge, then went back up to the prague castle and walked around the old city some more.

overall the weekend was great, not what i expected, but a lot of fun, and some place i never thought i'd go.

there's still so many other pictures so i'm going to get my act together and upload them all to a london snapfish account and put my username/password up here so everyone can see them...give me a few days

of course, the second i touched London soil, London decided to give me a hard time by losing my cell phone for me. it somehow disappeared while i was sitting next to it on the bus, and after i had added 20 pounds to my account the day before, but after a lot of stress i got a new phone with my balance transferred.

today i had CLASS--this morning was Photo where we all looked at each other's pictures from weekend travels, and in PR we went to a PR consultancy and listened to some dude talk, or more like, listened to him trying to talk while our professor kept butting in everytime the poor guy stopped for a breath...oh well, we're the ones stuck with her for 3 hours every monday so i dont really feel bad for him.

on a side note, after getting my mom's recipes i successfully cooked fried rice:

and semi-successfully made homemade tomato sauce:

...that's it for now! ill update later this week!