Spring Break, longest blog ever

Hello everyone!
I've been back in Madrid since Friday. Its been so nice to just sleep! My spring break was amazing. It really was the trip of a lifetime. I saw so many great things and had so much fun with everyone I traveled with. Now I'll tell you about it, mostly with pictures!

LONDON
We arrived in London kinda late and checked into our hostel. It turned out to be the worst hostel we stayed in during the trip but it still wasn't that bad. It was crowded. However, we could walk to the city center and explore London easily. On our walk, towards the Thames River, we passed Charlie Chaplin's house

and Big Ben/Parliament

and lots of red phone booths

We went to Trafalgar Square and climbed this monument

We walked around London all day. Its very old and charming. We went to the National Gallery Museum, The Tate Modern, and the National Portrait Gallery (all the museums are free in London!). At the National Gallery, I saw a painting by Valezques that I may write a paper about for my art class, lots of Monet, Van Gogh and Renoir as well. The National Portrait Gallery had a lot of cool photographs and painting of people like Twiggy, John Lennon, and, of course, the Royal Family. There was also a room with modern art type portraits, including the weirdest thing I have ever seen in my life. Its also kinda gross. It was a bust of the artist's head but it was made out of his own frozen blood! Its called "Self" by Mark Quinn and he re-makes it every five years. It was creepy and unsettling. It looks like this "Self"

Then we rested at St. James Park

We walked to Carnaby Street, which was the center of 60s fashion. We are really good Indian food there for dinner. Oh! and right before we left, a very distinguished looking man came in and sat at the table next to us and he turned out to be the actor Bill Nighy from Love, Actually!

OXFORD
Our plan to bike to Stonehenge never worked out because there is only one bike shop near there, and all their bikes were rented out for the one day we could have gone. However, Dasha and I still wanted to bike through the English countryside. So we took a bus to Oxford and rented bikes there. We biked down the Thames River and got rained on a lot. It was super British.

AMSTERDAM
Amsterdam is one of the most adorable cities I have ever seen. Its full of canals, cute dutch buildings and bicycles. There are more bicycles then people! I assume this is because some people have formal bikes and casual bikes. Of course, we rented bikes again. The streets are so bike friendly, its amazing. We rode by the botanical gardens and had a picnic at Ooster Park. Dutch is also the funniest language I have ever seen.

This is a really cool "I am Amsterdam" statue/art thing

This is everyone in the first letter of their name.(Rob and Rachel, Dasha and Danielle)

and me in the "d" because it looked fun

We also visited the Anne Frank House, or in Dutch:

Statue of Anne Frank

 

PARIS 

We took an overnight bus to Paris, which was not to terrible and it was like a free place to sleep, kind of. However, we got to Paris at 6 AM and could not check in to our hostel/apartment until 2. So we did laundry. Once we did check in, we had to take the metro to our apartment, kinda far from the city center but it turned out to be the cutest thing ever. Very Parisian. Fancy but kinda run-down and rustic. 

Ok, things we did in Paris. 

Eiffel Tower 

 

Shakespeare & Company, the most famous English-language bookstore in Paris 

 

Note Dame

 

The Pére Lachaise Cemetery 

which has many famous people buried there, like Oscar Wilde

 

you are supposed to kiss his grave with lipstick on, as you can see in this picture, so Dasha, Pat and I did just that 

 

Arch de Triumph 

The Louve (which is just was too big, but was also free the night we were there, if you were under 26)

The Basilica(this is the view from the top)

The Cafe from Amalie

and here is a picture of all of us eating dinner in the apartment (Dasha, me, Michelle, Danielle, Courtney and Pat)

ROME
Our hostel in Rome was really nice. However, it was Holy Week, so the entire city was FULL of tourists. Also, the Vatican was closed.
We did see the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, and all the Roman Forum Ruins

We took a train to Florence, which was really fun

FLORENCE
There is an NYU center in Florence. We met with one of our friends there and went to dinner at a pretty nice restaurant, we had pizza and tiramisu! Florence is a beautiful city, but kinda small. There are lots of out door markets and a whole plaza with leather markets. I bought leather gloves and a leather wallet for pretty cheap. I haggled a little.
We saw the replica of the Statue of David becase the real one is a museum and we had been to too many of those.

PISA
We were only in Pisa for about an hour but we were able to get the classic tower pics

Well that is most of the exciting stuff I did. Hope it was interesting to read about. It was an amazing trip, as I think I've mentioned. Well, back to homework.