what a time for the heat and hot water in your apartment to go out....
well lets go back to last week. All the parents left and life was back to normal schedule. Classes are winding down and finals are coming up :( For art we went to the Tate Modern... on the way to the museum we got to see st. pauls cathedral and the millenium bridge (featured in harry potter). The museum was pretty neat considering it is the first contemporary museum our class has visited this semester so it was a big switch from bronzino and titian. Our teacher only took us to see two or three displays, they were videos that were kinda disturbing... i didn't like them...the whole point was to decide whether or not specific things are art and why or why not. One display that was really interesting was a sunflower seed display. A man made a display of millions and millions of hand craft sunflower seeds that took up the flower like gravel. It was really interesting to learn about the process and made me appreciate it more than just seeing it. Tuesday it also started to snow! My first snowfall in london wooohooo. It didn't stick too much considering we are in the heart of the city but in the suburbs it stuck a lot....teachers were unable to get into the city for classes because they were snowed in. This would have been a lot cooler and exciting if i were able to go back to the apt. for a warm shower....but we had no heat or hot water. fun. Our apt. building is under construction and it was supposed to be fixed in 24 hrs..but ended up being more like 72.... our landlord got us space heaters and we cuddled up for warmth oh and had hot coco of course. Wednesday I had classes all day then thursday i ran some errands and went to class..nothin special. Thursday night alex and i went to see harry potter ...number 7 part 1? idk i'm not a huge harry potter fan but guess its just somtin you gotta do in london...the movie wasn't too bad...but basically just a tease for part 2.
Crack of dawn friday morning Alex and I were off to Amsterdam...7 am flight, oy. Good thing we flew out of Luton airport and not Gatwick because Gatwick closed their entire airport b/c of the snow...o boy. First time we didn't fly out of gatwick thank god. After our whole planes trains and cars routine we arrived at our hostel. We had a few hours to kill before our friends from florence came so we wondered the streets for a while. Found a great bagel bakery for brunch. Didn't know much about amsterdam before going but it was so cute. It is a canal city like venice..but they still have other types of transportation too. Trams and bicycles zip through all the tiny streets..no exaggeration, they are crazy. Cyclists will run you over if you are in their lane. Everyone met up later that day as their flights trickled in. It was good to see everyone again, seen caitlin so many times hahah i love it. Next morning we woke up and it was blizzarding outside. I felt like i was in a snowglobe...or a birdget jones movie. hahah. We went to a pancake house that was amazing...their pancakes are really crepes..they are huge..i got a banana and peanut butter pancake ..so delish. Reminded me of the apple pancake from the Ritz. Afterwards we headed to the Anne Frank House. It wasn't as I expected on the outside, looked like a simple museum. On the inside it was more of what was expected, it was pretty intense. Quotes everywhere, stuff still on the walls that she wrote/drew. Learned more about why it looks as it does on the outside and about the remodeling and how her dad (the only one in the fam that survived) took part in the museum. Pretty intense stuff. Afterwards we trekked the snowy side streets and went to the van gogh museum, loved it. I saw the painting of the shoes that we have in our house!!! Didn't know that was his woops. Anyways i really enjoyed it and there was a monet exhibit that was great too. Also found out that Amsterdam is famous for their waffles and doughnuts : ) We saw the I Amsterdam sign of course and took pics of it...not sure of the significance to be honest. All the dutch people were really nice and spoke english perfectly. Probably because they need to because their language is so goofy. Got back here to london safely with no delays yay easyjet. Slept the rest of the day...literally...thank god the heat and hot water is working again. The rest of this week will deal with finishing up classes and getting finished with finals/papers. But tonight.... going ICE SKATING!!! wooo can't wait haha ill let you all know how it goes!
