Alright, so I am finally getting back to my blog after a long absence. I've been busy finishing up the rest of the semester, and so I'm going to go ahead and use that as my excuse for failing to update. And I'll be home in a few weeks anyway to talk to everyone and show my pictures. But I thought I would go ahead and write a little bit about what I've been up to to tide you over until I get home.

Since my last post, a lot has happened. I had my Easter break during which my Mom came over to visit and we traveled through the UK, and then I continued to Italy. I've finished my classes now, and only have two finals left. The Christian Union had its last meeting, which was sad. All that's left are some last minute trips and parties (such as the BBQ I will be attending tonight).

I will just write a brief summary of my Easter break, because it was two weeks full of adventure and it would end up being a very long blog entry if I wrote it all down. I'll just highlight the best parts and skim over all the parts where we sat in airports or on trains (which took up a lot of the journey). Hopefully I'll remember all the things we did, because honestly I haven't even finished writing in my journal yet.

Mom arrived the Thursday before my break, which is when I have my last class of the week, so I was done by the time she got here. Very exciting for her, since it was her first time coming to Europe. We met up at the train station, walked around town, ate a good Irish dinner (Irish stew, yum!), and walked around my campus. Unfortunately, Mom's camera battery died right when we got to the campus, so pictures of where I am will have to wait until I get them up. I think we might have walked Mom to death, but she kept up pretty well.

She was staying at a B&B on the other side of Coleraine, which really isn't very far away, so she headed back there somewhat early to catch up on her sleep. The next morning we hit Port Stewart, which is a little town on the coast, and then went up to Giant's Causeway. That place is gorgeous, and I'm very glad that we went. I actually hadn't been yet, though everyone here told me it is a must if you're in Northern Ireland. I definitely agree. The weather cooperated very nicely until we were done at Giant's Causeway, and then it decided to show Mom Northern Ireland's true colors and rain. But that only happened while we were waiting for the bus to take us back, so it was fine.

Saturday morning, we headed out very early to Belfast to fly to Glasgow. My friend Erin traveled with us because she had no plans for Easter. We decided once we got there that Edinburgh sounded much more exciting than Glasgow, so we didn't see much there before we took a train over to Edinburgh. Luckily, the hotel we had booked for our night in Edinburgh had room for an extra night for us, so we stayed there. It was right in the center of everything, and so Sunday morning we headed out early to see the sights.

In Edinburgh, we visited the castle and Holyrood Palace, which is where the royal family stays when they are in Scotland. It was a full day, but very fun. I think we all agreed by the end of the trip that Edinburgh was one of our favorite places we visited. We saw plenty of plaid and heard a lot of bagpipes throughout our stay, so it felt very Scottish.

Monday, we had an early flight to Cardiff. This, of course, is where they film Doctor Who, and so my inner science fiction geek was very excited to go here. The city is actually very interesting. It is the newest capital city in the United Kingdom, and when they built it they wanted it to be a modern city, so all the architecture is very modern and interesting and there is random art everywhere. We got to see the whole city, though we didn't really mean to, because we took the bus in the wrong direction. I could go on about bus problems throughout the trip, but we'll just say it wasn't the first or the last time we took the wrong bus.

We saw the Doctor Who exhibit and some of the places where they filmed, and Mom actually did quite well putting up with it. Erin and I are both big fans of the show (because I forced her to watch it), so we were like, "Oh, this was in that one episode!" I think Mom is going to have to start watching it now that she's been all the places where they film. That night, we ate in a restaurant that was in one episode. It was Turkish food, which I've never had before, but it was very good. That might have actually been my favorite restaurant the whole trip.

We left Cardiff Tuesday morning to go to London. Finding our hotel in London was a bit of a fiasco, but we eventually made it. All of Tuesday was spent traveling, with a bit of time in the evening for shopping. But that was fine since we had three more days in London.

We tried to see the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday morning, but learned that if you want to see that you need to get there really early. After we managed to get out of the crowd, we headed over to the Parliament and Big Ben and looked around there. We also saw Westminster, though we didn't go in anywhere because of a large protest happening across the street. That afternoon, we went to the British Museum, which is a world class museum. I have to tease Mom about that because she told us about 50 times that it is a world class museum. It was indeed a nice museum, although I missed about half of it because my two friends who are studying in London this semester met up with us. So I spent time catching up with them instead of looking at the exhibits. But it was very nice to see them. And we did see the Rosetta Stone, which made Mom happy.

Erin and I bought dresses in London to wear to a play the next night. We got up early the next morning to go to a place that sells discounted tickets for plays. We ended up getting tickets to Les Miserables, and though they were restricted view, it really didn't make a difference when we saw the play. The play was excellent, and another one of my favorite things we did on our trip.

On Friday we went to the Globe Theatre and took a tour. The Globe in London is actually a reproduction of the original Globe, but it was very neat to see. I want to go back there during the play season, though. They were just preparing for Romeo and Juliet to be shown beginning in May.

While we were walking around the museum in the Globe, we ran into my friend Sarah who was also traveling in London over Easter break. That was quite random, but nice to see her. We also went to the Victoria and Albert Museum that day and to St. Paul's Cathedral. St. Paul's was closed to tours because it was Good Friday.

Friday was Mom's last day, and so she headed out very early on Saturday morning. Erin and I were to fly out that day as well, but our flight was in the evening so we spent the morning hitting a few last minute sights. We went back to Buckingham Palace after the changing of the guards to get some better pictures. After some last minute shopping, we went to the airport.

The airport and our trip to Milan were somewhat a mess, and probably the worst part of the trip. Let's just say, never fly with Ryanair. We didn't get to do much sight-seeing in Milan, and so I will just skip to Rome. Erin and I met up with my two friends from London at the airport and traveled to Rome together. We got there late, but made it to our hotel, which was very nice, and went to bed to start early again the next day.

Monday morning we took the hotel shuttle into downtown Rome. Rome is exactly like you would picture it. You walk down a street, and there's the Colosseum. Walk a little further, and there's the Pantheon. You can almost guarantee that every old-looking building will be a historic landmark of some kind. We wandered around and took way too many pictures of everything. There was so much to see.

One great thing about Italy is the massive number of places to get gelato. We ate gelato everyday, twice, and had to remind ourselves to eat real food, too. The gelato is so delicious, as is the pasta. We definitely took advantage of being in Italy and ate a lot of Italian food.

I think we hit all the major sights in Rome. We toured the Colosseum, saw the ruins, sat on the Spanish Steps, walked around Vatican City (though we did not see the Pope because the line was incredibally long), and went through the Sistine Chapel. Everything was so beautiful there. I greatly enjoyed Rome and would definitely go back.

Erin and I only got to spend three days in Rome, and then we had to head back to Belfast. I was actually somewhat relieved that we decided to go home on Wednesday, because we were so tired by the end of the trip. It was a long way home, but we made it back to Coleraine eventually. I think I slept an entire day when we got back, and then we started to worry about all the work coming up for the last two weeks of classes.

It was a very good trip, and I would certainly be up for another tour of Europe to see all the things I missed. I took about 2,000 pictures on the trip, which I am not going to be able to upload here. I will put up a few pictures from each place we went, but most will have to wait until I come home. I'm sure Mom has been showing off her photo album to everyone, so maybe you already have a taste of what we did.

I hope everyone at home is well, and I will be seeing you soon!

*Ok, blogger won't let me upload photos right now, so I will go ahead and post this and add photos later!