Portobello Market Review

Portobello Market is one of the better markets I've been to in London (there are a lot).

A lot of leather satchels, vintage jewelry, a section with food, and some other miscellaneous goods. It is really unbelievable how far the market spans down Portobello Road. I walked down for an hour and a half or so at a relatively faster browsing pace, and still only made it to what seemed to be the first third of it, at which point I turned around because I was worn out. If I have time I want to try to go back.

Hierarchy of London Markets:

1) Sunday Up Market

2) Portobello

3) Camden

4) Burrow

Note: Spitalfield and Burrow posts to come soon

The Natural History Museum is amazing!!!

I only have 3 weekends left in London (4 weeks of my program, but I am going away for one of the weekends to Paris), so I am starting to try to spend a lot of time trying things I haven't done yet and spending as little time in my room as possible, especially because it is so hard to do so during the week after I get home from work. So yesterday, Kat and I wanted to do something touristy, but were still relatively exhausted from our action packed Saturday, so we didn't want to do anything wild. We decided to go to the Natural History Museum because neither of us had been, it is on our street, and it is free (as are almost all museums/art galleries in London). It completely exceeded our non-existent expectations!! I loved it! And we only got to spend an hour there, so I definitely want to go back to check out the exhibits we skipped over.

The building is really beautiful:

And this is the inside:

There is an amaaaaAAaazing dinosaur exhibit! I didn't realize how into dinosaurs I am until this trip.

I thought this was funny, look at those arms!! The bio on this dino said his arms were too short to reach his mouth :( how sad! And he only had two fingers! :(

 Sidenote: A T-Rex is so heavy that if it were running and it fell over onto its side, it would die from its own body weight. #whydinosaursareextinct

There was an (almost) life size animated and surround sound T-Rex!

The other exhibit we went to was of mammals. The replicas were so realistic, I loved it.

:)

South Kensington, London

I have become so so sick of South Ken. It's too polished and boring. Aside from other students on my program, I rarely cross paths with people my age. It's predominately middle aged people and families, the stores and restaurants are definitely catered towards that. But, I think the main reason why I am sick of it is I have gotten into a routine and only pass the same streets on the way to class and to the tube to get to work, so - I decided to wander around an area a few blocks from where I live so I could see more of the area.

South Ken:

St. Patrick's Day Parade in London

In London, they hold the St. Patrick's Day Parade the weekend before St. Patrick's Day, which was Sunday, March 13 in this case. I just stopped by for an hour or so, it was pretty interesting, relatively tame though.

There were definitely a lot of bagpipers

I could have done with more step dancers :/

This is my corner pub, all dolled up for the festivities:

You would think because of the proximity to Ireland that St. Patrick's Day would be a bigger deal in the UK, but no one seemed to care or even remember. It was definitely a tame and not too festive day.

The Eagle Premier

I was invited to see The Eagle's premier in London last week (because I work at Universal). The movie was pretty good, but I got to walk on a red carpet!! Whee!! It was surprisingly plush and comfortable to walk on.

Also, I saw Channing Tatum:

 

And, although I wanted to pretend I was famous and it wasn't a big deal to be walking on a red carpet, I decided I might as well take a couple pictures. Here's my roomie Cady :)

(and Channing Tatum behind her, by the railing)

And my boss sent me this link today:

http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/movies/The+Eagle+Premiere-9918.html

You can see me lurking in the background around 4:50 ;)

Bristol, UK

So, the two days following my trip to Portugal, were my two finals. I was finished by 1 pm on Tuesday, February 15, and then a few hours later, my roommate Kat and I went off to Bristol. It takes about two and a half hours by bus. We were visiting Kat's best friend from BU's best friend from high school who moved to Bristol upon graduation. Soozie was an excellent host, and gathered up a bunch of her friends from uni to show us a good time. This was one of my favorite trips of the semester because it was really nice to experience a day in the life of a bunch of Brits our age, and they were all really cool and even though I've never seen the show, I felt like I was living an episode of Skins. (Since I go to class exclusively with students from the Boston University program, I unfortunately have not had as much exposure to British uni students as I would have liked...)

Here are some pictures from my trip:

Soozie's place:

Kat and I got breakfast in this pub:

Also, Banksy is from Bristol. This is unfortunately the only picture I got of any of Banksy's work:

 All in all, Kat and I had an amazing time in Bristol with Soozie and her friends. I don't know if I would necessarily recommend visiting Bristol out of the cities in the UK to visit simply because if I didn't know someone from there I would have had no idea what to do. When Kat and I first got in, we had an hour or two to kill and we pulled out Kat's UK guide book and after reading about Bristol we just stared at each other blankly and decided to find a cafe to hang out in instead.

Porto Pt. 2

So, after basking in sunlight for the first time in months, wearing sandals, sunglasses and exposing barelegs for the first time in what feels like a century, trying an amazing new dish which I have been itching to have again, and enjoying the beautiful scenery, we ended our day in Porto by watching the sunset on the beach. Perfect day? I think so.

Nightlife in Porto:

Nightlife in Porto was really interesting. For one, there were no open container laws, so it was like one big party on the streets:

Another remarkable thing about nightlife in Porto is that a typical playlist for a club/bar in Porto is as follows:

•  "Pump up the Jam" - Technotronic (aka 'get your booty on the floor toniiiighttt, make my day')
• "It's Raining Men" - The Weather Girls
• "Mamma Mia" - Abba
• "Hit the Road Jack" - Ray Charles

I honestly wish I remembered more. It was just really old, cheesy American songs that everyone seemed to love and were singing along to, but not in an ironic way. I was fascinated by this. And these four songs were played both nights that I went out, and across different bars, so no, it wasn't just the bar I went to.

Also, people are so friendly in Porto! So friendly! They seem to love tourists.

 This is a picture of this old man who came to talk to my friends and me while we were sitting on a bench alongside the river. He just came over smiling, asking how we were enjoying our day, and just genuinely wanted to chat with us. He asked us if we knew how to get to the beach from where we were, and gave us directions and recommendations for seafood restaurants to go to for dinner.

Our last day in Porto was a Sunday, and unfortunately we hadn't foreseen this, but everything was closed!! Usually, there is very minimal daytime activity in Porto anyway, but it was literally a ghost town on the streets of Porto on Sunday. This was extra sad because we booked a late flight to maximize our time in Porto, even though we had our final exams on Monday and Tuesday morning... So it felt like somewhat of a waste to get back to our dorm at 11pm on a Sunday night when there wasn't even anything to do in the city that day. Oh well, while those next two days were kind of rough, I lived to tell the tale..

To end on a good note: here are some pictures of how adorable Porto is!