life in surround sound and process color.

LISTENING TO: a year in review... 1. Chasing Kings - Maybe It's the Distance 2. Lily Allen - Who'd Have Known 3. Tinie Tempah - Pass Out   4. Jessie J - Domino   5. Matt Hires - Honey Let Me Sing You A Song   6. Kanye West - Power   7. Emeli Sane - Heaven   8. The Rembrandts - I'll Be There For You   9. Chris Brown, Lil Wayne & Busta Rhymes - Look At Me Now   10. Camelia Jordana - Non Non Non 10a. Ben L'Oncle Soul - Seven Nation Army

LISTENING TO: Camelia Jordana - Non Non Non , but in actuality Ben L'Oncle Soul - Seven Nation Army , since we're in a travel throw-back mood. This is a bit delayed, but seeing as my flight home was also delayed, it fits with the narrative (Side note on the song choice - this was an earworm that got stuck in my brain during my trip to Paris, and it seemed absolutely appropriate for the story of my journey home from Prague). ...So, where were we? After getting a notification about the impending strike in Brussels, Rachel's grandmother very kindly proceeded to be my Czech interpreter while attempting to get instructions from my airline. After being told to not make any major changes with the exception of hopping on a different layover flight to Amsterdam and then Newark once I got to Brussels, I skype'd my family, let them know what was happening, and got ready to consume massive amounts of quality coffee prior to getting to the airport around 4am Czech time. F...

LISTENING TO: Chris Brown (feat. Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes) - Look At Me Now When we last met, things were different. Rachel and I had just gotten up, ready to take on the Prague Castle, which, by the way, was one of the high points of this trip. It was gorgeous and ginormous, and although very, very cold (you could see your breath while we inside) was definitely worth the trip up the mountain. I'm so excited to see the film I took there - I can't even describe how great it was. Not to mention the view was something amazing - you could basically see all of Prague, which was beautiful. After walking down these really cool stairs and eating trdelnik (which is basically a funnel cake doughnut with cinnamon sugar and chocolate filling), we walked through Old Town and made our way to Palladium, which was the mall, which was insane but really cool. And huge. Like 200+ stores, four floors, really cool escalators huge. After speeding through there, we bought some hot wine on the ...

LISTENING TO: The Rembrandts - I'll Be There For You So where were we? Oh yes, going out to the bar before staying up all night and getting on a bus, then a train, then a plane all at 2am, 3am and then finally around 4-6am. Seems like a good plan, until you put it into practice. Then it turns into a lesson of how many (drunk) people take the night bus in Islington, paired with how very, very awful McDonald's smells within a closed space (say, a train, where you're already feeling sick). However, after that horrifying experience, the rest of the very early morning was actually pretty much smooth going. Gatwick Airport is HUGE (also, for some reason although my Doctor Who bracelet didn't set off security alarms in either Newark or Brussels, it totally set things off in London... which I guess is kind of ironic), and although we had to make our way to the second to last terminal in the entire airport (a fifteen minute walk, mind you) the flight itself was pretty chill...

LISTENING TO: Emeli Sande - Heaven Alright. Go ahead and yell at me for missing blogging yesterday. I'll make it up to you by making this post super long, kay? Good. So. Where were we? Wednesday night. Wednesday night was so much fun. We ended up heading back out to Wax Jambu, where the bartender recognized us, which was nice. While we were there, we met Danny, Phil and Dave, all from Essex, who were all really nice (although they thought Rachel was lying about being American and instead thought she had a really strong Canadian accent). After debating the pronunciation of the word awesome, we all continued off to Slim Jim's, which was an awesome (hah, no pun intended) bar that we've been meaning to get to since we've been here. As Rachel described it almost perfectly for those of you familiar with Alfred, at least, it was all the good things about Alex's combined with all the good things from GJ's but without the creepiness. It's probably our favorit...

LISTENING TO: Kanye West - Power Whoosh. Can you believe it's Wednesday already? I totally can't. So let's see - where were we? Oh yes, today! Today stared off with a trip on an unfamiliar bus (which was fun, always) towards the Monument. Which, by the way, is very tall and has lots of stairs (according to Rachel, there were 311). The view was gorgeous, although my muscles are totally screaming. After the Monument (where we got certificates of completion, by the way), we headed down to the Tower of London, which was AMAZING. There was so much history and architecture and it was just a really cool look at medieval London. Things learned: people thought ostriches once ate iron, torture is really screwed up (sometimes literally), and the Crown Jewels are really very pretty and completely unique to his or her own monarch. From the Tower we walked across London Bridge, which was a nice change. From there we made our way over to the Globe Theatre, which was really sweet ...

LISTENING TO: Matt Hires - Honey Let Me Sing You A Song Let me tell you - I truly enjoyed drinking my first Czech beer in a bar called Prague in the city of London last night. It's a neat little bar and it was a fun night. That lead to a change in the weather - literally. It started raining when we got up today and hasn't really stopped since. Besides the rainy weather, this morning was also reserved for heading to Buckingham Palace. After a miscommunication with a grumpy bus driver who dropped everyone off three stops early leaving us to master the sidewalk puddles and St. James Park. Although the tours only run for the summer, we still got to see the rain day version of the changing of the guard, and then we went and saw the Antarctic expedition photo exhibit up at the Queen's Gallery (which was gorgeous, by the way). After the gallery, we walked fifteen minutes through Chelsea to get to Harrod's, which, let me tell you, was absolutely the most insane depar...

LISTENING TO: Jessie J - Domino Monday, Monday, Monday. After starting the day eating croissants and cursing the fact that we got to the Tesco too late last night to buy bagels (side note: found a really great bar and some really great new British beer last night - Wax Jambu and Tiger, respectively), Rachel and I made our way down to the Cortauld Institute Gallery, which was really great. The main exhibit was everything from Renaissance to Impressionism. It was also the first museum of the day where one of us got yelled at by a museum guard... this time because my camera decided to turn the flash on without telling me. From there we walked down to Trafalger Square and the National Gallery, where we were hoping to possibly wait in line to get into the sold out Leonardo daVinci exhibit. We were kindly informed that we would have to get to the museum to wait in line at 5:30am. The museum itself opens at 10am. Suffice it to say, but we're not going to get into the exhibit. So w...

LISTENING TO: Tinie Tempah - Pass Out This morning didn't start quite as excitedly as yesterday, but we did have a fun time trying to find an outlet converter, since we discovered that for whatever reason, Rachel's didn't work. After successfully finding one in the basement and then planning our day, we set out to travel on the 38 busline. Let me tell you, double decker buses are awesome, and they should be in every major city's public transportation repertoire. After the excitement of the bus ride, we made our way to the heart of what Rachel and I decided to call "touristy London". After grabbing some coffee, we made our way down to Westminster Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, realizing too late that you really can't visit Catholic institutions on a Sunday. After deciding to go back to those later this week, we checked out Parliament and Big Ben, then making our way across the Westminster bridge/River Thames, we split a sandwich outside of the Lo...

LISTENING TO: Lily Allen - Who'd Have Known This morning was interesting. I woke up, starting cleaning, doing some work. Mom and dad were out at New Hope, Sarah was about to go shopping, and then I realized it was 5pm and that meant it was 11am, and that meant I missed my flight to London and why didn't Rachel wake me up and OH MY GOD WHERE IS RACHEL AND WHY AM I NOT IN PRAGUE RIGHT NOW? and then I started pinching myself, because it had to be a dream, but I wasn't waking up, and then my parents came in, and I tried explaining it, and my mom goes, I understand, it's confusing... and then I realized I was wrapped in a blanket sleeping on Rachel's couch. And that's what my jet-lagged mind came up with at 6:30 this morning. So anyway, London. That's where we are now. Getting there was easy, up until we got to London, because apparently if you don't have an EU passport and are coming from not your home country, you have to go through all of thes...

LISTENING TO: Chasing Kings - Maybe It's The Distance... And here we are again, back full circle. I"m in a different country, and blogging about it. I guess I should start at the beginning, which would be right about the time I graduated college, which was all the way back in May 2011, when my best friend Rachel (yeah, huge coincidence there) decided she would live in Prague for the first year after graduation. Cut to November, where Rachel says she has these awesome plans to visit London, basically for free. Cut to December, where I decide to fly out to Prague, then to London, then back to Prague. Cut to now... I guess you could say that everyone I know pretty much realized how freaked out I was about having a layover flight to get to Prague in one piece. My initial flight was out of Newark Thursday night, ending in Brussels this morning, then to transfer to my flight to Prague later this morning. For those of you planning to travel internation...