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Hi everyone,

I just arrived back on American soil last night. My last few days in the UK were awesome. My trip to Wales with Pritesh and James on Saturday was fun filled as well as educational. We had rented a car for the full weekend, intending on camping, but the day we were to leave, massive flooding began around various parts of England and Wales. So we opted not to join those getting helicopter lifted out and instead of camping opted to leave a day later and drive there and back in one day instead of two or three. It's about a 4-5 hour drive from Cambridge to the Center for Alternative Technology on the central coast of Wales. The Center was very cool with educational displays on all sorts of sustainable living topics for energy, architecture, water, transportation, waste, etc. We spent over four hours looking around there. I talked the woman at the information desk into showing me the reedbed wastewater system which provided some useful insights for my thesis research - well until I was bitten by a fire ant and had trouble forming more questions through the pain. After the center we drove through part of Snowdonia national park and then along the coast with views of old stone walls separating squares of sheep pastures (the sheep are all color coded with spraypainted dots) on rolling bluffs above the water. Sunday I went punting with Pritesh and another of his friends. Punts are these little boats somewhere between a canoe and a gondola that are all along the canal in Cambridge. No proper visit to Cambridge is complete without punting. Instead of paddling, you must stand on the back of the boat and push with this huge pole on the bottom of the canal. Pritesh's skills improved by the end of our ride after saying he had fallen into the water last time he went. I tried too and managed only to hit a few walls and other boats. The sunset light on the old colleges was amazing.

Monday I wandered around London for a day, making mental notes of all the spots I need to go back and spend more time in such as the Design Museum and walk around Waterloo. Tuesday was a seriously long day of travel. I woke up early to take a 2 1/2 bus from Cambridge to the airport. I met up with Mike and Brian in the check in line. When at the counter, we were offered a voucher deal to take a slightly later flight that still arrived in Philadelphia in time to catch our second flight plus offered us 407 pounds!!! So we took the cash, almost 800 dollars US, had some celebratory drinks hanging out in the London airport and still had another layover in Philly, not getting into State College until around midnight. Mike and Brian had taken a ferry across the channel the night before from Amsterdam to come straight to the airport in London, so we had all been traveling for many continuous hours by the time we were done at what felt like 5 or 6 am. Whew. My luggage managed to miss the flight out of Philly, but was delivered this morning, so not to bad. It is good to be back though. Give me a call soon to catch up!

Nicole

the rain

A rain storm is hindering activities here in Cambridge today. James, Pritesh and I are postponing our trip to drive to Wales until tomorrow when the storm should be past since driving and camping in the rain is not so ideal. Check out www.cat.org.uk to see the Center for Alternative Technology that we'll hopefully make it to tomorrow. Wishing you nicer weather over there.

Nicole

Italian beaches to rain in Cambridge

Monday night in Bologna John threw a little dinner party for my last night in Italy with some of his friends and roomates. We ate chickpea curry and pita on the roof of their apartment building and looked at Venus and Jupiter through Johns's telescope. After a lot of wine, good company, and 4am pasta, I saw the sunrise over Bologna, a perfect red ball lighting up the town. Andreas, John's German roomate who is now more Italian than German, suggested a trip to the beach town of Ravenna, so we caught a 7am train and spend the morning and afternoon laying on rented lounge chairs under a beach umbrella and running throught the hot sand to the warm water. Although not one of the nicer beach areas of Italy, I can say I did make it to the beach in Italy now. I rather sleepily packed and ran around from bus to bus to airport and arrived late into London after an hour flight delay. My old friend from Australian times met me at the airport and since an angry crowd was waiting for a broken down bus to Cambridge, we had a free taxi ride back to Pritesh's apartment where I have a great place to crash for the next few days. James is coming down from Sheffield on the afternoon train in a couple of hours, so the three of us will have a little runion from our days of backpacking around the Outback this evening. Plans for the next few days are a little up in the air, but they will involve some time in London and a trip to Wales, perhaps over the weekend.

Ta,

Nicole

Rome in a day

Ciao!

On Thursday I took a train to Pisa for just a couple hours on my way to Florence (Firenze). I thought about asking a random stranger to take my picture in the pose looking like I was pushing the tower over, but it just seemed far too cheesy sine there were thousands of others doing the same thing all around me, so I just sat in the lawn around the leaning tower and equally amazing churches next to it watching the crowds. later Thursday I met John at the Firenze train station and we camped at an amazing campsite on a hill overlooking the whole city, arriving just at sunset (I have about a hundred photos of the sunset reflecting on the river with all of its bridges and the light on all of the church domes and tile roofs). We spent Friday exploring the streets and Piazzas of Florence, sampling much pizza and gelato, then took a train to Roma. The campsite in Roma was not quite as well located and we had an adventure of trains and buses and walking along busy roads with no sidewalks to get there, but it worked out fine as budget accommodation anyway. Saturday we walked all over the city to all of the major sights including the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon (which I was particularly impressed with), and the Colloseum (which we caught at sunset for some great photo taking). The vatican city sights were closed Saturday afternoon through Sunday, so we didn´t really go inside anywhere, but otherwise covered all the major attractions in a day. Sunday we took a trip to Tivoli just outside of Rome to see Villa d'Este which I´ve studied in landscape architecture history courses. Actually my whole trip in Italy has been giving me flashbacks to lectures studying this piazza or that villa, so many of the sights I´ve been going to I will recognize and start remembering design facts about which is neat (my professors would be so proud). Villa d'Este is known for its amazing fountains which were engineering feats in their day and equally impressive now with sprays spewing and trickling out of all kinds of sculptural compositions. My favorite was the row of a hundred animal face fountains. We took a train back to Bologna last night and I will probably have some less ambitious days to rest up for my last week in the UK today and tomorrow. I´ll be back in the US late on the 24th so I´m looking forward to catching up with everyone then!

Ciao!

Nicole

Ciao from Italy!

Ciao!

I´m having a great time in Italy, enjoying some beautiful Mediterranean weather, reminding me of home. I spent the rest of the weekend in Bologna. John showed me around some amazing old cathedrals and piazzas and pointed out the university he´s doing his PhD work at - the oldest in Europe. He has five other roomates which speak English to varying degrees and are super friendly, trying to help me plan out my day trips. There are all sorts of free concerts and other events every night here, but so far we end drinking wine on someone´s balcony with John´s friends and roomates instead. I´m trying to learn a bit of Italian which seems far less challenging than the other languages I´ve been encountering, especially with all of its overlap with Spanish. Yesterday I took a day trip to Ferrara, a great town just half an hours train ride away. I toured a huge castle and cathedral there. Then I tried a local cuisine specialty, little pasta pouches shapped like floppy hats filled with pumpkin with a butter and fresh sage sauce, in a cafe overlooking the cathedral piazza. Today I´m headed to Modena (where all the balsamic vinegar is from) for a few hours and then am meeting John to go to a concert tonight back in Ferrara in a small Piazza. Tomorrow I´m heading to Pisa and then Florence where John will meet me after work to camp outside of Florence. Then we are going to Rome for the weekend, also camping at a campground just outside the city to be low budget. Since I hadn´t planned on coming to Italy on this trip, I´m all of the sudden realizing how much there is to see, especially of the villas and piazzas we study in landscape architecture history courses. I don´t think I´ll have much trouble filling my next few days with sights and filling my tummy with more great pizza, pasta, and gelato. I´ll fly to London late on the 17th for my last UK leg of the journey.

Ciao!

Nicole

Italy

Ciao!

So after Copenhagen I made a brief trip to Kolding to visit a thesis case study, the Kolding bioworks pyramid, which was very cool. Then I spent a couple days in Munich which was nice but rainy and I was a bit burnt out on wandering around touristy areas of cities. So I just arrived in Bologna Italy and met up with my friend John. I will fly to London on the 17th. More details soon, just a quick update before I head off for some Italian food here.

Nicole

heading south for some summer

So yesterday I went to the Dyssekilde ecovillage and had a nice tour with my contact there, Jacob. Last night I wandered around Copenhagen more and enjoyed some ice cream by the evening light on the canal. I won´t be missing the hostel here as I move on to new accomodations this afternoon. My plans have been mutating on the hour the last couple days. My latest plan is to head to Kolding today and spend a day or so there to see if I can track down the illusive bioworks pyramid which would be a great case study for my research - a glass pyramid greenhouse which has layers of plants and fish inside to treat wastewater from an apartment block. I haven´t been able to find a email contact about it yet so we´ll see. After that, I may be skipping another place I planned to visit in the north because the trains here are rediculously expensive. It sounds like it might cost me around 200 dollars on the train to get there round trip which is really not in my budget. In the mean time, I´ve been emailing with some old euro friends from my Australia exchange days. John is in Bologna, Italy in grad school there and I´m thinking of hightailing it out of the expensive north and back to some mediterranean climate zones. The plan now seems to be to take the train back through Germany this weekend with a stop over in Munich. Then about a week in Italy based in Bologna with Pisa, Venice, and other beach towns short distances away. Then I will take a cheap flight from Italy to London and meet up with a couple other Aussie-time buddies to tour the UK. So much for Amsterdam but I think the new itenerary should be worth it. Stay tuned to see if this schedule completely changes soon. Happy fireworking.

Nicole

Kobenhavn

My train ride went smoothly yesterday from Berlin. The view out the window when we got near the sea was beautiful and I am excited to be by the water. In the middle of the train ride, there was some announcement I couldn´t quite understand about a ferry. At first I thought that we would have to get off the train and take a ferry across and get back on another train, but to my surprise, the train drove onto the ferry! So I was on a train, on a ferry - a new experience! Everyone on the train got off onto the ferry and went to the upper decks which had a shopping mall and cafes. The views of the sea were wonderful with wind turbines lining every visable coast on the north and nothing but a sea horizon to the east and west. I can understand why the wind power is so popular because it is soooo windy here.

I arrived into the Koebnhavn train station around 8:30 (there was still light in the sky until around 11:30 at night, so it wasnt even close to dark). I was less impressed walking through the city to the hostel, which just a short walk from the station, than I expected to be. Everything here seems pretty touristy or kind of run down. The hostel is equally less impressive than I thought and while safe enough feeling is probably one of the lesser hostels I've stayed in with little character and little convenience. They require you to put all of your things in a locker room and leave between 11 and 3 every day. I found out from a coulple of nice Swiss guys in the room that it is the cheapest hostel in town at the equavalent of 20 euros per night. This country is not cheap at all.

My opinion of Copenhagen got a little better after my walking tour today. It was very cool and windy making for not so ideal picture taking, but the coast was kind of moody in a neat way and I saw some neat palaces, churches and fountains. There is an opera house across the water in one spot that was in an axis with a huge fountain and a church with an amazing dome. Just as I was about to finish the walking tour and head to the botanical garden, it started pouring rain. I tried to keep going thinking it would let up but it just started raining harder so I found a little jazz cafe to sit and have a glass of wine in and do some writing. After trying to wait out the rain in the cafe, I gave up and walked back to the hostel in the rain. I ended up talking with a girl from Minnesota and a guy from Australia in the room. The three of us went to find this vegetarian buffet that had mediterranean food which was recommended in the guide book for dinner. The food was really great and it was relatively cheap compared to most other options - I think still around 12 dollars though. The food was a refreshing change from cheese sandwiches and pizza and we all stuffed ourselved.

Tomorrow I´ll take a morning train out to an ecovillage near here as part of my thesis research, supposedly 80 minutes away on two trains. I´ll come back and stay in Copenhagen again tomorrow night and then I'm thinking of moving on unless I find the inspiration to stay one more day. It seems like all of the other backpackers I´m meeting are equally unimpressed with the city and moving on quickly, but I wonder if part of it is the rainy weather as well. I´m thinking of trying to find my way to the Folkecenter, a alternative technology research center on the northwest coast, for a tour they have on Thursday.

Hope everyone watches some good fourth of July fireworks for me!

Nicole