Windsor - the cutest town!

ALERT - another long post FULL of pictures, and this time I mean FIFTY pictures

Sunday was a very full and exciting day, which had been planned days before: a visit to the town of Windsor *_* I had heard so much about this town, first from my dad who sometimes goes there for work, then from Isabela who lives nearby. Isabela offered to bring me there and we organised to go this Sunday, with her mum driving us there and then Isabela going straight home from there while I’d come back here on campus later on.

Therefore, the alarm went off at 8.15am and I went to wake Isabela up (since she never listens to alarms), but we ended up chatting in bed until 8.45. By then, we were in a rush because her mum was coming to pick us up at 9.30 and she still hadn’t finished packing. We managed to do everything, though, and we were in the car to Windsor on time! The car ride went very quickly, despite being one hour and half long, between chats and music.

We were dropped in Windsor at about 11 o’clock and we went to see the outside of the castle. Two adjectives I can find to describe it are: majestic and gorgeous. It was impressive and I couldn’t stop taking pictures of it from different angles :)

 

 

 

The next stop was the high street and the little open shopping centre, which is nothing like Westfield in its cuteness. I mean, it felt like being in one of those ancient train stations, which wasn’t that far from the truth since there was a station inside!

 

After the high street, Isabela took me to the main train station, then across the river Thames and we walked in these alleys where there was a bakery that I fell in love with despite not eating cakes... They made so many "Frozen" dessert *_*

Eventually, we reached Eton College, still on the other side of the Thames. Eton College is the most prestigious boarding school in England, where the princes went as well, and it takes up an enormous part of Windsor. Unfortunately, the College was closed to public, but I could still enjoy the view from the outside. I have no words to describe it properly, so I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves and show how great it is. So jealous of the boys (it’s an only-boys school) who can go in such a beautiful college! We also went in the sports ground, a lovely park :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Around 12.30 we got back to the river and since there was a boat leaving for the tour we decided to buy tickets and board immediately. It turned out that we had the boat all to ourselves! I suppose that the cold and the time played in our favour, for that :) We had the advantage of being able to leave our bags on a chair without worrying and move around to take pictures without bothering anyone! The tour lasted about 40 minutes and it took us through Windsor on the river, with a voice explaining through speakers what we were seeing. We saw plenty of boat-houses, ducks and swans along the way and around us we had Eton College, Windsor itself and a huge racecourse centre, among other things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As soon as we got back, we stopped on the riverbank and we fed some ducks and swans with the swan food we had bought earlier on. Some of the ducks were very gentle and they ate from our hands gently and without hurting us at all! 

 

 

It was about 2 o’clock when we stopped for lunch near a Christmas fair, where I had traditional fish and chips for the second time since when I moved to London! During lunch, we talked about what we had seen so far and what we still had to see and then... then we looked up on Google some singing lessons for next semester *-* A quick explanation on this: I have always liked singing, but I never seriously thought of singing lessons before... however, on Saturday night on the bus Maria Stella was telling us about an acting workshop she is going to do in January and then Isabela and I started thinking of taking a Musical Theatre course! But we don’t have an basic signing knowledge, so we thought we’d go for singing lessons before. Anyway, at lunch in Windsor we found this great course at City Academy, starting on the 13^th of January! 

We finished lunch around 3pm and we went back towards the castle to visit the inside, but... guess what?? The last admission was at 3 o’clock and it was 3.15 when we arrived there :( Therefore we had to give up on seeing the inside and we started taking selfies with the castle itself!

 

 

 

Making our way around the castle, we found a parish church that looked very nice and warm, so we entered to warm up, but we also ended up visiting it properly as it was beautiful :) We also walked around for a while and looked at really nice streets!

 

 

Still disappointed about not being able to enter the castle, we went to the park in front of it where there is a veeeery long straight path that leads to it. It was amazing! I love that walk, because it looks so impressive and regal and it definitely shows that it’s leading to a royal palace!

 

 

When we left the park, there was still light and we wanted to wait for the dark to come so we could see the Christmas lights properly. In the wait, we decided to go back to the Christmas fair where there were some bumpers cars and have a go at them. On the round before us, there were a couple of cars with teenagers and we trusted there would be more when we started... instead there were only cars with children or parents with children and we had our reservations on hitting little ones... so I was like “Ok, Isabela I’ll teach you to drive instead” and we started normally making our way around the cars area. But children never do what you expect, do they? Some of them ganged up against us, noticing we didn’t want to hit them, and started hitting us very hard! After a while we gave up on avoiding them and we started taking revenge... but we didn’t manage to get back to a couple of little blond siblings because the time finished as we were nearing :(

By the end of our bumper cars ride it was dark and we could go back in town to see the decorations properly! There was a lovely fountain all lit up that looked amazing in the night, all the lights on the high street were even more spectacular and some images were projected on the castle (even thought his last part was not as impressive as I expected it to be after hearing my dad’s description)!

 

 

 

Around 5.15pm, we were picked up by Isabela’s mum and she drove me to Feltham railway station, so that I could get back home using only my Oyster card and not having to buy a train ticket. There I had to say goodbye to Isabela as well :( The trip took me about 1h30, first on a train then on the tube, and I spent part of it reading a manga version of Shakespear’s “The Twelth Night” and part of it resting. While I was on the train back home, I was thinking that it’s going to be very weird not having her around for a whole month, after living together for three! 

It was such a great day in Windsor, despite the cold :D

Last week of first term - part 2

Here you go, this is the second part of the week. I thought I’d separate it in two posts to avoid overloading single posts, since a lot happened and everything comes with plenty of pictures!

Wednesday 10/12: waking up with a cold is never fun and when it happened that morning I wasn’t happy at all! But I suppose it could be expected after walking around in the cold for ages on Tuesday. For most of the day I did housework, doing the washing (finally! I was in desperate need of clothes after two weeks without doing the washing!) and cleaning my room and bathroom. When I finished with that, I wrote some Christmas cards, waiting for Maria Stella to call me.

From about 5pm to 8 o’clock I stayed at her place, helping her revise for her midsessionals. She would repeat the notions to me, while I was reading from her notes since I don’t know anything about Law. To be honest, I found all of it pretty interesting to listen to, even though I wouldn’t want to have to study it :) Helping her with her course is turning out to be very useful to me, between what I learn about writing/proofreading essays and about British Law.

I came home for dinner and ate with Tommaso, his friend Fabio and Isabela, then Isabela and I went to my room and started talking about the future. The main topic we have in our mind when we think of next year is the house we will have to move to. We still haven’t found one, fairly enough since we haven’t done serious searching, but that’s not our biggest worry right now. At the moment we are still trying to work out who is going to be living in that house! That’s what our Wednesday discussion was about and we went on talking for a long time, looking at the different possibilities and problems. We also ended up looking up houses to be let, just to try and convince ourselves that we can make it! I am sure we can, but right now it is all very confusing and I am a bit scared of next year... moving out completely will be hard and  complications might arise often. I mean, this year we are in a safe bubble on campus, where we have cleaners for the shared areas, where our bills are included in the rent (therefore we have only one deadline to worry about), where everything is close by, where we have our own private and lockable rooms if we want to be alone. Next year it will all be different! Sharing a proper house will mean totally growing up, with no looking back because we will be officially facing all the aspects of living on our own. Sure, we won’t be working full time, we will still be students, but in a different way. We will have to be completely independent and rely on our abilities all the time, with pretty much only the help of our flat mates.

Thursday 11/12: my last day of lesson!!! Between 9 and 11am there was the last lecture of term 1 for us Biology students: Molecular Biology. The first half of the lecture was normal, then the lecturer started being soooo funny and we couldn’t stop laughing LOL In fact, when our group left the building to go out for lunch to celebrate we were still laughing a lot! Elena wasn’t there, but the four of us that were had a lovely lunch at the Half Moon, near uni, chatting and having fun for a couple of hours :) Our lunch seemed to have been planned on purpose: Laurana and Coral, sitting on the same part of the table, ordered the same Traditional Breakfast; Andrea and I, on the other side of the table, got pork ribs! Moreover, in the middle of the table there was a plate of bacon and hash browns to be shared by me and Andrea, which had confused the cashier and the waitress a lot because it was a weird combination to have without the rest of the Traditional Breakfast :P 

Laurana, Andrea, me and Coral at Half Moon

 

 

 

 

In the afternoon and the evening I blogged a lot and I finally got up to date with the events, for the first time in a couple of months: I was a very happy girl afterwards!

Friday 12/12: the last day of term for everyone else :) I woke up around 8.15 to Skype my Australian host family and some family friends (with various children) who were going to be at their house for an early Christmas party. However, something happened and they couldn’t talk to me, so I waited to give a Christmas card to our cleaner here at the flat on behalf of me and Isabela (who was at lecture but happened to walk back in exactly when the cleaner came!) and then I went back to sleep... I was feeling awful because of my cold! I got up again around 1pm, feeling a great lot better thankfully :)

Soon after lunch, it was time for the “flat” Secret Santa. Well, let’s say “circle Santa”, since it was just me, Isabela and Melanie! Anyway, it was great :) Melanie gave me a wonderfully cute doll of baby Tinkerbell, from the Disney store, something I had been admiring for a while! Then, Melanie received the Olaf from Isabela and Isabela a panda-pyjamas from me :) When we were done, Maria Stella arrived and we gave her her onesie, which she had specifically asked for so it wasn’t really a surprise!

 

Around 4 o’clock, we left to go to Westfield Shopping Centre, where Maria Stella had to buy a couple of presents and we ended up wandering around for a couple of hours! By 7pm, we were starving and Isabela and I were dreading the idea of still having to make and cook the pizza we were planning to have... so we bought a frozen one and we ended up cooking that one once back at the flat. It wasn’t a wonderful pizza, but it was fine :)

When dinner was over the two of us Skyped Maria Stella, who had gone back to her flat to eat, to make a decision upon what we would do during the night. The original plan was to go out in Central London, but with me as sick as I was (still my cold) and Maria Stella not feeling too well it didn’t make much sense. Moreover, Isabela had been invited by one of her friends from the Harry Potter society to go to a flat party and Melanie had suggested to go to the end of year party at Drapers. We had three options and it took ages to decide! Isabela wanted to go to the flat party to socialise with the people from her society and I totally agreed, so I told her I would go with her. Maria Stella, though, still wanted to go to Central London or, at the very least, to Drapers... after a while we compromised on going to Drapers for an hour and then moving to the flat party. It was about 9pm then and we were meant to go out at 10.20 so there was plenty of time... during which I was meant to wash my hair! However, I ended up Skyping Rebecca (Australian host mum) to ask what had happened in the morning. I meant it to be a quick chat, but she was already Skyping with her mum and sister so I joined their video conference a talked to all of them :) After a while... a little someone joined the conversation, making me very very happy: Hannah *_* She is one of the children I used to play with down in Australia and she is soooo cute. Because of all these things summed together, I ended up talking for about 45 minutes and then I had to rush to wash my hair and get ready. Miracle of miracles: I made it!

We queued at Drapers from 10.30 to almost 11.30, since we hadn’t bought a ticket and during this time I ended up talking with a very cute boy in front of me. His name is Michael and he is in my course apparently! Around 11.30 we left the queue and gave up on Drapers, since it was the time we had planned to go to the flat party :) At the flat there were other 5 people, because the rest of the guests had left to go to Drapers (the opposite of us lol), and we chatted for a while. Then our host proposed a drinking game in which you had to pick a card and do something that was associated with the number (for example, with number six all the boys had to drink)... problem is, I don’t drink and Maria Stella and Isabela drink very little and only rarely, so we ended up playing with water :P It was hilarious! The three of us weren’t bothered even a little when we had to drink, since it was only water, whereas some of the others were quite drunk soon. It was a funny kind of drunkenness luckily! 

Queuing for Drapers

We stayed there until 1am, then we went to Maria Stella’s flat for a little bit to plan the next day and Isabela and I eventually came back home. In theory, Maria Stella had suggested we go to bed immediately so we’d be rested the next day and maybe we could even go out at night, but... well, we didn’t exactly listen to her! First in the kitchen (with a hot tea to try to warm up after the freezing cold outside) then in Isabela’s room,  we talked and talked and talked, jumping among the topics. We went from serious discussions, to lighter ones and laughs when I threw a little furry monster-toy to her and she started screaming before bringing it quickly back to my room (where it belongs). For example, we discussed distant relationships (in my case, Italy and Australia) and what parts are harder for us, impressions on the first term of university, our flat mates... we also agreed again on what a coincidence it was to find someone sharing most of our hobbies and being in the same flat! This had been Melanie’s observation some time ago and we had dismissed it because it was still too early in the term, but now it’s obvious what a lucky coincidence it has been. It was a talking-night that went on until almost 5am, because we had so much to talk about. We live together, we spend so much time together and we always end up having so much to say at night! I think it’s because the night brings out deeper topics, which makes sense.

Saturday 13/12: luckily, I got to sleep in until 12 o’clock after going to sleep so late and then I managed to do something I had said I would do for over a month... I threw water at Isabela to wake her up :P To be fair, I missed her in the darkness and only wet the pillow, but it was effective enough hahaha

Afterwards, I had breakfast and I Skyped my friend Giorgia for over an hour and a half, since we hadn’t talked since when she was here a month ago (well, we texted, but we never actually spoke). At the end of the call, I tidied my room and got ready to go out. Just before we met Maria Stella at 5pm, it was time to say goodbye to Tommaso, who was leaving for Italy. I was expecting a quick goodbye, not particularly warm, instead Tommaso surprised me and Isabela by hugging us and saying he will miss us :) Awwww sweet! I will miss him too, to be honest, because we have grown closer over the last weeks!

The plan for the day was to go around London and look at Christmas decorations. Things changed a bit, but we still managed to see plenty of lovely Christmas lights and decorations *_* Maria Stella, Isabela and I left campus at 5 o’clock and went to Oxford Street, where we went into a few shops where Maria Stella and I needed to go: River Island (for a hat that I didn’t buy, though I got a present for Giorgia), Urban Outfitters (for Maria Stella’s gloves), Primark (for my hat, some furry slippers for various people and my gloves) and various others where we didn’t buy anything. After touring among the little streets all lit up with beautiful fairylights, we stopped for a quick dinner at McDonalds, as we were starving, and then we caught a bus to Piccadilly Circus. Also this square was very decorated, even though it wasn’t as good as last year apparently. 

 

 

 It was about 11.45 when we went to the bus stop to come back home. We had decided to avoid the tube and travel on the surface to look around, but when the trip turned out to take an hour... we were all pretty much sleeping/relaxing on the bus. Anyway, it took ages to get home and it was almost 1am when we said goodbye to Maria Stella, who left for Italy on Sunday morning! This was goodbye number two with people leaving, therefore excluding the girls from Biology. It’s already sad now... I wonder what it will be like at the end of the year :( And they are not even proper goodbyes, but only “see you after the holiday!”.  
I went to bed (in my room, this time) as soon as I could, as I was dead...