Not this week but the next, I'm working a 40 hour week. I'm scared. Put on the working woman face and bear it, Hannah, cause you'll get a load of cash at the end :). That's what'll get me through.

Also, the more I see and hear about Duchess Kate, the more I love her! Secretly, I want to be her... and have her closet.. minus the hats. ha. But, seriously, she is classically beautiful, always says the right thing, has this Jackie O. grace or something about her. I'll work on it.

How classy is this!? So chic.

home life

I gotta be honest. Its a lot harder to blog when you're not seeing things like 3rd century churches and Michelangelo's sculptures every day. But, I'm being hard hearted. I'm not really giving Provo a fair shot. The mountains covered in green are a treat to see every day. And it IS so good to be back with my Provo family.

You can see the Y on the mountain in the back, and that little curly
Q sidewalk over the road is what I would walk over to go from
work to school every day last semester. Photo from here

 My trip from London to Salt Lake was a dream compared with the rockiness Deanna and I experienced getting to Norwich (what with her having to fork out $700 for both our train tickets to London and then having to worry about her over withdrawing her account every time we paid for something, which was a $30 fee for EACH transaction!)

Dee and I caught the taxi from Thel's at some horrible hour like 3am (per usual.. we had quite a few early mornings that week!) and got to the coach station in plenty of time to catch our ride to London. From there, we parted ways as she was going to Gatwick and I to Heathrow. Easy as pie. The only bother was having to heave around my 98384748 lb. suitcase up and down the Tube stairs and trying not to knock people out with it on the train. Who packed that suitcase, eh? Not me...

who misses europe? i do. i do.

Oddities

Rome-> At the Vatican, you saw all kinds, including lotsa nuns.
And this nun wasn't chancing any sunburn, as she was wearing
 an umbrella hat. 

Rome-> All over the place were these 24/7
running fountains. I'm not quite sure how Rome pulls these off, but they
 run continuously and are cold and good to drink!
They saved Deanna and I a lot.

Paris-> This guy had his cat slung over his shoulder.
Why? How?  Dee and I did not know the answers-- but seriously.
Why isn't kitty inside? And if he's outside, Why is he slung over
the guy's shoulder? ha

Gimme Paris

 It is irritating that I have to admire the pompous and unabashedly power hungry leaders of all these foreign countries, they built the prettiest stuff.  Henry VIII? Prime candidate there, commissioned like half the buildings in England. William the Conqueror? Yep. Windsor Castle and the Tower of London are two notches on his stick. Emperor Nero in Rome built the Colosseum. Hoity-toity beyond hoity-toity Louis XIV did Versailles and the Saint Chappelle Chapel in Paris to just name two, the greedy guy. Marie Antoinette built her “little cottage” (little, my bum) on the edge of the Versailles gardens as a vacation home, which Deanna and I went to. Ha, they may have spent absolute loads of money and ignored the poor, but boy did they know how to build some cool stuff!

London-> Tower of London, by ole William the Conqueror who fought quite a few battles
so he could gain some extra land. 

Rome-> Nero's Colosseum. All the stone walls on the bottom were originally in the basement,
they were the cages where the animals were kept. There was originally the floor on top
of that where the gladiators would fight and the entertainment would take place.

Paris-> Versailles. Louis XIV was such a prick building this huge palace and the gardens just cause he fancied the big and the expensive. Granted, he did introduce ballet to the world, so he did do some good stuff. The palace is fabulous though.

Paris-> gardens at Versailles.

Paris-> Dee hangin out in the Versailles gardens

Paris-> La Sainte-Chapelle by Louis. This was
oh so fabulous. Stained glass that looked like lace

A close up for ya.  Louis you may be stuck up, but you can build a CHAPEL.
It only took 5 years to build as well. Huh.

Rome was super for all its churches- many even older than the ones in England. Several we went to while there were founded in the 100-300 AD range- freakin archaic. Italian churches were quite a bit different than in England…  they had such colored and ornate floors whereas the ones in England just had tombs all over but made up for it with fabulous gothic ceilings.

Venice-> beautiful floor mosaic in the church Santa Maria e San Donato
on the island of Murano (home of famous Venetian blown glass).

The churches were very cool in Rome, and it’s a good thing, cause otherwise I think Rome woulda been a bust, horrible enough to say. It was really dirty, and 80% of the men on the street were dirty too--creeps trying to “pinch our bums” as Ken indeed warned me about! And the cobblestones! Those things are brutal on your feet, all uneven with who knows how many invisible-till-you-trip-on-em crevices. But the churches? Fabulous.

Rome-> cobblestones. Right hazardous, I'd say. You can see the Colosseum
peekin out at the end of the walkway there.

And whoever stole my wallet (and they better be feeding their 14 starving children and not buying dope) in Rome can go to Hades. They caused me a ton of hassle, the dog. Canceling credit cards and having to use Deanna as a bank.

Paris I think was my favorite. It was sophisticated and classy and oh so European (everybody so stylish and always having baguettes and croissants) but was still obviously a city where people truly lived. There were schools and chic office buildings and guys in suits on the metro. It was way cool to be in a place that so fit the picture in my head of Europe and was actually a place where people thrived. As opposed to Rome where it was so dirty and seemed a bit too ancient with all the churches built in only the generation or two after the time of Jesus Christ. Venice was just a dream world, so quiet with no cars and not a school or a pharmacy or business buildings or anything else that spoke of people besides tourists in sight.

Paris, I could live in, no problem. None at all.