This is the time of my life, yes I am sure what I want is what I've got

[gogmagog]

Well, my brother has booked our European vacation sensation. Our itinerary is such:

6/14 - Bubs and I fly out of Memphis to Amsterdam, transfer to Rome
6/15 - Arrive in Rome
6/16 - Rome sightseeing (St. Peter's Basilica, Forum, Colosseum - optional Catacombs [FUCK YES] and Pantheon or Michelangelo's Moses, Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel)
6/17 - Rome to Venice
6/18 - Venice sightseeing (gondola to St. Mark's Square, Murano glass-blowing workshop) - Venice to Biandronno (Lake District)
6/19 - Biandronno to Lucerne - Lucerne sightseeing (Lion of Lucerne, Chapel Bridge - optional Mt. Stanserhorn [though I think it was called Mt. Pilatus last time we were there?])
6/20 - Lucerne to Paris
6/21 - Paris sightseeing (Champs-Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame - optional Versailles [YES], Moulin Rouge)
6/22 - Paris to London (via the Calais-Dover ferry)
6/23 - London sightseeing (they turn us loose, but we'll be fine on our own there)
6/24 - Bubs flies home to Memphis; I stay in London

After that my itinerary fuzzes out a little; but in general I'm just going to hang out in London sightseeing and visiting with friends; I've talked to my friend Colin and I may end up going up to visit him in North Yorkshire for a day or two, which would be fun (in part because I haven't ever seen North Yorkshire yet, but mostly because I haven't seen Colin in ages). I'll leave from London on 7/1 and get into Memphis probably later that day (thanks to the miracle of changing a billion time zones). Then I'll hang out with Bubs for a day or two before heading back to ye olde IC.

Honestly, even though we will be crossing some of the same territory we saw last time we went Eurotripping (during Christmas break of my year in England), I don't mind at all - all the Italian cities are new, and I certainly have no problem seeing Lucerne and Paris again, since I loved both of them last time and there's plenty I didn't see in both cities (and it will be nice to be in Lucerne not on Christmas Day, so things will actually be OPEN). And of course I want to live in England eventually, so even though I've seen lots of London before I know I won't get tired of it (and then I'll hopefully be visiting Colin, so I'll get to see a new part of England too!). I'm not entirely certain where I'll be staying in England, but I've been checking out inexpensive places to stay; fortunately in London you can pretty much get anywhere from anywhere, so it really doesn't matter that much, though for sentimental value I kind of want to stay in Kingston. :D

And BY GOD I AM GOING TO HAMPTON COURT THIS TIME...I lived like 5 minutes away from it for 9 months and was too lazy to go see it until the very end, despite being a huge Tudor freak and it being a major Tudor site. Then at the end ended up not being able to go as I'd planned because I had to leave a week and a half early to go home for my dad's funeral. (Another reason I'm glad I'm going is that it'll be nice to have my most recent memories of England not be sad and tragedy-stricken.)

...In unrelated news, I've finished my Beowulf paper and final (verdict: paper not bad but not fabulously intelligent either, final didn't go great but could have been a lot worse), and now all I have to do is finish my grading for my Rhetoric class and implement the suggestions my prof gave for finishing my seminar paper. The problem, of course, is that my seminar paper is now moving at approximately 1/10000 the speed of molasses. I'm hoping to finish it tonight though, or tomorrow at the latest. (I'm also going to start my grading tonight; it'll be so nice to not have to focus on writing amazingly fabulous comments except for the few who specifically gave me a SASE or asked for comments. ZOMG SO MUCH FASTER.)

Man, I'm so ready for this semester to be over. Unfortunately my summer class starts Monday, and I've already been assigned reading for the first day of class. This is not an auspicious beginning. D:

Let's Positive Linking!
- MadTV does The Wizard of Oz. (From jokersama.) Actually quite good; the best part is that the chick playing Dorothy totally has the Judy Garland intonation down, even when she's throttling Glinda or calling the Tin Man a homo. XD
- The opening movie for Final Fantasy Tactics: The Lion War. ZOMG DO WANT
- Squeenix announces Star Ocean/Star Ocean 2 remakes for PSP, Star Ocean 4 in development. As a confirmed tri-Ace whore, my immediate response was to start salivating like Pavlov's shota dog.
- The most offensive piece of statuary I've seen in a while. Honestly, is this what they think all comic readers want? (Of course we must all be male, because we all know girls CAN'T read comics, and if they do it doesn't count.) Seriously, it's like June Cleaver meets Daisy Duke. Now, MJ is a sexpot, but still! The exposed cleavage, the fact that she's barefoot (though not pregnant, that might prevent her from having a26GGG figure), the VISIBLE THONG, the PEARL NECKLACE...WHAT THE FUCK. (And we're not even going to get into the fact that I'm sure, given the crap Spidey puts that costume through, that I'm sure it's machine washable, and that MJ is practical enough to do so.)
- Bobby Brown claims Osama Bin Laden wants to kill him and marry Whitney Houston. Yes, you read that right. On the plus side, Osama x Whitney would be an AWESOME COUPLE. XD

Comments

[satsu.livejournal.com]

6/23 - London sightseeing (they turn us loose, but we'll be fine on our own there)
6/24 - Bubs flies home to Memphis; I stay in London

Expensive drinks in Soho? :D

[yoshitsune.livejournal.com]

Yes! As soon as I figure out if/when I'm going to be in N. Yorkshire and when I'm going to be in London, we can set up a day. I'm not leaving England again without meeting my kouhai! :D

[eslington.livejournal.com]

Total shame I'm not London resident at the moment. ^_^;

[yoshitsune.livejournal.com]

Oh, that is too bad. D:

[brandchan.livejournal.com]

Trust me that statue is nothing you should see some of the Japanese Hentai statues. It's like no, just no......

[yoshitsune.livejournal.com]

Well, I've seen the disturbing ones with like the jets of milk shooting out of ginormous breasts and tentacles and such...it's just this is a) clearly not actually a hentai statue, and b) it's not just the sexed-upness of it that gets me riled up (as I mentioned, MJ is kind of a bombshell supermodel type), it's the '50s social values that go along with it.

[brandchan.livejournal.com]

The guys who buy these types have no social skills to speak of so creepy fantasy statue it is for them. I know they come into the comic book store I work at and look at the creepy porn comics. And buy such wonder titles like Teens at Play: Mother like Daughter or some crap.

[(Anonymous)]

I'll be in Paris on 6/21! -janie