Happy Halloween!

After a week of non-stop sightseeing with my mom, I am officially wiped out! This weekend was daylight savings time over here (a week earlier than in the US, weird right?) so I was very glad to be able to get an extra hour of sleep!

Because my roommates and I have to intern tomorrow morning (and because they too are wiped out from break!) we're keeping our Halloween festivities to a minimum. It's weird not carving pumpkins or getting dressed up!

Instead, I'm sitting around wearing my Minnie Mouse ears and that's about all I'm doing today.


What are your Halloween plans/ What is everyone getting dressed up as?

a roman bath

Out of all the places my mom & I went this week, Bath was my favorite! Maybe I'm biased because I'm Italian, but I love learning anything and everything that's related to Roman times.
The baths were built in 75AD! After being used by the Romans, the baths got buried and built upon and they've only recently (maybe 100 years?) were uncovered! The water still naturally flows from deep underground and the whole thing was beautiful.

a mini recap

sorry for that mini hiatus!

Like I mentioned before, my mom was in London for this whole week! I spent everyday, morning until night with her going all over the city and seeing so many things -I think I took somewhere around 700 pictures!

Here's just a taste of some of the places we saw earlier this week..

I convinced my mom to go with me on the London Eye (450ft tall!). She was pretty nervous at first and wouldn't open her eyes, but after a few minutes I convinced her to get up and walk around the capsule and take in the views of the city.






We spent almost an entire day just in the British Museum! Anyone who's been to London says this is the #1 place to see because it holds so many amazing historical artifacts, including the Rosetta Stone! We didn't even see half of the exhibits!







I'll post more in the next few days - I don't want to overwhelm with pictures.

Midweek fashion!

The weather in London is getting so chilly and it's hard to be motivated to dress cute when the temps are dropping!

Last week I spend far too much money at H&M but couldn't help myself. My current obsessions are striped tops, blazers, and baggy shirts and I managed to find all 3 last week! I'm really bad at taking pictures of what I'm wearing because, if I did, they'd all be embarassing myspace-esque mirror shots (maybe I'll have to start playing around with the self timer on my camera? We shall see).

What are your favorite trends right now? What does everyone think of the fur vest trend?








(all pictures via weheartit!)

How was your day?

How many of these things did you do today?
I think I did #2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 11! And now I am doing #12 to my readers.

the canterbury tales

Another weekend means another fun Friday fieldtrip to recap!

I know I read some Canterbury Tales stories in high school, but of course I can't remember anything about them. Yesterday my roommates and I went to Canterbury where our school planned a tour through Canterbury Cathedral. Like some of the other Cathedrals we toured during previous weekends, it was overwhelming thinking about the 800+ years of history that has happened there.

We were able to spend a few hours in the actual town of Canterbury where we, of course, ate fish & chips!







After lunch, our group headed 40mins back towards London to Leeds Castle. I know it seems like I've seen a whole lot of castles, but each of them are so different! Leeds was actively used until the mid 1970's and was a lot different than Dover (from last weekend). Dover was definitely more of a castle used during wars and not really for royal family life. Leeds on the other hand, was set in the country-side, surrounded by water and full of endangered bird species! (I guess the royal family really loved birds?).








There was a pretty cool maze at Leeds Castle too! After navigating unsuccessfully, my friends and I split up into 2 teams and my team got so lost! Let's just say I have a bad sense of direction.


There aren't any fieldtrips next weekend because our "fall break" starts, which means my mom is coming! We have so many tourist-y things planned. I am so excited.

a little pick me up.

I guess this is a continuation of my "i miss you monday" post. I love love love London but I'm having quite the hard time balancing my life here and the people I left back at home.
And the people I left are having a hard time balancing me being gone.
Without going in to boring detail, I decided to give my more-than-just-a-friend guy some space for a few days. Part of me is determined to focus this extra time, mentality & energy on the positive, and while at the same time I feel like part of me is broken. I'm finding it really hard to take a break from talking to someone that I've talked to everyday for almost 4 years.

I might feel broken, but I have a whole weekend full of adventures with my roommates to beautiful Leeds Castle & historic Canterbury - and I'm not going to let a semi-broken heart keep me from living it up while in London.

Things I love Tuesday!

Browsing through the pictures on weheartit is one of my guilty pleasures and I've gathered quite a lot of pictures of interior designs that I love! I graduate in May and I am so, so excited to (hopefully!) find a job & be able to move into an amazing apartment so that I can decorate as well as these!






My all time favorite room setup is from IKEA! (Shocking, I know). I love it so much that I screencapped the image from the website so that one day I can try and replicate it! The mini chandelier, the color, everything.

It's Monday & I miss you

I wanted to title this "missing monday" to play on the M's, but it didn't really fit I guess.
I haven't felt super homesick until lately.

I skype call my mom everyday and email my dad several times/day, but calling my grandma and a certain boy doesn't come as often. So when I got the chance to talk to both in the past few days, it really bummed me out about how much I missed them & how they missed me.

So I guess I am using this post for little things I've found on weheartit that I think fit how I feel.
I won't get all boring & describe my guy situation in detail but it goes something like:
Known each other almost 4 years, never had the title of dating, but have been exclusive to each other for most of the 4 years. We would be serious if I hadn't gone to NYC or London.
But there was no way I would pull a Lauren Conrad (ie when she didn't go to Paris for Teen Vogue because of Jason).

And now here I am having the time of my life but wondering what could have been.

Dover Castle!

This Friday's field trip was to Dover Castle! It's about two hours away from London and is close to 900 years old. When you think of a castle in medieval times, Dover has everything you'd think of - a drawbridge, (what used to be) a moat, towers and the coolest tunnels!
Our tour guide explained to us that when the French were invading Britain around 1100 or 1200, the people in the castle dug extensive tunnels under the castle and outward so they wouldn't be noticed! In the most creepy way, it was awesome walking through them and thinking about people walking through them 800 years ago, fighting off an invading army.



When I was 1 or 2 years old, my parents took my brother and I to England and Dover was one of the places we went! Obviously I don't remember anything from being there 20 years ago, but it was a really cool feeling to look over the white cliffs and think that my little eyes as a baby had seen this before!
The other nice thing was actually getting to be out of the city! Living, working and going to school inside the heart of London 5 days/week is completely different than what I'm used to back home in New York (I had never even taken a bit of real public transportation until living in NYC, other than a bus to and from south campus!) My roommates and I sat and climbed on this ledge and, if we weren't on schedule, we would've stayed all day. It was beautiful.

Beautiful weather!

As I checked weather.com today I thought I had definitely typed in the wrong city. Before I got here last month, all I heard from people was "you'll certainly need an umbrella!", but as of today, weather.com says it'll be sunny for the next week!


While I love this sunny weather, I admit I'm missing Autumn back home. London doesn't see a drastic change during the fall, like I'm used to back in central NY - where there are dozens of places to pick apples, run through corn mazes, eat donuts & apple cider while gazing at the changing leaves.

So I thought I'd pay a little homage to the weather that I'm missing, all while I'm sitting here enjoying this lovely, yet different weather!