Grandparents and Paella

After returning from the ruins of Pompeii, I had to turn around and welcome my grandparents to the Eternal City. Having visited my sister in Switzerland, the two Grand Tourists (pun intended) made their way down to my neighborhood for a few days, eager to see Rome's offerings. Unfortunately, the trip to Pompeii cut short our time together, but we still managed to visit several landmarks, including the Capitoline Museums, San Luigi dei Francesi, and sample some great food, with the lasagna al forno at La Scala a particularly memorable favorite. The two days spent with family was an enjoyable break from the grind of the semester.

A couple weeks of school passed by soon after, and semester break shined down on the mid-semester gloom. Classmates scattered to the four winds, some staying as close as the Florence, while others went as far afield as Morocco and London. I went to the latter, along with a small contingent of peers who were ready to revel in another, if slightly colder, metropolis. The four day sojourn marked my second trip to London, yet there were a few boxes on the "Tourists Guide to London" still left unchecked. Up first was Saturday Portobello Market, an exhaustive sprawl that makes the Winter Park Farmer's Market look like a garage sale. Walking down what felt like two miles, I passed all manner of goods for sale, including wrinkled maps, rusty telescopes, and counterfeit football jerseys. All the perusing made our group quite famished, so we helped ourselves to huge bowls of seafood paella, freshly prepared within massive pans along the street. Full of mussels, shrimp, and calamari, the dish was too good to be called mere street food.

Amazingly, my first London tour came and went without any trip to the famed British Museum. Seeing as how I call myself a history major and all, it would have been unbecoming to miss it. An absolutely massive complex, the British Museum contains items spanning over one million years of existence from all corners of the globe. I marveled at the Elgin Marbles (although I feel they would be better placed in Greece), crowded around the other tourists to gape at the amazingly well-preserved Egyptian mummies (sadly, none of them felt inclined to wake up and rampage around the exhibit-50's monster movies be damned), and admire a flawless jade turtle taken from the Near East. Like most public museums in London, there was simply too much to see in one afternoon, but it was an extremely informative and exciting tour nonetheless.

Frustratingly, something stuck in my craw as I sat on my flight back to Rome: having been a player and fan of soccer for almost 15 years, I was unable to attend a match in the birthplace of football once again. All in due time, all in due time.