Grainne's Account

This trip has been simply amazing. London flew by in a blur and I do wish we had spent more time there. It was fascinating to see the graves and execution spots of some of British history's most famous. Highgate Cemetery, too, was extraordinarily beautiful- we saw Marx's grave but were unable to find neither George Eliot nor Cristina Rossetti's gravestones. I loved seeing the David and Botticelli's Venus in person. There were two different paintings of Adam and Eve in the Academia that I enjoyed very much as well. In both, Adam simply looked bewildered and dazed out of his mind, while Eve looked very devious and entirely certain of what she was doing. In Venice, Cate, Michaela and I all went to the beach island of Lido at sunset and swim in the entirely deserted and extremely beautiful Adriatic Sea for hours, which was definitely one of the single best experiences of my life. The one full day we spent in Vienna we went to one of the oldest amusement parks in the world and got to go on a gigantic ferris wheel and plenty of roller coasters whilst taking in most of central Vienna. Prague is, by far, the creepiest city we've been to. The elevator in our hotel has not doors, only a sign that reads "Warning! Moving Wall." And finally, Cate and I have completed our mission to climb at least one large tower or building in every city (St. Paul's in London, the Duomo in Florence, the bell tower in Venice, Stephan's Dome in Vienna and the clock tower in Prague), from which we've seen beautiful views of all of the cities.