The Big Trip
Part II: Firenze e Roma

The constraints of museum opening hours dictated a hasty arrival and establishment of ourselves in Florence, followed by determined dash to the Uffizi.

All this effort was worth it, giving us three hours in one of the best art museums in the world. Highlights included Monaco, Botticelli, . Plus the view out the window over the Arno was pretty good:

and the outdoor cafe, though chilly, was pretty picturesque:

A couple of the rooms were closed & I felt a bit shortchanged that we'd missed out on seeing the Caravaggios. It turned out these were in the new rooms down stairs, along with some very dramatic Reni and Honthorst works,

which made for a climactic finale to our visit.

Having fulfilled one of the key art-appreciation aims in Florence, we were able to relax and enjoy wandering about the town.

Much smaller than Rome, Florence is filled with cute little streets and piazzas that make it ideal for pedestrian tourists like ourselves.

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An oversight on my part during trip-planning, meant that our only full day in Florence was a Monday, when most of the museums are closed, hence yesterday's rush to the Uffizi. This afforded us, however, a day to stroll about, free of my obsessive art-fervour. We had a look-ee at the Duomo, Santa Maria del Fiore,

and adjacent Campanile Giotto,

strolled east through various neighbourhoods

and collated some lunch from the markets,

which we ate on the banks of the Arno.

South of the river, we hiked up the hill to the Fortress Belvedere and had a look at Palazzo Pitti

and several churches: Santa Spirito & Santa Maria del Carmine.

Crossed the Ponte Vecchio

and moseyed through the centre of town, enjoying the afternoon light on the beautiful buildings there.

Going north again, saw another fortress,

and wandered through a less picturesque, in the traditional sense, section of town, which nonetheless exuded its own beauty in the evening light.

Ate the remains from our lunch for dinner and drank two bottles of chianti, after which conversation with fellow hostel guests became tolerable.

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Our final morning in Florence and the last chance to see the Academia, which we did. It was good, though reaching threshold for consumption of art from 1300 to 1700. In Maarinke's words: if i see one more Virgin and Child or Annunciation or Pieta, I'm going to scream.

In my words: Do you think David killed Goliath to make up for not being quite "correctly proportioned" - you couldn't just go out and buy a big car in those days, you know.

In Maarinke's words (in front of the David): Matt, stop gesturing like that with your hands; everyone knows what you're talking about.

It's great being arty and cultured and stuff.

Haste at Academia gave us time for a final walk round before returning to Rome. The walk went a little something like this:

We walked to Piazza Santa Croce,

paid tribute to a famous Florentine,

bought some more spinach balls for the hungry vegetarian, and checked out the markets before bidding Florence farewell.

Back in Rome (managed to not miss train this time), we dumped stuff @ hostel, trying to suppress Australian accents to avoid bearing any resemblance to fellow countrymen staying there (the great irony of hostelling being that you travel half way round the world to expand your mind and/or horizons and end up sharing a room with someone who used to work with the father of someone you once tutored or, in the case of Rome, are checked in by someone who went to your high school and share a room with someone who is about to start work at the same place one of your mates does (RBA, in case you're reading Grant)).

As antidote to overdose of chiarascuros, pietas, altarpieces etc, we went to the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, stopping off to be stereotypically (and, given above rant, hypocritically) Australian by drinking a couple of longnecks in the park (the Giardin del Lago mind you, right near the Piazza di Siena, and it was Morretti we were drinking, so it was all pretty authentico derelicto behaviour).

It was more like the Art Gallery of NSW than the Uffizi or the Musei Vaticani (and if you could imagine how many people would go to the AGNSW, no disrespect intended, if it were transplanted to Rome, you would overestimate the attendance at the GNAM by a factor of 2). The collection there is big, spanning the 19th to 21st centuries, and there is a lot of good stuff, both Italian and international. The problem is, i suppose, that whilst Italy is famous for (1) Roman antiquity and (2) most famous art from 1300 to 1700, from Giotto and Cimabue through Da Vinci, Santi, Buonarotti, Tiziano, Corregio, Veronese etc. to Caravaggio, Tiepolo, Tintoretto and Canaletto etc, (blahblahblah, look at me, i'm a dancing monkey who can recite lots of artists names, give me a banana), things had gone pretty quiet from 1750 when the baton had definitely been passed to France (having been shared with Flanders & Holland admittedly from 1600 on) and then also to England, Germany, etc. That's not to say that painters weren't painting in Italy, and that Italy wasn't important in terms of art: the Prix de Rome remained a most prestigious award at the Academy in Paris throughout the 1800s and artists have continually travelled there to seek inspiration and learn technique. For various reasons, political, social, religious and artistic (and combinations thereof), the most progressive, exciting, novel art, the stuff that gets written about in art books, and initiates movements that we can label and praise, particularly in this modern age that prizes conceptual novelty over perfection of craft (Hirst shark, take a bow), was done elsewhere.

The collection at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna clearly demonstrated that there were lots of artists doing lots of good work, following roughly the progression of "The Canon": neoclassicism, romanticism, painting en plein air, realism, impressionism, post-impressionism, expressionism, cubism, abstraction (blahblahblah, this time i'm reciting movements, another banana please), then the multiplicity of forms, styles, media that characterise the modern and postmodern ages, but generally a few years behind the cutting edge. Coming from Australia, which wouldn't be claimed as a centre of any international art movements, but which has it's own "story of art" that is understood in the context of, but is not dictated by, the international story, i could appreciate the Italian art we saw there. It wasn't Ingres, Delacroix, Turner, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Picasso (here I go again...; though there were a couple of them represented there), but it was good interesting stuff that reflected developments in art and society at the time. And no altarpieces.

Probably for me the most exciting pieces at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna were the works of the Futurists (Boccioni, Carra, Severini), who lamented some of these things about which I have rambled above, Italy's departure from the centre of art etc, and who captured some of the dynamism of the modern technological world in their fractured, abstractified images.

Maarinke dug the 20c abstracts too:

After all that waffling, the general moral of the story was that good art doesn't have to be famous art, and being two of the eight people in the entire museum, including staff, beats pushing through crowds at the Vatican hands down. And it was time for a couple of quiet ones.

Big dinner to farewell Italy: bruschetta & breadsticks to start, fettucini vongole & spaghetti napoletana respectively for entree, sangiovese to drink, osso bucco & zuppa di pesce resp. for mains, panetone and grappa (doubles x 2) to finish.

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Final morning in Italy: enough time for one more authentico experience, a stroll to the Campo di Fiore. Rome was bustling by the time we dragged ourselves out of bed (a special thanks to the (you guessed it) Australians sharing our hostel room for returning drunk at 4am from their swim in the Fontana di Trevi - yet another moment to make me so proud of my country) but it was cool to see the city in a different light (though in mid-winter the direction of the sun doesn't change a whole lot between 8am and 4pm).

Bought some dates at the Campo di Fiori markets (at €20/kg, we were paying for the experience as well as the dates), then returned to the hostel for breakfast and timely check-out.

Then it was off to Fiumicino for us and, after some complications involving my flight on El Cheapo (or more linguistically appropriately, Das Cheapen) Air being cancelled and me only finding out about it after I'd asked four different officials, we boarded a Lufthansa (woohoo, an upgrade for me - definitely landing on my feet with regards to transport, Birmingham train fiasco notwithstanding) flight to Munich.

It was a pretty clear day so we could see Venice (only just!)

and the alps, which were spectacular.

Next stop: Bayern.

The Big Trip
Part 1: Roma

Thursday Jan 5 saw my departure from Stansted to Roma Ciampino to meet Maarinke for two weeks of continental travels, the culmination of months of intensive preparations. After an inauspicious start to the trip, involving me boarding a train to Birmingham (only realized after departure from Cambridge station), i managed to check-in with 165 seconds to spare and made it to Rome. Found the hostel and went for a reconnaisance trek about town, past Colloseo,

and the monument to Vittorio Emmanuel II,

all the way to the Vatican.

Trained the following morning to Leonardo Da Vinci aeroporto in time for Maarinke's arrival from Vietnam, via Singapore and Frankfurt. She was in high spirits, on her inaugural trip to Europe, and of course pleased to see me (particularly so as I, uncharacteristically and some might suggest miraculously, wasn't late to meet her at the airport).

We found our hotel, noting the campanile vista from the window of our room,

then, wasting no time, we hit the streets, stopping first at the Coliseum,

which turned out to be far more infested with hawkers during the daylight hours, then on to Foro Romano,

where the clear skies and sunlight, both relatively foreign concepts to me now, allowed for full appreciation of the splendours of the great empire.

Up the Capitoline hill (one of the seven famed hills of Rome),

to see Romulus and Remus (famed founders upon aforementioned hills),

and the north side of the Campidoglio.

Jumping ahead to the 19th century, the Vittorio Emmanuel II monument, built after the unification of the nation of Italy, whilst in keeping with the monumentality of the ancient empire, expresses its splendour in a radically different style, more redolent of similar nationalist- neoclassical works in Germany from the same period.

It appears to be a great cliche to criticise this monument in comparison with the graceful ruins of antiquity that surround it, or with the renaissance and baroque palazzos and chiesas that constitute much of the city. It is representative of Italy's move into nationhood after more than 1200 years: in this day of pan-Europeanism, as distinctions between states become more blurred, such commemorative pieces give reminders of the relative modernity of the concept of nationhood. It was good to enjoy this perspective over history, whilst also appreciating the view over the city.

Back down the hill, past the Foro Imperiali,

and into the city, where the piazzas were teeming with crowds enjoying the Epiphany Day public holiday. Purchase of trendy new sunglasses from a street vendor provided opportunity for Blue Steel posing in nearby alley.

Maarinke was putting in a sturdy performance for someone who hadn't been to bed for 54 hours, but a rejuvanatory hot chocolate was in order, enjoyed amongst the throngs outside the Pantheon.

7pm saw Maarinke, understandably, collapse into bed and, after a couple of slices of pizza con funghi e salsiccia, I hit the hay also, in preparation for another big day tomorrow.

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A relatively early start saw us make it to the Vatican when the queue was only 1200 metres long. That was a pretty exciting and stimulating couple of hours,

but worth it once inside. The Capella Sistina, crammed as it was with 2000 tourists snapping away, most of whom wouldn't know a Bernini from a Botticelli or a Lippi from a Lotto, was good without being great: obviously one shouldn't pass up the opportunity to see one of the most famous places/artworks, but that doesn't mean you can't make snide, jaded remarks about the experience.

What were really good were the rooms through which one dutifully troops on the way to and from the main event:

Filled with ornate decoration, great big maps of different parts of Italy, lavish frescos, there was plenty to look at whilst attempting to distract oneself from the mindless banter purveyed by fellow tourists. The modern religious art collection, of which we saw a subset, was an welcome contrast to the masses of High Renaissance on offer.

The Pinacoteca was also cool (though we were to later discover that the bulk of the Baroque pieces were being exhibited in Bonn at the time). Lunch and a bottle of paint stripper was followed by a quick visit to St Peters piazza,

where Maarinke looked suitably pious reverent in front of the Basilica.

Strolled then past Castel Sant Angelo,

back across the Tiber,

up the Spanish steps,

to the Pincio, from where we viewed the city,

and Piazza Popolo.

Wandered south then through a really cool swisho part of the city filled with art galleries, antique stores, cafes and trendy boutiques. Paid obligatory visit to Fontana de Trevi

where a kind street hawker offered to steal my camera (admittedly in exchange for a lovely red rose), but declined my reciprocal offer to jam his rose in, thorny end first. Having ticked most of the touristy boxes, we celebrated with a couple of Morettis and a lasagne and called it a day.

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Squeezing the last drops of cultural value out of Roma before our departure to Firenze, we assembled in front of Villa Borghese at 8:30am.

That was unanimously judged the best thing we saw in Rome: a mansion in acres of parkland, filled with topnotch painting and sculpture, predominantly Baroque. Highlights: Bernini, Titian, Caravaggio, Veronese and the incredible entrance hall. As a pleasant contrast to the knuckle-dragging throngs with which we were forced to share our Musei Vaticani experience, many of the rooms in Villa Borghese could be enjoyed in complete solitude. Sustained ourselves with a ciambella,

then off to the stazione,

where we missed our train thanks to a combination of faulty departures boards and our (my) own ignorance and apathy. Thanks to my faultless performance as "Stupid Australian tourist" in the station information office, we were then upgraded to a Eurostar: woohoo - sitting in the aisle was a small price to pay for the 1.5 hours carved from our travel time.

Next stop: Toscano.

New Years Eve in London

Being a cheapskate, i try to avoid paying for train tickets whenever possible, short of actually breaking the law, so i jumped on the opportunity for a lift to London with Sinead. Even better, I got to drive: their's nothing better to amp you up for a night of NYE partying than driving someone elses car at 140 km/hr down the M11. The subsequent tube journey from Upminster to Brixton afforded me a few quiet moments to prepare myself for the evening by consuming 8 500mL Kronenbourgs and churning through a few chapters of Ernst Gombrich's 'A Little History of the World'. Arriving in Brixton, I was ready:

Met up with the gang and checked out a couple of joints before settling on the White Horse bar as the venue for the evening. Everyone was in fine fettle.

Did the midnight thing, decided we'd had enough, helped some randoms push-start their car, thereby fulfilling my new years resolution to help someone sometime during the year.

Back to MJs to chill out,

and off to sleep, in my case on the living room floor.
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2006 was greeted with expected levels of enthusiasm,

though outlooks improved after a glass of champagne and some parmigiano reggiano.

Not one to pass up the opportunities associated with a trip to London, i went along to Tate Modern, had a look at the Rachel Whiteread installation,

and the Le Douanier Rousseau exhibition.

Walking back along Southbank, the National Theatre looked cool, all lit up.

Back through town,

continuing the cheapskate act, i forwent the tube and walked back to Kings Cross, ready to make a start on the year.

Christmas in London

Spending Christmas away from the family fold, various Australians, including Brother Paul and myself, converged on Clapham to make the best of things. Arriving late afternoon on Christmas eve, first stop was Tesco's to stock up for the festivities. £168 later and we were all turkeyed, porked, puddinged, custarded and wined up, or at least sufficiently equipped to be all of those things and possibly more. A modest evening in anticipation of tomorrow's excitement was extended in scope by the appearance of Mr Timothy J Le Souef, physics and engineering graduate of the University of Western Australia, now resident of Bristol, whom i had seen only briefly in the past three years hence was delighted to share reunion, as was he, no doubt as well as being almost totally incoherent, like overcome with Christmas spirit and stuff.
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Christmas morning saw us spring up, relatively bright and moderately early, to open pressies,

and spread the joy,

and, in some cases, get started on the Christmas cheer.

Straight after breakfast we threw ourselves with great gusto into the preparation of lunch. What we may have lacked in competence, we definitely made up for in enthusiasm.

Paul looked like he knew what he was doing with the turkey,

and he was definitely having a good time:

We weren't sure about the appropriate culinary utilisation, if any, for the turkey neck,

though the obvious (inappropriate) comedy utilisation just had to be pursued.

Paul and I smartened up our act in honour of the main meal,

which turned out to be just as good as we'd hoped:

and was devoured with remarkable gusto:

It was quite a feed, with notable contributions from all (big shout-outs to Paul for the turkey, Alex for the veges and me for numerous trips to the shops for a whole lot of what turned out out to be unnecessary items... ):

and was generally regarded as a worthy substitute for the traditional family meals.

Not long after dinner, it could be, relatively diplomatically, said that the festive cheer got the better of us:

Big ups to Paul for getting through 95% of the above-displayed 1 litre bottle of gin - well done you drunken bastard. I'm certainly in no position to criticise, having concluded the evening a little bit like this:

Meeeeeeh-eeeeh-eeeeh-ry Christmas!!! Thanks for coming everybody!!__________________________________________________________________

Boxing Day was, no big surprises there, a bit slow. Eventually made good of ourselves, moseyed across Clapham Common

to K and A's place for a couple of warm-up rounds, then off to dinner at Nando's.

Headed to the pub for a few more reflective libations,

Things went downhill quickly (again, oops-a-daisy):

Returning to MJs, I wrapped up the evening with a few nice facial expressions,

then turned in for the night, after which my inconsiderate "friends" and sibling decorated me with a beer can and a cardboard tube. I guess.

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Paul had to fly out to Dublin first thing in the morning, to go and adjudicate at the World Debating Championships of the World. As I was up then, having just been for my morning run and done my yoga, I offered to accompany him to the tube station where we had an emotional farewell.

I think i can speak for both of us in saying the main emotion experienced at the time was "a headache".

It was really cold that morning. Cold enough, in fact, for snow!! Wooo-hoooooo!!!!!

Or in Alex's immortal words: (3 c's above middle) Snooooooooooooooooooooooow!!!!!!!!! Here MJ rings her Mum (Hi Jane - word up!!) to give her the first-hand weather report:

In atonement for the festive excesses of the previous few days, a day of cultural sophistication and artistic contemplation was in order. Met a friend from Cambridge, Sinead, at Warren St and moseyed down to the Wallace Collection,

The Wallace Collection is wicked - an unbelievably comprehensive collection of painting, sculpture & decorative arts from 1500s to 1800s that was gathered by one family before being donated to the nation - highlights are Rococo paintings, Boucher, Watteau, Lancret plus the good old Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals, I think you'd all know that one, and Titian's Perseus and Andromeda - fan-ferkin-tastic.

Sinead, being a Londoner originally, just loves being shown around by a poncey know-it-all Australian upstart who has been to London all of 6 times (each of them weekends):

Headed to the National Gallery for a bit more cultural stuff,

to have a look at, amongst other things, the photography exhibition of Tom Hunter - allegedly the first photography exhibition @ the National Gallery!

Met up with MJ & Alex at Tam's place, (she had become engaged only two days before - congrats Tam & Ben!),

Tam and I killed Alex and MJ, fair and square. Wiped the floor with them. Call of the game was Alex: Something to do with ants. MJ: Um er um, anthill? anteater? Alex (after time's up): Antler. Apparently living in France for 8 months is an adequate excuse for losing one's grip on the English language.

Here the winning team revels in its grand and well-deserved victory.

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Headed out to see more sights with Alex and Andrew. All of us are from Perth but, as mentioned above, Alex has been living in France for 8 months, Andrew has been living in Portugal for two years & I, as you avid fans would all know, have been in Cambridge for 7 months. All friends of MJ but none of us really knew each other before Christmas, the adventures that lay ahead would bring us together in ways we'd never imagined. Or something.

We did have a rockin day though, that's for sure. First stop, London Bridge,

where it was real cold,

then past the Monument,

and along the edge of the City,

to the Tower of London,

and a bit of a peepy at the Tower Bridge,

over which we walky-ed to see the Yann-Arthus Bertrand (Earth from the Sky guy) exhibition.

By that stage, it was freakin freezin, so we scurried along the south bank,

to the nearest pub, where we jammed entire plates of Yorkshire pudding dippers into our gasping gullets. That simply wasn't enough, so we had to go back to Clapham for a bit'o'din-dins at The George with The MJ and The Lauren,

before I headed Camward again, bidding London farewell after my longest trip there thus far, in my life ever, in the world, in the whole of time ever. Awesome times - thanks to all involved for a top Xmas!!!!

After a big, productive touristy week in London, Paul came up to Cambridge to take in the country air and imbibe of the scholarly essence that permeates these hallowed lanes.

Naturally we had to show him a good time, which by all accounts we did. A civilised dinner at Audley Cottage, courtesy of Stas and Ben, accompanied by a few glasses of wine,

which was followed by a quick trip to that most salubrious of entertainment establishments, Ballare, better known as Cindy's, which happens to be staffed by some of the most courteous, cultured and sophisticated bouncers you could ever hope to meet.

Plus he got to see how hard I work also.

So, a good balanced perspective there, I think you'll agree.

Things had certainly been wrapping up in Cambridge with end-of-year and Christmas dinners, students and staff departing and things generally heading towards the Christmas holidays. Given that the decorations had been up in stores since early September, it's not surprising I guess. I, however, was not slowing down.

The weekend after Amsterdam, Jo and Erin, who used to live in the room in which I now reside, so that would make her my ex-flatmate once removed, were having a housewarming party in London. Another good excuse to get down there, but I'm never one to waste a London trip, so I packed in the action, heading to the Wallace Collection on Saturday afternoon. Or evening really, as it was 3:45 when I arrived there, so the sun was basically down.

The Wallace Collection was amazing, particularly so as i'd consumed the remainder of a little souvenir from Amsterdam, which enabled me to gain certain insights into the paintings, and myself and life and the universe, which i may not have otherwise attained.

Highlights were Frans Hals' Laughing Cavalier (incorrectly named on both counts)

Francois Boucher's tributes to Louis XV: The Rising of the Sun

and The Setting of the Sun

and Titian's Perseus and Andromeda.

Wandered through Marylebone, Soho, etc to Trafalgar Square, seeing the Christmas tree there,

which I'm told is an annual gift from Norway.

Then went south past Big Ben (and the tower containing it, for Big Ben is in fact the bell),

and Westminster Abbey, and along the Thames.

Went to MJ's then headed, with Amsterdam love birds in tow, to Erin & Jo's party. It was great to see Erin & Jo and to check out their cool new apartment. Unfortunately, a bout of laryngitis limited my contributions to conversation; this, as you can imagine, was a great tragedy for all concerned.

Highlight of the night was going over Tower Bridge on the taxi ride home.

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Went to the Rubens exhibition "A Master in the Making" at the National Gallery.

Painting Massacre of the Innocents found in a stately home in Austria in 2001. The owners didn't even like it apparently, so were happy to put it up for auction when it was identified as a Rubens.

It went for £45million.

It was great to see his early works in the exhibition and note how his style developed formatively, then go upstairs to the main collection and compare with his later works.

Dashed back home to ready myself for the arrival of my old PhD supervisor who was paying Cambridge a whistlestop visit somewhere on his way between Wisconsin, Indiana, London and Austria.

Amsterdam

Directly after the festivities detailed in the previous post, I headed home, woke my housemate Kieran and packed my bags for Amsterdam. Having not left the United Kingdom for almost 7 weeks, it was definitely time for a mini-break. We were meeting MJ at Harwich Ferry Terminal, where we embarked for the ride of our lives over the North Sea.

I have never been so sea-sick in my life. Sure not having actually been to bed after imbibing a few post-dinner ports probably didn't help. Nonetheless, thanks to particularly high seas, the ship was rocking back and forth like nobody's business, so much so that one could barely walk 3 metres without being slammed into the wall or the nearby person carrying a tray of red wines and coffees.

Thankfully, having definitely not found my sea legs on the marine journey, I still had my land legs so the train from Hook van Holland to Amsterdam Centraal was pretty painless. Apart from the English yobs in our carriage drinking wine from the bottle and singing lewd songs about once working in Chicago, in a department store, woman came in asking for a nail, I didn't have a nail so I gave her a screw, you get the gist...

My photodocumentation of the evening's events was very poor, so to summarise: Arrived, Crokets (more about them later) and Chips, Heineken, Hotel, Edam and Grolsch for Dinner, Bar, Heineken, Sambuca, Bar 2, Kieran and MJ shack up, Grolsch, Long Walk around Amsterdam... alone boohoo. The latter did yield good photos:

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Raring to go the next morning, we crossed over numerous canals,

and saw a giant clogboat

on our way into the town centre

We had a look at the markets

pretended to be Sinter Klaas,

Tried on some big clogs

and some regular(ish)-sized ones,

and had a bit of lunch.

Dutch Christmas traditions appear to involve retro comical racial stereotypes which I imagine wouldn't be allowed in Australia, or the UK, or most places. But, it is a tradition and, in this age of globalisation, commercialism and marketing-driven cultural homogenisation, they should be cherished.

All this excitement was wearing the children out, so I dropped them off at the hotel and went past the Rijksmuseum,

to the Van Gogh museum.

That was of course amazing: so good to see such a large amount of his work and his contemporaries at once. Plus they have a really good collection of other art. The mushrooms i'd had with my lunch were quite helpful also, in the pretty colours deparment. So it was a very fruitful visit.

When I'd moseyed back to the hotel,

the children hadn't been misbehaving too much so after a quick re-enactment of the Sinter Klaas episode,

we headed out for dinner. I foolishly, yet predictably, took the challenge of surfing the giant clog boat, which wasn't as firmly tethered as I'd previously thought. After a bit of image processing, one may be able to get some appreciation of my self-inflicted predicament:

I emerged dry, and on we went for dinner at an Argentinian steakhouse,

then, in search of further foolish hijinx, to the giant clog (the landlocked one)

and the lions

and off to recount our adventures in a nice little bar, where they were kind enough to play Living on a Prayer for me. Twice.

A very amusing night.

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The next day we had time for one more croket

before embarking back to Britain. But the foolishness didn't stop there.

What a mini-break!

Pembroke Christmas dinner

Not a lot to be said. It's been a good term at Pembroke so it was nice to wrap it up in a dignified manner.