it’s come to my attention that 1) I still have a blog and 2) I have been terrible at updating it, especially with so many beautiful  things going on!

I came back from Lecce, which was depressing. here are some more [mostly food] photos to make you hungry/jealous/book the next flight to Italy

…but seriously:

rustica

businessmen dinner stance

tagliatelle

caprese

group in the sun

group work

axon view

section view

last lunch, con sartu de riso

finally caught a shot of this amazing villa from the bus

farewell dinner.

hotel tiziano breakfast box

BDG > LIN

LIN > CDG

CDG > EDI

ciao Brindisi!

Milano

en route a Paris.

landing at EDI

back in rainy Glasgow…

…where this is a normal grocery store occurrence

and it snows when it’s sunny

freaky freaky party at art school

trying to maintain my Italian espresso levels

woodlands weekend stretches

then spring arrived!

and then I had lovely visitors and we had brunch at stravaigin

and walked around U of Glasgow

and on a highlands road trip

Loch Lomond

(please see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzQ1pNfbe3Q)

Kings House Hotel for lunch, Glencoe

and we met some beautiful new friends

siblings in scotland!

three sisters of Glencoe

and we were held up in a traffic jam because a wind turbine was trying to cross the bridge

we went on a trek to the southside to find highland coos

and we went to Edinburgh

and had afternoon tea at the Balmoral Hotel

and then Glasgow got super sunny and springy and gorgeous and everyone went outside

favorite tea spot, tchai-ovna

vic at night

sunday roast at the butchershop, complete with yorkshire pudding

gelato for a west end stroll

Glasgow botanic garden

I am currently in Lecce, Italy until February 20th (more on that later) but haven’t updated in a while and have some photos of Glasgow prior to my trip:

Burns night supper and ceilidh at GSA with haggis, neeps and tatties (for reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burns_night)

Now back to Italy. After 3 flights (Edinburg>Paris>Rome>Brindisi) last Sunday, I arrived here in Lecce. I am participating in an intensive program in Climate and Sustainability in Urban Environments, which is completely funded by the EU. Honestly, the journey was exhausting but Lecce is a beautiful city and they have been feeding us like royalty with incredible food and wine so I can’t complain.

Edinburg>Paris

Can you spot the windmills?

Paris>Rome

The sun was so bright and began to cast this yellowish tint on the water – never seen anything like it from the air

Rome>Brindisi

Made it.

First dinner at the hotel : maccherioncini

Lecce (not as warm as it looks..snowed the first day!)

Universita del Salento

Stumbled upon this cool antique market

Breakfast room at the hotel

Pasticciotti leccesi con espresso – pasticciotti are a local treat only made in Lecce – crisp yet very delicate crust filled with warm vanilla custard – amazing!

Roof of the school (used to be a monastery!)

This is a Roman amphitheater where animals used to fight (no gladiators in Lecce) and it held over 10,000 people. It was buried until it was discovered in the 1930s but half of it remains buried because they wouldn’t demolish the church that was built on top of it.

Paper mâché is one of the local crafts of Lecce

Santa Croce (I think)

Napoleon pizza – love this oven setup

Cappuccino con biscotti

Site visit

Privately owned stone quarry (no longer in use, obviously)

Amazing Greek dinner

Believe it or not, we actually do some things not related to food

…then we get back to the food.

The restaurant at our hotel is delicious.

Orchiette con pomodori

Pollo

Gelato

Yesterday we had an incredible day trip. We first went to Gallipoli on the west coast of Salento (the region of Italy we are in), on the Ionian Sea and also to Otrantro on the east coast on the Adriatic.

Eating sea urchins at the fish market in Gallipoli

The local stone of Gallipoli is very unique and is made partially of crushed shells

Ionian Sea – it really is that blue, no photoshop needed!

Driving to Otranto

Thermal baths on the Adriatic (closed for the season)

Then we had a four-course lunch on a farm where all the cheese/vegetables/meat is grown/made. Amazing.

Appetizers

Chickpeas & chicory

Maccheroni

Pork & potatoes

Cake with fruit

After the epic meal, we got off the bus on the side of the highway to check out another abandoned quarry – the color of the water in these photos barely does it justice

Finally arrived in Otranto

We had dinner last night at our hotel, and even ended up at a carnivale party (conveniently also in our hotel)

Today was a much needed lazy day around Lecce

Arancino (rice ball) and espresso with almond milk

View from the hotel, (light) dinner at the hotel

As with other trips, I’ve gotten a lot of heat and jokes this week for my excessive photo-taking but I just can’t help it that everything is so beautiful and photogenic! It took me about four days to put this update together…time to mentally prepare myself (and my stomach) for week number two..

This weekend, I went to Dublin with my friend from school because we had a VIP hookup for the hottest ticket in town, vh1 storytellers with Ed Sheeran at Whelan’s.

Even the immigration agent who stamped my passport knew about the concert:

“How long are you staying in Ireland, Anastasia?”

“Until Monday morning.”

“And why are you here?”

“I’m going to a concert.”

“Oh, so you’re going to go see Ed Sheeran, huh?”

“Actually, yes I am.”

“Ok then, have fun.”

Stamp.

One of the best things about being abroad is that it is super cheap to travel to many other places, including Ireland. Our flight was £19 round trip – about $30.

The concert was awesome and we had the next day to explore the city, although it seemed like many things were closed since it was Sunday. All in all, we had a good time and some delicious food so it was a success.

Door to our room at the hostel…not going to lie, this concerned me a bit

Amazing dinner at The Hairy Lemon: Guinness, Irish stew with brown bread and baked potato, bread and butter pudding

Me and Teresa

Me and Paige

Post show

Next morning

Trinity College

Turner at the National Gallery

Steak pie, mashed potatoes and mushy peas

7am..may as well be 7pm

Back to GLA

I’ve been busy with several deadlines this week and have been trying to get all of my holiday errands done before I leave for the US on Monday morning!

Holiday studio dinner, GSA Christmas “Inferno” ball, wild weather…ending of term 1…

Glasgow style

primary school singing at John Lewis

probably the biggest sweet potato in the UK

studio improvements

OTD : “on the door” (as in, tickets available at the door)

ned : non-educated drunk

tatties : potatoes (cooked, not just loose potatoes at the grocery store)

neeps : mashed turnips

ehm : umm (like what you would say in between words/thoughts)

rasher : thick slice of bacon (but also the only kind of bacon)

crisps : potato chips

chips : French fries

till : cash register

trolley : shopping cart

bin : trash can

jumper : sweater

biscuit : cookie

quid : pound (£…like saying a buck)

tenner : £10 bill

fiver : £5 bill

kitchen roll : paper towels

hamper : either a laundry hamper or a gift basket

trainers : sneakers

To be continued..

Christmas market at night, dinner at Carluccio’s, brunch at school, GSA Christmas concert

(No thanks)

Of course I am a few days late with this post but to be fair I am still stuffing myself with plenty of leftovers and therefore, still in Thanksgiving-mode.

While it was hard to not be at home on Thanksgiving for my first time ever, we hosted a delicious feast for 25ish of our friends last Saturday which, I have to say, was a complete success. I spent the last few weeks gathering and sourcing all of the ingredients that I would need so we had all of the traditional favorites (although, since only 2 of our guests were American, no one would have known the difference)

– turkey (crown, not a full bird) with gravy
– mashed potatoes
– sweet potatoes
– green bean casserole
– cornbread stuffing with apples
– homemade cranberry sauce
– homemade pumpkin pie (with homemade crust)

– additional appetizers and desserts from friends

The biggest challenge was dealing with our convection oven – apparently these are supposed to cook faster and more evenly but it takes literally 2-3x as long to cook anything (plus it’s in Celsius…) I had one in my school apartment in New York and could never get it to cook properly either, so I’m really not sure what the big deal is and I am not a fan.

But anyway – some friends came over the day before to help with the pies and miscellaneous chopping, which was a big help! I also finally bought a microwave last week so that was great for some last minute reheating. None of my international friends had ever eaten a proper thanksgiving so they were all impressed and I was so happy to share our most delicious holiday with them!

My thanksgiving options at Tesco…no thanks

(After my grocery delivery arrived with the turkey!)

Party prep

Took me a LONG time to make sure the turkey was done! Dumb oven.

Plus so many pies.

Happy friends

Happy hostess

Some more beautiful things…

GSA shop at Christmas

Reid lobby at Christmas

George Square at Christmas

Happy plants

Ceilidh fundraiser at school last night

Tea and frangipane for studio

Next week is the last full week of the term so this week = paper writing + presentation prep + hopefully some Christmassy things

It’s been a while and a lot has happened! This week was very busy with school work but for reading week last week, I opted to stay in town since I had a few school appointments scheduled. Here are some of my nice outings:

Tennent’s Brewery

Mackintosh “House for an Art Lover” (not an actual house – built in 1990s, based on a competition design proposal drawings by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife, Margaret MacDonald)

Glasgow Science Center followed by an amazing walk along the Clyde River

James Bay concert at Art School

Miscellaneous walks around the west end including the discovery of a lovely community garden

Kelvingrove Art Gallery

Argyle Street Christmas Market*

*Glasgow has already been in full Christmas-mode for several weeks, which means LOTS of delicious treats to enjoy (including delicious souvlaki at the market!)

Holiday sweets here are THE BEST:

– sticky toffee everything (including lattes)
– mince pies (usually, “mince” refers to ground beef except during the holidays, when it is a sweet pie/tart filling made of fruits like apricots and raisins which are cooked with sugar and brandy, etc. Divine.)
– stollen (technically German but I’m not picky since it’s amazing and plentiful)

Mom requested to see more photos of me, so here you go:

The Pot Still, home of 500 whiskies (I drank about half a dram and had enough)

George Square at night

(Took us a minute to realize this was a fake owl, but the other birds are real)

Kelvingrove Art Gallery, as seen from Kelvingrove Park

Salvador Dali

Only in Scotland…

Best cure for a long week: tea and pecan cheesecake at school

This weekend = preparations for our big Thanksgiving dinner next Saturday!

…I can’t help you – here are some more!

I don’t have class on Tuesday’s, so I took a long walk over to the east end to check out the Glasgow Necropolis, a massive hilltop cemetery. It was really impressive, and a beautiful day to visit: mild weather, not windy, but very dramatic skies.

Some of the monuments were so old and falling over – definitely not a place I would want to be after dark! I especially liked the boldly painted gates of some of the crypts (okay – I admit that’s a weird thing to say)

George Square ready for Christmas

The Tennents Brewery

Then I went to Glasgow Cathedral, right across the street

My walk back was just as beautiful!

Our dear Mac building

The last few days have been mainly sunny, although sometimes quite cold:

…which also means tea and cake is always a good idea.

This is a Gregg’s nut (imposter cronut, I assume)

Post lunch at the Vic

November 5th was Guy Fawkes day, and an annual fireworks celebration/carnival in Glasgow Green. (Sidenote, fireworks can be purchased in supermarkets here. Yep.)

It felt like entire city was out in the park, probably also since it wasn’t raining. We didn’t try any rides, but found the most amazing hot donuts (and watery hot chocolate) to deal with the cold. The fireworks were pretty decent and were synced to superhero music – there was also a full moon!

Yesterday I ventured to Waitrose, which is a much larger and nicer supermarket than the ones closest to our flat. I found some amazing things including mince pies, pale blue eggs, and gingerbread porridge. It’s about 25 minutes from our flat but I have a feeling I will be making the trek often. They also sell Frank’s Redhot – I’m sold!

A few last beautiful things:

This week = reading week and hopefully a trip out of town!