Its been a week since I have updated! Unfortunately that is not because we have been ridiculously busy because life is quite slow in the countryside but simply because we do not have internet! What we are gathering is that since Kiplin Hall is located in such a remote location that we are too far away to get good internet service. A neighbor poked her head in the other day and debunked the myth that the reason we didn't have internet was because our landlord didn't pay the bill (which is what he explained to us). After she explained that it took her five years to get adequate internet, our hopes are starting to dry up to believe that we will have internet in the house. Do not worry though! It is a good thing, I think. We are already learning how to live without having the internet, which is turning out to be quite nice. We have to be a little more creative with how we use our free time instead of spending so much of it online. We are spending more time outside, going for walks, riding bikes, playing soccer-er-football. In fact, everyone is getting soccer. We are all about to buy cleats and shin guards. DuPuy is the ref. There are four guys and four guys which makes it fairly easy to make even teams. We keep varying them up to figure the best match up. Today it will be me, chris, emma and sarah vs. justin, jesse, jenny and zach. Keep posted for the results.
Life without the internet is posing to be a difficult academically. We cannot use google for anything. That means no google maps, no random searches, no ways to procrastinate. We actually have to do all of our work without distractions! Kidding aside, it is annoying to know that if you did not save a google maps pdf properly that you might not be able to do work the whole day (since we are doing site analysis). It is also difficult to do precedent analysis. We are dependent on the random books that people brought, all of which are extremely contemporary which will be interesting to see how their influence will manifest in our contextually traditional projects. LTL, Think/Make, and Diller Scofidio at the moment are our urban precedents, interesting. We now add precedent analysis to our list of things to do behind checking email and facebook when we have about an hour or two of internet use. Studio without internet will be an interesting variation to add to our already mutated version of our 'international' studio. Hopefully, the results will still show magnificent work as DuPuy repeatedly states that we will all produce. God willing.
Anyway, I don't really want to write a daily journal of our adventures because it will probably bore you. I mean it is exciting for us but reading about what we ate for dinner and what game we played at night becomes cumbersome to read. I will try to highlight the more exciting things that happen rather than a play by play, which will hopefully make this a little more enjoyable to read!
Next blog I'll post a little more about what we are doing in studio. It is an interesting project that will hopefully produce interesting results.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
English Countryside--Kiplin Hall!
Friday
Friday consisted of us traveling to Kiplin hall, about four hours north of London. The drive was gorgeous. We lucked out and had great weather, the sunniest day so far in England. It did bother us though that we were trapped in the car, but it at least made for picturesque views. We had a beautiful sunset once we reached Kiplin which set well over the lake on our property. The grounds to the estate are unbelievable. Its almost like its out of a novel. We didn’t explore much because we knew we had an empty pantry so we set out to buy groceries.
The grocery store is about twenty minutes away but it was worth the drive. I bought a week worth of food for 25 pounds, which is about 40 dollars. The only pain was that they charge for bags and I didn’t know that until I finished paying. Most of us didn’t know so we had to individually load all of our groceries into our van. Thankfully we have a big trunk.
We went back to our house and made dinner. We got settled in the place after we got a tour from the groundskeeper. The place is an old carriage house that is recently renovated. Its an L shaped building with a courtyard facing the lake. On the ground level, we have a library (our tv room), a kitchen, a dining room, our studio (which is a big room with four tables), and a guest bedroom. Upstairs there are three bedrooms, two bedrooms for the four girls and one large bedroom, which is more like a loft, for the four guys. DuPuy has his own entrance to his apartment on the ground level, but right now his heat is broken so he sleeping in the guest bedroom.
I am particularly happy with the living conditions. The rooms are spacious. We have all new furniture all of which is from IKEA. The loft is the coolest room in the house so I’m happy to be sleeping there. It is also the warmest. Our first night we had to learn the hard way about our heating system. Even though we had the warmest room, the entire house dropped down to about 7 Celsius and was freezing. We found out that the heat was circuited to drop down so low. Obviously we changed that immediately.
We are going to do a video of our house and the grounds once our internet is working and we will put it on youtube.
Saturday
We spent the day in Richmond scouting out sites for our studio project. We explored the very cool, medieval city of Richmond. We also checked out Easby Abbey, an old ruin from the sixteenth century. Very cool. It was a very relaxing day.
Sunday
We went to Durham. Left about 10:30 am. Took about an hour to get there. The city is beautiful. It reminded me of a British Siena minus the huge plaza. We thought about looking around for sites but we decided to stick with Richmond as the location of our main site.
We broke into two groups and went to coffee shops to use the internet. We were online for about an hour before we met up with DuPuy. It is kind of annoying that we need to depend on coffee shops to use the internet. I am looking forward to when the internet is fixed at Kiplin. I made a blog for the group so hopefully we will use that soon. Our name is British Blitzkrieg. Hopefully no brits will find that offensive.
After surfing the web, we explored the historic part of the city. The atmosphere is very quaint. There old buildings that date back as early as the eleventh century. It is a typical medieval city with extremely narrow streets, with buildings about three stories high, built in a regional style that radiate out from a central square. There are two major buildings within the historic city, the castle and the cathedral.
The castle was built in 1070 and is now used by Durham University. About 150 students live there. It’s basically their version of Stamp with residence halls minus the fact that it is a castle. We went on about an hour tour given to us by a student attending the university. She did a very good job and DuPuy made sure to tell her multiple times about how much he liked it. It made me think of Carolina who gave tour guides in Florence. It seems like a great job to have. You get to talk for an hour and be an expert about something interesting. Then you get paid. Wherever I live next, I might look into giving tours for a historic building in the area.
The castle looked very stereotypical, like what a kindergartener would draw as a castle. The crenellations are probably the biggest reason. We toured the building and became very jealous of the students who live there. It’s almost unbelievable that students get to study in such a magnificent place.
We also visited the stunning Durham Cathedral, which happens to be Dupuy’s favorite cathedral (which is something to say considering he’s been to hundreds). It is built on a cliff so that the westward face, the main entrance, is inaccessible. It makes for a dramatic view. This forces the entrance to be on the sides. The things that are most noticeable once you enter are the huge columns and the dramatic light let in through the clerestory. The columns made the building feel heavy. Every other column is either inscribed or painted which makes for an interesting perspective because it distorts the rhythm of the columns, which is typically consistent. The light was incredible. The orientation allows for light to enter through the clerestory and it reflects well off of the vaults. Both sides have large rose windows. There is noticeably more fenestration (a characteristic of English Cathedrals) than the cathedrals we visited in France.
We stayed for evensong, which is a shortened mass free to the public that runs about thirty minutes long. It combines two choirs together, the men’s and boy’s choir and they sing hymns. It is nice to hear both voices together. We also went to evensong at Westminster Abbey and were able to sit much closer to the choir. This time we sat kind of far away from the choir in the regular pews. I prefer to sit closer because it was much more engaging. Nonetheless, it is a great chance to spend time in the cathedral for free listening to beautiful music.
We were only five deep when we left the cathedral to come home. Sara, Emma and Jesse left early to make dinner for us. They made thai chicken stew, or at least that is my interpretation of the name of the dish. Needless to say, it was delicious. I had two servings. We had a good conversation with DuPuy. We are learning a lot about his insight and his personal life, which adds another layer to this trip that makes it so worthwhile. The boys cleaned up after we ate a tasty apple crisp. We are going to try to have group meals every Sunday. I imagine that the girls will remain the cooks and the boys will continue to clean up. Otherwise dinner will be chili, instant mashed potatoes, frankfurts and canned corn.
Post dinner plans consisted of people splitting up and getting on with their personal endeavors. Some laundry was done. People cleaned their rooms. I read our tech homework, which was very uninteresting (thermal conditions of various building materials). There was a good amount conservation tonight about our daily schedule. We will have tech every morning 10-11. He will teach from Bovill’s slides. He has said repeatedly that he wants it to be interactive so I hope that this means that we will learn this material much better than we do in a lecture setting. We will have studio following tech at 1 and that will go until 5. Ideally we will have it four days a week and split the week up with a field trip for our history class. Weekends will consist of us traveling to nearby sites like we did this weekend (Richmond and Durham). The schedule sounds ideal to me. We maintain this until the end of the month.
I am now preparing for bed, at 11 at night. In fact, I have been ready for bed since ten but I am dragging this out by writing this journal. I like getting tired early; it’s a change of pace from previous schedules. There might even be a chance that we will get eight hours of sleep a night. Can you believe it? I almost can’t. It sounds too good to be true.
Tomorrow we will go to Richmond to pick our site. I have a site in mind. I want to do an infill project that will tear down an existing restaurant and build a mixed-use building with retail on the bottom and a bed & breakfast above. It terminates the view one of the streets off the main square. The street splits and the site is right at the fork. It will cover tectonics, urban issues and adaptive reuse.
Our assignment was given to us rather impromptu. We scouted out potential sites for the group but it now turns out that the sites we found are candidates for our personal sites. We make all the decisions from deciding the site and determining the program. I want to do something simple programmatically so I am learning towards mixed use. I feel like I have done quite a few celebratory buildings and it will be good to do something more discreet. I found a few sites that need work on them but only really found one that fits the urban description that I am looking for. I want a site is located within the city medieval fabric that will require an understanding of the vernacular style and the existing urban conditions. Most of the sites that need help are located on the main road, island buildings that are better suited for celebrated buildings. Emma is considering one of these sites for her project. She wants to do some type of tourism information center, because the existing one is not too substantial.
I’m glad that DuPuy is giving us independence in choosing our sites. We each will have very different projects, which will be refreshing. It seems to be more applicable to post-graduation because we have to learn how to develop initiative and the ability to balance pragmatism and idealism within the creativity of design. It will give us a good sense of what we are made of, which is good and bad for obvious reasons. I see more good than bad and what I do see as bad is probably just scary if distilled down. I am curious to see what we can accomplish in a month. I don’t know how to compare consecutive design with the format we design at in Maryland. I imagine that we will have good results. We are removing so many unhealthy variables that it almost has to be better.
OK I have to go to bed. I will plenty of time to write tomorrow. I am the first to go at 1pm tomorrow and the final crit is at 4:30. I will most likely go to ‘the station’ and use the internet and post this! I can’t wait until we have internet.
Friday consisted of us traveling to Kiplin hall, about four hours north of London. The drive was gorgeous. We lucked out and had great weather, the sunniest day so far in England. It did bother us though that we were trapped in the car, but it at least made for picturesque views. We had a beautiful sunset once we reached Kiplin which set well over the lake on our property. The grounds to the estate are unbelievable. Its almost like its out of a novel. We didn’t explore much because we knew we had an empty pantry so we set out to buy groceries.
The grocery store is about twenty minutes away but it was worth the drive. I bought a week worth of food for 25 pounds, which is about 40 dollars. The only pain was that they charge for bags and I didn’t know that until I finished paying. Most of us didn’t know so we had to individually load all of our groceries into our van. Thankfully we have a big trunk.
We went back to our house and made dinner. We got settled in the place after we got a tour from the groundskeeper. The place is an old carriage house that is recently renovated. Its an L shaped building with a courtyard facing the lake. On the ground level, we have a library (our tv room), a kitchen, a dining room, our studio (which is a big room with four tables), and a guest bedroom. Upstairs there are three bedrooms, two bedrooms for the four girls and one large bedroom, which is more like a loft, for the four guys. DuPuy has his own entrance to his apartment on the ground level, but right now his heat is broken so he sleeping in the guest bedroom.
I am particularly happy with the living conditions. The rooms are spacious. We have all new furniture all of which is from IKEA. The loft is the coolest room in the house so I’m happy to be sleeping there. It is also the warmest. Our first night we had to learn the hard way about our heating system. Even though we had the warmest room, the entire house dropped down to about 7 Celsius and was freezing. We found out that the heat was circuited to drop down so low. Obviously we changed that immediately.
We are going to do a video of our house and the grounds once our internet is working and we will put it on youtube.
Saturday
We spent the day in Richmond scouting out sites for our studio project. We explored the very cool, medieval city of Richmond. We also checked out Easby Abbey, an old ruin from the sixteenth century. Very cool. It was a very relaxing day.
Sunday
We went to Durham. Left about 10:30 am. Took about an hour to get there. The city is beautiful. It reminded me of a British Siena minus the huge plaza. We thought about looking around for sites but we decided to stick with Richmond as the location of our main site.
We broke into two groups and went to coffee shops to use the internet. We were online for about an hour before we met up with DuPuy. It is kind of annoying that we need to depend on coffee shops to use the internet. I am looking forward to when the internet is fixed at Kiplin. I made a blog for the group so hopefully we will use that soon. Our name is British Blitzkrieg. Hopefully no brits will find that offensive.
After surfing the web, we explored the historic part of the city. The atmosphere is very quaint. There old buildings that date back as early as the eleventh century. It is a typical medieval city with extremely narrow streets, with buildings about three stories high, built in a regional style that radiate out from a central square. There are two major buildings within the historic city, the castle and the cathedral.
The castle was built in 1070 and is now used by Durham University. About 150 students live there. It’s basically their version of Stamp with residence halls minus the fact that it is a castle. We went on about an hour tour given to us by a student attending the university. She did a very good job and DuPuy made sure to tell her multiple times about how much he liked it. It made me think of Carolina who gave tour guides in Florence. It seems like a great job to have. You get to talk for an hour and be an expert about something interesting. Then you get paid. Wherever I live next, I might look into giving tours for a historic building in the area.
The castle looked very stereotypical, like what a kindergartener would draw as a castle. The crenellations are probably the biggest reason. We toured the building and became very jealous of the students who live there. It’s almost unbelievable that students get to study in such a magnificent place.
We also visited the stunning Durham Cathedral, which happens to be Dupuy’s favorite cathedral (which is something to say considering he’s been to hundreds). It is built on a cliff so that the westward face, the main entrance, is inaccessible. It makes for a dramatic view. This forces the entrance to be on the sides. The things that are most noticeable once you enter are the huge columns and the dramatic light let in through the clerestory. The columns made the building feel heavy. Every other column is either inscribed or painted which makes for an interesting perspective because it distorts the rhythm of the columns, which is typically consistent. The light was incredible. The orientation allows for light to enter through the clerestory and it reflects well off of the vaults. Both sides have large rose windows. There is noticeably more fenestration (a characteristic of English Cathedrals) than the cathedrals we visited in France.
We stayed for evensong, which is a shortened mass free to the public that runs about thirty minutes long. It combines two choirs together, the men’s and boy’s choir and they sing hymns. It is nice to hear both voices together. We also went to evensong at Westminster Abbey and were able to sit much closer to the choir. This time we sat kind of far away from the choir in the regular pews. I prefer to sit closer because it was much more engaging. Nonetheless, it is a great chance to spend time in the cathedral for free listening to beautiful music.
We were only five deep when we left the cathedral to come home. Sara, Emma and Jesse left early to make dinner for us. They made thai chicken stew, or at least that is my interpretation of the name of the dish. Needless to say, it was delicious. I had two servings. We had a good conversation with DuPuy. We are learning a lot about his insight and his personal life, which adds another layer to this trip that makes it so worthwhile. The boys cleaned up after we ate a tasty apple crisp. We are going to try to have group meals every Sunday. I imagine that the girls will remain the cooks and the boys will continue to clean up. Otherwise dinner will be chili, instant mashed potatoes, frankfurts and canned corn.
Post dinner plans consisted of people splitting up and getting on with their personal endeavors. Some laundry was done. People cleaned their rooms. I read our tech homework, which was very uninteresting (thermal conditions of various building materials). There was a good amount conservation tonight about our daily schedule. We will have tech every morning 10-11. He will teach from Bovill’s slides. He has said repeatedly that he wants it to be interactive so I hope that this means that we will learn this material much better than we do in a lecture setting. We will have studio following tech at 1 and that will go until 5. Ideally we will have it four days a week and split the week up with a field trip for our history class. Weekends will consist of us traveling to nearby sites like we did this weekend (Richmond and Durham). The schedule sounds ideal to me. We maintain this until the end of the month.
I am now preparing for bed, at 11 at night. In fact, I have been ready for bed since ten but I am dragging this out by writing this journal. I like getting tired early; it’s a change of pace from previous schedules. There might even be a chance that we will get eight hours of sleep a night. Can you believe it? I almost can’t. It sounds too good to be true.
Tomorrow we will go to Richmond to pick our site. I have a site in mind. I want to do an infill project that will tear down an existing restaurant and build a mixed-use building with retail on the bottom and a bed & breakfast above. It terminates the view one of the streets off the main square. The street splits and the site is right at the fork. It will cover tectonics, urban issues and adaptive reuse.
Our assignment was given to us rather impromptu. We scouted out potential sites for the group but it now turns out that the sites we found are candidates for our personal sites. We make all the decisions from deciding the site and determining the program. I want to do something simple programmatically so I am learning towards mixed use. I feel like I have done quite a few celebratory buildings and it will be good to do something more discreet. I found a few sites that need work on them but only really found one that fits the urban description that I am looking for. I want a site is located within the city medieval fabric that will require an understanding of the vernacular style and the existing urban conditions. Most of the sites that need help are located on the main road, island buildings that are better suited for celebrated buildings. Emma is considering one of these sites for her project. She wants to do some type of tourism information center, because the existing one is not too substantial.
I’m glad that DuPuy is giving us independence in choosing our sites. We each will have very different projects, which will be refreshing. It seems to be more applicable to post-graduation because we have to learn how to develop initiative and the ability to balance pragmatism and idealism within the creativity of design. It will give us a good sense of what we are made of, which is good and bad for obvious reasons. I see more good than bad and what I do see as bad is probably just scary if distilled down. I am curious to see what we can accomplish in a month. I don’t know how to compare consecutive design with the format we design at in Maryland. I imagine that we will have good results. We are removing so many unhealthy variables that it almost has to be better.
OK I have to go to bed. I will plenty of time to write tomorrow. I am the first to go at 1pm tomorrow and the final crit is at 4:30. I will most likely go to ‘the station’ and use the internet and post this! I can’t wait until we have internet.
Tuesday & Wednesday & Thursday--the rest of london
Tuesday
We went on a boat ride down the Thames to Greenwich. We saw plenty of great historic buildings but not so many great contemporary ones.
Greenwich has impressive historic buildings that are laid out brilliantly that sit on the waterfront. The buildings lie on the base of a hill that has the observatory on its summit. This is where the Greenwich meantime was developed. We learned about camera obscura and other dorky astronomical concepts.
Afterwards we walked under the river through a foot tunnel and checked out Canary Wharf. It’s a large financial district east of the city that is full of large, new skyscrapers. It has the largest building in London Metropolis, the Canada tower. Its built on three levels, similar to La Defense and even has a large rectangular building in the center. There are canals that go throughout the old docklands and are lined with pedestrian walkways. We found a great pizza place right off the canal after we discovered the tube closed down temporarily.
As we headed back to hostel, I started to feel sick. I went to sleep early and missed out on our own pub-crawl.
Wednesday
We were greeted with lousy, British weather on Wednesday morning. I was well on my way to being sick so I was not too thrilled to see this. We headed down to St. Paul’s and accepted that there wouldn’t be a better day to have good weather to see a view of the city. We climbed up the hundreds of stairs to see the various summits both inside and outside of the cathedral. The inside of the cathedral was outstanding. It has the second largest dome in the world only behind St. Peter’s in Rome. The cathedral was designed by Christopher Wren in 1666 ten days after the fire of London burned down the existing one. He did a phenomenal job for only taking ten days to design it. I felt lousy by the time we reached the top but the views were so spectacular that it didn’t really hit me until we were on our way to our next stop.
We didn’t do too much the rest of the day. We went into it knowing it was going to be a half a day, which I was happy about. We went to Liverpool station but decided to take the long, scenic route in the cold rain walking at full-DuPuy pace. We passed the Gherkin, the funny looking, upside down cone building built by Norman Foster. The ground level has large triangles penetrating that bottom that circle the building. I didn’t realize that it had a circular base but I guess I never thought about the ground level much before. We got lost getting to the train station from there and for some reason decided to stay outside once we reached it. I bought a phone while people ate and tried to stay in some kind of warmth.
My health was fading as the day progressed and did not have much energy to go through the rest of the day’s activities. DuPuy conned us into thinking we were going to end early but we kept on doing more things. We visited the Portrait Gallery and spent about an hour looking through the galleries. He realized that we spent more time than anticipated out and about and treated us to the tea and biscuits on the top level of the museum. It was my first teatime but hopefully not the last. It was quite good.
Teatime gave me time to revive and I chose to go out with the group to see Harrods after class. I forgot how over the top it was from when I visited when I was younger. Within seconds of entering, we were told to hold our backpacks in hand, not the most pleasant greeting. A few minutes later we were scolded for walking together in a group. I left there with Emma soon after. I hated its elitism.
Once again I missed pub time and stayed in to read. I didn’t mind too much. Before, Emma and I had a nice dinner at a pasta house that made amazing penne Napolitano that was down the road from our hostel. It was a good recovery night.
Thursday
Thursday was the first day we went north on the tube. We visited Arsenal Stadium and a contemporary Liebskind student center at a London university. Arsenal Stadium was very impressive. They inserted an enormous stadium in dense urban fabric. The most amazing thing about it is that it has no parking; they are dependent completely on public transportation. We might try to get tickets to go to a game. We have already seen how much of a grip ‘football’, as they say, has on their culture. Pubs are packed when a local game is on. We just bought our first football today to play.
We wandered over to the Daniel Liebskind student center. It’s a funky deconstructive building that is in the camp as Gehry’s and Zaha Hadid’s buildings. It is a toned down version of his Toronto museum. The building isn’t accessible to the public but DuPuy tried to charm his way in and might have gotten us a chance to go inside when we go back to London.
Our next stop was on the complete opposite side of the architecture spectrum: the very historical, very creative/innovative Sir John Soane’s museum. Sir John Soane was a prominent architect and art collector of his time and decorated his house in an incredibly eclectic way. He bought three townhouses on a square in a wealthy part of town and connected all three together. The section of the house is phenomenal. He makes a ton of small spaces and periodically open it two or three stories. The best room is in the back where he connects all three back rooms together, but each have a separate roof structure. A written description could not do it justice, thankfully we drew a ton and took a bunch of pictures. This visit is definitely a highlight as of now.
I was still sick and manage to blow through three packs of tissues that I bought that morning. We headed over the classical Tate Britain. They had a beautiful Turner exhibit. Once again I was unimpressed with the contemporary art. I also was unimpressed with the contemporary addition done by James Sterling. I haven’t seem much contemporary architecture to write home about.
We were let out early again and took advantage of a two for one discount at Wagamama that our London pass provided us. Wagamama gave us another delicious meal. I had some type of spicy, vegetabl-y soup that cleared my nasal passages right up. I’m a fan of the restaurant altogether.
I went out for a little bit in order to celebrate our last night in London to the bar next to our hostel. The beer is fairly cheap, but the food is the better deal. We had a good time. Zach, Chris, Justin, Emma and Jesse went out later to whiskey night but somehow missed out the big dollar-shot discount. I heard all about the next day. I, on the hand, stayed in and packed. Most night I went bed early. I was eagerly anticipating going to Kiplin hall.
We went on a boat ride down the Thames to Greenwich. We saw plenty of great historic buildings but not so many great contemporary ones.
Greenwich has impressive historic buildings that are laid out brilliantly that sit on the waterfront. The buildings lie on the base of a hill that has the observatory on its summit. This is where the Greenwich meantime was developed. We learned about camera obscura and other dorky astronomical concepts.
Afterwards we walked under the river through a foot tunnel and checked out Canary Wharf. It’s a large financial district east of the city that is full of large, new skyscrapers. It has the largest building in London Metropolis, the Canada tower. Its built on three levels, similar to La Defense and even has a large rectangular building in the center. There are canals that go throughout the old docklands and are lined with pedestrian walkways. We found a great pizza place right off the canal after we discovered the tube closed down temporarily.
As we headed back to hostel, I started to feel sick. I went to sleep early and missed out on our own pub-crawl.
Wednesday
We were greeted with lousy, British weather on Wednesday morning. I was well on my way to being sick so I was not too thrilled to see this. We headed down to St. Paul’s and accepted that there wouldn’t be a better day to have good weather to see a view of the city. We climbed up the hundreds of stairs to see the various summits both inside and outside of the cathedral. The inside of the cathedral was outstanding. It has the second largest dome in the world only behind St. Peter’s in Rome. The cathedral was designed by Christopher Wren in 1666 ten days after the fire of London burned down the existing one. He did a phenomenal job for only taking ten days to design it. I felt lousy by the time we reached the top but the views were so spectacular that it didn’t really hit me until we were on our way to our next stop.
We didn’t do too much the rest of the day. We went into it knowing it was going to be a half a day, which I was happy about. We went to Liverpool station but decided to take the long, scenic route in the cold rain walking at full-DuPuy pace. We passed the Gherkin, the funny looking, upside down cone building built by Norman Foster. The ground level has large triangles penetrating that bottom that circle the building. I didn’t realize that it had a circular base but I guess I never thought about the ground level much before. We got lost getting to the train station from there and for some reason decided to stay outside once we reached it. I bought a phone while people ate and tried to stay in some kind of warmth.
My health was fading as the day progressed and did not have much energy to go through the rest of the day’s activities. DuPuy conned us into thinking we were going to end early but we kept on doing more things. We visited the Portrait Gallery and spent about an hour looking through the galleries. He realized that we spent more time than anticipated out and about and treated us to the tea and biscuits on the top level of the museum. It was my first teatime but hopefully not the last. It was quite good.
Teatime gave me time to revive and I chose to go out with the group to see Harrods after class. I forgot how over the top it was from when I visited when I was younger. Within seconds of entering, we were told to hold our backpacks in hand, not the most pleasant greeting. A few minutes later we were scolded for walking together in a group. I left there with Emma soon after. I hated its elitism.
Once again I missed pub time and stayed in to read. I didn’t mind too much. Before, Emma and I had a nice dinner at a pasta house that made amazing penne Napolitano that was down the road from our hostel. It was a good recovery night.
Thursday
Thursday was the first day we went north on the tube. We visited Arsenal Stadium and a contemporary Liebskind student center at a London university. Arsenal Stadium was very impressive. They inserted an enormous stadium in dense urban fabric. The most amazing thing about it is that it has no parking; they are dependent completely on public transportation. We might try to get tickets to go to a game. We have already seen how much of a grip ‘football’, as they say, has on their culture. Pubs are packed when a local game is on. We just bought our first football today to play.
We wandered over to the Daniel Liebskind student center. It’s a funky deconstructive building that is in the camp as Gehry’s and Zaha Hadid’s buildings. It is a toned down version of his Toronto museum. The building isn’t accessible to the public but DuPuy tried to charm his way in and might have gotten us a chance to go inside when we go back to London.
Our next stop was on the complete opposite side of the architecture spectrum: the very historical, very creative/innovative Sir John Soane’s museum. Sir John Soane was a prominent architect and art collector of his time and decorated his house in an incredibly eclectic way. He bought three townhouses on a square in a wealthy part of town and connected all three together. The section of the house is phenomenal. He makes a ton of small spaces and periodically open it two or three stories. The best room is in the back where he connects all three back rooms together, but each have a separate roof structure. A written description could not do it justice, thankfully we drew a ton and took a bunch of pictures. This visit is definitely a highlight as of now.
I was still sick and manage to blow through three packs of tissues that I bought that morning. We headed over the classical Tate Britain. They had a beautiful Turner exhibit. Once again I was unimpressed with the contemporary art. I also was unimpressed with the contemporary addition done by James Sterling. I haven’t seem much contemporary architecture to write home about.
We were let out early again and took advantage of a two for one discount at Wagamama that our London pass provided us. Wagamama gave us another delicious meal. I had some type of spicy, vegetabl-y soup that cleared my nasal passages right up. I’m a fan of the restaurant altogether.
I went out for a little bit in order to celebrate our last night in London to the bar next to our hostel. The beer is fairly cheap, but the food is the better deal. We had a good time. Zach, Chris, Justin, Emma and Jesse went out later to whiskey night but somehow missed out the big dollar-shot discount. I heard all about the next day. I, on the hand, stayed in and packed. Most night I went bed early. I was eagerly anticipating going to Kiplin hall.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
This is a journal entry from earlier in the week. First time I had internet access to post it. I will post more about the rest of the week and our transition to northern England.
Sunday morning Emma, Chris, Jenny and I went to Hillsong. We really liked the service. I thought the message was right on. The facilities are impressive. They are located in the center of the city and are renting a theater.
We went out the night before to a club in the city. It was an interesting experience to say the least. We went to Soho which is there main bar area and we settled fairly quickly on a club. We decided to go to a club instead of a pub because we thought that this would be one of the few nights this semester we will be able to go out. I prefer pubs. It was an ok time, it is definitely not my scene. Its too superficial and way too expensive. We met an awesome British guy on our way out who gave us some advice about the area. He also knew a lot about American history. And he liked Bush. It was refreshing to meet someone in Europe who doesn’t hate conservative American politics.
We move at a very quick pace. This is kind of like Paris except that we do not draw nearly as much, which for now is something that I enjoy. Its nice to walk around the city and absorb all the information DuPuy tells us.
We checked out Southwark and Tower London after church. We spent most the day walking around. We saw some great new architecture projects. I really like the converted marketplaces. We also saw the new Norman Foster’s City Hall building on the water. I’m not a huge fan of it, but the rest of the complex was interesting. It morphed into the boardwalk that spanned the river. We also visited the Design Museum. They displayed David Chipperfield’s work who has some cool projects throughout Europe. The museum itself was very nice. It was located right on the water and had a great view of the city. It was also the first time we saw blue sky. The weather has lived up to its reputation so far.
It rained today. We spent most of the day outside too. We toured Hampton Court which is the old royal palace now converted into a museum. There are a ton of gardens. They have a famous maze that I remember visiting when I visited in middle school. We spent a few hours roaming around and then went into the town of Richmond. We ate Wagamama, which is one of the more popular restaurants that are here. It was so good—it’s a combo of thai and Vietnamese. The town was cool. It was a typical British mid-size suburb that had a ton of shops and cafés. It had some really nice houses too.
We were let out early and went to the movies. We have a London pass that gives us free access to loads of places within the city. We went to an independent theater and saw a three-hour movie about prison life. It was way too intense and graphic. And long. Afterwards, Emma and I went out on a date to a restaurant that had a twenty percent discount because our pass. It was my first time going to an Indian restaurant. I really liked it. We had a nice date and got to spend some time together, which is a good change of pace from being with the group so much.
We are having a great time overall. Our week is flying by but it amazes me how quick we are learning the city. I like London a lot. I am happy though that we will spend time in the countryside. It will be a great change of scenery.
Sunday morning Emma, Chris, Jenny and I went to Hillsong. We really liked the service. I thought the message was right on. The facilities are impressive. They are located in the center of the city and are renting a theater.
We went out the night before to a club in the city. It was an interesting experience to say the least. We went to Soho which is there main bar area and we settled fairly quickly on a club. We decided to go to a club instead of a pub because we thought that this would be one of the few nights this semester we will be able to go out. I prefer pubs. It was an ok time, it is definitely not my scene. Its too superficial and way too expensive. We met an awesome British guy on our way out who gave us some advice about the area. He also knew a lot about American history. And he liked Bush. It was refreshing to meet someone in Europe who doesn’t hate conservative American politics.
We move at a very quick pace. This is kind of like Paris except that we do not draw nearly as much, which for now is something that I enjoy. Its nice to walk around the city and absorb all the information DuPuy tells us.
We checked out Southwark and Tower London after church. We spent most the day walking around. We saw some great new architecture projects. I really like the converted marketplaces. We also saw the new Norman Foster’s City Hall building on the water. I’m not a huge fan of it, but the rest of the complex was interesting. It morphed into the boardwalk that spanned the river. We also visited the Design Museum. They displayed David Chipperfield’s work who has some cool projects throughout Europe. The museum itself was very nice. It was located right on the water and had a great view of the city. It was also the first time we saw blue sky. The weather has lived up to its reputation so far.
It rained today. We spent most of the day outside too. We toured Hampton Court which is the old royal palace now converted into a museum. There are a ton of gardens. They have a famous maze that I remember visiting when I visited in middle school. We spent a few hours roaming around and then went into the town of Richmond. We ate Wagamama, which is one of the more popular restaurants that are here. It was so good—it’s a combo of thai and Vietnamese. The town was cool. It was a typical British mid-size suburb that had a ton of shops and cafés. It had some really nice houses too.
We were let out early and went to the movies. We have a London pass that gives us free access to loads of places within the city. We went to an independent theater and saw a three-hour movie about prison life. It was way too intense and graphic. And long. Afterwards, Emma and I went out on a date to a restaurant that had a twenty percent discount because our pass. It was my first time going to an Indian restaurant. I really liked it. We had a nice date and got to spend some time together, which is a good change of pace from being with the group so much.
We are having a great time overall. Our week is flying by but it amazes me how quick we are learning the city. I like London a lot. I am happy though that we will spend time in the countryside. It will be a great change of scenery.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
First Day in England
I think I'm converting this into my travel blog. Now it will be catered to England, hence the title.
I pre-wrote this because internet is expensive.
England
The past two days have been great. I’m exhausted because we have already toured the city. Du Puy, our professor, knows how to travel well.
Our flight was smooth. We had a direct flight. The flight took about seven hours. Its ahead of us by five hours so we landed at 7am.
On our first day, we were fairly busy. We checked into our hostel. Our hostel is more family oriented than youth, so it’s by no means a place for people to party at. It’s very nice. Our room has four bunks for the four guys. The room is pretty big for hostel standards. We will be here until next Friday.
After we checked into our hostel we explored the area. We’re staying near St. Pancras/ King’s Cross. It’s a little out of the central part of the city but there are plenty of restaurants and places to visit nearby. We had to push through the jet lag so we walked a good couple miles at DuPuy’s pace, which is surprisingly fast for a sixty-five year old man who just got off of a plane without much sleep. We saw a good amount for the brief walk, which is starting to become a theme of the trip.
We had to take a two-hour nap because we were dying. It really helped to revive us. It was not nearly as bad of a transition as it was when I went to Paris. I just took a shot of espresso and I was ready to go. We headed down to Covent Garden, which is a converted marketplace into a retail area, and had a few beers. We decided to drink first then eat, I don’t really know why, so consequently we felt the beer a little than we would have otherwise. We stayed out until about 9pm, until we could really stand up without passing out. Besides the exhaustion, we had a great night.
Today we had an even busier day. This is a good preview of what the trip will be like. We will pretty much be up at 8am, eat breakfast, meet DuPuy at 9am somewhere in the city, and then site see until about 5pm. Today we saw a bunch of things. We toured St. Paul’s and the surrounding area. The cathedral is beautiful. We walked along the river and saw a good chunk of development. We went on a tour of the Globe Theater, very cool. We had a charming Scottish actress give us a tour. She had the greatest accent I’ve heard so far. We continued down the river, passed the Bank of London along the way, or that might have been earlier in the day, and eventually crossed the millennium bridge. We explored Tate Modern a bit. We were wiped out so Emma and I only stayed on one floor. I am beginning to accept that contemporary art is generally not my cup of tea. I might be a little too prudish for some of the content or unintelligent.
DuPuy then released us to go off on our own. On our walk home, we found a good hamburger place to eat dinner. It was pretty expensive. It cost 10 pounds, which is about 16 dollars. And I think that is not very expensive for London standards. We will most likely go over our weekly per diem.
We pretty much walked everywhere. At one point, we took a bus and that my feet were incredibly appreciate of it. My feet are still in a little bit of pain from today. I have to get use to this pace. It’s a bit of a contrast to the very limited walking I did this winter break. My body notices the difference for sure.
We are preparing our plans for tonight now. Since this is our only Saturday night in London, the general sentiment is that this will be our big night out. We have a few recommendations from the front desk where to go. I have a feeling it will be a good night.
Emma and I are going to Hillsong tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it.
I pre-wrote this because internet is expensive.
England
The past two days have been great. I’m exhausted because we have already toured the city. Du Puy, our professor, knows how to travel well.
Our flight was smooth. We had a direct flight. The flight took about seven hours. Its ahead of us by five hours so we landed at 7am.
On our first day, we were fairly busy. We checked into our hostel. Our hostel is more family oriented than youth, so it’s by no means a place for people to party at. It’s very nice. Our room has four bunks for the four guys. The room is pretty big for hostel standards. We will be here until next Friday.
After we checked into our hostel we explored the area. We’re staying near St. Pancras/ King’s Cross. It’s a little out of the central part of the city but there are plenty of restaurants and places to visit nearby. We had to push through the jet lag so we walked a good couple miles at DuPuy’s pace, which is surprisingly fast for a sixty-five year old man who just got off of a plane without much sleep. We saw a good amount for the brief walk, which is starting to become a theme of the trip.
We had to take a two-hour nap because we were dying. It really helped to revive us. It was not nearly as bad of a transition as it was when I went to Paris. I just took a shot of espresso and I was ready to go. We headed down to Covent Garden, which is a converted marketplace into a retail area, and had a few beers. We decided to drink first then eat, I don’t really know why, so consequently we felt the beer a little than we would have otherwise. We stayed out until about 9pm, until we could really stand up without passing out. Besides the exhaustion, we had a great night.
Today we had an even busier day. This is a good preview of what the trip will be like. We will pretty much be up at 8am, eat breakfast, meet DuPuy at 9am somewhere in the city, and then site see until about 5pm. Today we saw a bunch of things. We toured St. Paul’s and the surrounding area. The cathedral is beautiful. We walked along the river and saw a good chunk of development. We went on a tour of the Globe Theater, very cool. We had a charming Scottish actress give us a tour. She had the greatest accent I’ve heard so far. We continued down the river, passed the Bank of London along the way, or that might have been earlier in the day, and eventually crossed the millennium bridge. We explored Tate Modern a bit. We were wiped out so Emma and I only stayed on one floor. I am beginning to accept that contemporary art is generally not my cup of tea. I might be a little too prudish for some of the content or unintelligent.
DuPuy then released us to go off on our own. On our walk home, we found a good hamburger place to eat dinner. It was pretty expensive. It cost 10 pounds, which is about 16 dollars. And I think that is not very expensive for London standards. We will most likely go over our weekly per diem.
We pretty much walked everywhere. At one point, we took a bus and that my feet were incredibly appreciate of it. My feet are still in a little bit of pain from today. I have to get use to this pace. It’s a bit of a contrast to the very limited walking I did this winter break. My body notices the difference for sure.
We are preparing our plans for tonight now. Since this is our only Saturday night in London, the general sentiment is that this will be our big night out. We have a few recommendations from the front desk where to go. I have a feeling it will be a good night.
Emma and I are going to Hillsong tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
End of Prague, Crete and Santorini
So I haven't had much time to update. The hostels we've been at have charged for internet. Its lame. And they are kind of expensive. Anyway, the hostel I'm at gives an hour for free which I've spent a half an hour using already somehow on the internet. It goes so quickly.
So recap:
I was in Prague earlier this week. We left super early wednesday morning, 5am, to fly to Heraklion in Crete. We stayed there for two days. Loved it there. Took a ferry very early in the morning to Santorini. Stayed there for two days also. And I also loved it. Then, we took a ferry this morning, six hour long ride, to Athens. And in the few hours we've been here, its not my favorite. Its very dirty. And we're staying in the nice area.
So what have I done? The rest of Prague consisted of a few days of relaxing. Traveling is somehow taxing on your body so I spent a whole day lounging around. Initially, I felt guilty for staying inside but at the same time, if I'm not going to enjoy myself if I go out then there isn't much of a point. I think the traveling jitter is a little over-rated. At the end of the day, you have to enjoy yourself. At least thats my two cents. I think Leslie would argue with me on that point.
I felt like my time in Prague was more about meeting some really awesome people. I liked it alot. The bar in the basement of the hostel made it easy to meet people. And the beer was only a dollar, less than, so you could spend a decent amount of time down there without spending a lot of money. I also watched a few movies. I was conned in to watching Dirty Dancing. Ok, maybe I had a small choice in the matter, but anyway, I hope my masculinity is not increduluous after this statement but I enjoyed it. There were moments of pure corniness, but overall I was very entertained. Later, I think the next night, there was a large group of people watching another chick flick, What Women Want, and I really didn't like it. I realized that I don't dislike "chick flicks" for the romance, its just when they are so poorly acted, directed, scripted-- they just are lousy films. And, at least Dirty Dancing at some meat to it, ya know, like a little class rivalry, a commentary on life in the 60s, but God, the other one just sucked. There was nothing too it. I liked Helen Hunt though. Anyway, we also watched Into the Wild and Hitmen. Into the Wild has faded on me. I still like it but I think I get more frustrated by it more than anything. His search in a way is too romanticized, but they still show the pain he caused, I don't know, I feel ambivalent towards it. OK I'm becoming self-conscious of my movie review when I "should" be talking about my exciting adventures in Prague.
Lets see, one day I spent going around the city finding buildings I liked to draw them. I met some nice people along the way. I found a friendly couple from Kansas in Starbucks who were Christians. They were very excited to hear that I am a Christian. Later that day, I met two dutch girls in a pizza place. Had a really nice converation with them. They spoke english flawlessly. I think their vocabulary is larger than mine.
Oh! I forget which day this was but I met up with Gina Gregorian, a girl who from my church, for dinner. It was her last night Prague. She lived there for the past year teaching high school kids english. She had fun stories to tell. Her comparison of the Czech education system to ours was interesting. The main difference she said was that the Czech kids are given much more freedom. High schools in the US are much more legalistic about stupid rules.
The next day I didn't go to as many places. My goal was to see Fred and Ginger, a Frank Gehry apartment complex. I really liked it. It was on a corner site. It is also called the dancing house because the left part of the house, Ginger, looks like she is dancing, while the right part of the house, Frank, is holding her. Its a neat metaphor represented in architecture. I thought it was successful in that it didn't overwhelm the streetscape. It definitely had a strong presence too it but not as much as some of his other work.
I was sad that I didn't get contact info from some of the people I met. Its odd to connect with someone, hang out with them a few nights, and just never see them again. People just come and go so quickly. Its a little tough if thats your life for a while.
OK, I don't have much more time.
Crete was one of the most beautiful places. I liked it a little more than santorini, which I didn't expect. Well, the hostel we stayed at persuaded me. It was the most beautiful hotel I've ever been too. The manager I think hooked us up with a nicer apartment for the heck of it too. The view was incredible. The was design of the place was incredible. The food was incredible. All good things to say about Crete. We only had two days there. One day was spent on the beach, roaming the little downtown, and checking out one of the bars. The other day we spent at the Minoan Palace in Knossos. I was off that day so I don't think I soaked it in as much as Aaron, who is a classics major, who's main reason to come on this trip was to go there. I'm glad I went still. We explored Heraklion, the main city, for a bit, and I lost Aaron and Leslie. I had to go home alone. It wasn't too bad, just a little frustrating. We didn't go out afterwards because we had to wake up early for our ferry ride to Santorini.
Santorini was interesting. Interesting in terms of my expectation. I think that whenever a place is hyped up too much, it just can never meet that expectation. I think that happened for me. I wasn't as enthralled with it as I thought I'd be. However, I still really liked it. The first day we got there we rented ATVs. That was the most fun I've had on the trip. Hands down. I loved it. You're allowed to ride the ATVs on the main roads. So Leslie and I explored the island. We went to the less touristy part the first night. We really enjoyed it. The next day we went on a tour. It was expensive! But we visited very cool places. We went to remains of a volcano, swam in the hot springs adjacent to it and saw the most beautiful sunset ever! Spectacular.
OK I have to go! Ahtens for two more days. then italy!
So recap:
I was in Prague earlier this week. We left super early wednesday morning, 5am, to fly to Heraklion in Crete. We stayed there for two days. Loved it there. Took a ferry very early in the morning to Santorini. Stayed there for two days also. And I also loved it. Then, we took a ferry this morning, six hour long ride, to Athens. And in the few hours we've been here, its not my favorite. Its very dirty. And we're staying in the nice area.
So what have I done? The rest of Prague consisted of a few days of relaxing. Traveling is somehow taxing on your body so I spent a whole day lounging around. Initially, I felt guilty for staying inside but at the same time, if I'm not going to enjoy myself if I go out then there isn't much of a point. I think the traveling jitter is a little over-rated. At the end of the day, you have to enjoy yourself. At least thats my two cents. I think Leslie would argue with me on that point.
I felt like my time in Prague was more about meeting some really awesome people. I liked it alot. The bar in the basement of the hostel made it easy to meet people. And the beer was only a dollar, less than, so you could spend a decent amount of time down there without spending a lot of money. I also watched a few movies. I was conned in to watching Dirty Dancing. Ok, maybe I had a small choice in the matter, but anyway, I hope my masculinity is not increduluous after this statement but I enjoyed it. There were moments of pure corniness, but overall I was very entertained. Later, I think the next night, there was a large group of people watching another chick flick, What Women Want, and I really didn't like it. I realized that I don't dislike "chick flicks" for the romance, its just when they are so poorly acted, directed, scripted-- they just are lousy films. And, at least Dirty Dancing at some meat to it, ya know, like a little class rivalry, a commentary on life in the 60s, but God, the other one just sucked. There was nothing too it. I liked Helen Hunt though. Anyway, we also watched Into the Wild and Hitmen. Into the Wild has faded on me. I still like it but I think I get more frustrated by it more than anything. His search in a way is too romanticized, but they still show the pain he caused, I don't know, I feel ambivalent towards it. OK I'm becoming self-conscious of my movie review when I "should" be talking about my exciting adventures in Prague.
Lets see, one day I spent going around the city finding buildings I liked to draw them. I met some nice people along the way. I found a friendly couple from Kansas in Starbucks who were Christians. They were very excited to hear that I am a Christian. Later that day, I met two dutch girls in a pizza place. Had a really nice converation with them. They spoke english flawlessly. I think their vocabulary is larger than mine.
Oh! I forget which day this was but I met up with Gina Gregorian, a girl who from my church, for dinner. It was her last night Prague. She lived there for the past year teaching high school kids english. She had fun stories to tell. Her comparison of the Czech education system to ours was interesting. The main difference she said was that the Czech kids are given much more freedom. High schools in the US are much more legalistic about stupid rules.
The next day I didn't go to as many places. My goal was to see Fred and Ginger, a Frank Gehry apartment complex. I really liked it. It was on a corner site. It is also called the dancing house because the left part of the house, Ginger, looks like she is dancing, while the right part of the house, Frank, is holding her. Its a neat metaphor represented in architecture. I thought it was successful in that it didn't overwhelm the streetscape. It definitely had a strong presence too it but not as much as some of his other work.
I was sad that I didn't get contact info from some of the people I met. Its odd to connect with someone, hang out with them a few nights, and just never see them again. People just come and go so quickly. Its a little tough if thats your life for a while.
OK, I don't have much more time.
Crete was one of the most beautiful places. I liked it a little more than santorini, which I didn't expect. Well, the hostel we stayed at persuaded me. It was the most beautiful hotel I've ever been too. The manager I think hooked us up with a nicer apartment for the heck of it too. The view was incredible. The was design of the place was incredible. The food was incredible. All good things to say about Crete. We only had two days there. One day was spent on the beach, roaming the little downtown, and checking out one of the bars. The other day we spent at the Minoan Palace in Knossos. I was off that day so I don't think I soaked it in as much as Aaron, who is a classics major, who's main reason to come on this trip was to go there. I'm glad I went still. We explored Heraklion, the main city, for a bit, and I lost Aaron and Leslie. I had to go home alone. It wasn't too bad, just a little frustrating. We didn't go out afterwards because we had to wake up early for our ferry ride to Santorini.
Santorini was interesting. Interesting in terms of my expectation. I think that whenever a place is hyped up too much, it just can never meet that expectation. I think that happened for me. I wasn't as enthralled with it as I thought I'd be. However, I still really liked it. The first day we got there we rented ATVs. That was the most fun I've had on the trip. Hands down. I loved it. You're allowed to ride the ATVs on the main roads. So Leslie and I explored the island. We went to the less touristy part the first night. We really enjoyed it. The next day we went on a tour. It was expensive! But we visited very cool places. We went to remains of a volcano, swam in the hot springs adjacent to it and saw the most beautiful sunset ever! Spectacular.
OK I have to go! Ahtens for two more days. then italy!
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Prague
Here comes an update from PRAGUE!
The city is wonderful. It is very different though than others cities I've been to in Europe. For one, it's in eastern europe. The rule of communism just ended about twenty years ago and an economic collapse followed it in the 90's. The city wasn't visisted much until the late 90's which was popularized by the late michael jackson. Who knew. The effects of communism are still so present that the difference between a western city is very noticeable. Our tour guide yesterday lived during the communist rule and had horrible stories to explain what life was like.
I'm fascinated to compare my life in America to the cirumstances given to those in other countries. We are so blessed to live freely that we don't understand hardship that exists around the world. A part of me worries that there is something in human nature that exists to prepare for crisis. So many generations throughout history have needed to endure some type of crisis that it their life was dedicated more to survival than living. To remove the need of such a dramatic purpose, I wonder if people back home are just waiting for something to activate their need to live. They need some type of crisis to realize who they are. Maybe its not in human nature, maybe its something that doesn't require a crisis, but maybe it is something that is the cause of apathy that a catastrophe is the only thing to wake people out such a slumber. I am not too clear about what exactly I'm trying to say but I feel something intensely when I think about what I have had to experience growing up and the millions of other people who have had to live in such dire circumstances.
The trip started three days ago after Leslie, Aaron and I flew into the city from Barcelona. The trip was great. It was a very smooth transition to get here. I was happy that I didn't get any discomfort from the pressure change. I think I might be better from the cause of the intense pain. Oh yeah, Andrea left us to go to Madrid to visit her uncle. So now its just the three of us.
Its nice to travel with two other people. Its a managable number of people to be with. And I like Leslie and Aaron. I met Aaron here. He knows Leslie through some Jewish connection back home. They are both educating me on both the social and religious aspects of the Jewish culture. Aaron just graduated from the business school and with a classics degree too which will come in handy when we visit Greece. He just got a job in the City so he wanted to travel with us before he settles down.
I'm starving and I realize I have a lot to say so I'm going to get food first.
ok, I ate some pizza, napped, gave the hostel my dirty clothes to do laundry (wonderful service), and talked to emma, jordan and emily. Good little break. I also met two guys staying in the room next to me.
The plan for tonight is to go the bar at 8ish, spend some time there, and i think there are two options for clubs. We can go to either the one went to last night or go to the largest club in prague, supposedly. The hostel is organizing a pub crawl tonight which I think ends at the club from last night. A few people that I went with last night want to check out a different club. We'll see which one I go to.
Overall, Prague has been great. This part of the trip is more about going out than Barcelona. I forgot how much I love to go out. I haven't gone out like this since freshamn year of high school. Thankfully, now I'm a little more mature so I can handle it much better. Its a lot of fun to meet such a diverse group of people. Although, last night, I was mostly with people from the US. Still though, its a lot of fun. People are more willing to open up than back home because we're all out of our comfort zone which makes it so easy to meet people. Barcelona was different. We didn't go out at all nor did we meet too many people. At the time though, it was fine. We were so busy that we didn't need to go out.
To sum up what I've been doing the past few days, I'll begin with the day we flew in. As I said, our flight was really smooth. I met a couple from Portugal on the line. Well, they weren't actually from Portugal, the girl from Czech and studied in Portugal and he was from Northern Portugal. They met at university in the south. They were interesting people. They both were very friendly and spoke impeccable english. They decided to meet in Barcelona for a weekend date because they went on a few dates in Portugal. Some life. He was just waiting on line for her to get checked in because he was on his way to China for two years to practice his fifth language. They both advised that I should travel before going to graduate school. They were shocked that I was twenty and wanted to go straight through. I guess its not typical to do that in Europe. People take a lot of time off to figure out what they want to before they go back. The more I think about, the more positive I am that I am going to take a break. I just have to figure out what I would do during that year off.
Anyway, so she was very helpful. She was actually reading a book that I bought for my friend on the plane called Captivating. Its a Christian book that I don't think was too popular. I thought it was pretty random. She was also sitting my seat accidently. It was weird. She gave us her email to advise us on good places to visit. She also recommended a taxi service that saved us a lot of time and headaches that took us directly from the airport to our hostel. Czech is so different that its fairly difficult to figure your way around. However, thanks to globalization, everyone and everything is spoken/written in english. At every restaraunt we went to, the menu was italicized in english and the waitress spoke english well. Also to our advantage, the alphabet is no longer in scyrllic, the alphabet Russian uses, I think, so we can at least attempt to read the words. It makes it easier to remember where to go even though we don't know what we're saying.
We got to the hostel around 7 pm. Its a very nice hostel. Its contemporary and has a more urban feel to it than the other hostels. It also has a free computer lab with about ten computers in it which is so helpful. It allows me to take hours on the computer to write this entry. Our room is at the very top. All three of us are sharing a room. We have a nice balcony. The set up of our room is interesting because its a converted apartment. So, rather than having our own room in a hallway, we have a bedroom of an apartment. About ten people sleep in the living room. We have a little kitchen and a nice bathroom that we share. Thankfuilly, there is an elevator so we don't have to hike six flights of stairs everytime we need to leave or come home.
Another nice amenity that is new to our adventure is the bar located in the basement. Its a nice bar, decently sized with cheap drinks. A nice sized beer is twenty crowns, which is about 80 cents. Its a great way to meet people. I mentioned before that past two nights that I went out began at the bar where I just met people there. Its open til 12:30 so what we've done previously is go out after it closes. Tonight will be different because the hostel is organizing the post-bar activity so they will take us to the club. I guess we're getting a discount. And if its pub crawl, I guess we will venture to other bars.
The first night we were here, Leslie and I ate dinner at a nice restaraunt up the road that a worker recommended. It was delicious and so cheap! After Paris, anything is dirt cheap. We paid six euros for a full dinner. And it was better than most of the meals I had in Paris. I tried garlic soup, rabbit and sometime of potato dish. Everything was great. The rabbit tasted like chicken. The potatoes were made with egg so the texture was really cool. It felt like al dente pasta. I really liked it. After dinner and a nice conversation with Leslie, we went to check the bar out. Aaron met up with after he found a Kosher restaraunt to eat at. There were quite a few people there when we walked in. I felt like I was a high school party at first. The climatic walk down the stairs, the loud music, the awkward initial looks, the crowd forming at the bar. But after a few minutes, I realized it was nothing like it. People were very friendly and were curious to meet each other. I met some swedish guys, two guys from colorado, and another guy from LA. I talked to the kid from Colorado who did architecture for most of the night. We spent about two hours there before a really drunk Australian kid rounded everyone up to go a bar downtown. About fifteen us left to go take the tram there. We get to the tram, and the ticket station is locked inside the tabac so to get on the tram would be a 700 crown risk that I wasn't willing to take if we were caught without tickets. About half the group jumped on the tram, the other half stayed off. I especially didn't want to get on the tram with the really drunk kid because of how much attention he would draw. So seven of us walked into town following three guys who did the same walk a few nights before. It was fun to hang out with everyone, but it took a little longer than I liked to get to the first bar. Well, actually, the first bar we went to was closed so we had to improvise to find a second. It took about an hour before we found one. Along the way, some guy petitioned us to go to a strip club to get sucky sucky and licky licky. I was shocked when one of the guys considered it but thankfully, he looked at me, saw my disapproval, and changed his mind. We got to the first bar, got a beer, stayed for maybe ten minutes. They were playing really crappy 80s music. We went to a much nicer bar across the street. We bumped into two guys from the states within a few minutes of walking in and hung out with them for the remainder of the night. The one guy didn't believe I was from Jersey. All he kept of saying was, 'look at your hair, your not from jersey, look at your hair!' I was offended but decided to still talk to him. He went to John Hopkins for Med school. Him and his friend, who was much trashier, were in Prague for about five days. I love hearing the stories of why people are in Prague. More often than not, the people are traveling so its cool to hear where they are coming from and going to. I'm pretty sure that the trashy guy picked up a prostitute that night. He left saying, I hope my girlfriend won't find out. Dirtbag. So we left at about 315 once we had our fair share of listening to crappy 2000s pop, which for the life of me I cannot understand why they listen to it so much. I heard that the popular music from about five years ago becomes popular here. So they were listening to britney spears, missy elliot, fifty cent and the pussy cat dolls. It was deplorable.
We left there and got home at a ridiculous 515 am. I was so pissed. Well more annoyed than pissed because I knew that I had to go on a tour at 930am. It wasn't too bad. I thought I was going to feel like crap the next day but thankfully, I woke up. I tried to bail though when I first woke up but Leslie wisely talked me into going. It was well worth it.
The tour was a six hour walking tour of the city. We saw everything. Our tour guide was great. By 2pm, I felt it; I was tired. I really liked how the tour guide went into depth about the history of the city. I couldn't believe how horrific the conditions were just twenty years ago. It explained too why there was such ugly architecture. I have to admit it, I am underwhelmed by the architecture in the city. The way that most people built it up, I came here expecting a lot, but after seeing Paris, London, Barcelona, and Rome, it just doesn't come close to any of them, in my opinion. And I don't think its Prague's fault, because a lot of the historic buildings were left in dispair during the communist rule, and many unfortunate buildings were built during that time as well. They were so ugly. Overall, it felt dirtier and poorer than other cities. Its logical though, I mean the whole city was under such strict censorship that there wasn't any exploration for good architecture. The ugliest buildings the tour guide pointed out to us were built for the president of the communist government in the 70s. They looked like bad ambrosian studio projects.
We took a boat tour, walked a good bit, and got lunch. It felt like a typical day in Paris minus the drawing. The people who were on the tour were very nice. We met people from all over the world. I particularly liked two couples I sat next to at lunch who where from Belgium and Norway. They also spoke english very well. They had fun opinions about the city and food. They didn't like the food. We had decent beef goulash for lunch. Well the beef was good, the dumplings were crap. We left there to go to possibly the most beautiful Cathedral I've ever seen. I thought of Lacey because the play of light that the church had was amazing. It effected the space well. I want to post pictures of it. I took about hundred pictures. The cathedral was in the center of a castle. The whole area was really beautiful. Leslie and I hung out in the gardens for about two hours after our tour ended. The cafe overlooked the city and we had perfect seats to watch a storm come into the city. We also had a great view of the Fred and Ginger building by Gehry. I actually liked it a lot. From afar at least. We did some quick shopping afterwards. I finally bought some shoes. I'll break them in tonight.
I had no desire to go out last night because I was tired, however, I was persuade by a girl from Middlebury to go while I was sitting downstairs in the bar with Leslie. I'm so happy I went. We went to a 80s 90s club. We left with a group of 15. I only knew one kid so I was little leery to go. Leslie and Aaron were too tired to come out so I was by myself. Within a few minutes though, I befriended a girl from Louisiana who was also alone who was really sweet. I ended up with two guys from LA, the girl who convinced me to go and her friend, a guy from Silver Spring who's now living offshore in Norway, and a brother and sister from Denmark. The other group stayed in a different part of the club. We danced for the whole night. We had so much fun. The group was really nice. Everyone let go and enjoyed it. I honestly haven't had that much in a long time. One of the best nights ever. I was happy I came out to say the least. We got home by 3, not as late as the night before.
Today is my least eventful day of my trip. I stayed in and really enjoyed relaxing. The weather made it easier to do so because it dropped from 80 degrees to 50. And its raining. I'm about to go the grocery story so I have to wrap this up because there are two guys waiting for me. Tonight I'm pretty sure will be fun. I'm excited. I just wish emma was here with me.
The city is wonderful. It is very different though than others cities I've been to in Europe. For one, it's in eastern europe. The rule of communism just ended about twenty years ago and an economic collapse followed it in the 90's. The city wasn't visisted much until the late 90's which was popularized by the late michael jackson. Who knew. The effects of communism are still so present that the difference between a western city is very noticeable. Our tour guide yesterday lived during the communist rule and had horrible stories to explain what life was like.
I'm fascinated to compare my life in America to the cirumstances given to those in other countries. We are so blessed to live freely that we don't understand hardship that exists around the world. A part of me worries that there is something in human nature that exists to prepare for crisis. So many generations throughout history have needed to endure some type of crisis that it their life was dedicated more to survival than living. To remove the need of such a dramatic purpose, I wonder if people back home are just waiting for something to activate their need to live. They need some type of crisis to realize who they are. Maybe its not in human nature, maybe its something that doesn't require a crisis, but maybe it is something that is the cause of apathy that a catastrophe is the only thing to wake people out such a slumber. I am not too clear about what exactly I'm trying to say but I feel something intensely when I think about what I have had to experience growing up and the millions of other people who have had to live in such dire circumstances.
The trip started three days ago after Leslie, Aaron and I flew into the city from Barcelona. The trip was great. It was a very smooth transition to get here. I was happy that I didn't get any discomfort from the pressure change. I think I might be better from the cause of the intense pain. Oh yeah, Andrea left us to go to Madrid to visit her uncle. So now its just the three of us.
Its nice to travel with two other people. Its a managable number of people to be with. And I like Leslie and Aaron. I met Aaron here. He knows Leslie through some Jewish connection back home. They are both educating me on both the social and religious aspects of the Jewish culture. Aaron just graduated from the business school and with a classics degree too which will come in handy when we visit Greece. He just got a job in the City so he wanted to travel with us before he settles down.
I'm starving and I realize I have a lot to say so I'm going to get food first.
ok, I ate some pizza, napped, gave the hostel my dirty clothes to do laundry (wonderful service), and talked to emma, jordan and emily. Good little break. I also met two guys staying in the room next to me.
The plan for tonight is to go the bar at 8ish, spend some time there, and i think there are two options for clubs. We can go to either the one went to last night or go to the largest club in prague, supposedly. The hostel is organizing a pub crawl tonight which I think ends at the club from last night. A few people that I went with last night want to check out a different club. We'll see which one I go to.
Overall, Prague has been great. This part of the trip is more about going out than Barcelona. I forgot how much I love to go out. I haven't gone out like this since freshamn year of high school. Thankfully, now I'm a little more mature so I can handle it much better. Its a lot of fun to meet such a diverse group of people. Although, last night, I was mostly with people from the US. Still though, its a lot of fun. People are more willing to open up than back home because we're all out of our comfort zone which makes it so easy to meet people. Barcelona was different. We didn't go out at all nor did we meet too many people. At the time though, it was fine. We were so busy that we didn't need to go out.
To sum up what I've been doing the past few days, I'll begin with the day we flew in. As I said, our flight was really smooth. I met a couple from Portugal on the line. Well, they weren't actually from Portugal, the girl from Czech and studied in Portugal and he was from Northern Portugal. They met at university in the south. They were interesting people. They both were very friendly and spoke impeccable english. They decided to meet in Barcelona for a weekend date because they went on a few dates in Portugal. Some life. He was just waiting on line for her to get checked in because he was on his way to China for two years to practice his fifth language. They both advised that I should travel before going to graduate school. They were shocked that I was twenty and wanted to go straight through. I guess its not typical to do that in Europe. People take a lot of time off to figure out what they want to before they go back. The more I think about, the more positive I am that I am going to take a break. I just have to figure out what I would do during that year off.
Anyway, so she was very helpful. She was actually reading a book that I bought for my friend on the plane called Captivating. Its a Christian book that I don't think was too popular. I thought it was pretty random. She was also sitting my seat accidently. It was weird. She gave us her email to advise us on good places to visit. She also recommended a taxi service that saved us a lot of time and headaches that took us directly from the airport to our hostel. Czech is so different that its fairly difficult to figure your way around. However, thanks to globalization, everyone and everything is spoken/written in english. At every restaraunt we went to, the menu was italicized in english and the waitress spoke english well. Also to our advantage, the alphabet is no longer in scyrllic, the alphabet Russian uses, I think, so we can at least attempt to read the words. It makes it easier to remember where to go even though we don't know what we're saying.
We got to the hostel around 7 pm. Its a very nice hostel. Its contemporary and has a more urban feel to it than the other hostels. It also has a free computer lab with about ten computers in it which is so helpful. It allows me to take hours on the computer to write this entry. Our room is at the very top. All three of us are sharing a room. We have a nice balcony. The set up of our room is interesting because its a converted apartment. So, rather than having our own room in a hallway, we have a bedroom of an apartment. About ten people sleep in the living room. We have a little kitchen and a nice bathroom that we share. Thankfuilly, there is an elevator so we don't have to hike six flights of stairs everytime we need to leave or come home.
Another nice amenity that is new to our adventure is the bar located in the basement. Its a nice bar, decently sized with cheap drinks. A nice sized beer is twenty crowns, which is about 80 cents. Its a great way to meet people. I mentioned before that past two nights that I went out began at the bar where I just met people there. Its open til 12:30 so what we've done previously is go out after it closes. Tonight will be different because the hostel is organizing the post-bar activity so they will take us to the club. I guess we're getting a discount. And if its pub crawl, I guess we will venture to other bars.
The first night we were here, Leslie and I ate dinner at a nice restaraunt up the road that a worker recommended. It was delicious and so cheap! After Paris, anything is dirt cheap. We paid six euros for a full dinner. And it was better than most of the meals I had in Paris. I tried garlic soup, rabbit and sometime of potato dish. Everything was great. The rabbit tasted like chicken. The potatoes were made with egg so the texture was really cool. It felt like al dente pasta. I really liked it. After dinner and a nice conversation with Leslie, we went to check the bar out. Aaron met up with after he found a Kosher restaraunt to eat at. There were quite a few people there when we walked in. I felt like I was a high school party at first. The climatic walk down the stairs, the loud music, the awkward initial looks, the crowd forming at the bar. But after a few minutes, I realized it was nothing like it. People were very friendly and were curious to meet each other. I met some swedish guys, two guys from colorado, and another guy from LA. I talked to the kid from Colorado who did architecture for most of the night. We spent about two hours there before a really drunk Australian kid rounded everyone up to go a bar downtown. About fifteen us left to go take the tram there. We get to the tram, and the ticket station is locked inside the tabac so to get on the tram would be a 700 crown risk that I wasn't willing to take if we were caught without tickets. About half the group jumped on the tram, the other half stayed off. I especially didn't want to get on the tram with the really drunk kid because of how much attention he would draw. So seven of us walked into town following three guys who did the same walk a few nights before. It was fun to hang out with everyone, but it took a little longer than I liked to get to the first bar. Well, actually, the first bar we went to was closed so we had to improvise to find a second. It took about an hour before we found one. Along the way, some guy petitioned us to go to a strip club to get sucky sucky and licky licky. I was shocked when one of the guys considered it but thankfully, he looked at me, saw my disapproval, and changed his mind. We got to the first bar, got a beer, stayed for maybe ten minutes. They were playing really crappy 80s music. We went to a much nicer bar across the street. We bumped into two guys from the states within a few minutes of walking in and hung out with them for the remainder of the night. The one guy didn't believe I was from Jersey. All he kept of saying was, 'look at your hair, your not from jersey, look at your hair!' I was offended but decided to still talk to him. He went to John Hopkins for Med school. Him and his friend, who was much trashier, were in Prague for about five days. I love hearing the stories of why people are in Prague. More often than not, the people are traveling so its cool to hear where they are coming from and going to. I'm pretty sure that the trashy guy picked up a prostitute that night. He left saying, I hope my girlfriend won't find out. Dirtbag. So we left at about 315 once we had our fair share of listening to crappy 2000s pop, which for the life of me I cannot understand why they listen to it so much. I heard that the popular music from about five years ago becomes popular here. So they were listening to britney spears, missy elliot, fifty cent and the pussy cat dolls. It was deplorable.
We left there and got home at a ridiculous 515 am. I was so pissed. Well more annoyed than pissed because I knew that I had to go on a tour at 930am. It wasn't too bad. I thought I was going to feel like crap the next day but thankfully, I woke up. I tried to bail though when I first woke up but Leslie wisely talked me into going. It was well worth it.
The tour was a six hour walking tour of the city. We saw everything. Our tour guide was great. By 2pm, I felt it; I was tired. I really liked how the tour guide went into depth about the history of the city. I couldn't believe how horrific the conditions were just twenty years ago. It explained too why there was such ugly architecture. I have to admit it, I am underwhelmed by the architecture in the city. The way that most people built it up, I came here expecting a lot, but after seeing Paris, London, Barcelona, and Rome, it just doesn't come close to any of them, in my opinion. And I don't think its Prague's fault, because a lot of the historic buildings were left in dispair during the communist rule, and many unfortunate buildings were built during that time as well. They were so ugly. Overall, it felt dirtier and poorer than other cities. Its logical though, I mean the whole city was under such strict censorship that there wasn't any exploration for good architecture. The ugliest buildings the tour guide pointed out to us were built for the president of the communist government in the 70s. They looked like bad ambrosian studio projects.
We took a boat tour, walked a good bit, and got lunch. It felt like a typical day in Paris minus the drawing. The people who were on the tour were very nice. We met people from all over the world. I particularly liked two couples I sat next to at lunch who where from Belgium and Norway. They also spoke english very well. They had fun opinions about the city and food. They didn't like the food. We had decent beef goulash for lunch. Well the beef was good, the dumplings were crap. We left there to go to possibly the most beautiful Cathedral I've ever seen. I thought of Lacey because the play of light that the church had was amazing. It effected the space well. I want to post pictures of it. I took about hundred pictures. The cathedral was in the center of a castle. The whole area was really beautiful. Leslie and I hung out in the gardens for about two hours after our tour ended. The cafe overlooked the city and we had perfect seats to watch a storm come into the city. We also had a great view of the Fred and Ginger building by Gehry. I actually liked it a lot. From afar at least. We did some quick shopping afterwards. I finally bought some shoes. I'll break them in tonight.
I had no desire to go out last night because I was tired, however, I was persuade by a girl from Middlebury to go while I was sitting downstairs in the bar with Leslie. I'm so happy I went. We went to a 80s 90s club. We left with a group of 15. I only knew one kid so I was little leery to go. Leslie and Aaron were too tired to come out so I was by myself. Within a few minutes though, I befriended a girl from Louisiana who was also alone who was really sweet. I ended up with two guys from LA, the girl who convinced me to go and her friend, a guy from Silver Spring who's now living offshore in Norway, and a brother and sister from Denmark. The other group stayed in a different part of the club. We danced for the whole night. We had so much fun. The group was really nice. Everyone let go and enjoyed it. I honestly haven't had that much in a long time. One of the best nights ever. I was happy I came out to say the least. We got home by 3, not as late as the night before.
Today is my least eventful day of my trip. I stayed in and really enjoyed relaxing. The weather made it easier to do so because it dropped from 80 degrees to 50. And its raining. I'm about to go the grocery story so I have to wrap this up because there are two guys waiting for me. Tonight I'm pretty sure will be fun. I'm excited. I just wish emma was here with me.
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