Paris

As you probably know, I went to Paris this weekend with my friend Geoff and two of his friends from his study abroad program. For this trip we took Eurostar, the train company that is most popular over here (equivalent of amtrak). We left at 5:25am and it was a 2 and a half hour journey to the center of Paris at Gare du Nord. Once we got there we checked in at the hotel and headed out to explore the city. The hotel was located in a great area close to the Pantheon and only a few minutes away from Notre Dame. Since I have a keen interest in photography, I'm going to use my photos to provide the commentary of the trip....

This is the Pantheon, the first place we went to see. It was pretty cool but I don't know anything about it so it didn't really mean anything other than a nice site to see.

The gate in front of the Pantheon, kind of interesting

On the walk from the Pantheon to Notre Dame I saw this cool plant

Our second stop was Notre Dame, it was a really cool place, we got to go inside and walk around. There are some amazing stained glass windows inside. It took 200 years to build this thing, very impressive.

I got to borrow my friend Geoff's fisheye lens (to see some of his work: http://www.blipfoto.com/view.php?id=775536)

This was from inside Notre Dame

Moving along quickly, we then went to Hotel de ville, apparently a famous place, it looked pretty cool and it was very big so it was impressive, again I have no idea why it's famous.

The courtyard of the Louvre, very impressive. We came back here later that night because after 6pm you get in free. We'll come back to that after..

We walked along the Jardin des Tuileries and stopped for some lunch here. It reminded me of Family Matters when the Winslow's go to Paris in the teleporting thing, haha. 

Sitting eating lunch, Geoff brought his film camera which is pictured, as well as his polaroid and digital camera with us every place we went.

After lunch we headed towards the Champs Elysees, along the way we passed the US embassy which was guarded by over 10 soldiers, they would not let anyone take pictures or anything. If seen taking a picture they would stop you and delete the image, we saw it happen to an older lady. 

Walking down the Champs Elysees was really cool, right where the Tour de France finishes every year. 

After stopping along the way to go into the stores we made it to the Arc de Triomphe. It is surrounded by a huge round-a-bout so the motion picture seemed obvious for me to take.

Again, Geoff's fisheye lens, it was so much fun getting to play with it

After hanging out at the Arc for a little while, and having 5 people come up asking for me to take their pictures for them, we headed to the eiffel tower or tour eiffel as they say in French. It was so much bigger than I thought it was going to be. We went up to the second tier and that was plenty high enough for me!

As we got up into the tower a thick fog came in so the view wasn't as good as it might have been but still cool nonetheless. 

After going up the Eiffel Tower and getting some dinner we headed back to the Louvre in a heavy down pour, everything got soaked but it was worth it to go back to the Louvre and see all the art. Unfortunately, I was using my phone to take most of the pictures in the Louvre because it was easier to carry that around, and when I plugged my phone in on Sunday when I came back it went into recovery mode and I lost all the video and photos that I took from the weekend. I had pictures of the Mona Lisa and a bunch of other cool paintings and videos showing a panoramic of the courtyard at the Louvre and the view from the Eiffel Tower. On the bright side, I still got some great pictures with my real camera, and this painting was one of my teachers in high schools favorite works so Geoff and I spent half an hour climbing stairs and getting lost trying to find this painting hidden away in one of the wings. We made it just in time before the museum was set to close up. 

The rain was all gone on Saturday and it left behind blue skies and cold breezes. We headed up to Montmartre for the day to see the Sacre Coeur which is another huge church. As you can see it's up on a huge hill and it had the best view of the city, even better than the Eiffel Tower. From where this picture was taken to the entrance of the church there were almost 200 steps. Then we climbed an additional 300 in a spiral stair case to get to the top of the centre dome. The view from there was absolutely worth the trek up, again though I had video of this and it's all gone..

There were some of the best street performers I have ever heard/seen while going up the steps, this harpist was the first of the day followed by many more. My favorite was a jazz band that were comprised of 4 musicians, trumpet, sax, bass, and banjo. They were really cool and played great music. 

Hopefully by the pictures you can tell that I enjoyed myself here, I did everything that I knew about and more and got some great exercise while doing so. I almost forgot about the food! I had my first ever crepe, nutella and coconut and it was really good so simple but the taste was awesome. We also got breakfast ones on Saturday morning which beat out most breakfast sandwiches I've had. The rest of the food was pretty comparable to what I expected, croissants were great, baguettes and french bread were also fantastic. Overall I would say that this trip was one that I will always remember and I would recommend anyone to go. I still prefer London over both cities that I have been, I was glad to return back to the only city that I have ever lived in. Next week begins our mid-term break and we will be headed to Liverpool for a night and then coming back for a few days only to fly out to Italy for the rest of the week so check back soon for more!

I went through my camera again and found some more pictures that I forgot to upload last time...

London Olympic Site 2012

Today for our Global Citizens class we got the great opportunity to go to the Olympic site, which I thought was going to be spectacular. It ended up just being a secluded area with a map of what the site is going to eventually look at and a massive construction zone. It was still really cool because come 2 years from now it is going to be really cool to see how much it changed from now. The site itself is bigger than Hyde Park (London's biggest park) and it is in zone 3 so it is pretty far outside of Central London. The budget for the project is an incredible 9 billion pounds ($14,407,649,874.69) which is for the main stadium, aquatic centre and many of the other buildings including the village to house the 17,500 athletes.

It is supposed to be completed by this time next year so they have over a year to practice and do dry runs of the opening and closing ceremonies, probably so they don't make the same mistake that happened in Beijing!

There is a lot of controversy that surrounds the project for after the Olympics which I won't get into but it can be a big issue in the future.

Anyways, here are the pictures, it will be interesting to see what is to come of this site in the next year and a half before the games, it is crazy to think that they will happen in the summer after graduating college!

This is going to be the Olympic Stadium where Opening and Closing ceremonies will be in addition to the Track and Field events

Closer view of the stadium, seats 80,000

The logo for the games

How 'bout some food?!

So I showed you the last time I made some fancy food for dinner, and I've got a few more meals that turned out pretty good, very simple but it saves me money and is better than eating out. 

I made this every night this week, very healthy but I'm trying to be Popeye and eat my spinach to get some guns

My very own schrimp scampi! It turned out so good I ate it all!

Want the recipe?

I'm off to Paris on Friday so check back to see everything that happened while I'm there!

It's Already October?!

I cannot believe that it is already the first week in October, which means that I have been here for 5, almost 6 weeks already! You'll have to forgive my writing, I know I'm not the best but I'm starting to like this blogging stuff. That being said, time is flying by, which is good because I do get home sick some days and I miss everyone at home, but bad because London is an amazing place and I am liking it more and more with each passing day.

With five weeks down I think its time for an update on life in London, not just documents of my trips. Let me begin with academia because, after all, that is why I am here! My classes are so different than what I was expecting to have because I was told by previous students they were supposed to be 'easy'. Not so fast my friends, each class has a lot of readings for each week and most of them are paired with an essay to summarize those readings. So that's nothing like what my classes are like at UConn in Storrs, which have tests and usually only 2-3 in a semester, these classes have 4-5 papers accompanied with smaller response papers. Aside from the classes, I like most of my professors, and the only one that I didn't particularly like was only teaching for the first 5 weeks anyways so I don't have her anymore.

My two volunteer placements are very interesting as well. My first one is at a secondary school (middle - high school) where I meet with 4-5 students individually because they are students that have a reading level of 4th or 5th graders and they are between 8th and 11th grade (instead of grade they say year 11 or year 7). I read with them for about 30 minutes and then briefly go over what they read and talk about whatever else they might want to talk about. So far they haven't opened up much except for asking where I am from and why I'm there but nothing about them.

At my other placement, called South Bank Mosaics, I get to work with young offenders who have to do community service and they get the privilege to go to this organization and make mosaics that get put together with the other youths work and are put up across the city as art. I really enjoy this because I get to make some too, and I don't usually do that sort of thing and because it is doing something positive for these kids.

Adjusting to life in London has been a bit rough in the beginning because obviously, I come from a small town, and UConn is in the middle of no where. So it's just like moving to Boston or New York except the currency is completely different, cars drive on the left side of the road, and I'm just not used to living in a big city. City life is cool though because there is always something to do. Having said that, I would not want to live in a city for that same reason, there is always something going on and the pace is very fast, sometimes its nice not to hear the sounds of cars outside the window and people everywhere. I don't want that to sound like I don't like it though, because it is an awesome experience, it's my first time in an apartment having to cook every meal (hypothetically, I eat out more) and to buy everything for myself like light bulbs and little things that you take for granted when you don't have your own space.

Since my last post I have planned one more trip, for our mid-term break, which is quickly approaching (3 weeks). For this, my last planned trip we will be going to Italy! It is the same group that went to Amsterdam, and we will be going to Venice and then on to Rome for 6 days. Since our internet is so terrible when we went to book the trip we could not all get the same flights because pages wouldn't load and there was a big stressful backlash from that. So, the next day after 4 of us had booked, I still had not so I had to get arrangements on my own, but I will fly over to Venice with the group but I could not get the same flight with them from Venice to Rome so I only get to spend a whopping 28 hours in Venice before flying over to Rome by myself. The others will join me the next day so it isn't a big deal really, I don't mind traveling by myself, it's kind of fun only being responsible for you and not worrying about anything else. But it should be a really fun trip, Italy was top on my list of places to visit while I'm here. So that rounds out my list of places to go, started with Amsterdam, next weekend I am taking a train with my best friend from home, Geoff to Paris for the weekend, then for our mid-term break is Italy, and then finishing out is a trip to Stockholm Sweden for a weekend in mid November. Time is going to start speeding up even more with trips coming every second week so stay tuned for the last 2 and a half months because a lot is going to happen and hopefully some great pictures will result! P.S. anyone out there that likes my photos, please hook me up with someone, I would love a career!

Future Trips

I have just booked two more trips! In late November I will be going to Stockholm, Sweden with a few of my friends I've made while being here. It should be a great trip, however i have no idea what to do there. It was a very cheap booking so we couldn't resist!

Also, just the other day I booked a trip to Paris for two weekends from now with my best friend from home Geoff. That is one trip that I cannot wait to go on, we are going to take a train there so it shouldn't be as uncomfortable as our bus ride. There will be so many things to do there so it will be a jam packed weekend.

Of course I will be posting pictures and stories from those trips as well, stay tuned!

Euro Journeys: Back from Amsterdam!

Euro Journeys: Back from Amsterdam!: "A few of us went to Amsterdam for the weekend this past weekend and it was an awesome time! The only drawback was the transport and the acco..."

Back from Amsterdam!

A few of us went to Amsterdam for the weekend this past weekend and it was an awesome time! The only drawback was the transport and the accommodation (sort of a big thing but not really) as you'll see in the pictures the hotel was pretty awful but we got what we paid for 20 pounds a night (approx $35) and the bus was very long and it was over night so we lost a lot of sleep. Again we paid only 38 pounds for the return trip (they call round trip return here). The cool part of the bus trip was getting to take the chunnel. It wasn't at all what I was expecting however, we went through customs when we got to the start of the tunnel. But after that we had to wait because you cannot drive in the chunnel, we loaded into a cargo train, on the bus, all the cars and buses are packed into this train that leaves every hour and a half, it was very interesting, it didn't even seem like we were moving. Since no one was very organized before leaving, I got the directions from the bus station to the hotel into my phone before leaving our class, what I didn't know was that the directions were completely wrong. We walked for 40 plus minutes in the wrong direction and had to find someone that spoke english to ask them how to get to our hotel. Turns out that we were in south Amsterdam and we were supposed to be in Central Amsterdam, another 40 minute walk, carrying our backpacks and everything! When we finally got to the hotel we were a bit...underwhelmed? It was advertised in the lobby as being the "worst hotel in the world" and that "you'll leave this hotel being more tired and dirty than when you came in". Upon reading these ads, I became a little frustrated and anxious to see what it was really going to be like. When we checked in we were told to come back in 2 hours so we decided to do some walking around and explore the area for a bit.

We ended up hanging out here for over an hour just enjoying the warm weather. 

We did the usual touristy things...

I like the black and white these days.. this is the other end of the pond with the I Amsterdam  sign.

This is most of the group that hang out together,  only missing Yan

This is the dining room and common room I guess for the hotel we stayed at

These are the beds and lockers we got in the room, that is Yan

The second day we went to the Anne Frank House which was about a 20 minute walk from our hotel; lucky for us the whole walk looked as good as this!

After making the walk to the museum, we discovered the line was wrapped around the building. Right next to the house was this church.

After waiting an hour in line, we finally made it into the museum, and it was well worth the wait! 

Following the museum we walked around for the rest of the day soaking in the beautiful city

If you've seen the movie Inception it will look like a scene from that, but the bridge is just one piece, kinda weird

On sunday, we went on a bike tour through the country side and they brought us to this  windmill that people still live in. From there we went to a cheese farm where they showed us how to make the cheese (I think Brit would be jealous) and also the wooden clogs, typical tourist stuff.

Towards the end of the tour we went through this park and our guide showed us this sculpture, an original Picasso.

Despite the bad bus experience and below average accommodation, the trip was an overall great success, I thoroughly enjoyed my time there and would love to go back if I ever get the chance to in the future!