We like snowboarding =)

I apologize in advance for the length of this next post. There is just so much to cover =)
Alright, here we go...

Paris day 3 and 4:
Day three started off with a visit to The Hôtel National des Invalides where Napoleon’s tomb is located. There they had an extensive museum entailing the history of France pertaining to the wars. It was very interesting. There was also an armory that we got to browse in. Everything was in glass cases. Glass cases provide lovely reflections. So being the creative group we are, we discovered that if you stood a certain distance from the glass you could get your reflection to line up with the armor inside therefore making it look as if you were wearing the armor. Brilliant! We proceeded to take pictures using this lovely discovery.

Some examples:

jacob

me

savs

Our travels then took us to Sante Chapelle where we got in for free due to our current status as architecture/art students! Being artsy pays off I suppose. Sante Chapelle was beautiful. The sun poured through the windows splashing the colors of the stained glass everywhere. Have I mentioned that I absolutely love stained glass yet? Because I do! This stuff is ridiculously amazing! What was so neat about this building though was the stories in the windows. There are 1,113 scenes depicted within the 13 stained glass windows. They tell the story of mankind from Genesis to Christ's resurrection. It is pretty impressive. Everything here was over the top. You see Sante Chapelle was the private chapel of the king. He would allow only his close friends and family to join him in the upper chapel. (the one with all the windows). The lower chapel was for the palace staff. It was neat, I am glad we experienced this place.

After the chapel we were going to go to the catacombs, but they were closed for restoration until March. Instead, we ventured to the Pompidou. It is a modern art museum built by Richard Rogers. Inside there were lots of works by some big name artists like Picasso, Kandinsky, Braque, Dali, and Pollock (just to name a few). It was incredible. Of course half of the art was, in my opinion, rather ridiculous. Some pieces of modern art are interesting and then others you just have to wonder about. For instance, one room proudly displayed these 4 massive beams leaning against the wall and wrapped in large rope. I mean really. Art? Who buys this stuff? I am also convinced that some of the paintings could be replicated by a 4 year old, but I guess there are people out there who actually like this stuff. So if that is you, I apologize for not knowing what makes a composition art. I do admit that I have been brain washed by this major into liking some pieces of art that I previously made fun of, but there is definitely a line where that brain washing stops. Some of that stuff was just silly looking.

The Pompidou center finished out our day 3 in Paris. The next morning we decided to sleep in a bit which only meant 9am. Then we packed up and headed out to complete out spectacular journey through Pairs. We had a few more things we wanted to accomplish before we left. This included the Basilique at St. Denis and the Palace at Versailles.

St Denis was very pretty. It looked older than the other cathedrals but that was just because it hasn't been kept up as well as the others. The rose window on one side was completely missing as where other parts of various windows. Again we found ourselves with a sunny day meaning lots of color filling the walls and columns. It was beautiful! The museum was free here as well due to the fact that it was the first Sunday of the month (in Paris, the museums are all free on the first Sunday of every month) so we got to tour some other parts of the church.

Our final destination was the Palace at Versailles. WOW! This place is massive! It was probably the touristiest thing we did while there. It was so crowded. We took an audio tour of the inside, but we found ourselves just wanting to get out of there and go see the gardens. Things might have been different if the crowd wasn't so large. Inside you were basically shoulder to shoulder with people everywhere you went. It was like a herd of cattle being shuffles through a small space. Not cool! The outside on the other hand was amazing. Unfortunately the statues were covered up and the fountains where dry, but it was still quite a sight to see!

Here ends our absolutely amazing adventures from Paris. Paris was such a wonderful place to visit. I could never live there, but I could definitely visit it again. All in all, we had an absolute blast. To get home we got to experience another overnight train ride. This meant board the train at 10:55pm, arrive in some city at 4:40am, chill for an hour before our 20 minute ride to another destination where we waited for 13 minutes to load our final train home to Dusseldorf 2 hours away. Fun stuff. Let’s just say that it was a long night.

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Since we got here Gavin, Geoff, and I have been dreaming up a snowboarding trip in the Swiss Alps. After looking into it a bit we realized that we would have to "settle" for the German Alps, but still we had no definite plans. Wednesday rolls around and we are trying to figure out what to do for the quickly approaching weekend. Snowboarding is mentioned and suddenly plans start formulating and we magically found ourselves with reservations for a hostel and a train to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the site of the Winter Olympic Games in 1936. Holy cow! We spent 2 days snowboarding in the Alps!!! It was fantastic!!!!

The group consisted of Gavin, Geoff, Sierra, and me. Again our travels found us on an overnight train. This time fortunately it was an 11 hour non stop train. One day I will get the hang of these things. I do not understand how this works. When I am in class I have to fight extremely hard to keep my eyes open! It never fails: walk in, sit down, lights turn off, PowerPoint appears with the sound of the professors voice explaining the material, and then WHAM, you are hit with the overwhelming urge to sleep. In a desperate attempt to keep your eyes open, they cross and suddenly the PowerPoint starts appearing twice. Your head oddly becomes much heavier and the words of the professor begin to sound like a beautiful lullaby singing you off to sleep. Sleep comes so easily in class. This is not the case on these trains. Why is this? When you want to sleep you can't and when you don't, you do. Maybe they should start playing boring documentaries on these trains. Maybe that will fix things.

Once in Garmisch we set out to find the ski place. Establishing its location, we decided to just walk. I would say we ended up walking a mile or so to get there. Walking through the streets of the town was so neat! Garmisch is a small town tucked away at the base of the Alps. Everything was so cozy. The smell of fireplaces filled the air! This of course happens to be one of my favorite smells!

We find our destination and spend the day snowboarding in the Alps with absolutely perfect weather! The whole experience was simply amazing!!! The only trouble was when Geoff and I attempted to use the t-bar lift. If you have no clue what I am talking about then click on this link.... T-bar lift .... To keep a long story short lets just say they ended up having to stop the lift 4 different times for us before we finally made it up. Well, we actually only made it halfway up the lift before falling again but decided to give up. So we popped of our boards and walked through the woods to the nearest run. =) My advice to you: never ride a t-bar lift with a person where there is a significant height difference. It just doesn't work.

After a long day we loaded up our gear and set out to find our hostel. And when I say loaded up our gear, I mean everything. We walked to the complete opposite side of town with our heavy backpacks, boards, and boots in hand. That was quite a walk. I would say that we walked for a solid hour. This hostel was forever away. But our walk did provide us the opportunity to see more of this cute little town. The sun set and we got to walk under a blanket of stars. Everything was still and quiet. The smells of the chimneys filled the air. It was great! Finally we arrive at our hostel where we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the place. It was only 11 euros per person so we were glad to find that it was so nice!

The restaurant we found for dinner was amazing. The staffers were all dressed up in traditional German clothes and there was live music provided by a man playing the accordion and a woman playing the guitar. It was so much fun! The food was strange but delicious. I had some kind of white sausage with a fresh pretzel and mustard. After we finished eating a couple who had been sitting near us came up and asked if we where American. The man then looked at me and said "I giggled internally as I watched how you ate your sausage. (I cut it with a knife and ate each piece with a fork) You ate it the German way! You should have eaten it the Bavarian way!! You stab it with a fork and suckling the whole thing up!" It was hilarious.

The next day we decided to check out the other side of the mountain where we would find ourselves skiing above the tree line on a glacier at the highest point in Germany. The only way to get there was by a 20 minute gondola ride. It was absolutely AMAZING!!!! The views were breathtaking!!! The skiing area was basically in this bowl on the top of the mountain. Once inside you were surrounded by mountains as far as the eye could see! The day before, the runs were often icy and the snow was packed. But here, there was a blanket of powdery goodness =) I highly recommend this place for skiing. It was amazingly cheap too. And even if you don't ski, the gondola to the top is for anyone. Lots of people just went up to see the view. I basically fell in love with this little town!!

Unfortunately our adventures there had to come to an end and that night we hopped on yet another overnight train home to Dusseldorf. We arrived at 6:50am just in time to shower and leave for class at 9am.

The whole gang!

The group minus me obviously =)

Going home for the day

Sierra and I on the slopes

View from the top. Yes that is a frozen lake. AMAZING!!

View of the town from the top

very important sign...

The ski slopes

view while on a ski slope

snow angel =)

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Due to the length of this post I think I shall save Amsterdam and Rotterdam for tomorrow. Hope you enjoyed!

So here is the scoop...

I had every intention of catching everyone up on the latest of my lovely European adventures, but wound up chatting with my dad and sister on skype instead! Yay! So the update will have to wait. But here is what you have to look forward too:


1.) the last 2 days of Paris

2.) one incredible action packed adventure

on snowboarding in the German Alps!

3.) our class trip to Amsterdam and Rotterdam

(we leave tomorrow and get back friday night)


So look forward to one massive update in the near future. And by near, I mean Friday or Saturday. =) I hope everyone has an awesome week!!


Ohh and thank you to everyone who has sent letters! Mail is fun! =)

The Paris adventures continued....

Here is the lovely video I promised you a few posts back. This was created by Savs, Jacob, and I during our camera workshop. It is just a collage of some footage we captured during the week. Hope you enjoy...



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A little over 3 weeks in this lovely city and the transportation system and I still have a rocky relationship. Apparently I just don't know how to check times correctly. Walking to the bus this morning I had this sickening feeling that my timing was off. Today we were going on a class trip to Bonn and had to meet at the Hauptbahnhof at 8:40 so I had to catch a train earlier than normal to get there. As I rounded the corner to where the stop was just in sight, I noticed my train quickly approaching. Ohh no! I think my theme for Germany is "Run, catch that train!!" Unfortunately a red light postponed my sprint and I got there just in time for the doors to shut right as I stepped in front of them. All worked out in the end though, Savs (who get on the train a stop before me) missed that same train so we arrived at the same time and just barely made it to our 8:40 meeting spot. One day we will conquer this German public transportation system and all will be great.

The Bonn trip was a blast. It only took us an hour by train to get there and then we had a full day of activities. To start off we met with a small animation agency that does advertising, medical animations, and whatever other small projects they are approached with. It was neat. They showed us some of their work and talked about what they do. After that we went on a tour of the Post Tower. That was such a neat building. It is this huge 40 story all glass skyscraper. The floors are glass, the sides are glass, and many of the walls were glass. It was neat and the views were awesome! There we were taken on a private tour and shown some films about the building and company. We got to sit in this awesome conference room with the most comfortable chairs! As we watched the short films we enjoyed the comfy chairs while snacking on these tasty fruit gummy bears with cold refreshments. They even had real apple juice, not the bubbly kind. I was happy =)

Some pics of the Post Tower...

those are mail boxes from every country. it was pretty cool.

view off the 30th floor...

another view

Later we met with a man who took us on a walking tour of the city and told us about its history. The weather was amazing! Blue skies and fresh air made for a lovely time.

A neat chuch. We didn't get to go inside =(

here's the group with our lovely tour guide =)

Statue of Beethoven. He was born there...

so back to Paris....

Day 2:

Our day started with a lovely visit to the nearest bakery where we enjoyed a sweet breakfast. It was some sugary goodness! I could really get used to fresh pastries for breakfast. Everything was amazing! Probably really bad for you too, but who cares....we were in Paris enjoying the fresh goodies from a bakery!

The weather was anything but welcoming. The skies were gloomy, the air was crisp, and a light rain showered the streets. It looked like it was going to be a pretty yucky day! What a perfect time to stay indoors. The Louvre turned out to be the perfect destination! We spent the whole day wondering around this massive collection of history (8 hours to be exact!) It was amazing. We covered all but one floor and one little section. I would say we did well! I loved everything about this place. Wait, scratch that…I loved most everything about this place. I could have done without the naked people sculptures and paintings. But luckily there were lots of clothed objects to occupy my amazement.

We started our journey in the sculpture gardens. Wow! I mean, wow! Simply incredible. A room filled with life size marble sculptures of various men and women could only be described as "wow." The detail each masterpiece contained was unbelievable. I kept waiting for one of them to blink as I looked at their faces, or get up and move around. They were so life like. Of course then there was the whole missing arms thing going on for some of them. That tends to put them back to stone. But still, the artists did a spectacular job of capturing life. As I stood there marveling at the craftsmanship of these glorious statues I couldn't help thinking about the time it took to do one of these. Incredible!

The paintings where a sight too! We are talking huge paintings. Like 15 to 30 feet across! I was blown away. It was funny to me that with all these amazing paintings covering the walls, and all these sculptures and other ancient art, the only thing that had signs leading the way to its resting place was the famous Mona Lisa. I just do not understand this painting. It is the only painting in the entire Louvre that gets its own wall, is displayed behind bullet proof glass, and is blocked off so that you cannot come within 15 feet of it. I had always heard that she was basically the smallest painting there so I envisioned her to be smaller than a piece of printer paper. Surprisingly she was much bigger. Of course when you compare it to the 15+ ft paintings I can see what they meant. I still do not understand her popularity though. She is actually quite ugly, looks just like the pictures you see of her, and has no story, just rumors. Perhaps that is what draws people in, the mystery of it all. Who knows! I have even had to do a short research paper over this painting and I still can't figure out her fame. All I know is that there was a swarm of people all crowding around to see this "priceless" piece by Leonardo da Vinci. What makes his ugly woman painting more popular than all the other ugly women paintings. I mean seriously!

For dinner we decided that being in Pairs for a once in a lifetime adventure we should splurge and go to a fancy restaurant. Savs mom did some amazing behind the scenes work and found us a nice little restaurant called Ratatouille (just like the Pixar movie! Except a rat did not fix our meal. At least as far as we know...). It was neat. I have never paid so much for one meal in my life!!! The experience was cool and the food was great but holy cow was it pricey. I had the cheapest meal and mine was 20 euro. That just included my chicken plate and water! Personally I feel that these restaurants are highly overrated, but I guess for a once in a lifetime deal, it was fun. Savs mom did a great job finding that restaurant for us.

To finish up the day, we ventured to the Arc De Triomphe. For some reason it was a lot bigger than I was expecting. We learned about it in our architectural history class a few semesters ago, but I never expected it to be that massive! It was great! To get there you have to follow a tunnel under the road. Once there we decided to climb the slender spiral stair case all the way to the top. The way up wasn't bad, but coming down we went faster so I got pretty dizzy. You've gotta love spiral stair cases =) Once at the top we were able to look out over the city. It was nighttime by now so the city transformed into a beautiful sea of light and color. The Eiffel Tower beautifully lit to one side, a few cathedrals scattered here and there, it was beautiful. It turned out to be the perfect way to end the day.

More coming later....

Adventures in Paris....

This past weekend Barrett, Jacob, Gavin, Geoff, Savannah, and I set out to conquer the land known as Paris. Since we had a five day weekend we figured it was the perfect opportunity for our Paris trip.


Day 1:

To get the most out of our experience we decided to leave Wednesday night so that we could arrive in Paris early Thursday to begin our adventures. Geoff was the mastermind behind our travel arrangements/reservations and let us blindly believe that when we got on the train we would sleep until we got off in Paris. Um, next time I am asking questions before I board the train =) Our journey began in the train station at 8:20pm where we loaded up and took our seats. At 11pm we got off in some city (I can't remember the name) where we were to wait for our next train that would arrive 2 hours later. One thing you must know about the different train stations is that they are mostly open to the outside air and are not heated. It was rather chilly. But we took this opportunity to goof around, take silly pictures, and chat. 12:55am rolls around and its time to continue to our final destination. It was a very long night. Most of us have not yet perfected the art of sleeping in the sitting position. With stiff necks and sleepless bodies, we arrived in Paris 6 long hours latter at 6:50am. Paris provided us with a whole new level of freezing. It was very COLD!! Being so early, the sun had not yet begun it's journey over the horizon to take off the chill and prepare for the glorious day complete with blue skies.


My first impression of Paris was not what I expected. Everything I had ever heard was that it was not as great as you would think. The main description given was that it was trashy and stunk. Maybe the air didn't smell as bad because of the cold? The only smells we encountered where those of the subway systems. Yikes! Every once in a while you were hit with the aroma of soured urine. Other than that, I did not notice a thing. When the sun finally spilled over the horizon and painted the buildings with a golden glow, Paris suddenly came alive. Walking out of the subway we were greeted with the sight of some big Gothic Cathedral. It was beautiful. We never learned the name of it, but in the light of the morning sun, it was absolutely beautiful. As we took pictures and walked around something in the distance caught our eye. It was the Pompidou center! You see we have all had 4 semesters of architectural history so we have studied all these different buildings and where excited about the opportunity to see them in person!!! It was amazing! Then we spotted what looked like the bell towers of Notre Dame so we set out in that direction. I am pretty sure we spent an hour or two in there taking pictures. It was beautiful. I am in love with stained glass so I basically just sat there and starred at the beautiful windows and the light that painted the columns and walls with beautiful arrangements of color.

Our next adventure was to find the famous Eiffel Tower! At this point we had not seen any signs of it yet. As we walked we kept searching to see who could get the first glimpse of this famous icon. I was very excited as we wondered around. I just couldn't believe we were actually there. In fact it still doesn't feel like I spent the last 4 days and 3 nights in Paris! Then suddenly Jacob spotted it. We were finally there! After taking numerous pictures and paying 3,10 euros to climb the six hundred and eighty stairs to the highest point we were allowed to go, we found ourselves looking out over the beautiful city of Paris on top of the Eiffel Tower. The view was breathtaking!! Talk about a big city. The city reached as far as the eye could see. It was amazing! What a wonderful experience!

to be continued...