Dresden

On Thursday I decided to go to Dresden with several other students that were planning on going. We bought our train tickets and left Friday at 10:30am. The train was packed and we didn't have reservations so we had to just walk around until we found open seats. The ride was only two hours so we arrived around 12:45 and started to walk to our hostel and found some food. We came upon the UFA Palace, which is a movie theater designed by Coop Himmeblau. I think it looks like a giant glass rock that fell from the sky. The inside was filled with concrete columns and crazy metal staircases. We also came upon a fountain made of broken up chunks of glass. After walking around the city a little bit we headed to the VW factory where we were told that they were closed but we were to come back the next day for an English tour at 3pm. We also found a small market that was going on in a parking lot that reminded us a lot of the state fair. There were several booths set up selling jewelry, t-shirts, candy, etc. and also a lot of food vendors that sold all typical German food like bratwurst and schnitzel. They also had beer and really good pastries and crepes. We ended up eating here for lunch the next two days.

It started to get dark and we walked through the more historical part of Dresden where we saw a lot of the old churches lit up that were destroyed in the bombing in World War II, like most of the city, and then later rebuilt. The city looked really pretty lit up over the water as we looked at it from one of the bridges. We decided to eat dinner at a German restaurant where most of us got one liter beers. John's meal was even served on a sword in place of a skewer. I had barbeque chicken, which was actually just ketchup with curry, and potato wedges. That night we went to bed a little bit early so we could get up early the next day to explore.

The next day we woke up and walked back down to the water and to the area with the churches and the opera house. We walked into one of the churches which was the most recent Baroque church to be completed in Dresden and there was a Catholic mass going on inside. I actually recognized the part of mass that they were on even though it was in German because the priest was singing the same song. We also walked through the gardens inside the large courtyard of the Zwinger, which is a large complex with a lot of pavilions and galleries. After eating lunch at the market again we headed towards the VW Factory for our tour. Our guide took us through the factory which is actually extremely clean and without the car bodies on the conveyor belts, it would not really look like a factory at all. This factory is the only place in the world where VW makes the Phaeton which I guess could be considered their luxury car. The cheapest one sells for 65,000 Euro, which is about $100,000. Customers come to the factory to custom design their Phaetons and then the car is made here. The customer can then either pick it up at the factory or have it delivered to them. The large glass cylinder in the front of the building is the parking garage where the Phaetons are stored until they are picked up.

After the tour, we walked around some more and then headed back to the hostel to get ready before dinner. We were referred to a neighborhood German restaurant that was a 15 minute walk from the hostel. When we walked in it seemed that everyone stared at us and it was kind of uncomfortable but then our waiter was very nice. The whole menu was in German and almost everything had pork in it so it was hard to pick something to eat. I ended up getting a Greek salad that was very good. The beer here was also extremely cheap compared to being in Paris or Barcelona. We stayed for a while hanging out and drinking and our waiter even gave us a free desert.

The next morning we woke up and checked out of the hostel and then headed downtown again before we had to get on our 1:10 train. We stopped by the market for the last time to have some crepes and bratwurst and walked through the city a little bit more before heading back to Prague. This time the train was not so packed and we could all sit together. The train ran along a river and we had really good views of several small towns with castles and some cool little bridges. It was actually nice to hear the voice on the train speak Czech again when we knew we were almost back to Prague.

Week Two of Class

This past week was our second week of class. We received our second studio project and found out where the site is that the project is supposed to be designed for. It is just a 2 minute walk from our studio on the main street called Narodni that the National Theater is on. We got to choose our own program for the building we are designing which was unusual because usually they give us the program such as a theater, library, gym, etc. I chose to do a wellness center, which would have yoga, massage, a pharmacy, Pilates, and a sauna.

On Tuesday we had Bees and Beekeeping class again and our teacher took us to the bee farm. We had to take a 30 minute train ride out into a more rural part of the Czech Republic. When we got off the train we walked for about 10 minutes until we came to a river where we could see houses and a boat on the other side. This was where the bee farm was and our teacher explained to us that eight families live on that side of the river, including him. The boat came over and took us across the river where we walked to a small house and then saw the bee farm which wasn't more than about 15 2'x2' boxes. The boxes house several frames of honeycombs, where the bees store their honey and where the queen lays her eggs and the new bees are born from. We saw a new baby bee coming out of one of the honey combs and we also saw a wasp fly onto the comb to steal some honey and watched the bees fight him off. Our teacher then took us into his "lab", which wasn't much more than a small classroom, and showed us how they artificially inseminate the queen bee and the device that they do it with, which was designed at this bee farm. We also learned that this bee farm takes the honey from the hives and produces honey wine with it. The class was very interesting and in a few weeks we get to go back and see how they make the honey wine.

The next day, Wednesday, during studio time we went to an exhibit near the castle about a style movement called Biedermeier. The movement was trying to make design simpler and came before modernism. The exhibit had a lot of furniture, glass, clothes, and paintings. Some of the glass and paintings were interesting but overall I didn't like the exhibit very much. Afterwards we had seminar and our professor Paul talked about Greece and how the Grecians set up their cities. Next week we are talking about Rome which I am looking forward to since John and I are going to Rome for Thanksgiving break.

That night I went to see a documentary about Annie Liebowitz that was playing at a theater downtown. She is a very famous photographer that used to work for Rolling Stone and now works for Vanity Fair. I recognized a lot of her photos that I didn't know that she took. The documentary followed her as she started to take pictures and got a job with Rolling Stone taking pictures of everyone from the Rolling Stones to John Lennon to Bruce Springsteen.

On Thursday we had studio again and we just worked on our new project. Then in drawing our teacher took us to a gallery that was having an exhibit on the Soviet occupation in the Czech Republic that took place in 1968. The exhibit was all black and white photos and it was cool to see because I actually recognized a lot of the places that were in the photos where there were soviet tanks and soldiers and where people were protesting and doing demonstrations.

Cesky Krumlov

Since we do not have classes on Fridays, myself and seven other students decided to take a one night trip to Cesky Krumlov, which is a small town about three hours south of Prague. I booked a hostel and John went and bought bus tickets and we were to leave at 8:30am on Friday morning. That morning we all got up to leave at 7:30 to take the metro to the bus station. We got to the bus station where John had bought the tickets at about 8 am and were just sitting along the curb when one of our friends made a comment about how his ticket said that we were getting picked up at another station. John went to go ask someone at the desk about it and sure enough we were at the wrong bus station. The lady John bought the tickets from never pointed out not to come back here but to go to another station. Realizing this we all ran out of there to catch the metro where unfortunately we had to transfer lines to get to the right place. After all eight of us went running from metro to metro and then finally to the bus platform we got there at 8:32am and the bus had already left. Realizing we would still have to pay for the hostel that I booked and we still had return trip bus tickets we went to the counter and the soonest bus to leave with enough room for all of us was at 1:30pm so we decided to do that.

To kill all this extra time we now had between buses we went to a café called Café Louvre and had breakfast and read the newspaper and just hung out for a while. We left to make our new bus time and left for Cesky Krumlov at 1:30pm. The bus trip was three hours and we arrived around 4:30pm. To get to our hostel we walked through the entire town which isn't much more then a major street with little side streets going off of it and the Castle towering over everything. We found our hostel where I had booked an eight person room for all of us. The manager came in to check us in and asked all of us for our passports, which none of us had because our program director had collected all of them to get our visas registered with the foreign police. We had told her we were traveling to Cesky Krumlov this weekend and she didn't mention not to travel within the Czech Republic without them. He then told us we could not check in here or anywhere else in town without them and we could even be arrested for traveling without them. Not really knowing what to do, we said that we could get our passport numbers and he agreed to let us stay if we at least had those. We called the pension where we are staying and they were nice enough to give us all our numbers and we finally checked in.

By this time it was past 6pm and everyone was hungry. Cesky Krumlov is very small so we walked the main street again before deciding to eat at another hostel called Traveller's Hostel. They had really good food and we had appetizers and pivo (beer) and hung out there for a while. From here we walked around and took some pictures of the castle all lit up at night and then stopped by a few other bars. One bar we stopped at had Eggenberg beer which is brewed in Cesky Krumlov. I thought it had a strange taste but it was fun to try.

The next morning we had to be checked out by 10:00am so we all got our stuff together and left to go have breakfast and then explore the town more. We walked up to the castle and decided to go up in the tower. The stairways were very narrow and there were some bells inside from the 1400's. You could look out on all of Cesky Krumlov from the tower and see the houses and see people canoing in the river. We then walked around the complex and the gardens before finding a place to eat lunch. We ate at a restaurant called Two Mary's and ordered hot mead and the Bohemian feast for eight people. The feast included potato pancakes, chicken, millet (sort of like a casserole), salad, a piece of ham, and dumplings. The mead was too strong for me but the feast was pretty good. From here we walked to other end of town to pick up our bags at the hostel and then were off to the bus station to catch our 4:10pm bus back to Prague.

starting classes

So we started class this week with seminar on Monday and our whole class met our professors at the clock tower in Old Town Square. The clock tower is the one with the really large astrological clock on it. We went inside and looked over an enormous site model of Prague and our Czech professor Martin pointed out a bunch of things to us. We then went up in the clock tower where we had a really good view of the whole city. That night we went out again with John's Aunt Kathryn and her friend Kerry, again to Klub Architektu. They really liked that place. This time I had a pepper stuffed with feta cheese and tofu. It was really good. The next night we were to go on a jazz boat around the river for Kathryn's birthday. (the picture is Kerry, John (very excited) and Kathryn)

The next day in studio all we did was work on our first project that was due Thursday which was our First Impressions of Prague since we had arrived. I was doing mine on running in Prague and how it is different than in Raleigh and also how the baby tower helps me keep my orientation while running. I also had my first Bees and Bee Keeping class and we got to watch a video about bees making colonies and also tried some different kinds of honey on bread.

This week had been really cold so Kathryn decided not to go on the jazz boat and had John and I just met her and Kerry to go out to eat for the last time. We ate at a place on the Prague Castle side of the river near their hotel. The food was more traditional Czech than Klub Architektu but still very good. I had shrimp pasta. We gave Kathryn her "Prague Czech me out!" t-shirt and then had to say goodbye. It was fun having them here for a little while.

The review for our First Impressions project went really well and pretty fast for having to go through about 24 people. After studio I had a break and then had Drawing class. We walked around and stopped at a courtyard and also at a modern art museum to draw. I am not crazy about this class but I think it is helping me draw better. Next week our teacher wants us to do rubbings and also try watercolors.

living in Prague

Since I have come back to Prague I have done a lot. I was sharing a room at the pension where we are living with five other girls for the first two nights before moving into my permanent room. I am sharing a room with one of the other girls from studio, Danielle, and our room is pretty small but we have a lot of shelves and cabinets and a refrigerator. It is just like living in a dorm again with all the girls on one hall and sharing a bathroom. So far though, it has been fun to be around everyone all the time.

We had orientation for school at the Institute on September 10 where we just went over everything we ever needed to know about traveling and being in another country. We got our schedules and picked out our studio desks. The Institute is right in Old Town Prague and near all the good shopping and touristy things to do. It is about a 25 minute trip everyday from the pension where we live to get to the Institute between walking to the metro stop, riding the metro, and then walking to the Institute. It is nice to have a metro pass and able to jump on whenever we want. The pass also lets us use the trams for free.

On Friday we did not have class and I really needed to do laundry since I had almost three weeks of dirty clothes so John and I took the tram to the laundry place which is actually nice and they give you free coffee or tea and have wireless internet.

After laundry, I went to see Prague Castle with some of the other girls. We took the metro to the river and then walked across the Charles Bridge. There were a ton of tourists in this part of town and the bridge was full of people selling pictures and jewelry. We walked through town and up the steep hills to get to the castle gate. At the gate there were armed guards that stand extremely still no matter how close people get to them. This gate went into the palace where the royal family lived. We walked through and it wasn't much more than a rectangular building with a large courtyard in the center. Just behind the palace is a huge church, which is what you see when you look at the castle from the other side of the river. We walked through the church and around the castle area before starting to head down. There were a few points where you could stop and see all of Prague out in the distance. You could see the baby tower from here, which I have found out is actually a television tower that holds observation decks and a restaurant.

That night I made a reservation for 14 of us to eat at a place called Klub Architektu in downtown, right near studio. John's cousin's boyfriend and the lady who ran the hostel in Marseille had recommended it to us and it was also in the Let's Go book that I have. We got there and it was inside of a 16th century underground cellar. They had a million drinks on the menu but only two beers on draft. I split a pitcher of sangria with some other girls. The sangria was not as good as what we had in Spain and a lot sweeter. I also got the dark beer that they had and it was very good. The menu was also huge and I ended up getting chicken stir fry with rice and that was also very good. I would like to go back to this place when my parents come. After dinner a few of us went to another bar before heading home.

The next day I didn't have much planned so I worked on the blog and my pictures some during the day. I also went for a run and while running I saw a big green area with a lot of trees that I thought was a park but ended up being a huge cemetery. I decided to just run through and check it out and the place was actually pretty nice and some of the gravestones were enormous compared to the ones you see in America or the ones I have seen in Ireland. After running around and somewhat losing my orientation, I was able to see the baby tower and it helped me to find my way back to the pension.

That night we were to meet John's Aunt Kathryn, who is visiting from North Carolina with a friend, downtown for dinner at 7pm. We were supposed to meet in Old Town Square by the big Jon Hus statue. John and I got ready and headed downtown and when we got to Old Town Square we saw that there was a huge 5K and 10K race going on and there were booths and a stage and a million people swarming around the meeting place that we had picked. After wandering around for at least 20 minutes we finally ran into his aunt and her friend. From here we went to two bars for a beer, including a bar called U Flecku which had an accordion and a tuba player and a lot of Czech people singing. They only had one beer on tap that they served to everyone and it was 13% alcohol which is a lot compared to typical American beers. It was getting late and being so close we decided to go to Klub Architektu again. The menu is huge so I was easily able to find something else good to eat and got smoked salmon pasta. It was fun to see John's aunt and we are meeting her again during the week for her birthday.

After dinner, John and I met some of our friends at a bar because our friend Ryan was turning 21 that night. Turning 21 isn't really as big of a deal here because the drinking age is 18 but we still wanted to go out. We ended up choosing a bar that had go-go dancers dancing on the bars, so that was pretty interesting. They had a huge 5 liter mojito that the other five girls and I shared which was really good. We all danced and had a good time before catching the tram and heading home.

Having a three day weekend is nice and today, Sunday the 14th, has been nice but it is already getting cold here. Tomorrow we start school but I don't have studio until 2pm and we are meeting in Old Town Square. The other classes I am taking are Urbanism, which goes along with studio, Drawing, and Bees and Beekeeping.

Happy 17th Birthday Conor!

Last day in Madrid

The next day, September 7th, was our last day in Madrid and the last day of our two week trip. We first went to the Reina Sofia Art Museum which I liked but by that time I was a little tired of going to museums so I probably didn't look around as much as I should have. The museum did have some really cool glass elevator shafts and a more modern addition to the older part of the museum.

From there we went to the Caixa Forum which is a really cool new building by Herzog and DeMueron where they gutted out an existing building and added new walls on top of it. You could walk under the whole building and it had its big silver entry staircase centered underneath the building. We went in and the building had a large lobby with a gift shop and then a huge white staircase that took you to the other levels with different galleries and a restaurant on the top floor.

We hung out in the building for a while just walking around before heading to El Retiro. The park was huge so we walked around a bit and then sat in the park awhile before walking around to see the drummers and entertainers by the big lake.

That night we went back to the restaurant with the really good guacamole and had it again with fajitas and sangria. I definitely liked the food in Madrid better than anywhere else we went. That night we went to the bar in the hostel again and packed up to leave the next day to go back to Prague. The trip was really awesome and we got to see so much. I was really glad we picked the cities that we did and I was also excited to get to Prague and settle in to where we would be living for the next three months.

Madrid

We arrived in Madrid around 7pm and found our hostel, Cat's Hostel that my friend Rebecca and my cousin Cara had told me about. We were again in a huge room, this time with 16 people, and unfortunately the room was right on the street so it was very noisy. I did like the hostel though because it had computers with internet to use for free and it also had free breakfast and a bar downstairs with cheap beer. That first night we walked to a restaurant that was a block away and had chicken fajitas and sangria and found that the place had really good guacamole. We then walked around the area and also found some churros con chocolate, fried dough that you dip in chocolate sauce, which were good. We went back to the hostel and went down to the bar for a little bit and were surprised to hear the song "Space Jam" from the movie and see all of the kids in the bar immediately start dancing and singing all the words.

The next morning, September 6th, we woke up from an off and on sleep due to 14 people coming in and out of the room all night and we decided to walk around the area we were staying in. We walked to Puerta del Sol and also the Plaza de Mayor which was really nice. John really wanted to go to a bull fight and I thought it might be interesting so we found out how to get tickets for that and where to go. We showed up at the Plaza de las Ventas at 5pm to get tickets and they were having a deal where you could sit anywhere for 10 Euro. The stadium was a circle with concrete steps as seats going all the way and the place was actually a lot smaller than I thought it would be. The event started at 7pm and all the matadors came out together as they played music. Then the first bullfight started and a bull came rushing out to face a few less experienced matadors, with the pink capes, before seeing the head matador, with the red cape, at the end. At first the fight was entertaining as the bull was energetic and running around and then the matadors started to spear the bull in the back with these colorful sticks that then hang from the bulls back to weaken it. Then the head matador comes out and plays with the bull before sticking his long sword directly into the bulls back. If the matador is good, the bull will die very quickly but if he is not good like some of these matadors the bull still runs around and gets weak before they have to stab him the brain. This part was not very nice to watch and I didn't really expect it. Then when the bull is dead a carriage of horses comes out and pulls the bull out of the ring by a rope attached to his horns and everyone in the stands waves white hankerchiefs up to the sky. There were six bull fights while we were there and overall I was glad I went because it was interesting but I don't think I would go to it again.

Valencia

The next morning, September 4th, we got on the train to Valencia with no problems and arrived around 4pm. Valencia is much smaller than Paris and Barcelona and our hostel was downtown and very close to the train so we quickly found it and got unpacked. The whole trip so far we had been in our own room but here we were staying in a room with 12 other people, all packed in a room with six sets of bunkbeds. We actually got good beds all the way in the back of the room, it was just different having to share a room with so many people we didn't know. After settling in we quickly left again to see what we came to see in Valencia, la Ciudad de las Artes i de las Ciencias (the City of Arts and Sciences). It is a huge complex designed by Santiago Calatrava that has an art museum (pictured above to the left, I think it looks like a huge spaceship), an IMAX theater, a science museum, and an aquarium. The whole complex is like a big park and you can walk around for free so we walked around for a bit and then decided to buy tickets for the science museum (to the right) since we had already been to several art museums and also to an IMAX museum. The science museum was cool inside and we spent the afternoon wandering around. That night we didn't want to spend a lot of money on food so we grabbed something quick and then just sat in the plaza right near our hostel before going to sleep.

The next day, September 5th, we woke up to go see the movie The Alps at the IMAX theater called L'Hemispheric, the building shaped like a giant eyeball (above to the left). I had never seen an IMAX movie before and they gave us headsets so we could here it in English. The movie was about John Harlin whose father had died climbing the north face of the Eiger in Switzerland and it followed him as he attempted and succeeded in climbing it himself. I really liked the movie and it was cool to watch the scenery on such a large screen. We came out and then walked through another part of the complex called the L'Umbracle (pictured to the right) which is pretty much a short walk through a garden covered in a repeating white arched structure. We then had to leave to catch our last train to Madrid but I was really glad we made this stop in Valencia to see the City of Arts and Sciences.

Last Day in Barcelona

The next morning we got up and headed to the area by the beach called Port Olympic. We decided to walk to save some money and see more of the city so we walked through the park where they have the Zoo and the Modern Art Museum. When we got down to the beach and saw all the people in the water and laying out we decided that we actually wanted to swim and hang out so we went back to the hostel to get our suits and came back to lay out for about an hour and a half. We were right under the Frank Gehry goldfish, which is a giant sculpture of a fish covered in gold overlapping metal. Sadly I didn't bring my camera because I didn't want to leave it on the beach while swimming.

After swimming, we came back and showered before heading off to the Contemporary Art Museum, designed by Richard Meier. The whole building is completely white on the outside and inside and has a really cool interior. I didn't like the art exhibits very much, I was more impressed by the museum itself. The big open plaza in the front of the museum and the area behind it seemed to be a hang out for skateboarders as there were about 50 or more kids skating and hanging around the area. That night for dinner we went back to Tapa Tapa because we liked it so much and had more tapas and sangria. We then walked down La Rambla again for the last time before packing up and to get on the train the next day to go to Valencia.

Barcelona - second day

The next morning, September 2nd, we woke up early to get over to La Sagrada Familia before it was really packed. La Sagrada Familia is a huge church designed by Gaudi that has been under construction for almost 100 years and will not be completed until at least 2026. This church does not look like anything else and is very recognizable. Only eight of the proposed 18 towers are done being constructed. We went inside and saw that the large church only really has ceilings and walls with a completely empty interior that was being used as a construction site.

After walking through the church and the Gaudi museum, we took the metro to Park Guell, which was also deigned by Gaudi. As you can tell, Gaudi is extremely popular in Barcelona. To reach the park we had to climb a very steep street and then take about four escalators to the top. From up here you could see the La Sagrada Familia under construction (pictured above to the right) and also the Torre Agbar tower, by Jean Nouvel.

There was a covered walkway made of stone inside the park that I really liked. At the bottom of this park there is a large staircase with a lizard sculpture in the middle called the "drac" where we saw about 15 people trying to take a picture with it at once so John jumped in there also. Later that day we went back to the Barcelona Pavilion to see it at in late afternoon before eating dinner and then going to bed.

Barcelona

Our hostel in Barcelona was very close to La Rambla, which is the main busy street that is filled with people all day and night. Our hostel was about a two minute walk from La Rambla but far enough away that is was quiet and we could sleep. Our room also had its own A/C which was really awesome. Our first full day there, September 1st, we got up and went to the Barcelona Pavilion (pictured to the left), designed by Mies van der Rohe. It is a tiny little pavilion made of mostly stone and glass. We hung out here for a while before heading to the Olympic park, which held the summer Olympics in 1992. The park was huge but it was mostly empty. There was a large, white tower designed by Santiago Calatrava in the middle of the park.

After wandering around the park we took the metro to Passeig de Gracia, which is another main street with expensive shopping and several restaurants with tables on the sidewalk. We came across Gaudi's Casa Mila, also called La Pedrera, (pictured to the left) and some other Gaudi houses as we walked down the street. We then ate dinner at Tapa Tapa, which was recommended to us by John's friend Win. This was the first time I had had tapas and the food was very good. Tapas are small portions of meat or vegatables or appetizers and you order several of them and then share them with everyone at the table. We also finally had some Sangria. After dinner we walked back to La Rambla and then eventually to the hostel to go to bed.

Marseille - Southern France

After being in Paris for four nights we were ready to move on to Marseille which was a smaller city and much more laid back. We arrived at our hostel after a metro ride and then bus ride and came to a very large house. The women sitting at the pool in the backyard came to greet us as we walked up and showed us to our room which was a huge room on the first floor of the house that she lives in with her husband and two kids. We also had our own bathroom and outside terrace which was a nice change from our hotel in Paris. We walked into the small town outside of the major city for dinner and ended only finding a pizza place that was open. The guys inside were watching soccer and were very friendly and one spoke English. We took the pizza back to the hostel and ate on the terrace. We then went and talked with the couple about how to get to the Calanques, which we had seen a picture of in our bathroom. The Calanques are a series of cliffs that make up an area of Southern France that touch the Mediterranean Sea. We were to take a metro and then a bus to reach them and then hike about 30 minutes into them to get to the water and beaches between the cliffs. We planned our trip for the next morning and also packed as were leaving the next day to head to Barcelona as well.

The next morning, August 31st, we woke up and ate the breakfast that the women made for us at the hostel, before her husband dropped us off at the metro and we were on our way to the Calanques. After the bus ride that dropped us off at the head of the trail that we were to take to hike in, we hiked about 20 minutes before seeing the cliffs open up and started to get really pretty views of the water. We hiked in some more and found our way down to the water where we went swimming and jumped off some of the rocks. Unfortunately we had a train to catch so we couldn't stay for very long. This was also one of my favorite parts of the trip and I would like to come back and spend more time here just hiking around and swimming. We promptly left and made our train, and arrived in Barcelona at 10 pm after about a seven hour train ride. We found our hostel and went to sleep, being very tired from hiking a lot of the day.

Last day in Paris

The next morning, August 29th, we woke earlier than we had been to beat the long lines at the Eiffel Tower. We got some lunch that we brought with us as we took the stairs to the first level where there were actually tables and chairs and we had lunch. We walked around the first level to see the view and then headed to the second level where we could see everything a little better. We headed down and walked down the park below the tower, the Champs de Mars, before beginning to head to the Louvre again, this time to go inside.

On the way, we stopped at a seemingly cheaper then usual place for a quick dinner and then ended up getting ripped off as we had to pay 10 Euro each for one 16oz fountain soda. With 10 Euro coming out to about $15, I was not very happy with this. Nevertheless, we headed to Louvre, where we got in for free since it was Friday night and began our treck around the huge museum. My favorite part was the sculpture of the Winged Triumph. We also saw the Mona Lisa, along with the 1000 other people trying to take a picture of it, the Venus de Milo, and we also walked through the Roman, Greek and Egyptian exhibits. We came out to see the pyramid entrance was lit up and then went back to the hotel and got ready to leave on the train the next day.

more Paris

The next day, August 28th, we woke up and walked to a more modern building close to where we were staying, the Cartier Foundation by Jean Nouvel (pictured to the left). This building houses offices and a contemporary art museum. The museum has two large glass partitions out against the sidewalk, then an area for trees and plants, and then the building with an almost entirely glass façade. We then took the metro and got off near the Rodin Museum, picked up some lunch at a deli again and ate in a large park where we watched men playing bocce ball. Behind the park was very large building that we ended up walking through and it turned out to be the Musee de L'Armee which also had a very large church and housed Napoleon's Tomb under a gold dome. This was probably one of the more interesting things that we just happened to come upon.

From here we walked to the Rodin Museum where we saw several sculptures by Rodin inside of the house where he lived and sculpted. There was also a very nice rose garden outside with castings of his more famous sculptures, like the Thinker, where we just sat for a while and hung out.

From here we took the train to Centre Pompidou, which was one of my favorite things that we did on the whole trip. The Centre Pompidou, designed by Renzo Piano, is a very large modern art museum that has all of its mechanical systems and its main circulation path exposed on the outside of the structure rather than the inside, like most buildings. We walked through the whole museum, which also happened to have a very large architecture exhibit with tons of really cool models and renderings. We then left and had dinner right at a restaurant right outside before heading back to the hotel.