Centre Pompidou and the Louvre

Most people would never imagine you could see Saint Chapelle, Centre Pompidou AND the Louvre in one day. Fact: you could spend the whole day at the Louvre and still not see everything. Welcome to Interior Design Study Abroad.

Saint Chapelle was built in the Tudor style. The walls of the chapel upstairs is made almost entirely of stained glass. It is also completely covered in brightly colored patterns.

Centre Pompidou is a contemporary building designed by Renzo Piano. This building is unique for it's exposed architecture. Most buildings hide up all the innerworkings of a building, but Piano kept it all on the outside, saying it should be celebrated. The zigzag looking thing going up the building is the escalator, and you can get an awesome view of the city from there.

Inside Centre Pompidou is a museum for contemporary art. We had to go through it pretty quickly, but I absolutely loved it. It had some iconic chairs that I recognized, some paintings whose artists I recognized.

Chair from Le Petit Comfort series

We had a lunch break then walked to the Musee du Louvre. The Louvre was originally a fortress in the 12th century. It was turned into a palace for Fracois I and Louis XIV, and has been a museum since 1793. Its most recent addition has been the Pyramid by I.M. Pei. The Pyramid is very contemporary and has a strong juxtaposition with the rest of the building. Some people love it, some people hate it. I didn't like it much until I actually went to see it today.

We were all very tired by the time we got to the Louvre so we didn't spend a lot of time there- about 3 hours total. We did manage to see a few very famous pieces- you know, just the MONA LISA, and the WINGED VICTORY. Nothin special. Hardly worth mentioning. Leslie and I sketched the Winged Victory, and as we were sitting there people kept peering over our shoulders to look at our work. We even had some people take pictures of us! I didn't know how to react to that so I just pretended I didn't notice. It was kind of hard to not notice though- once I looked up and this old lady had a giant lens pointed right at my face! It was kind of fun. I won't pretend my sketch was anything incredible, but it was still a confidence booster :)

We got Chinese food for dinner.  I don't know if this really counts as Chinese, but I tried roast duck for the first time. It tasted like chicken.

P.S. Now that I'm all caught up with my blog posts, I should be posting every day again. :)

June 15th- Bonjour, Paris!

Today was a very long day.

It mostly involved traveling. We left our flat at 11:30 and headed to the Eurostar station. The actual travelling time on the train was only about 2 hours, but what with the queue time, traveling the metro, and the change of time zones, we didn’t arrive in our hotel in Paris until 9 PM. Needless to say, we were exhausted, and we were starving.

For dinner we went to a great pizza place down the street from our hotel. Haha. I just realized that I’ve eaten pizza in every country I’ve been to on this trip. We also got dessert- it was called fraise melba, or strawberry melba. It was amazing. However, we also got our first encounter with the language barrier at the restaurant. Benae is the only one in our entire group that speaks French. We’ll see how this goes!

It was about 10:30 at night but the day wasn’t over yet. Our professors took us to see the Eiffel Tower- it’s just a few blocks away from our hotel. Oh. My. Goodness. I was blown away. It was absolutely stunning! We were all giddy at the sight of it. 

Yes, I took this picture. I'm kinda proud of it :)

I also took this picture... don't judge. The lighting was tough to work with!

We got back to the hotel around midnight. Our hotel is very small, but it’s well kept and cheerful. The biggest problem is that we have four girls in our room and one narrow closet... so there's enough room for us to hang up one shirt each, and the rest would have to stay in our suitcases.

We'll be in Paris for 10 days. This is going to be an adventure for sure!

June 14th- Cheerio, London!

This was my last day in London. So sad! But we're moving on to a new adventure: tomorrow we're taking the Eurostar to Paris!

Our last day in England was pretty relaxed. We toured Kensington palace in the morning and looked at textile displays in the National Theatre. Kensington Palace is where Prince William and Princess Catherine now live. Our tour of Kensington was very different from the other places we've been to; they turned the rooms into these awesome "enchanted" displays... the displays told the story of 7 English princesses. But they weren't the typical happily ever after stories- they were all actually sad. For example, Princess Charlotte had two miscarriages, then went through 50 hours of labor giving birth to her stillborn son, then died 5 hours later. And all of the stories were like that.


It was interesting to learn about the ugly side of being royalty. Everyone likes to overlook that side, but honestly, I think there are so many challenges with being royal- no privacy, demanding expectations, who knows if your friends are true friends or if they just like you for your status, etc- that having a lot of money doesn't make the job look worth it. As if money and material things could make you truly happy anyway.

So that's my soapbox for the day.

We didn't spend much time at the National Theatre because there wasn't exactly a huge textile display. But we found these awesome chairs right outside the Theatre. They're giant! And they look like they're upholstered with grass! So we had fun taking pictures of that. :)

We got a great view of the London Eye on the way back from the National Theatre.

I don't know how this happened, but I think my whole home ward will probably end up in London this summer. This previous Sunday, my neighbors the Bergstroms came to London on a business trip. So tonight, I went out to dinner with Averyl and the Bergstroms. It was so awesome! To see such familiar faces in such an unfamiliar setting was very strange. But I loved it, of course. And it was a wonderful way to spend my last evening in London!

This was on the tube and I really liked it. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll get to come back to London someday :)

June 13

Our trip to Ireland went by so fast! I was sad to go. So of course, our last day in Belfast was spent shopping. :) Not much to really report there, except the mall had really neat modern architecture. I liked the modern sculptures all over the city. We walked into a couple shops that sold homemaking stuff like rugs, kitchen tools, etc which I really enjoyed. And there were these guys standing on the street corners everywhere selling tickets for bus tours, and we had a couple guys hit on us. We even got a picture with one guy! Haha.

In the afternoon we flew back to London. By the time we got back and we were all exhausted. Then again- we’re always exhausted by the end of the day! 

Jesse called our 3 day trip to Ireland a “vacation on our vacation”. I must say that’s a pretty accurate description! I felt like Ireland was much more relaxed than London. Our days were still very eventful but I didn’t feel rushed.

I have loved being in London, but I think I liked Ireland more. I think I'm just more of a small town person than a city person. :)

June 12- Giant's Causeway

Our day had a very lovely start- we went to the breakfast buffet in the hotel. There was so much good food! To be honest, that was probably my favorite thing about our hotel.

We spent the whole day on a bus tour around the coast of Ireland. Our tour guide had this awesome Irish accent which made it fun to listen as well as difficult to understand sometimes. We made occasional stops so we could step outside and take pictures.

For one, we stopped at Carrickfergus Castle, which belonged to William of Orange. We also stopped by Carrick-a-Rede, which is this rope bridge that connects two platformed islands. Who knew that crossing a rope bridge could be so awesome?? It was pretty high up, but the only thing that made me nervous was the strong wind- it made it hard for me to see what with my eyes watering and my hair all over my face, plus it rocked the bridge. But we all got across just fine and the view of the ocean was incredible!

Our final destination on our bus tour was Giants’ Causeway. I don’t completely understand how Giants’ Causeway was formed, except the rocks are Basalt, which comes from volcanoes. But by some natural phenomena, this huge cluster of rocks are all in the shape of hexagonal prisms. The local myth is that there were two giants- one in Scotland, and one in Ireland. Each giant argued that he was bigger and stronger than the other. They would throw giant rocks at each other which are now scattered along the shore line. Finally it looked like it was going to be a fist fight. Once the Irish giant saw the Scottish Giant heading over, he realized that the Scottish giant was much bigger and stronger than him and was sure to win. So he went to his wife who dressed him up like a baby. When the Scottish Giant arrived and saw the Irish Giant dressed like a baby, he turned around and went straight back to Scotland. He said, with a baby that big, I would hate to run into its Daddy!

It started raining just as we got back into the bus to head back. The luck o’ the Irish must have rubbed off on us! We got back to the hotel around 6. After eating a simple dinner, Jesse, Leslie and I had a small scripture study/ devotional. And (shock!) I got to bed at about 10:30. Inconcievable.

June the 11th- First Day in Ireland!

I just spent 3 days in a foreign country with no computer, no cell phone, no camera, and no iPod. And I had a blast! And it hardly bothered me at all to go without those things, except for my camera. (I left my camera battery in its charger in London) But some of my friends let me take pictures with their cameras, so it turned out ok.

We left the flat at 5:30 AM (Yikes!!) to catch our flight to Ireland. The flight was only an hour long but there was a delay so we got there at about 11. 

Since the hotel wasn’t ready for us to check in when we got there, we dropped our stuff off at the front desk and went across the street to St George’s Marketplace. The word is LOVE. It was this awesome place where locals sell fresh fruit, vegetables, fish, handmade crafts, and fresh baked goodies.  I loved the community-like atmosphere of the place.

After lunch we took a bus tour of Belfast and learned about the city’s history. Around the time of Industrial Revolution, Ireland became the world’s number one seller of linen and tobacco. There are still a lot of linen factories throughout the city, but very few of them are still used to manufacture linen. I found it really neat to see the Peace Wall- it’s this wall that divides Ireland and North Ireland. The wall itself is a very sad thing, but over time people have covered it with their hopes for peace. It’s covered in graffiti and such and it’s actually really neat. 

We also got to see the place where Titanic was built. I had no idea that the Titanic came from Belfast so that was really neat. And it was incredible to see how big the Titanic was- if it was stood up on its end, it would be taller than any building of that time!

When we got back we were finally able to check in at the Hilton Hotel. And holy cow, the Hilton was AWESOME. It was soo much nicer than our flat in Kensington!

We walked into the shopping area of Belfast to get some groceries for Sunday and to find dinner. After wandering around for a good place to eat for about 2 hours, we finally settled on the Kitchen Bar. I had this soda bread pizza that was way good. 

We conked out by 11:00. That’s the earliest I’ve gone to bed this whole trip!

Cambridge

Today we toured Cambridge University. Interestingly, instead of having one designated campus, the buildings are interspersed throughout the town. So you might say we did a bit of walking today! Cambridge University is very, very old- its first buildings were built around 1020 AD. It actually began as a school for 14 year old boys who were studying to become priests. Now there are about 18,000 students enrolled.

This is the Corpus Clock: a million-pound clock invented by one of the professors at Cambridge. -And when I say pounds, I mean money :P

After our walking tour we toured the back of Cambridge via "punting". A punt is a long, flat boat; it works a lot like a gondola. It was so fun to float down the river in these cute little boats!

For dinner, Averyl and I went to South Kensington to get fish and chips. So yummy! Then we went to Covent Garden Market in search of gelato. We went to the Ice Creamists- I don't think what we got was gelato, but boy was it good. I guess that means we'll just have to go back again. Poor us!

Hopefully I can come back to Covent Garden- tomorrow morning I'm leaving for Ireland for a few days, then we'll come back to London for one more day. And while we're in Ireland, I'm leaving most of my stuff in our flat in London, which means I probably won't bring my laptop, which means I won't be blogging until I get back on Monday or Tuesday.

Tomorrow I'm leaving at 5 AM for Ireland! I'm super excited but I'm not looking forward to such an early start!