Paris 2012

Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. Photoset 3.

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 17:47:14 -0500

On the higher courtyard, looking at a once-private royal chapel.

The beautiful view from the top courtyard.

Yep! A cemetery for the dogs of soldiers!

This is the seating for the "Royal Tattoo," basically a military parade held every night or so (not sure, I didn't attend).

A church (or something) converted to a memorial for those who fought in wars.

A view of the old part of Edinburgh, with the Waverly train station under the coverings seen below the bridge.

A lot of old buildings had their clocks like that, I thought it was interesting.

An awesome bluegrass/country/southern band from Australia! They were so good!

Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. Photoset 3.

Edingburgh, Scotland, UK. Photoset 2.

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 17:36:42 -0500

A bagpiper performing on the Royal Mile, amidst hundreds of people and performers for the Fringe Festival.

The Royal Mile.

Typical housing in the heart of Edinburgh.

Entering the castle!

People taking in the nice view from the castle.

On the main castle courtyard.

The famous One O'clock Gun - firing at, you guessed it, one o'clock in the afternoon every day.

A really cool museum of the castle's prison history!

Edingburgh, Scotland, UK. Photoset 2.

Edinburgh, Scotland, UK August 7-8, 2012 My first stop...

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 17:26:00 -0500

This is the view from my hotel room!

St. Mary's Cathedral, close to where my hotel was.

Inside St. Mary's Cathedral.

The westernmost part of the Princes Street Gardens, looking at part of the castle on the hill in the background.

The gardener's house.

A street performer juggling "knives", while standing on a ladder and blindfolded...

On the left is the National Gallery and behind is some old building (descriptive, I know).

A beautiful view of the East part of Princes Street Gardens.

More Princes Street Gardens.

More Princes Street Gardens.

Edinburgh, Scotland, UK August 7-8, 2012

My first stop after Newcastle, was Edinburgh, in Scotland. Here is what I wrote about Edinburgh while on the trip:

I love Edinburgh! I’d say it’s one of my top three favorite places I’ve been this summer - maybe even top 2! List is Napoli, Edinburgh and Paris as top 3. It’s so beautiful! Very old, but bustling and busy. I love the old town houses, very pretty and unique (in UK?). On the first day I walked around Princes Street Park and fell in love! On the way to the park there are many old pubs and stores, and even a few old churches and a beautiful cathedral. But the amazing part is starting at the park - the old town (including beautiful and enormous buildings) on top of the hill looks down on a Central Park-esque garden full of green grass and people enjoying nature and the sun. It’s great like central park in the sense that you get this kind of oasis feel (away from the city bustle and streets) but it’s even better than central park because it had the city looking down upon you, like some lord of the rings scene with the city on the edge of a cliff. I also got extremely lucky because I came during Fringe festival ( http://www.edfringe.com/ ) ! I was able to see so many street performances - from circus acts to comedy shows - it was great! There are a lot of interesting people walking around because of it, as well as a lot of people from all over the world. You can tell the people here are really cool too, there seems to be a bit more culture and intellect than other part of England that I’ve seen (this is a huge assumption though).

Last one :).

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 22:28:22 -0500

Last one :).

Yet another panoramic of the castle in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 22:26:22 -0500

Yet another panoramic of the castle in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Here is a view of the castle grounds.

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 22:24:00 -0500

Here is a view of the castle grounds.

New for a few panoramics… Here is the view of part of...

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 22:20:00 -0500

New for a few panoramics…

Here is the view of part of Princes Street Gardens from the castle.

Just a preview of the next post - Edinburgh, Scotland! This is a...

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 21:26:00 -0500

Just a preview of the next post - Edinburgh, Scotland! This is a panoramic of Princes Street Gardens!

Durham, England August 7, 2012 On my last day in the...

Mon, 24 Dec 2012 01:34:00 -0500

A small, central plaza in the heart of the small town.

A typical city-center street filled with shops and restaurants.

Durham's enormous Cathedral!

A small courtyard within the cathedral grounds surrounded by the old living chambers of the nuns and friars.

Picture of a cemetery and church.

Same cemetery but this time with the IR filter! :D

Durham, England August 7, 2012

On my last day in the Newcastle area, I decided to take a short train ride to Durham, a small town about 40 minutes away. Durham is known to be more traditional and old, as opposed to Newcastle which is a thriving, modern city with a huge growing population and economy.

Durham was really great - it was a really small town with a nice, picturesque city-center and a ton of small churches and beautiful buildings. As you can see, though, it had an incredible cathedral! It was unbelievably large and incredibly beautiful - it’s a shame it’s so isolated and located in a tiny town (although I think it’s worth the visit). Apart fromt he cathedral I went to a few museums and learned a lot about the history of Durham, which was interesting.

Tynemouth, England. Description to come in the near future!

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 01:46:00 -0500

A beautiful view of Tynemouth Priory and Castle.

The beach at Tynemouth.

Ridiculously expensive beach-side homes.

A small view of Tynemouth's main historical street.

Tynemouth, England.

Description to come in the near future!

Newcastle, England. Photoset 2.

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 01:36:00 -0500

Newcastle University.

Newcastle University.

The Millenium bridge tilted up (so as to let ships go under it)! So cool!

Part of where the original "New Castle" used to be - there have been many on the spot ever since Roman times.

Finish it with one last panoramic at night!

Newcastle, England.

Photoset 2.

Newcastle, England. August 2 - 8, 2012. Hello again! Sorry for...

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 01:26:00 -0500

Newcastle!

James' beautiful apartment.

The stadium was holding men and women's soccer games for the olympics. I wasn't able to make a game though :(.

The Quayside (area by the Tyne river).

The Quayside.

Earl Grey's monument.

Olympics for public viewing!

Newcastle, England. August 2 - 8, 2012.

Hello again! Sorry for the delay - same excuse as always, busy with school and friends. I’m glad to be keeping up with this though! It’s worth it :). The good thing is that there is still a lot left! :D. Anyways, here is the post about Newcastle! This time it’s a bit different than what I normally write because I took “notes” as I went through my days so that I could save some time on the blog writing. Therefore, it may not flow so well, but you’ll get to read about the most important parts and thoughts of the days. I’ll try to fix some of them up so they don’t sound weird and choppy. Enjoy!

But first, some background:

In Lisboa, Portugal, I was fortunate enough to make friends with a lot of great people - more specifically, two Croatian, Andrea and Andja (which you’ve already “met”), a Belgian, Tomas, and an English man named James. All of them were extremely kind and wonderful people. Like you’ve already read, I was able to visit Andrea and Andja in Zagreb once my internship was over with, but I had room for one more trip somewhere within Europe! At the end of my stay in Portugal, James was generous enough to offer me a bed at his apartment in Newcastle, and so I happily obliged! After Zagreb, I flew to London and took a train to Newcastle, where I was going to stay for about 5 days. Anyways, here are my notes on the trip:

Blog:

Day 1 (Friday the 3rd)

James has an incredible apartment! I can’t believe he can afford it… Haha. It’s walking distance from the center of the city but far enough so as to be peaceful and quiet at night. I really like the size of Newcastle, it’s not too big nor too small and there seems to be a lot of growing going on in it, which means that a lot of things are new, but cheap!

For not being this famously historic city, there are a surprising amount of old, historic churches, structures and neighborhoods, which is nice. The best part so far is when I find old neighborhoods or blocks - they’re super typical and really unique. The area by the river, called the Quayside (Dean Street, butcher’s area?), is very historic and the architecture is really traditional and pretty. Very nice to walk along. There is also an old city wall with very traditional buildings which I really liked.

I can’t understand when some people talk.

That night James and I went out drinking with one of his friends named Chris. This was actually a really cool experience because I got to see really old, “classy” pubs as well as dance clubs and I had a lot of fun. They drink sooo much! We drank two pints before we left, and drank about 4 more throughout the night (and Chris and James even more) - I couldn’t keep up! By the third beer I was already struggling to keep up and wanted to take it easy, but they wouldn’t allow it, haha. I had a lot of fun though.

Day 2 (Saturday the 4th):

James drove us to Kielder Water and Forest Park (I believe), which is about an hour away and in the Northumberland area, so that we could go mountain biking! I was really excited to go, I have never been truly mountain biking in a trail. However, when we get there it is raining unbelievably hard, so we weren’t able to ride :(. We ended up driving around more, but that actually wasn’t so bad because the countryside is really pretty (rolling hills) and green. We also passed by tiny, tiny villages which was a really unique experience for me. It’s funny because even two block villages have a seemingly ancient church…

Day 3 (Sunday the 5th):

Watched Olympics, went to the beach in Tynemouth - so pretty! Then went out with a friend, was more relaxed this time but also got to see a lot of really cool bars.

Day 4 (Monday the 6th):

Museum Tour! Learned a ton about the history of the area (North England) which was actually extremely interesting! I was really surprised as to how rich the history was and how interesting it is. It has a great mix of history from Roman, Viking, tribal, royal and other eras and periods! I am really impressed as to how many (great) museums there are here, it’s a great thing to have in a city! I ran out of time at the museums!

Day 5 (Tuesday the 7th):

Last day. Went to Durham! Durham is nice, and had an amazing cathedral! Surprising for the size of the town. Went to a few museums and learned a lot about the history of Durham, which was interesting. Pretty traditional streets, it was worth going to.

Plitvice photoset 2

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 02:39:20 -0400

Plitvice photoset 2

Plitvice, Croatia July 31, 2012 After Emi left, I had en...

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 02:31:03 -0400

Plitvice, Croatia July 31, 2012

After Emi left, I had en extra day so I decided to take a bus to the beautiful national park in Plitvice (pronounced “pleet-veet-seh”), which was like two hours away from Zagreb, where I was staying.

The park was so beautiful, as you can (hopefully) tell by my pictures. It was already unbelievable the second you started going through it. I decided to do a 3-hour expedition (the park was really well organized - they had multiple expeditions of a certain number of hours with times of departure and everything), which comprised of taking a tram to a starting point and then walking back to the entrance essentially. While riding on the tram we got a glimpse of the park itself and it was incredible! The first glimpse of the lakes was through the trees - at first I was confused because I saw something ridiculously blue and didn’t know what I was looking at, haha. They’re so blue and beautiful that they almost look artificial (not in a bad way)! But no, they are the real thing, it is really a sight to behold. The trail itself was also done really well - we basically walked along a boardwalk that wound between the forest and the lakes. Again, I was a bit surprised at how well-kept the trail was (not a single board out of place!) and how organized everything was. If that park was in Argentina, everybody would get lost after half a mile due to lack of a clear path and directions :-P. The park was full of people, but because it was so big it wasn’t a big problem. Overall, it was a great experience because (apart from being stunningly beautiful) it was something new, since I’d been exploring different European cities the whole summer.

On the way back, I had a bit of a scare. They told me that the last bus came at 6:30, so at around 6:10, I get to the place where I was dropped off, but realized that there’s no clear bus “stop” which I had to wait under - and I also didn’t see anybody there… I waited for 10 minutes, seeing bus after bus pass by without stopping, and began to freak out a bit: If I missed the last bus back to Zagreb I would miss my plane the next day! Thankfully, a bit past 6:30 a similar bus came blasting through the curve but thankfully slammed on its breaks. A man gets out and asks me if I’m going to Zagreb and I said yes, and so I got in and bought a ticket - I was saved! It was quite an experience to deal with that kind of organization, I guess I’m just spoiled by the US’ tendency to over-compensate when it comes to organizing transportation, haha.

A panoramic of the park (Trg kralja Tomislava) in front of the...

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 21:50:46 -0400

A panoramic of the park (Trg kralja Tomislava) in front of the central train station (seen on the right).

Photo

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 21:40:00 -0400

Very old street full of bars and great places to eat!

Nikola Tesla every where! :D

Pretty parks in the middle of the city :).

Zagreb Cathedral

Inside of the Cathedral - so beautiful!

Old croatian alphabet - looks like an alien language! Haha.

Medieval town about 30 minutes away from Zagreb.

Pavle and Andrea being a cute couple :)

Andrea's apartment!

Zagreb July 27th - August 2nd Hello everybody! Sorry...

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 21:25:00 -0400

Croatian National Theatre

The sun! There is a scale model (distances and sizes of planets) of the solar system in the city of Zagreb!

The main square in the center of Zagreb.

Zagreb July 27th - August 2nd

Hello everybody! Sorry for the delay in posts - with school I have been fairly busy until now. Hopefully I’ll start to slowly finish off the posts. I have all of Great Britain to post after this, so there’s still about 4 posts or so.

July 27th was my last day in Paris - my internship was finally over! :(. I was obviously really sad to be leaving Paris, my lab and my dorm. I really had an incredible time - not only did I learn a LOT more than I had imagined, but I also enjoyed it a lot more (the work I mean). It was really unbelievable to be living in Paris and having a normal, day-to-day life. I wish I could write pages and pages about what I felt in Paris and how my experience went, but I don’t want to bore everybody and it’s also pretty hard to do that, so I will keep it short.

I had gotten used to going to work and seeing all the people (Alex, Vassilis, Pankaj, Benjamin, and Johan), not to mention that I finally started making friends at the spanish dorm. So it was especially sad to be leaving all those friends and familiar faces that I had made during my stay, rather than leaving Paris or Europe. However, I was really missing home at the time and I was also looking forward to traveling around Europe in my final weeks there, so I wasn’t devastated or anything :).

My first, “post-internship” trip was to Zagreb Croatia, where I would meet my brother, Andrea and Andja and we would spend a few days there. After Croatia, the plan was to visit James in Newcastle, England, stay a few days there and then do a small tour of northern Great Britain. But anyways, this post is really mainly about Zagreb, so I will get to that!

Zagreb was probably one of my favorite places - not necessarily for its beauty, food or its people/culture/history (although it was one of my favorite in that sense too), but mainly because of the people we were with. Not only was I with my brother, whom I hadn’t seen the whole summer other than in Milan, but I was also with Andrea (we were staying at her apartment), her boyfriend Pavle, and Andja - three incredible people! From day one, they were unbelievably nice and generous to us; even though they worked full time jobs during the week, they took us out, showed us around and never stopped helping us out with ideas of what to do during the weekdays and things like that, not to mention the fact that they wanted to pay for everything (all while letting Emi and I crash at their place for free)! They were also great people to be around; they were nice, fun and interesting. I really had a great time in Zagreb. The first weekend, we went out for some drinks in the historic district (there’s a picture above showing it), which was something that I really enjoyed. There, the bars put the tables and chairs in the middle of the street so people can sit down, relax and enjoy good beer in good company while enjoying the historical surroundings; it was something really unique. Of course, the city itself was beautiful, especially the historical/downtown area. However, what I thought was interesting was the fact that sometimes you would run into certain areas where the apartment buildings were a bit ugly and worn down; it turns out that these were built during the communist regime, which would make sense, but was still surprising since I’d never run into anything like that, obviously. I just thought it was interesting to still see the results of something like that so many years later, not to mention noticing how different those times must’ve been. Another thing that I enjoyed about Zagreb was its museums and parks, which, for its size, had a lot of them! I went to a “Technical” museum (basically engineering stuff) which was really unique and interesting. However, by far the most interesting museum was one called “The Museum of Broken Relationships”. This museum comprised of objects that reminded them (or symbolized) the relationships of old partners - people from all over the world sent in objects from their failed relationships and wrote a paragraph or two about them. Some of them were hilarious (one was a “can of love” which her boyfriend gave her, and she wrote, “It doesn’t work”), some of them were depressing (the ones dealing with death or illness), and some of them were just hard to read (cheating, walking out of a marriage on the day of, etc.). It was something I’d never seen before - it was really interesting and entertaining!

After Emi left Zagreb, I took a day trip to a national park in Plitvice (two hours away from Zagreb) - the next post will be about that.

Second photo set from Milano.

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 15:10:00 -0400

Isola dei Pescatori.

A picture of Isola dei Pescatori taken from Isola Bella.

Summer palace built by Vitaliano the 6th on Isola Bella.

A picture of Isola dei Pescatori taken from Isola Bella.

The entrance to the zoo - basically a ranch house or something? Not sure.

When it started raining!

Second photo set from Milano.

Milan and Lago Maggiore! July 20, 2012 On the weekend of...

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 14:57:27 -0400

In front of the Duomo di Milano with my cousin Maxi, uncle Rodolfo and Emi.

Inside the cathedral.

Inside the cathedral.

Inside Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II (look familiar? See: Napoli)

Monument to Leonardo Da Vinci!

At Lago Maggiore, on the way to Isola Dei Pescatori and Isola Bella.

Arriving at Isola Dei Pescatori by ferry.

Isola Dei Pescatori

Isola Dei Pescatori

Isola Dei Pescatori

Milan and Lago Maggiore! July 20, 2012

On the weekend of the 20th, I had planned a trip to Milano, to visit my cousins (and Emi, who was there all summer) - I was very excited to see family and familiar faces again! Not to mention that it has been years since I’ve seen them! Thankfully, the flight from Paris to Milan was really short (about 1 hour) and it was calm. Emi and Maxi (one of my cousins) picked me up, then walked around their neighborhood (Limbiate). It is actually hot here and feels like summer, unlike Paris, where it has been about 18-20 degrees celsius with rain the whole time! After saying hello to everybody, we then went to Milan - drove to subway station and took it to the center (it’s actually a suburb of Milan, Limbiate). Then we walked around a bit; we first saw the Duomo di Milano, which is a very beautiful cathedral, with (to me) a very original facade. After walking around inside the beautiful cathedral, we wandered around the Vittorio Emanuele II shopping center, which is identical to the shopping center in Napoli (called the Galleria Umberto I). Like any good tourist in Italy should do, we got a delicious ice cream (only for 2.50 euros! Cheaper than Amy’s ice cream and for a lot more ice cream!) and walked around more. We were all really tired so we didn’t walk for too long. Unfortunately, the gods apparently punished us for being lazy by having to take an alternate route back home because of strikes on the metro… After all this we went straight to Mariela’s (other cousin, older sister) house and ate (with 11 people) the best meal ever! And it was ALL made from scratch - incredible - even the desert. First pasta with pesto, then salad, mozzarella (amazingly fresh and good) and tomatoes, then two kinds of vegetable pies that were incredible, then desert which was tiramisu - also home made. Unbelievable! I love being around everybody - they are all so incredibly nice, open, friendly, and really funny too. It’s such a great environment - everybody is always laughing and talking and joking and being very expressive. I missed that in my life while I was in Paris! Haha.

The next day we took a trip to one of the incredible lakes up north (close to Switzerland) with my uncle Rodolfo, Maxi, his girlfriend Gaia and Emi to visit Isola Dei Pescatori and Isola Bella, two small islands. Not surprisingly, it was unbelievable! You had the lush, green mountains looking down onto the clear blue lake next to incredibly old and picturesque houses… I tried capturing the beauty with my camera but it was really hard! We had a good time there and even got to see the sun for a good while (but it did rain intermittently).

On the final day, Emi, Fernando (third and final cousin), his girlfriend Marta and I went to a local zoo near Pavia, a really small town/village about an hour from their place. The drive there was actually incredibly nice, because we got to see a lot of the beautiful country side which I had not seen before (it was a bit different than the countryside that we saw on the way to the islands, which was also beautiful). Once there, the zoo was actually a pretty small establishment, run by only a few people it seemed, and very “local” in the sense that it seemed like a mom-and-pop kind of place (no advertisements, sponsorships, vendors, etc.). However, this did not prevent the zoo itself from being small at all! In fact, it was rather large and had a really good amount of animals. While in the zoo, we got to see a live demonstration of hawks and owls, which was really cool. However, shortly into our trip, it started pouring! We had to run between sheltered areas, which there was a lot of, thankfully - it was fun, though.

Here is a picture of a cemetery in Durham, near Newcastle, where...

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 19:01:50 -0400

Here is a picture of a cemetery in Durham, near Newcastle, where I was recently. It was taken using my infrared filter (Hoya R72).