Winter EuroTrip 2011-2012 (Ya, I'm super late...)

Yes, I realize I could've come up with a better name but look at the bright side, I'm posting again :) Let's hope that this time I keep it up.

So let's back track a bit. The last post I did was over Thanksgiving break where I was in Barcelona, which by the is an amazing place. We visited tons of works by Gaudi including Park Guell, Casa Mila, Casa Batllo (my personal fave) and the ever so glorious, awe-inspiring Sagrada Familia. We also enjoyed tapas and many run-ins with the bubbly words of the Catalan language including with a small sign allllllll the way at the bottom of a hill to explain that a particular fountain was not in service. (Catalan honestly sounds like people talking underwater, which actually suits the architecture and nature of the place amazingly). All-in-all it was great fun. I really miss the place and hope to go back to Barcelona and maybe see the rest of Spain someday. As for now however...

Trip and photo epicness.

WINTER BREAK. (Ya, super late too but I gotta start somewhere don't I?)

So this year instead of doing the usual business of going home, it was decided that I should travel Europe instead for the whole of winter break. Intense. As you can imagine, I've never planned a month long trip before, and I've never been in charge of funding the whole thing either. Thank God for grandparents though (shout out to Grandma, and Lola & Pop!) This year, since I was travelling in a group, two of my friends and I started planning out, booking flights and accommodations etc from at least 2 months in advance. It was at times... intense. But it was sorted so the final schedule of events went a little something like this:

DEC 16 Break officially starts
DEC 19 Rome - Nice
Dec 21 Nice - Paris
Dec 26 Paris - London
Dec 30 London - Portsmouth
Jan 1 London - Amsterdam
Jan 2 Amsterdam - Prague
Jan 5 Prague - Vienna
Jan 8 Vienna - Zurich (with day trip to Lucerne)
Jan 12 Zurich - Rome

Cool? Cool. Now I'm just going to briefly describe each place otherwise this post will take FOREVER. And it's already taken me forever just to put this up *sigh*.

Nice

No, not nice, Nice as in that coastal city of France that's just a $50 flight away from Rome. That place. Here we spent an hour and a half on the bus to the hostel, not because we had far to go but really due to the fact we missed our stop. We ate dinner by ourselves at restaurants since we could never seem to eat when the natives did, we visited graveyards and a random church (ah, Tuesday! The only day of the week when everything is closed... except graveyards of course, and the only full day that we are actually there), we went to the coast and watched an absolutely amazing sunset, (picked up some rocks there too), roamed the Christmas market treating ourselves to things such as a view of some Olympic skaters performing and cotton candy, and finally we visited a museum, Palais Massena (the morning before leaving of course) which had some pretty cool paintings and a pretty neat tiger rug.

This is what happens when you eat alone.

After that, we took a train to Paris.

Main quote for this city: "Everything here is sooo Nice."


Paris

Ahh, French. The language I understand less and less every time I hear it. Seriously, I just can't understand it and I can't speak a word of it, which was something that my french-speaking friends all forgot any time me speaking French was required. All was well however. We visited Museum D'Orsay (where there was an entire exhibit on the time period of Oscar Wilde -- so obsessed with him), the Louvre where I got a pic with Mona (just to let you know, 4 hours is not enough time to even get through one wing of it... O and it's also free to students on Fridays at 6). We went to Champs-Elysees (to be honest, I'm not sure what that is since anything French sounding just goes over my head), Paris Opera House, Eiffel tower of course, Arc de Triomphe, Sacre Coure where I met up with my friend from the Olympic Youth camp I went to in '08 (miss you Anja!), and Notre Dame where we celebrated Christmas Vigil. Those were some of the main spots we went to. We also celebrated Christmas in Paris, which was also my friend's Bday. It was really bittersweet, first time in 2 decades that I celebrated Christmas without my family. At least I had close friends with me.

*All of the lights!*


Main Quote for this trip: "Kate, you forget, I don't speak French!"


Flight to London-town!

London

Probably no one was more relieved than I to be in such a glorious place. Finally, a language that I UNDERSTAND. And they can understand me too! *Cries a little in happiness.* You never realize how much you miss something until its gone. I never realized how much I miss overhearing strangers and understanding them completely. Ugh, glorious. Anyway, back to the trip. This was my first time ever setting foot in Britain, my country's motherland. It was quite fascinating. We visited Westminister Abbey (the fan vaulting in there is amazing!), took pics with Big Ben (who's now leaning), went to the V&A Museum, Shakespeare's Globe, "The Helmet" (City Hall), John Soane Museum, and Buckingham Palace. I even had tea at tea time at St. Martin in the fields. We also went to Trafalgar Square where there was an Official Olympic Countdown clock preparing for the Olympic games. Amazing. (Also, I once again wish my fellow OYC people good luck in their training!) We went to Kensington Palace which was transformed into an enchanted castle dedicated to the princesses that lived there. We also saw the play 39 Steps which was just hilarious. So many new quotes. All-in-all, a fantastic place to be.

V&A. I think.

Main Quotes: "I see why you're an orphan!"
"It was supposed to be a cast of four!"

Next, a hop, skip and bus ride away to Portsmouth!

Portsmouth

But wait... It's 2am. Enjoy for now. Part 2 coming soon!
(Sorry for the abruptness, I'm getting kicked out..)

Playing Catch-up

Ok, it's been a while, I know. But I am finally on break (Give thanks for Thanksgiving!) and so I now have time to share what all I have been through these past few weeks. So, I am Sorry for the suspense but here is what has happened since my last post:

We went on the northern trip which I will have to explain in a completelyyyy different series of posts (I started to write it but it's getting too long and I have other things to talk about). So expect those sometime soon. (For real this time).

We started our final project of the semester (yes, mid-semester) hence why I have had basically no time as of late until now. To give you an idea of what we are doing we were asked to make changes to an area in Trastevere (a neighbourhood on the other side of the river to Rome) which had a poor urban scheme and was just generally a bad area architecture and feeling wise. (Part one was urban). That part has been finished as of two weeks ago and now we are in the process of designing a palazzo (building) from within our scheme. The palazzo is a Jewish school. We just had preliminary reviews for it and so currently I must make some changes. That's really all I want to say about my project. I've been working on it everyday in most of my free time which has been hard but still I enjoy it. So enough of that for now, no need to think of it until I get back to Rome.

O yea, did I mention that I am in Barcelona? Well I am. I left this morning and am now in a great hostel in the middle of the city. But I shall talk about Barcelona, in, of course, yet another blog post. So that I don't confuse you.

Okay, so finally, really onto what's happened and good to note.

So as many of you know, I celebrated my 20th Birthday a few weeks ago. It was great. Actually, awesome. The more I think about it, the more I am sure that it was my best birthday that I have ever celebrated. I was excited the entire week and when my bday weekend finally hit, an explosion of awesomeness just happened. On the Friday, we went to this place called DeeJay Bar in Trastevere where it was ladies night meaning for 5 euro, ladies got as many shots as we wanted from 11-midnight. We went there expecting to use that as a warm-up to a club or some other place but when we went to the basement... well, we kinda made it a club. They have a second bar section (on top of a piano) and a wide open space.. and great dancing music. So we politely stayed as the music was ooo soo inviting and danced... until 2. It was great. Basically half of my class was there, making it an arkie dance party. (Almost reminds me of another arkie party in a basement where I was with about half my class. Hmm...)
The day following (Saturday), I had my day planned out: I would go to studio after waking up, work for a few hours, go shopping for my clubbing clothes for about 2 hours then dinner with my roomies, rest, go to my fave bar--Bottecella aka Steelers bar-- and get a tequila slammer from my good man Giovanni and then finally end the night at Le Maison, a night club literally a block from Giovanni's.
Well, it didn't exactly work out that way. The first and last things just didn't work out. Work didn't work because... well, it's work. I just went shopping instead. For five hours. Oops. A bit longer than I expected. But on the plus (?) I did get to see the massive crowd of people waiting outside one of the government buildings for the Prime Minister to finallyyyy announce that he was stepping down (definite relief for the Italians). I have the newspaper too to remind me what happened on/near my bday.
The rest of my night was pretty much just plain awesome. Ate at a really good restaurant near Piazza Navona (south side) and also went to Giovanni's where I met an Australian name Robbie and had my fave drink of all: a Long Island Ice Tea. Needless to say I was extremely happy that night as I was surrounded by friends in the eternal city, in my favorite bar drinking my favorite drink. It was great. Around one, we tried to get into Le Maison, but the names on the list that we usually use did not work. Apparently they only work on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays (even though it was Saturday). So we just headed back to the hotel. I was glad though, the night was still wonderful and I was extremely tired from the lack of a nap and just from all of the excitement. So off to bed I went.
My actual birthday day, I just slept, did some work and chilled. Easy Sundays :)

That Tuesday we decided to go to a soccer game. Uruguay v. Italy Friendly. It was all in all a great game. It's really exciting to be in a stadium full of soccer fans. They can be really intense. It's too bad that we missed the only goal scored in the game (first three minutes) due to a run in with Rome's ever so sketchy transportation law enforcement, the ATAC. (Attack of the ATAC). In short, stamp your bus tickets or be prepared to pay fines of 50 euro each on the spot or be a mob of arkies arguing that you have no money and that they need to give you a ticket to pay the next day. (Which they really can't do since by law, you pay on the spot or get taken to jail.)

It's not here now, but I'm going to update this with pics and vids. Just tired now. And same for the next part.

Which I will continue tomorrow.

Since I am about to pass out (it's 120am and I stressed myself out trying to sort out my Christmas schedule. Be sure to book your hotel before your flight...)

Ok. That's it for me now, talk to you tomorrow! XOXO

Nude v. Naked

So an interesting combination of things has led me to this title. First off, is that today in drawing class we had to draw a model in the nude using gesture lines with charcoal and chalk and second was that after a comment on the photo of one of my drawings, I started thinking about my last History class (taught by Ingrid Rowland -- be jealous) where Rowland had been talking about the difference between "naked" and "nude" when it came to statues.
Now by definition, they are the same but in the ancient times, being naked was more of a disgrace but being nude as a statue, had a certain dignity to it. When you look at ancient statues and compare them to actual people, you notice several things. One, is that while their body, especially concerning shoulders and hips are proportionate to an adult, some other parts (you can probably think of which) are actually much smaller and their only hair is facial and on their head. The reason for this is because of the message that they wanted to portray. Their body parts did not define them, they defined their body parts. When it came to statues, the head was as is, for they believed that your facial looks were your personality but their bodies were typically what they defined as "perfect". That's why with some statues you get some really old heads on young looking bodies. So all of that basically defines what "nude" is.
"Naked", on the other hand, has more of a vulnerability to it. Things are as is, not as you would like them to be. And because of that things are not perfect, even though they are proportionate. It's strange but really interesting to think about.

Ok. So now that that is out of the way, about my drawing class. It was GREAT. I had really been looking forward to this class since it has literally been years since I last worked with charcoal and I have never had the opportunity to have an actual model come in for me to draw from. I was really eager and so I sat in front (also because I'm really short and can barely ever see). We did gestural drawings, meaning the goal was movement rather than lines. We were to draw from the inside out. I had a little trouble for a while, since I first drew from up to down rather than from gesture to refinement but my Professor made no hesitation in literally grabbing my hand and moving it up and down the page to get the gesture. At one point he even just came over and rubbed my drawing off to show me the right way. Some people might be embarrassed by that but I was wayyyy to eager to learn to mind. Sometimes you just gotta start over to learn better.
The model did several different, energetic poses which required the contraction and elongation of muscles. This gave us many wonderfully varied gestures which we did our best to bring to life. Her poses ran from 30 seconds to 5 minutes, which gave us different kinds of refinements depending on what we could fit in.
For as long as I could remember I have been obsessed with the human form, the way muscles contract and elongate, the way life can lie within a series of curves. I have always felt that the strongest shape is the human form. There is nothing quite like it. My professor is an artist, not an architect and so in school he actually took anatomy classes as a requirement to learn how the body works and is put together. I'm highly considering taking an anatomy class just for that. So many things are based off of the human form and architecture is just one of those major things. He also mentioned that we could higher the model on our own time since we only get to do this for one class. I think I'm going to do that too with a bunch of people.
It was really great working with a model. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

My two favorites.

Frascati - The Land of Pork and Cookies

After a bit of a long night (stayed up til three talking to the guys at the reception desk about randomness) I awoke at 7:15 for what was to be one of my nicest days abroad here in Rome.

The destination for the day was Frascati. A name constantly forgotten and messed up by all members of the group except for the two organizing it.
After getting off of the train, the first thing we noticed was the silence. We walked up the steps and looked around. Barely anybody. It was nine a.m. and there was literally just a few people walking. Quite different from the hustle and bustle of the inner city where by 8 a.m. the streets are filled with people trying to get to work, tourists and hobos.
Walking up the stairs, we took in the wonderful view. Palazzo Aldobrandini sits on a hill and on axis (yes, I'm going to talk like an arkie right now) is a fountain which I pictured here below. Gorgeous isn't it?

For about two hours we walked around and eventually made it to an incredible medieval tower... of which we were yelled at by some crazy lady through her window :s. It got a bit uncomfortable after about 5 minutes because a) she was yelling at us in Italian and b) her window was closed the whole time and she looked like what you imagine a witch looks like. I almost feel like she was trying to put a curse on us. Anyways, we left and walked around some more, Karen picked some illegal pomegranate and then we ended up having to pass the tower AGAIN. And as we expected, the lady was still waiting. Glaring at us. I don't think she moved in the 45 mins that we were gone. It was freaky as you can imagine. I really do think she was trying to put a curse on us.

Well enough about witches.

It was only 11 and none of the food stalls had opened yet, or more specifically the one I read up on and reallyyyy wanted to try so we explored some more and came upon a dog park. The dog park had a fountain with a statue of just legs. Seriously. Twas pretty funny. There were also lots of cute dogs.

After spending a little time there it was finally time for lunch (yessss). When I looked up Frascati the first link that popped up was a blog; and literally half the blog was about eating a pork sandwich from this place called Lena La Regina Della Porchetta or in English, "Lena the Queen of Pork." Of course, as the diligent youths that we are, we arrived promptly at 12 where Lena herself (or I'm guessing that was her from going off the blog) was setting up shop. We kept looking around for the pork because the Queen of Pork has to have a pig right? We waited awkwardly for about ten minutes before asking if they served pork there. Seems silly I know but hey, sometimes you gotta ask. Apparently, she was just about to bring out the pig and so as we waited another five minutes, I bought another thing that Frascati is apparently known for. Wine Cookies. Or just cookies made with wine. They are pretty good. Taste familiar... but I don't know like what.

As we munched on the wine cookies, the porker was brought out. And my O my, was she a beaut. Since we were there first, Lena of course gave us first dibs and we ordered a round of her famous pork sandwiches. I'm just going to put the pictures here at this point, because they speak louder than any of my poorly written sentences could. And you probably could smell it better if I did that. Ya I said smell it.

The inside of the pig was lined/stuff with an array of wonderful spices that just left sparks of yumminess bursting in your mouth with every bite. Being part Filipino of course, I must mention it's delectable skin. That was the part I looked forward to the most. It was nice, crisp and absolutely delicious. I'm glad I read up on her.

To walk off the food that we just consumed we decided to just go exploring some more. We walked up another hill and found ourselves in a lovely, green park. On the right end of the park there was an extremely large fountain which actually was built all the way up the hill. It was pretty nifty. The repetition of the arcades and it's flatness of the bottom facade just made the whole thing seem to fit in perfectly.

And just to the left of that fountain is a park. The most wonderful, relaxing, fun park that I've been to. The first thing that I did was jump on this jungle, spinny, climby thing (which is pictured below) and spin it. It was really cool. I'd never seen on of those before. I also went on the see-saw with Karen and the swings which I was just a little too big for. It was lots of fun and really relaxing. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

After playing in the park, we climbed the hill more to get to the top of the fountain. Walking up I found some pretty interesting purple flowers. They have a ring as the base and the petals grow upwards. I pressed a few of them in one of my journals.

All in all it was an excellent day. The weather was great, chilly, but very sunny and the vistas at several points were wonderful, especially since Frascati is on a hill so you can see the surrounding city which is really cool and jawdropping.


P.S.: We were supposed to scan our train tickets before boarding and yup, we didn't do that so my friends and I still have a free ride to Frascati up until Dec 7th. We're definitely going to put that 1.90 Euro tickets to good use.

Ostia Antica, St. Peter's and Other Places (Quick Catch Up Post)

Ok, so it's been a few weeks since my last post but hey, no worries, I got you ;)

This past Friday we had our first day trip in Rome. And what better place than Ostia Antica? Well, actually, I can name a few, like Cinque Terre but whatever. Ostia Anitca is basically an abandoned town on the outskirts or Rome, about 40 minutes from the center where I'm at. Many of its ruins are well preserved and there are actually quite a few mosaics in their entirety left there. All in all it was a pretty neat place. I was tempted to run up and down taking pictures climbing on top of ruins but I couldn't find any camera person. I'm going back though, I feel it's a necessity (plus there's apparently a really cool tiny town right outside the gates that my Prof banged his head against the wall for because we didn't see it while we were there).

The following day (Saturday) we went to Vatican City and visited St. Peter's. St. Peter's piazza and basilica are AMAZING. They are gigantic. I just can't get over the size of it. It's beautiful too no doubt. I went with a few friends and we ended up waiting this line to get in the basilica that basically snaked around one arm around to the other. It didn't take long though. It was pretty much like walking slowly up to it. Inside, we ended up getting split up because I just couldn't keep still. I walked all around and took tons of photos of just about everything. I didn't go up into the cupola nor below into what I'm guessing to be the crypt. I have to go back.

Kate and I just amazed.

Also, I think I found a statue of my Saint there (yay), St. Agnes of Rome. I'm pretty sure it's her. A girl with a lamb. I wonder who the other lady is...

Next on my list is I went shopping. And yes, I had to be dragged out of the store because I buy too much. I have a bit of a problem. I regret nothing however. Sunday, I went to the flea market too where I bought my awesomely mint colored nail polish for a euro. Best. Deal. Ever.

AND:

Before I forget I also made a wish at the Trevi fountain (sooo many peopleee) and I went to the Spanish steps that night.

My Studio!

Courtesy of my friend Karen :)

It's a Bit Chilly in the Morning

I woke up far too early this morning to complete some work that is due. And in doing so, I realized that I would be able to enjoy the sunrise here in Rome.
The cool blues of the night meshing with the warm reds and yellows of the morning sun on the domes of the surrounding buildings are absolutely amazing. The colors are best seen on the domes of the churches surrounding the hotel. As I sit on the hotel terrace, I soak in the sights, the faint smell of smoke and the chiming of bells and seagulls. This place is truly beautiful. Though I got up quite early, I'm no longer tired. This sight and experience has completely refreshed me. I am ready for the day.
My only regret of seeing this beauty is that I'm not high enough to watch the sun start its journey over the buildings. I'm making it my goal so that one day while I'm here I get to see that.

View from the Terrace.