Mexico Trip Pictures

Mexico trip pictures are up here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/99497645@N07/

We went to Queretaro to see Esteban get married, and arrived early enough to visit the town of Bernal the day before. After the wedding, Jose's family was kind enough to host us for two days and show us around San Juan. The last three nights were spent in Mexico City. We saw the Museum of Anthropology, Chapultepec Castle, and took a day trip to Teotihuacan to see the pyramids.

Travels 3: Barcelona

After Paris I caught a train to Barcelona and stayed at Tara's apartment for a couple days while I took in the city.  Some MIT students had all rented out an apartment for the summer and some had already left so there was a little extra room. 

The first night they took me to see the Magic Fountain show at Montjuic. It was a fountain coordinated to music and a light show, this time they had a Queen song playing but I think they rotate it out during different seasons. It was cool for the 10 or 15 minutes that it lasted. 

One of the first things we did was go to the beach. It was nice to sit in the ocean for awhile and relax but I didn't bring my camera. Relaxing on the mediterranean was never a bad state to be in post-graduation. 

La Boqueria is the big market in Barcelona with a bunch of fresh produce and meats and other foods.  Here I'm holding a mango/coconut aqua fresca, my two favorite fruits combined! 

Barcelona was also really into their meats, particularly jamon. Tara bought some that had been fed solely acorns which was supposed to improve the taste. It was a lot better than beef jerky and much different than salami or prosciutto. 

Wandering the streets also showed that Barcelona was an interesting city. There were a number of different neighborhoods with their own feel. 

The most popular piece of architecture to see while in the city is La Sagrada Familia, which is a modern cathedral designed by Antoni Gaudi, who was a prominent architect in Barcelona. This was by far the most abstract cathedral I'd seen in Europe. They are still in the process of building it too, going off of the plans that Gaudi left when he died. 

Apparently much of the design was supposed to have been inspired by nature. The columns inside were supposed to look like a forest. 

I also visited El Parque Guell, which was also designed by Guadi. Up at the very top of a hill you got a nice view of the city. 

Just like San Sebastian, Barcelona was interesting in that it was part of its own region, Catalunya, which had a culture distinct from the rest of Spain. They had their own language too. 

Travels 2: Paris

After the night of travel I arrived in Paris somewhere around 7am and had to kill time until I met with my travel buddy Tara and the friend that was hosting us. Right next to the train station was the Garden of Plants. It was a nice walk to go through in the morning. 

I wandered along the Seine river until I came to Notre Dame Cathedral. The garden behind the cathedral was the only place that I could find free wifi.

The front and back were very ornate. You could probably sit in front of it all day looking at the front and still not notice all the details that were put into it. 

Afterwards I went to Luxembourg Garden since it was close to the apartment we were going to stay at. This was one of my favorite parts about Paris--all the well kept gardens. I didn't seem much of that in Italy. I ate a sandwich and sat around for awhile in different locations. 

Tara and I spent a lot of our days walking around and finding different things things to do. This was the Abbey Bookshop, which was a small  shop with a bunch of English books stacked up to the ceiling and aisles that could only fit one person through at a time.

We visited Studio 59 which started off as an abandoned building where artists decided to squat, display their work, and use as a studio. It was pretty interesting walking through the four or five floors of rooms where artists were working and talk to them.

Later that day we went to go eat on the Seine river with the rest of the MIT students that were doing internships in Paris. When we were getting all the things together the big debate was how many baguettes we needed to suffice for all of us. We forgot the corkscrew for the wine bottle when we got to the river, but only had to shout out and the closest couple next to all of us threw one our way. The Parisians came prepared to their picnics.

The Louvre was the main event for another day. I thought it was very hard to navigate but there was a nice variety of things displayed in it. 

I took a picture of all the people taking pictures of the Mona Lisa. Everybody had told me it was underwhelming so I was prepared when I saw it was about the size of a piece of construction paper. I liked seeing some of the bigger paintings that I recognized from AP European History in high school. 

Another exhibit was the lavish furnishing of Napoleon III Apartments, which was intersting.

One thing in Paris that I wasn't a fan of was macaroons. They were too sugary for me.

Sacre Coeur was a church on top of a hill towards the north of Paris and had a great view of the whole city. We sat on the steps and listened to a performer play the guitar and sing. It was a lot like Michelangelo Plaza in Florence with a view of the city and steps.

This view was from the Centre Pampidou, which was the modern art museum in the city. Some of the pieces were cool, it was very different from the Louvre. I liked the stuff that made you think about how the artist went about building it, like this sculpture of sheet metal.

Walking back one day we discovered that in front of Notre Dame there was supposed to be some pretty good street performers in the evening. This one was a fire dancer and impressive. 

This picture was from a late night crepe run we went on. Le Petit Grec was supposed to be the good shop to get crepes. They cooked the crepe right there on the skillet and put whatever you wanted on it. 

Right before I left Paris to catch my train to Barcelona I made the stop to visit the Musee D'Orsay. This turned out to be my favorite museum that I saw during the summer. It was a museum known for it's large impressionist collection and housed in what used to be a railroad station. I thought the paintings and sculptures were very expressive and that the size was just right for my attention span.