Hola from Madrid
Howdy from Espana , where the keyboards are normal and the streets dirty.
We did a lot yesterday during our last 8 hours in Paris.. Had another wonderful breakfast of french bread, jam and cafe in hotel henri then off to saint chappelle (pronounce: sane-sha-pell) which is a hideous looking chapel ducked inside the walls of a military\police fortress. the great thing about this chapel (which is ugly partially due to teh fact that it got sacked during french revolution) is the huge stained glass windows inside, there are about 10-12 windows which run about 2 or 3 stories high with two large circular windows on each end. this chapel was built by one king loui (??) to house the crown of thorns and pieces of the cross. he payed 3 times more for those artifacts than the actual chapel itself. Historians now think that the king might have gotten scammed on the artifacts...
Next caitlin and i split up to shop in our own separate ways. i hit up an english language book store called San Franciso books in the latin quarter. awesome bookstore. since i had left my "books to buy" list (yes i am a nerd) at home i stuck with scifi. Had a ton of Pratchet books with fantastic covers (for euro\uk release?), picked up Mort by Pratchet, Neuromancer and Foundation by Asimov.
Next we went to Rodin Museum which was soo awesome. Rodin was the anti-starving artiste. He was put up in a gorgeous chatuea in paris for the last 40-50 years of his life and allowed to just sculpt and paint. After his death they turned his house and gardens into the musee de rodin. Most of the sculptures were outside in a beautiful garden with benches and fountains and areas just to "chill". We saw the major works: the thinker, gates of hell, the three shades, the kiss and hand of god plus a lot of others.
Afterwards we wondered around more of the paris parks, ending up on the plaza between arc de triumphe and the louvre. It was so relaxing that we almost missed our night train to madrid.
We took a night train at 845pm for the 12 hour journey to Madrid Spain, our third stop. We had our own little compartment with seats and fold-out beds and a sink. Great views of french countryside including an outstanding sunset. The french farmers are into new windmill technology, saw a ton of them (the news ones like at IBEW on route 93). Also went through some real sketchy rail yards around 10pm. Had a "vegetal con pollo sandwich" for dinner which was so so, sunset was better.
We were very excited about sleeping on the train until we actually tried to sleep. There were some serious ride quality issues in southern france, the speed of the train didn´t help either. A lot of bumping and side to side motions. There were periods of smooth track, at which point you would sleep, things got better in spain and a few hours of sleep were had. Speaking of trains, subways actually - the paris metro system had rail for underground and trains that ran on tires and special elevated tracks for above ground, also so far, best subways in order are: london, paris, spain. All seem to be of equal size and vastly different quality. How can you beat the two simple phrases uttered all over teh underground "mind the gap" and "mind the closing doors", enough said.
In the morning we awoke to "green spain" (northern spain), hillsides, small tile roofed houses _and_ grafiti.. which was really bizarre.. picture if you will, sparsley populated spanish country side, mostly hills with a few scattered houses and a small brick wall enclosing a set of houses, which is covered in bright grafiti art..?? lets just say it was out of place. Upon arrival we took the metro to the center of madrid, Puerta del Sol. This is location zero for geography in madrid, similiar to Notre Dame in Paris. Um, so, we were thoroughly unimpressed with Madrid when exiting the metro.. i guess its hard coming from paris to anywhere else, plus it was sunday morning and the city was dead. We found our plaza a short walk from there. Madrid is organized around a set of plazas and the organization of roads seems less organization than boston. We took a short siesta.. and woke up to the sound of a lot of people gathering and eating and music playing. when we actually got outside a while later most people were gone and the everything calm again.. weird. one thing i want to bring next time is an mp3 recorder for doing audio snapshots during travel. sometimes the sounds are even better than the sights for me. we had paelle con carne at a cafe in Puerta del Sol. There are performing arts all around the city, we unfortunetly were a day late for Pink Floyd Ballet (!!). We may catch something tonight..
Photos - not having too much luck uploading the photos, the internet cafe here makes it a little more difficult to upload stuff. Caitlin is writing about select photos on her website, check it - ycaitlin.blogspot.com.
Adios for now
We did a lot yesterday during our last 8 hours in Paris.. Had another wonderful breakfast of french bread, jam and cafe in hotel henri then off to saint chappelle (pronounce: sane-sha-pell) which is a hideous looking chapel ducked inside the walls of a military\police fortress. the great thing about this chapel (which is ugly partially due to teh fact that it got sacked during french revolution) is the huge stained glass windows inside, there are about 10-12 windows which run about 2 or 3 stories high with two large circular windows on each end. this chapel was built by one king loui (??) to house the crown of thorns and pieces of the cross. he payed 3 times more for those artifacts than the actual chapel itself. Historians now think that the king might have gotten scammed on the artifacts...
Next caitlin and i split up to shop in our own separate ways. i hit up an english language book store called San Franciso books in the latin quarter. awesome bookstore. since i had left my "books to buy" list (yes i am a nerd) at home i stuck with scifi. Had a ton of Pratchet books with fantastic covers (for euro\uk release?), picked up Mort by Pratchet, Neuromancer and Foundation by Asimov.
Next we went to Rodin Museum which was soo awesome. Rodin was the anti-starving artiste. He was put up in a gorgeous chatuea in paris for the last 40-50 years of his life and allowed to just sculpt and paint. After his death they turned his house and gardens into the musee de rodin. Most of the sculptures were outside in a beautiful garden with benches and fountains and areas just to "chill". We saw the major works: the thinker, gates of hell, the three shades, the kiss and hand of god plus a lot of others.
Afterwards we wondered around more of the paris parks, ending up on the plaza between arc de triumphe and the louvre. It was so relaxing that we almost missed our night train to madrid.
We took a night train at 845pm for the 12 hour journey to Madrid Spain, our third stop. We had our own little compartment with seats and fold-out beds and a sink. Great views of french countryside including an outstanding sunset. The french farmers are into new windmill technology, saw a ton of them (the news ones like at IBEW on route 93). Also went through some real sketchy rail yards around 10pm. Had a "vegetal con pollo sandwich" for dinner which was so so, sunset was better.
We were very excited about sleeping on the train until we actually tried to sleep. There were some serious ride quality issues in southern france, the speed of the train didn´t help either. A lot of bumping and side to side motions. There were periods of smooth track, at which point you would sleep, things got better in spain and a few hours of sleep were had. Speaking of trains, subways actually - the paris metro system had rail for underground and trains that ran on tires and special elevated tracks for above ground, also so far, best subways in order are: london, paris, spain. All seem to be of equal size and vastly different quality. How can you beat the two simple phrases uttered all over teh underground "mind the gap" and "mind the closing doors", enough said.
In the morning we awoke to "green spain" (northern spain), hillsides, small tile roofed houses _and_ grafiti.. which was really bizarre.. picture if you will, sparsley populated spanish country side, mostly hills with a few scattered houses and a small brick wall enclosing a set of houses, which is covered in bright grafiti art..?? lets just say it was out of place. Upon arrival we took the metro to the center of madrid, Puerta del Sol. This is location zero for geography in madrid, similiar to Notre Dame in Paris. Um, so, we were thoroughly unimpressed with Madrid when exiting the metro.. i guess its hard coming from paris to anywhere else, plus it was sunday morning and the city was dead. We found our plaza a short walk from there. Madrid is organized around a set of plazas and the organization of roads seems less organization than boston. We took a short siesta.. and woke up to the sound of a lot of people gathering and eating and music playing. when we actually got outside a while later most people were gone and the everything calm again.. weird. one thing i want to bring next time is an mp3 recorder for doing audio snapshots during travel. sometimes the sounds are even better than the sights for me. we had paelle con carne at a cafe in Puerta del Sol. There are performing arts all around the city, we unfortunetly were a day late for Pink Floyd Ballet (!!). We may catch something tonight..
Photos - not having too much luck uploading the photos, the internet cafe here makes it a little more difficult to upload stuff. Caitlin is writing about select photos on her website, check it - ycaitlin.blogspot.com.
Adios for now
posted by newt at 9:52 AM
1 Comments:
More photos! C'mon, I promise I'll read if you post some photos here.
I can't believe all it took was a trip to Europe to get you two online. Man.
I'll be watching you, I'm signing up for updates to your feed on rssfwd.com.
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