Juniors Abroad - Amsterdam to Paris 2007

Since I did my presentation on Paris, and the construction of the Eiffel Tower, I have been incredibly excited to get here. We finished up our site seeing in Normany with the Bayuex Tapistry, then we all loaded back on the the tour bus for the train station. The train ride was tranquil and we were all greatful for that. Mr. Leers was an immense help getting us on the right train. I will miss him, he has become a pleasant addition to our troupe.

Our group was a buzz with excitment, the Eiffel Tower is something that we have always heard about but have never seen first hand. We took the Metro to the grounds of the Eiffel. We were amazed as the monument came into view. Carissa, Amanda, and I were disappointed because the Tower looked so small and anti-climactic from far away. As we grew closer, and were able to stand directly beneath the structure, we realized how magnificient it truely is. The group walk around examining the base of the tower, and I began presenting random facts about the towers history.

The Eiffel Tower was built in 1889 for the Worlds fair, and was used as an entrance to the fair. There are two restaurants in the Tower the Jules Verne and Cafe 99 (Cafe 99 was not visible from the outside). I was however able to see the entrance to the Jules Verne, but it is exorbitantly expensive. During my research, I read that the Tower is repainted, by a troupe of accrobats, ever seven years. It is painted three shades of brown to give it depth and dimention. It is not noticable on pictures, but becomes very evident once you are close to it.

Our first evening at the Tower was well spent, and I look forward to visiting it many time while I am here in Paris.

blog.docThe sloten Windmill was built in 1847 to help keep the surrounding polderlands dry. There is an elevator inside, but that is accompanied with lots of narrow stairs as well. this site is sometimes used as a wedding location.

Exploring food can be interesting to go in search of. Pretty much anything is offered here in Amsterdam. Some good places to try would have been Nam Kee: Chinese, The Tara, Cafe Harlem, Casablanca and some type of Indonesian food is always reccommended while in Amsterdam.

There are over 60 theatres, 45 museums, and 141 commercial art galleries in the surrounding area along with parks, squares, forests, and boat canal rides to enjoy.

The bikes were the most dangerous thing to worry about in Amsterdam. They go very fast, and do not worry about running over pedestrians. when I hear a bell, I hug the nearest building to me.

The train ride was interesting because I met a woman who lived in Amsterdam. Her name was Debbie and she lives in a house built in 1728–way cool! She and her husband moved from Boston to Amsterdam about a year ago, and she loves it here. I learned many interesting things from her like the yellow bike tour, the canal rides, and being able to travel from Germany to Paris in only a day! However, for her to be native to the US, I would have thought her opinion on the red light district woulkd have been a somewhat of a negative one–but she did not think this way. She supports the coffee shops toleration and the red light district, though she does not look like a women who would often visit these places. She mainly supports these things because it brings down the crime rate in Amsterdam.

Today, we were again fortunate to have the comfort of the tour bus and Mr. Leer’s expertise.  After a satisfying breakfast prepared for us by the keepers of the farmhouse, we headed to our first destination of the day, Point du Hoc.  The name was originally given by the Vikings who  used the “hook” as a navigational marker.  Today, it is more commonly known as one of the locations of the Norman Invasion during WWII. It is along Omaha Beach.  The Huc is  located on a cliffside  where one has a phenomenol view of the ocean.  The cliff is about 30 meters tall which makes the Invasion, in the words of Mr. Leers, “extraordinary.”  American soldiers (the Ranger Batallion) had to climb this vertically straight hill dodging the defensive front put up by the German soldiers. Along the site, bunkers once used by the Germans are still present.

Afterwards, we drove an hour and a half to our second destination, the Mont Saint Michel.

So, I have had my post written out for about a week and a half and kept forgetting to post it here. I apologize for being so late with my post.

 Here is what I wrote……..

 We started our day be goingto the Musee du Moyen Age. It was first started in 1334 and used as the townhouse for nuns. In 1793 the state took it over and by 1883 it was a public museum. It is known for its tapestry collection, in particular The Lady and the Unicorn. It is a series of six tapestires, five show one of the five senses and the sixth is titled To my Only Desire.  Another highlight from the museum were the illuminated manuscripts. I really enjoyed this museum, mainly because it was smaller, so it wasn’t as overwhelming. Also, it wasn’t flooded with people, so I felt like I could take my time and not rush through. Since I spent some time studying about the museum, I really enjoyed being about to physically see it.

 In the afternoon we went to Saint Chapelle, which was amazing. It is known for its stained glass windows. There are fifteen seperate panels of stained glass holding over 1,100 scenes mostly from the Bible. It is said that it shines brighter through the stained glass here than in any other church. I remember reading that back in the thirteenth century when it was built, only the Royal family was aloud to worship and the staff and poor had to worship in the basement.

We were on our own for the rest of the day. A group of us went and did our laundry, then headed to dinner, and then of course had dessert. I can’t believe that we only have a few more days on our trip. It has gone by so fast. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers. 

So I was too tired to actually make it down to the internet cafe and drop 4 euros to use it and write it on the trip which is what you would have liked, Clella and Tim.  So I’m going to imagine that I’m in Paris on May 18th.  Today, we went to the Cemetery in Pere Lachaise and it was pretty gnar-ical (mix of gnarly and radical).  I got to see Jim Morrison’s grave and it was fairly unimpressive.  It’s definitely a sight to behold but it certainly isn’t very befitting for a musician such as Jim of the Doors.  It was fun just searching for it, finding it, and taking the requisite photos.  We also found the painter Theodore Gericault’s grave - very cool, Tim got a pic of course.  Plus we found Chopin, Eugene Delacroix, Honore Balzac, impressionist painter Camile Pissaro - love his work so darn much!, and Marcel Proust - famous French intellectual and made famous by Uncle Frank in Little Miss Sunshine.  I got a lot of great video and pics from the Pere Lachaise.  Today I really loved that place.  Is that morbid? To want to spend all day in a cemetery?  I loved it and it made my day.

Wow, that was a long paragraph.  So now I’ll make this a short one.  Moving on.

So the trip thus far was fairly good, maybe rad even.  My favorites have been the bicycle ride in Brugge.  It’s hard to really top that one.  I haven’t ridden a bike in quite some time and then when I do ride one again, it’s in the Belgian countryside.  How amazing is that?  Luckily I wasn’t seriously injured when I fell off my bike while taking pictures.  I got cocky and thought I could take pictures with my camera while riding my bike with one hand.  Apparently, my reflexes weren’t that fantastic and I swerved hard, ended-over my handlebars and hit a pole, dropping my camera and breaking the battery cover.  I wasn’t too worse for the wear, which was good.  Just some scratches on my left wrist and a hurt shin.  Thank God.

Uh, let’s see.  I’ve been to approximately 10 museums and art galleries so far.  The Memling, Rijksmuseum, Frans Hals, Louvre, Rodin, Orsay, Anne Frank House, and countless others.  I’ve been more cultured on this trip than I’ve been my entire life.  My favorite ones have been the Orsay, which is in a gigantic train station.  I got to see a bunch of  impressionist painters that I really dug like Alfred Sisley, Claude Monet, Camile Pissaro, Paul Signat, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, all the famous French impressionists.  It’s amazing seeing such classical paintings up close and in person.

I don’t know whether I get more points for making my post long or for making it interesting.  I don’t know about a lot of interesting things that have happened so far in Paris, other than Kersti having a bunch of marriage proposals and stalkers and the Crepe Nazi near the hotel who kept my change but could make a nutella crepe in less than 30 seconds.

The trip has been long, fun, tedious, exhilirating, depressing, educational, sensory-overloading, and a whole mix of various other things all rolled into one mess of an amazing trip with the most amazingly quirky group of people ever assembled.  Thank you to everyone on the trip - especially you guys Clella and Tim, you made the trip worthwhile.  Peace and give me a good grade on this and the class.

Today is our last day in Paris, and our last day in Europe. It’s a free day so everyone went different direction. A lot of us were going to go to Versailles, but luckily last night we found out that it’s closed, so we didn’t waste our money trying. Instead we decided to spend our last day in Paris hanging out with each other, shopping, doing laundry and going to the Luxembourg Gardens. Others went to Chantilly which is a grand horse stable. As legend goes, the man who commissioned the building of these beautiful stables thought that he would be reincarnated as a horse and he wanted a suitable place for himself as a horse. The stable is very large, with the potential to hold 240 horses and 500 hounds, and is considered an architectural masterpeice of the 18th century. In 1982 it was turned into a Living Horse Museum and now holds many works of art along with the horses. The other option for the day was to travel to Chartres, which is a little village that houses a cathedral famous for it’s stained glass windows. Much like St. Chappelle that we saw earlier this week, Chartres  has intricate  stained  glass  covering the walls with depictions of Biblical stories. Today I think most people either stayed here in Paris, or went to Chantilly. It will be interesting to hear their stories when they return. I’m praising God for the beautiful sunshine we have here on our last day. We have a long plane ride ahead of us tomorrow, and we would appreciate prayers for safety. It seems like we have been in Europe forever, and I think we are all ready to come home. It has been an awesome adventure that will take quite a while to fully process, but one which we will never forget. We have made many new friendships that are sure to last because of what we have shared together.

Sunday May 13th is Monthers Day. Many called thier mothers last night because today we are heading to Normandy after church in Rouen and may not be able to contact them this evening. Before church many of us went out in search for breakfast. In the United States this would not be a very difficult task but here in France it was. Many of the shops are not open on Sunday. We were lucky to find the place that we did not too far from the cathedral. We attended mass at Notre Dame Cathedral de Rouen. Most of the group have not attened mass before nor speak french making it a very interesting and memerable experience. After mass we brought our bags down from our rooms and headed for the bus out side of the cathedral. some of us picked up some food before leaving Rouen. After a few hours of riding in the bus we arrived in Bayeux were we met up with Mr Leers. Mr Leers is going to be our tour guide during out time in Normandy. The first place we went to in Normandy was the american cemetery.This is a remarkable place. It is so hard to imagin how many people lost thier lives as a result of the war. Some of the group went down on the beach for a little bit before we headed out. After the Cemetery we headed to the farm house where we are spending two nights. A fewof girls and Clella stayed with a family just down the street so allow for us all to have our own beds. I said at the Farm house which was beautiful.
Before calling it a day many of us went for a walk in the country side.

     Amsterdam was beautiful and I feel sad to be leaving after almost a week of exploring the streets, canals, cafe’s and museums.  I could sense that many of the other students were excited to leave for bruges and stay in a smaller city that had a different feeling than the busy and bustling bike-riding city we had come to know and some of us (I think only a few like me) love.  The hostel was such a neat place to stay and meet people and collect stories that I feel sad to think that the rest of the trip will be stayed in hotels in Bruges, Rouen and Paris.  Amsterdam was a great place to get started in Europe as the other places we will be staying know less and less english.  

     It is really something to see 22 Americans traveling with their roller suitcases (I had a big backpack-again one of the few) across coblestone sidewalks and streets.  You should have seen it, better yet you should have heard it.  People could spot the Americans from a mile a way, but it was fun, memorable and laughable.

     Growing up in the Bay Area, California I have been accustomed to riding trains to concerts, baseball games and other events to Oakland and San Francisco.  First, I would like to say the trains here are much smoother and more effecient.  People actually cram onto these trains and read, sleep and eat from the carts the roll by the aisles.  Once we all got on the train ride was short and fun.  I finished my third novel today on the trip and others have been reading, writing, painting and i-poding on the travel and down times.  Thats enough about travel though but thats what we mainly did today: leave Amsterdam and head for Brugesm, Belgium.  Unfortunately we did not get more stamps in our passports. 

      Once in Bruges (after a short bus ride where we barely all fit on) we unloaded at our lovely hotel and headed for a tour and a bite to eat.  It was easy to see how much cleaner and quiter Bruges was compared to Amsterdam.  I heard almost all the students say how happy they were to be in Bruges.  The boys and I (there are only five of us so we got to stick together) went to a pianini shop where we would return two more times.  Can I just say the chocaloate was amazing as well in Bruges.  Almost everyone was exausted from the packing and traveling and uncertainty of the day but we all manged to muster up walking power to tour the city before bed.  English is still spoken almost everywhere here but it feels much more European with the small streets and canals and family operated shops.  I think we are all looking forward to bikeriding tomorrow.   

      Did I mention it has been cold and rainy here lately, much like the Portland weather we were all hoping to escape on our travels.  O-well, we are proffesionals in the rain and I think even the Belgium people can see this.  It was nice talking to whoever was reading this blog if anyone is at all.  It’s a class requirement you see, 25 points.  Check me off, i’m going back out in the rain to explore……..Kyle Bilinski     

Hey, sorry for the delay in posting for the 12th. By the next day we were on our way out of Rouen and had no internet access. But that is a different day for Kate to tell about (or so I recall). Anyway, our first, and only, full day in Rouen was the 12th. It was one of the few days we did not meet in the morning. That being the case, I did not get out of bed until around 11 o’clock (2 am PDT) :)… From what I understood, there was a large group that met earlier and walked to a ceramics museum, and some went to a museum featuring Claude Monet. Either way, it was a free morning and we did not have to meet up together until the early afternoon. I’m sorry I don’t have information on what others did in the morning - but if you would like to know, I suppose you will just have to ask them… my bad.

So our meeting point was the Musée du Jeanne d’Arc (I think that is the correct spelling). All but two of us showed up and we entered the museum. This particular museum was not like others we have gone to. It was a wax museum that chronicled the story of Joan of Arc. After following a path down a dungenous stairway, the experience began. There were about 10 or 15 different “sets” that you could stop at to listen to the next chapter of the story. Each one had an assortment of wax figures “acting out” the narration. And don’t worry, it was in English. I have to admit, most of us sped through and thought the whole thing somewhat cheesy. In any case we finished and headed over to the Joan of Arc Church which faced the museum.

Inside was a spectalur sight, but not one I expected. Everything looked quite a bit modern, except the full wall of stained glass windows. After listening to Tim explain, I discovered that this particular building was one that was rebuilt after the war, which I assume was WWII. It received much damage, but a lot of the stained glass in the original building was saved and placed in the new one. Also saved was a lot of rock from the original and artistically displayed around the perimeter of the building. We were not there very long, and afterwards we were all on our own to do what we wanted.

The group I ended up staying with first went to a nearby Internet Café followed by a trip down to the River Seine. As I mentioned earlier, this was our first full day in Rouen. If you’ve been following our itinerary, you may also notice it was our first full day in France. I must say, I felt a little bit more “at home” there than in Brugge or Amsterdam. There seemed to be a more modern atmosphere like crosswalks, main roads made of asphalt, etc. However, this does not mean people spoke English. In fact, far less people did there than anywhere else we had been. So I suppose I just liked the traffic flow better… not as many bikes!

Before I finish, I have to tell of a little adventure I went on. Out our window, from the 4th floor (which was 5 stories up), we could see the Rouen Cathedral, but more importantly to this story, there was a distant hill that would seem to overlook the entire city. The morning of the 12th, I saw a postcard that seemed to have been taken from that hill and it was a sight to behold. At that moment I determined I was going to make it to the top. When I was with my group that went down to the Seine, I worked on convincing them to come along. We started on our way, but when we came to the foot of the hill, those that shall remain nameless decided against it and the party was left to just myself and Christi. We started to follow a road that seemed to lead to the top when Christi noticed a sign that said “Panorama.” We decided to take the path the sign pointed towards and we were soon climbing up stairs that were winding through shade-giving trees. There were a total of 435 stairs leading to the top, not to mention sections of sloped ground that were stairless. We finally arrived to the top after the long ascent, and it was indeed a sight to behold. I took many pictures, but unfortunately I do not have my cord with me to post them online here. I will, however, be doing that later for those who want to see.

Overall, I really enjoyed staying in Rouen. We only went to the one museum as a group, but it was nice to have a “museum break.” As a result, it was more laid back and seemed more like vacation. I don’t know if I will ever go back, but it was a nice place to stay.

Hi from Amsterdam! Today is Liberation Day. It is the celebration of the end of the Nazi occupation in the Netherlands. We went to a celbration last night in Dam Square which was around the WWII monument. Hundreds of people were there and we had to get on our tip toes to see anything that was going on. There was tons of flowers surrounding the monument honoring all those that died and fought in the war. It was all in French so we didn’t really understand any of it but being there was memorable in itself.

Today we had a free day of going to museums of our choice. The guys and I went to the Bible museum and the Foam photograhpy museum. The Bible museum was very interesting. It had models of what Israel looked like back in that time period and I really like the Max Beckman exhibition. The part I liked the most was his interpretation of the events that are prophesized in Revelations. It was made by colored pencils and was very interesting to see his perspective of the events. I really liked the abstract and emotion aspects he puts in his art.

The Foam photography museum was also very good. The top floor was filled with different pictures from around the world. There were pictures of Africans starving to death and war pictures in Iraq and pictures of the Rwanda killings in the early 90’s. The pictures were very real and had a lot of emotion in them.

Later that night we went to the concerts honoring Liberation Day. The first band that was playing, when we arrived, was a rap group that I didn’t really enjoy. Then we waited for about 45 minutes and saw three guys play that ressembled the Beatles. Afterwards we walked the streets to get more familiar with Amsterdam. It has been amazing to be here on the day the people were liberated from the Germans. Great memories!