antwerpen

yesterday i went to antwerpen for the day. it is a small city near the border of belgium and the netherlands. it is compact and gorgeous. most of the buildings are from the 18th century and before and are ornately figured. the streets are narrow stone canyons with cafes and high fashion boutiques everywhere you look. people speak dutch. people speak french. there is a developed asia-town where i explored a thai grocery store. there is also a large african population and i saw stores advertised as "afro-asian markets." that covers a lot of territory. the city is beautiful to explore. the southern part of downtown is newer and more the fashion district but still cool. i walked around for three hours or so and then had a pizza. after dark i went to go hang out with teenage cool kids who were playing a gig there. it was really good to see them again and it reminded me how much i miss being in denton and how cool that town is. i will go back there soon though. i had to leave early because the cheapest train i could find was leaving that night and not in the morning, so i ran (for the first time in a while) part of the way to the train station, barely making my IC train. but, here i am to tell you about it. antwerpen is beautiful.

today i am packing and doing a little work because tonight i am flying to london to visit my uncle charlie! that should be a blast. three days in london. i will report back sometime.

i took a lot of pictures of antwerpen. check them out on the flickr.

paris

last weekend was my first excursion into the rest of europe. i took an overnight bus from rotterdam to paris, arriving before dawn on saturday. so from there i started walking around. if you'd like a overly-detailed visual account of my time there, check my flickr link for the set. but i'll quickly summarize my adventure here.

-as previously stated, arrived before dawn. walked around some of the northern arrondissements in the bible black predawn

-sunrise at the basilica du sacre coeur hilltop

-walking all the way from there to montparnasse, stopping at the the palais royal, napping in the courtyard of the louvre next to i.m. pei's glass pyramids

-couchsurfed with a guy named morgan who was OK

-eiffel tower, champs elysees, arc d'triumph etc etc

-patrick blanc vertical garden at the musee du quai branly

-sunset at trocadero arts compound with the eiffel tower

-running into somebody i knew once in high school, drinking on the banks of the seine

-montparnasse cemetery and the graves of jean paul sartre, man ray, charles baudelaire

-notre dame, walking around on an overcast afternoon

-pompidou centre and IRCAM, both renzo piano projects

-teenage cool kids show and afterparty at the sparkling eiffel tower

-nutella crepe

-the vast wind-swept plain of la defense

-finding and exploring renzo piano's rue de meaux housing in the 19th arrondissement, a project i studied last spring for class

i stayed until monday afternoon and then took the bus back. it was really interesting to be in the city, seeing the uniform scale of almost every area. why no skyscrapers in paris? the haussmann avenues are majestic too. there are so many neighborhoods in such a small area. the metropolitain was dirty and felt like i was riding in a cart pulled by a wagon. the city overall was dirty and bustling with activity. i think it was this dirt that le corbusier was reacting to when he proposed his voisin plan for destroying paris. also i was surprised with how international the city is, with the visible presence of a number of ethnic groups. on sunday night the turkish soccer team won an important match and the turks of paris drove through the streets, honking, yelling, and waving flags. i didn't eat much french food outside of baguettes and a crepe (i brought my food from home) but it seemed like nothing a vegetarian could get excited about. paris does have the highest PDA per capita i've seen anywhere too. really good to see the renzo piano buildings too, especially the one i am familiar with thanks to studio. overall a power weekend where i slept very little but had tons of fun walking the city and seeing new things. ok, back to delft and my normal life.