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me: F/28/SF, CA
AIM: venguyen
y!: slinkstar
Archives:
Feb 2002 - current
more? 1998-2002 archives
available by request
Elsewhere:
training log
50 in 365
joel
twobadapples
tammyloh
lgm
phase five
Upcoming Runs:
Weekly DSE Runs
7/29 - SF 1/2 Marathon
10/14 - SJ Rock n Roll 1/2 M
Need to find some more races
curious?
my amazon wishlist
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2003-04-03, 12:46 p.m.
I took 255 pictures from my two-week trip to Europe. I wrote a lot in my travel journal. These are just a few pictures and brief notes...
The stairs in our hotel room are quite steep, almost ladder-like. The guy at the front desk is just as tall and skinny as the buildings are. With the Dutch English accent, it often feels as if they
are making fun of us.
Hot food (croquettes) can be had from vending machines here. Aside from the Indonesian rice table, the food here is terrible. I wish I could stare more at the
women in the red light district, but they stare right back.
Sunday, on our way to the Van Gogh museum, we run into a HUGE anti-war protest. On our way out of the museum, Dutch police disperse the crowd with tear gas. We run and read our map elsewhere.
I first went to Paris fifteen years ago with my mom. Our first day, walking from the Louvre towards the Champs Elysees, we keep seeing French National Guard in riot gear EVERYWHERE. They've blocked off many streets, have truckloads of
men in riot gear standing around (with the garbage men right behind them to clean up the mess?). There's a small protest in the same square where Marie Antoinette was beheaded. The police presence far outweighs the
protestor presence on this day. I expect French people to be very mean to us, but they're nothing but polite. Then again, we've been mistaken for French, Chinese, Japanese, Tahitian, and Ecuadorian (?).
Paris is awesome--all the vitality of NYC but with much more culture and history. The food is quite tasty and the metro gets you everywhere easily. Its pretty easy to forget about Iraq if
you don't turn on the TV or look at the newsstands. I also surprise myself--I retained MUCH more high school French than I thought. I can get around pretty easily.
Smart Cars are everywhere. They crack me up. "Its the biggest car I could afford!"
overnight train to Barcelona...
Again, the anti-war (I didn't say *anti-American*) theme is also very evident in Barcelona, as it was in Amsterdam and Paris.
There are guys in kilts running around everywhere. I run into a few at La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's unfinished Gothic church. Their lamb purses are cute.
Barcelona's museum of modern art, MACBA, has a very weak collection but the building itself is beautiful, especially juxtaposed with its ancient gothic surroundings.
The modernista
architecture is beautiful...colorful mosaics, imaginative yet functional and flowing designs...Gaudi and his buddies are ingenius. I definitely took the most pictures in Barcelona than anywhere else.
And anyone who knows me knows that I couldn't leave Barcelona without visiting Snowflake, the only known albino gorilla in the world. I'd seen him in a 70s issue of National Geographic,
but until I got to Barcelona, I had no clue he was still alive and at the Barcelona zoo. He's pretty old (40 and gorillas have a 50 year lifespsan in captivity) and grumpy now, but I still love watching primates...as long as they don't
throw shit at me.
Barcelona was rad...the Modernist
architecture, Snowflake, the tasty beer, and the delicious (and cheap) tapas definitely made Barcelona my favorite city to visit. Of course, if I had to choose one of those cities to live in, it would definitely be Paris. And I could do without the
pigeons in all three cities. I probably screamed in public at least once a day due to the pigeon problem and my own issues with birds.
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