Europe 2022

Post-grad trip to Italy, Spain, and France Read more

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Views and friends in San Sebastian
June 2, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 68 °F
San Sebastian has been amazing! The hostel is by far the nicest, and probably biggest, one I’ve stayed in by far. It feels like it is super empty right now though and nobody really hangs out here. I decided I wanted to be social anyway, so I did some research and found an app called Couchsurfing - it’s primarily used for self explanatory reasons, but there is also a section for just finding other travellers to hang out with. I made a profile and found a group that was getting drinks in the city, I decided to just go for it and join them and ended up having an amazing time! There was a Venezuelan guy who moved here several years ago, a Dutch girl, and a girl who was also from the Chicago burbs but has lived in Paris for the last few years. The coincidences didn’t stop: she went to northwestern, and not only were we staying in the same hostel, but in the same dorm. Crazy! We had a blast and were out super late. Today I met up with the girls (the guy who lives here had work) to take a funicular up to one of the mountains, and we got some unreal views. This city is so, so beautiful and there are not many tourists at all. I’ve only found a couple of Americans at the hostel and only one out and about. Very little English is spoken, so I’m using Spanish a lot which is great. I’ve been really happy with how much I am able to converse with people casually in Spanish.Read more
wow! [Grammie]
6/12/22Reply
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Bilbao and the Guggenheim
June 3, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 72 °F
Bilbao is a cool city, it is a lot less touristy than other places I’ve been. There are fewer attractions and no beaches compared to San Sebastián. There seems to be a stronger basque identity here, I’ve been seeing and hearing it a lot more and seeing a lot more basque independence stuff. The Guggenheim is what puts this place on the map, it was a pretty interesting museum and I was not expecting to see so many cars. I randomly ran into someone in the museum who I met at the hostel in San Sebastián which was funny and convenient. We explored the museum together and walked around Bilbao for a bit afterwards. I’m about to meet up with some people from the couch surfing app - one of them coincidentally being someone else I know from the hostel in San Sebastián. Small world!
At night I met up with some more people from Couchsurfing and had another great experience. We went out for Pintxos, the typical basque food which is basically just little bites of different things. The thing to do is go around different restaurants and eat a couple at each one. We had a great time and had everything from squid to ham to cod - most of the time we had no idea what we were eating. But there wasn’t a thing we didn’t like!Read more
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First day in Oviedo and rugby game
June 4, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 61 °F
Now that I am with Lucas, the solo part of my trip is essentially over (except one day in between dad leaving and going to Paris), which is pretty wild. It’s great to see Lucas and of course I am getting much more Spanish practice in now as we are not using any English. Lucas had his last rugby match of the season today, it was cool to be able to see it although I didn’t understand a lot of the sport. He is on a professional team here that is essentially in the Spanish B league. There were more fans than I expected, maybe 1000-1500 people. Lucas’s team won by a solid margin and he got a try (touchdown) himself. One of the guys told me he is the best player on the team. Afterwards I went out with him and the guys on his team, which was fun but it was also hard to make conversation with them - not so much because of the language barrier but a cultural barrier. It was pretty easy to understand and talk to them but they are not nearly as conversational as Americans. They aren’t chatty and will respond to questions you ask but won’t ask anything back. It was not a problem though because I just hung out with Lucas and talked with him most of the night. And I did meet a couple of chatty people but they were other foreigners who played on the team. Overall an interesting and fun day!Read more
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Day in Gijon
June 5, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 64 °F
Lucas, his uncle (mom’s side, not Caputto) and his friend who are visiting Oviedo, and I took a quick bus ride to Gijon, which is a city on the water and the largest in the province of Asturias. It was a cool place, very similar to Oviedo except with views of the sea and some beaches. I love how you can get to another city so easily and quickly here - it’s a thirty minute bus ride that costs like 2.50. We had some good food and walked around town for a while and now we are all exhausted. There is definitely much less to see around this part of Spain but that is Ok because I am spending all of my mental capacity trying to keep up with the Spanish. It has been going surprisingly well - I’m able to communicate without a problem and was fine keeping up with these three argentines today. We had a lot of pretty complicated conversations - Lucas’s uncle is an economist and spent a while explaining Peronism to me. This is a very different leg of the trip from sightseeing in Rome or Barcelona but I like it a lot because I feel like I am learning more about the actual culture; Lucas knows a ton about it and also has Spanish friends that I am meeting.Read more
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Another day in Oviedo
June 6, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 63 °F
This has been a pretty uneventful and chill day. In the morning we went and did a tour of the main church in Oviedo, which I honestly found super boring - it was a pretty normal looking church and not only has this trip burned me out of seeing churches, but it has also set my standards pretty high. They do have some interesting historical stuff there like a cloth that apparently was over Jesus’s face after he died on the cross. The one in the pictures is a facsimile as the real one is stored in some highly controlled environment but it is actually in the church. After that, Lucas and company and I got some coffee and hung out for a bit before José (Lucas’s uncle) and Ale (his friend) had to get on their train to San Sebastián. After that Lucas had some stuff to do so I went for a walk around town and hung out in the main park (campo San Francisco) for a while. It’s nice having some chill days in the middle of what has been a very busy trip.Read more
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Day at the Riverbank
June 7, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 73 °F
Yesterday was another chill day in Oviedo. I went with Lucas and some of his friends from the rugby team to a river bank to hang out and swim. It was super beautiful out there, we basically were out in the mountains and it was only like a 30 minute drive. This group was a bit harder for me to hang out with because they are mostly from Oviedo or other parts of Asturias and their accent is just beyond difficult. Even Lucas says he has a hard time understanding them. For example one of them explained to me they have an expression: “es lo que hay” but they pronounce it like “yeh que hay” - I was like how the hell do you pronounce “Es lo” as “yeh”? So confusing. Fortunately there were a couple argentines who were far easier to understand as well as a guy from New Zealand who obviously spoke English. While there some bulls came up to us and I thought for a second we were going to get attacked because one of them did seem pretty pissed off. Fortunately he just walked away after we threw some bread to him. After that we just headed back, Lucas has a lot to do in terms of packing so I headed to the town park to hang out and read. It’s crazy how Spain is essentially in its own time zone - I came home from the park to get dinner with Lucas at 10 and the sun was still out.Read more
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Last day in Oviedo
June 8, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ☁️ 66 °F
This was probably the least eventful day of the whole trip. Lucas had to finish packing his things - as I write this we are on the bus to Madrid, and he is not going back to Oviedo again. So while he did that I wandered around the city a bit. I had already seen most of the interesting stuff around town and it was also drizzling all day so there wasn’t a whole lot to do. I read an absolute ton. I also had a nice lunch. It was nice to have a relaxing day as the rest of the trip is going to be super packed - especially considering I will be with Dad and Lexi for the rest of the time, who seeing as they have shorter trips than me will probably want to pack a whole lot into each day. With that in mind I enjoyed having a very lazy day. Although it is rainy, Oviedo is very green and I really enjoyed spending time in the parks there. Definitely the most chill part of the trip - and where I got the most Spanish practice by far!Read more
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First day in Madrid
June 9, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ☀️ 88 °F
It was a pretty disorienting day - Lucas and I took an overnight bus from 12:30-6:30 into Madrid from Oviedo and I was completely unable to sleep, so I was super tired and out of it when we arrived. Dad arrived at around 10 and we promptly took a nap for a few hours as we were both exhausted. Once we were up we started to explore the city, which was fun but also a bit difficult because it was super hot with very intense sun. The palace was a highlight as I had never been to a real palace before with a real, active royal family still inhabiting it. It was huge and very impressive, and it also had some beautiful gardens. Madrid seems to be a very business oriented city - I’ve seen many more suits than anywhere else - and has a very upscale vibe. It is way more expensive than anywhere else I’ve been on this trip. Food so far has been ok but definitely not worth the prices and service has been very bad at the restaurants we’ve been to.Read more
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Museo del Prado
June 10, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 86 °F
The big event of the day was the museo del prado, which was a very interesting museum with representaron of a lot of famous artists. Unfortunately pictures were not allowed in there - I took a lot anyway when there weren’t guards around, and when I saw the garden of earthly delights by Bosch I decided to do it and get scolded anyway because it is so famous and I did a research paper on it in high school. Totally worth it. After the museum we walked around the parque de retiro, Madrid’s Central Park, which was enormous and beautiful although it was too hot out to enjoy it. We also got nice views on the rooftop of a mall on Gran Via street, which has a very New York vibe to it, and found better (yet still overpriced) food than yesterday. Frankly Dad and I are underwhelmed by Madrid - for such a big city, there is not a ton of interesting stuff to see, and it doesn’t feel very unique. Like many parts of Barcelona, Madrid feels a lot like any city in the US. It is certainly not a bad place to be but for such a world famous place it does not live up to expectations. Public transport is also more confusing to navigate and less useful than in the other cities I’ve been in (at least the ones big enough for public transport to be necessary). I would say this is the only place on the trip I have felt disappointed in so far.Read more
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Valencia
June 11, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 84 °F
Dad and I spent a night in Valencia - there wasn’t a ton of destinations there, but it made sense as a stop between Madrid and Barcelona, and there was certainly enough to fill up a day. The coolest thing was the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciènces, which was a super modern and enormous campus of sorts with science and art museums, theaters, and more stuff we didn’t even see. We didn’t really go in anywhere but the buildings and campus were just incredible. We also had a great seafood paella on the beach at night. The beach area was very nice at night, a ton of people were out and there was a very long strip of restaurants. There was also a strip of clubs along a pier going out on the water so it was a super cool place to be at night.
While these things were fun, we seemed to run into every bump in the road possible in Valencia. We changed our plans last minute to come here - we were originally going to Seville, but they are currently having a historic heat wave with 110° weather, so we changed plans to go to Valencia instead. We couldn’t find a hotel in the city so we stayed in a nearby town, but getting a cab on either end was incredibly difficult and frustrating. We also had major confusion with using the metro - we bought tickets using a machine, which dispensed paper tickets, but when we got to our destination you needed to tap a card to open the gates to leave, which we did not have. We asked the security guy for help but he basically said we were screwed. We obviously couldn’t stay in the station forever so we just found an unattended exit and jumped the gate, which was a bit nerve wracking. We also could not get either of our credit cards to work to buy a train ticket to Barcelona so we had to go back to the train station in Valencia to get help from someone from the train company (which was a pain but ended up working).
Ultimately we still had fun in Valencia, but I am excited to get back to Barcelona, where I am more confident with the public transport and I know there are more attractions to visit!Read more
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Back in barcelona!
June 12, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ☁️ 79 °F
Dad and I spent a few hours in the morning walking around Valencia again before catching an afternoon train to Barcelona. By the time we got here, checked in to the hotel and got moving, it was already pretty dark out so we didn’t have many opportunities to get good pictures. We did explore a lot of the city, especially la Barceloneta, and ate an amazing paella just off the beach. It’s great being back in Barcelona and it definitely feels like we have more we want to do here than in the previous two cities we’ve been in.
I am also including dad and my pictures from Castell Montjuïc in here, although they are from the next day. However, I had already been there with Anabel and they already have their own entry.Read more
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Camp Nou
June 13, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ☀️ 82 °F
Dad and I did a tour of Camp Nou, the stadium where FC Barcelona plays, and it was really great and exceeded expectations. The museum was incredible - there is such a long and interesting history of the team and it’s connections to Catalan identity and resistance, and being such a historically successful team, they have a whole lot of trophies to show off. There was even a Messi section just showcasing the trophies he earned personally. Really wild how dominant they have been in the last few decades. The stadium tour was incredible and we got to see much more than I thought we would, including sitting in the seats where the coaches and bench players sit right next to the field. We also got to see a press room and the visitors locker room. Super cool. The stadium is honestly surprisingly old and outdated - the locker room seemed like it could have been in a high school. Overall it was an awesome tour and I was very happy with how much we were able to see with their most basic tour package.Read more
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Parc Güell
June 14, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 82 °F
Parc Güell was absolutely one of the coolest and most unique things I’ve seen on this trip. I’ve never been somewhere like it - a sort of half park, half museum overlooking the city. It apparently was some urban development project led by the architect Antoni Gaudí, who is super famous in Barcelona, that ended up turning into a museum. It is full of really interesting sculptures, structures, and houses built in his style. It feels like being in a Dr. Seuss book. It was also full of trees and birds and had incredible views of the city. It was really special in a lot of different ways. Super unique place!Read more
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La Sagrada Familia
June 14, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ☀️ 82 °F
The sagrada familia was also a highlight of this whole trip. It is the newest cathedral I’ve seen on the trip - in fact, it isn’t even done yet. They’ve been working on it since 1880 and the Gaudí, the main architect, died in 1926. They are aiming to complete in in 2026 for the 100 year anniversary of his death. It is the most massive and unique cathedral I’ve seen in Europe. It has a very modern style and feels like something out of Star Wars. When it is done, its highest tower will be over 500 feet tall and it will be the tallest building in Barcelona. It is so special to be able to see a cathedral that is still being built and that will also be done so soon. It is just such an interesting and trippy place and I really have just never seen any cathedral like it.Read more
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Gaudí houses and Picasso museum
June 15, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ☀️ 82 °F
Dad and I visited some of the houses (really seem more like buildings) designed by Gaudí, the architect who led the sagrada familia and Parc Guëll. They were really interesting to see and have a very unique feel to them. After seeing Gaudí’s stuff it’s easy to see references to his style and themes in architecture and decor all over the city. We also visited the city’s Picasso museum which was honestly a bit underwhelming. It was fairly small and all paintings Dad and I had never seen or heard of before, and lots of the art was just sketches. We had a great dinner with lots of seafood by the water!Read more
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Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art
June 16, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 86 °F
This museum was pretty interesting, and far less crowded than other ones that I’ve visited on this trip. They have a big skate park outside and there were a ton of people skating all over, and there was graffiti everywhere - including a Keith Haring mural. It all seems to be promoted by the museum. The museum went through the different decades of 20th century art in Catalonia and it was very interesting - I learned a lot about the history here. Although most of my pictures are from this museum, the highlight of the day was getting a 24 hour electric bike pass - one of those things where they have electric bikes all over the city and you use an app to unlock them. The bikes are great as the motor makes them really fast. I rode all over town today and took a long ride along the beach at night.Read more
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Barcelona MOCO Museum
June 17, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 86 °F
This was another modern/contemporary art museum that blew the other one I visited in Barcelona out of the water. They had a much larger exhibit with art by KAWS, Banksy, Basquiat, Murakami, Haring and Warhol to name a few. They also had some really neat immersive stuff as well as massive outdoor statues. It was my favorite modern art museum I’ve visited so far!
Unfortunately at some point this morning or last night my wallet was stolen from the hostel - it was literally next to me while I was sleeping. It was gone when I woke up and I tried to track down the AirTag I have in it, which led me to a trash can a few blocks away - they must have seen it and thrown it out as they were leaving. Fortunately my passport and vaccine cards were separate, I had very little cash, and am able to still use Apple Pay (which is accepted literally everywhere here post-pandemic). So fortunately it is not much more than an inconvenience - and by the time I get home, my replacement cards and drivers license will already have arrived!Read more
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Palau Nacional de Montjuïc y Font Màgica
June 17, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 84 °F
Had a great last excursion in Spain visiting a beautiful area at the foot of Montjuïc. There is palace that seems to have been converted into the National Catalan Art Museum, which I did not go into, and a whole sort of park leading up to it. There is also a place called the magic fountain there which does incredible dynamic shows set to music. It was an incredible place to watch the sun set, get some last views of the city, and see some street performers.
I can’t believe I am already leaving Spain! I can say without a doubt that Barcelona has been my favorite city on this trip and possibly my favorite city I have ever visited. It just has so much going on - lots of different cultures and neighborhoods with very distinct personalities, a mix of an old city with rich history and an incredibly modern new city built around it, arguably the most famous sports club in the world, and incredible art and architecture - all set in between mountains on the beach! Just an amazing place. I was there for 8 days total and wasn’t able to do everything I wanted. The city I stayed in the longest other than Barcelona was Rome with 4 days and I was ready to leave by then. No doubt I’ll be back to Barça in the future!Read more
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First day in Paris
June 18, 2022 in France ⋅ ☀️ 97 °F
We didn’t get to do a whole lot today as it was over 100 degrees most of the day and Lexi and I were both exhausted from flying (I flew from Barcelona and she flew in from Chicago), but it still feels surreal to be in Paris. I did have a bit of a travel nightmare on the way to the hotel. I took a cab from the airport and when we arrived, it declined my card. I tried to pay through their app with dad’s card (he sent me the number after my wallet was stolen) but since the accounts are connected both were suspended for suspicious activity (I guess from being in a new country). The driver spoke 0 English so it was impossible to communicate. We ended up going into the hotel to ask the receptionist to help mediate and he ended up saving me by just covering the fare with his personal card and saying I could just pay him back later. I have no idea what I would have done without that! Very lucky. Capital one is the villain of the story, as they sent me an email saying my card would continue to be declined due to fraud until I called their 1-800 number, which was not possible to do from overseas - pretty ridiculous for a card purely based around having no international fees. This is now the 3rd or 4th time I’ve been caught in a bad situation thanks to them randomly flagging my card and not giving me any way to remedy it until dad is awake and able to call them for me. Will not be using their cards in the future!Read more
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First REAL day in Paris!
June 19, 2022 in France ⋅ ⛅ 68 °F
In contrast to yesterday, today was absolutely packed with things to do. We started at the Paris Museum of Modern Art, which was fun and had a lot of interesting art, but their main exhibit with their most famous works was closed for some reason today. Afterwards, we went and had a picnic in the Champ de Mars (park) outside of the Eiffel Tower. From there we took a train to the Arc de Triomphe and went to the top and got amazing views of the city. From there we rented bikes through one of those bike share apps (through Uber actually) and had a great ride over that we intended to take to the Louvre, but ended up not being able to park the bikes anywhere near there, so we ended up going to the Île de la Cité, the island on the Seine that has the Notre-Dame cathedral and Sainte-Chapelle. We then crossed to the other side and explored the Latin quarter, then sat outside of the Pantheon for a bit. Then we met up with Lucas and got dinner with him back near the Latin quarter - I was a bit scared but I decided to try beef tartare after doing some research and being assured that it’s safe, hopefully I won’t get food poisoning in the next few days.
So far the first real day exploring Paris was absolutely amazing and we are loving the city so far! The only real negative is that it is unbelievably expensive compared to Spain and Italy. The language barrier is also very strong and there are not many English speakers around considering it is such a touristy city. However, people are far nicer than I had expected and we have only had positive experiences. We even had a waiter who kept telling us about how much he loved the US and kept rattling off state capitals that he knew - unfortunately he thought that Minneapolis was the capital of Illinois, but props to him for knowing either of those two places exist!Read more
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Louvre Museum
June 20, 2022 in France ⋅ ⛅ 59 °F
The louvre was really incomparable to any other museum I’ve seen on the trip, or in my life at all. Lexi and I did a 2 hour guided tour and stayed for another 2 hours exploring on our own and I don’t think we covered even 5% of what is in there. I have never seen a museum of that scale, but despite its size and the fact that we visited at 9:30 AM on a Monday, I have never seen one so crowded either. The line to see the Mona Lisa was absolutely comical. We had an awesome tour with a very knowledgeable guide who showed us some of the most famous pieces in the French and Italian wings, as well as some of the historically significant jewelry and crowns that the museum has. Afterwards Lexi and I explored (some of) the Egyptian exhibit, which was super interesting because many of the artifacts were nearly 6000 years old - the exhibit went back to 4,000 BC. Surprisingly, it was difficult to understand what we were looking at in this wing as there were not many English translations of the placards explaining what the artifacts here. I did not know before the visit that the Louvre used to be the French palace before it was moved to Versailles. With that in mind, it was so ridiculously enormous that it made the Spanish royal palace look like a studio apartment. As huge as it is, the museum only takes up a fraction of what was once the palace. The palace (or at least sections of it) was built, expanded, destroyed, and rebuilt multiple times throughout French history, and you even get to explore the remains of the original fortress and moat when you enter the museum. The museum was so massive that it took Lexi and I over 45 minutes from deciding to leave to finding an exit. Super amazing - and exhausting - place.Read more
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Day 2 of exploring Paris
June 20, 2022 in France ⋅ ⛅ 68 °F
After the Louvre, Lexi and I met up with Lucas and walked down the Tuileries Gardens - the Louvre’s palacial gardens - to the Place de la Concorde, an interesting historical site that has an Egyptian obelisk (that was literally taken from Egypt by Napoleon) and was also the location where many historical figures like Marie Antoinette were guillotined. We walked from there into a neighbourhood called Madeleine which had a lot of designer stores but also had a lot of construction going on so it was tough to navigate or hang out in. Lucas went back to his hostel from there and Lexi and I rented bikes to go see the Café de Flore - which according to Lexi is a famous cafe here - and then walked to the Luxembourg gardens, which were absolutely beautiful to explore.Read more
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Palace of Versailles
June 21, 2022 in France ⋅ ⛅ 63 °F
Versailles was definitely one of the most amazing places I’ve ever seen, and the most absolutely ludicrous display of wealth imaginable. I said the Louvre made the Spanish palacio real look like a dollhouse, but Versailles does the same thing to the Louvre. The palace is amazing in itself, and Lexi and I spent a good few hours exploring it. The highlight in there was the hall of mirrors, which was not only beautiful and ornate room but also one of incredible historical significance, as many important treaties were signed there: the treaty of Paris ending the American revolution, the 1871 treaty of Versailles ending the Franco-Prussian war (and marking the beginning of the German empire), and the 1919 treaty of Versailles ending WW1 were all signed in that room. The palace was the home of the Kings Louis 14-16 (and their families and servants with an estimated 10,000 living on the grounds at once) until the family was driven out by the French Revolution, and later was also used by Napoleon Bonaparte. The really incredible part, though, was the palacial gardens. They are just unimaginably expansive, yet covered with ornate statues, fountains, and hedges that are still perfectly - and I mean PERFECTLY - manicured. Seriously, I would estimate that several thousand gardeners must still work there today to keep the grounds looking the way they are. The grounds we also home to some additional homes that the royal family would spend time relaxing in, as well as a series of cottages that Marie Antoinette had built because she liked to pretend she was a peasant (and she clearly had no clue what that word meant). Lexi and I were literally at this palace for over 8 hours, and even taking a bike rental and using their shuttle, we only were able to see a fraction of the grounds of the palace. It is really unbelievable to think that a family used to actually live there.Read more
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Disneyland Paris
June 22, 2022 in France ⋅ ☁️ 70 °F
Going to Disneyland was frankly part of the trip I was not looking forward to, but Lexi is very into Disney and was excited about the opportunity to see a version of the park in another country, so we went. I will admit I had more fun than I expected, and compared to American amusement parks I’ve been to it was not very crowded and the lines were very reasonable, so that was nice. The park was also very small and it was easy to get done in one day; it felt even smaller than the Disneyland in Anaheim. Nothing felt that different from American Disney except for most of the rides were in a hybrid of English and French. Ultimately this is the Disneyland for all of Europe and so French was not really even the dominant language in the park. I would say we heard more English (mostly British and Irish) and Spanish being spoken by visitors than French, and there was also a lot of German and Italian. Overall I would say Disney is still not really my thing, but I did have fun on some of the rides, although I was very sick of the lines by the end of the day.Read more
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Musée d’Orsay
June 23, 2022 in France ⋅ ⛅ 81 °F
This was a very cool museum with a lot of famous and interesting artwork, especially Monet and Van Gogh. It was smaller and much less crowded than the Louvre with a focus on more “modern” (like 1800s) art. I learned that I am not a huge fan of Monet - I found a lot of his art boring, although that may have been because we were exploring room after room full of his paintings. I really liked Van Gogh’s art though, not just because it is visually interesting but because I found the stories from his life to be fascinating, although also sad. His famous self portrait, probably the most famous thing we saw in the museum, was painted while he was in a psych ward and was an attempt at conveying his mental state to his brother.Read more
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