Bruges - Pictures

view of a canal

View from on top of the belfort. This is a stadhuis or town hall - the oldest in belgium

Windmill - apparently built by the dutch

Feminism in flanders was born around the year 1200. A group of religious women got a bit mystical in their belifs - getting married to Jesus and things like that - and the catholic church wanted to bury them alive. The women (called beguins) thought otherwise: they started their own independent communites all over flanders.


I like this picture. It was on the way to Damme... and then I almost got ran over by a car. hahaha

View of a canal - stupid tacky tourist boats.

Rotterdam - Pictures

Overblaack development - those are the "cube" apartments

Creepy man coming out of the museum floor.. haahhaha


The ducks are walking on water. It was that cold.


That is the Euromast

Rotterdam is known for its many bridges. The white bridge is the Erasmus Bridge constructed in 2000. It is the biggest bascule bridge in the world. A bascule bridge is a moveable bridge with a counterweight that continuously balances the span, or "leaf," throughout the entire upward swing in providing clearance for boat traffic. Bascule is a French term for seesaw and balance, and bascule bridges operate along the same principle. They are the most common type of movable bridge in existence because they open quickly and require relatively little energy to operate.

Brussels - pictures

"Is this it? he's much smaller than i thought! Indeed, the pissing boy called Mannekin pis is the ideal national symbol for a country that is also very small and absurd. In 2007, for example, the guy did not pee for one day, with a sign warning for a prostate cancer. His suit is changed a few times per month, always by a guy called Jean-Marc." you can see all of his "costumes"

Schaerbeek cherries macerate in two-year old lambic for 5 to 6 months. 30% of young lambic added beofre bottling causes refermentation. basically it has cherries. It had an interestingtaste... pretty sour, kinda tasted more like wine than beer... but it was obviously really bubbly like beer.

This is like Belgium's Eiffel tower: its outside of the centre of the city, you have to pay a lot to enter, it looks the same up close as it does from a distance, but you go there anyway because you think you have to. The atomium was built for the world exhibition in 1958 when everybody still believed that the future was bright and that atomic energy would save the world. The nine balls represent an iron crystal, magnified 165 billion times. You can go from ball to ball inside, on long moving staircases."


Grand Place Grote Markt

Belgium - Bruges

The last city I went to on my trip was Bruges - the venice of the north!
In my opinion it was more fun than venice and in some parts prettier!
I wandered around this medieval city for a little while ... it had cute little cobblestone streets and old churchs, buildings, and houses everywhere. I think they receive something liek 3 million tourists a year... and it only has a population of 100,000!
I ended up renting a bike.. which was acutally kinda scary. Bicycles just rode in the street with cars in whatever direction and I always felt liek I was goign to get run over... and it was especially disturbing bec I didn't have a helmet. Anyways, my bike made it a lot of fun. I biked to this nearby city called Damme, which was about 5 km away. I biked along this nice little canal and it was such a nice day ... lot of fun. Damme is where part of the movie Girl with a Pearl Earring (w/ scarlett johanssen) was filmed ... so thats pretty much why I went there even tho I never saw the movie hahaha. But it was a really nice quiet small town. I saw a lot of windmills on the way, which is odd bec. my book said they are dutch... ( also i like how i saw no windmills while I was actually in the netherlands)
Anyways, I took some really nice pictures in both cities - it was such a nice day and everything was so pretty! Bruges also has canals everywhere but I didn't take a canal tour bec. it was just tacky. People also take these little horse drawn carriages around the city (form my guide book: check out the horse fountain. Have you noticed that the animals carry bags for their droppings? people used to think this was hilarious, but we got used to the idea and now we're just happy that there's no horse shit on the street. its better for the lace-and-chocolate business too) I climbed this bell tower... as usual and saw out over the city. OH and then I the chance to "touch christ's blood" at this one random church. You go into the church is holding this chalice with a few drops of his blood apprently and you make a donation and touch it. The little cylinder was taken on a crusade to Jerusalem in the 12th century, and true catholics believe that it is filled with Jesus' blood. Every day, the shiny cylinder is taken out of its safe and put on a pillow to be worshipped. The really really true believers are convinced that this is the moment when the blood actually changes from fixed to fluid. Scientists, on the other hand, established that it's a matter of temperature changes... WEIRD.
And finally I went to this place where Beguines once lived ... it is now declared a UNESCO heritage site. Feminism in flanders was born around the year 1200. A group of religious women got a bit mystical in their beliefs - getting married to Jesus and things like that - and the catholic church wanted to bury them alive. The women (called beguins) thought otherwise: they started their own independent communites all over flanders. It really wasn't that impressive. It just has a lot of daffodils and seems kinda creepy.
Oh yeah, I also had these pancakes at this place my book recommended and said "was the best place in the world to get pancakes" It was the thin kind and came with butter and brown sugar... and I got this traditional pancake drink called cidre which made it taste even better!

So then the next morning I got up at 5AM and caught a train back to brussels and I was supposed to catch a coach back to this small airport at 715... But bec. I wasn't in the UK... the bus didn'tcome until like 45 minutes late, nobody queued up and I was not happy. People were pushign their way on the bus. and i was espeically irritated bec I ALREAYD HAD MY TICKET and i was supposed to have LEFT 45 MINUTES AGO!!!! I didn't get on the first bus , but another once came like a minute later. But by that time I was alreayd too late to catch my flight bec it was so late. It was SO irritated. My flight was at 9:15 but I got to the airport at about 9:00. So i met these two girls who were form the US and studying abroad in London and Spain... they also missed their flights. We were put on the waitlist for the later flight back to London that day (AT 10 PM!!!!!) the flight was full so we were even gambling getting on that flight back. THere were talks about taking eurostar back to london (160 quid) OR taking a train to Lille, a train to calais, and then a ferry to dover, and then a coach back to london. WONDERFUL. I wasn't about to do that, so I stayed in the airport with this girl (who ended up being my fraternity hahaha) from missouri FOR 12 HOURSSSSSSS. I think what made it worse was there were 2 cafes and 1 store in the WHOLE AIRPORT. I was going out of my mind with boredom, but I couldn't waste any more money to go back into burssels (11 euro!) All I ate that day was a 4 euro sandwhich. If i didn't make that 10 pm flight I dont' know what I would have done.
So anyways, yeah I made the flight along with 4 hours that missed the flight as well. While we were about to land, the pilot is liketheres heavy fog, we may have to land somewhere int he east midlands. I was NOT pleased, but luckily things cleared up and we landed in stansted at around 11 something with a slight delay. I had to change my ticket on the bus I booked back to London victoria. I Got bac kto victoria and of course the tube wasn't running so i had to figure out how the night bus system worked... after about an hour of that I FINALLY made it back to my lovely flat and was never SO HAPPY in my LIFE to be back!

So, in the end, Belgium was fun... lots of "special" experiences.

The Netherlands - Rotterdam

So, the next day I had booked a train to go to Rotterdam on this high speed train company called Thalys (which also runs thru to amsterdam, come cities in germany, and paris) Yeah, so I missed my train because I forgot to change the time on my phone which I was using as an alarm clock. but I only had to pay a little to catch a later train and I got put into first class... so that was cool. They served me lunch at least and I got a nice comfy chair!
It only took about 1.5 hours to get to Rotterdam. Because I had taken a later train I was only there for about 5-6 hours I think. So i bought a day pass for transportation and went to this art museum that had some really interesting stuff... both modern and ancient. Probably most notable were works by Dali, Money, Degas... + more
Dutch is such a strange language...
But anyways, after that I walked through this Park to the main attraction of the city which is this big tower called Euromast. Its acutally not THAT big... smaller than a lot of the other towers I've gone up before. It over looked the city so I got to see everything. Rotterdam is known as a big port city (and they actually ahve a really big rivalry with Amsterdam. Rotterdam is the 2nd biggest city in the netherlands, and amsterdam is the largest) There is this rotating elevator type thing that lets you see the city as it raises you higher and higher.
After that, I just wandered around, found my way to these cool little apartmnets called the overblaak development which is basically these cube shaped apartments. A picture would probably describe them better than I could.
Overall, I didn't have enough time to really get any sort of impression ... I was so rushed... but Rotterdam seems like a decent city, a lot less touristy than Amsterdam is. It is konwn for its architecture as well because it was bombed flat during one of the world wars so a lot of it was rebuilt recently.
Took the same train back to Brussels and then made my way onto Bruges that night...

Belgium - Brussels

So I planned a trip to Belgium that would be the only trip I went on by myself (just bec. i wanted to have that experience) It was plagued with misfortune especially as far as FLIGHTS are concerned...

So I had a late flight out to Brussels, but of course it is delayed bec. there is "fog all over europe" I was really mad because I had planned out my buses from the airport (bec i was taking ryanair and they fly to airports that are small and far from city center) and the last one was at like 11:15. My plane is delayed perhaps like 1-2 hours. So with the 1 hour time ddifference I'm going to miss the last bus from the airport... which is kind of a problem! Not the mention the fact that I already paid 20 euros for a return ticket on the bus! So we finally leave London and we can't LAND in the airport we were supposed to but instead we land in Liege... which is east of Brussels. There are several other flighs that are due to land. Ryanair says "we have coaches to take you to the other airport" I run to get on the bus but its already full. Its REALLY CHAOTIC, people yelling in French, flemish, spanish, english, etc etc etc Its 1 am, I don't know how i'm goign to get to my hostel now since even if i get BACK to the original airport I have NO way of getting into burssels form there bec ther are no more buses until 6 am! I try to get on this ONE bus goign into burssels but they are full. So, luckily I meet these 3 chinese people who are actually studying in the UK who were on my flight. We talk for awhile and basically just figure the only way we're goign to get into town is by taxi. We get this other lady who needs to go and we tkae a taxi to brussels for 200 EURO!!! Luckily the lady paid more, so it only cost us 35 euro. It was only about a 50 minute drive...
So I finally make it into my hostel bed at 3 am 35 euros down the drain.
ANYWAYS, I really had a fun time in Brussels. Its such a random city.

The first day, I just did a few things like saw the city center or "markt" and walked around that area. I saw the famous "mannekin pis" which is basically a fountain of a little boy peeing. Apparently he put out a fire with his pee. HAHA Its a lot smaller than I thought, but it was still pretty funny. After I saw that I had a belgian waffle (yum!) and then went to this national art museum of belgium... blahhh Walked around the city center to shop for chocolate and I went to this really expensive place called Neuhaus and bought 250g of chocolate for like 23 euro. hahaha But at least I know it is quality. There are an obscene amount of chocolate shops all boasting to be the best chocolate in belgium...
later that night I met up with those chinese people I met the night before, and we went out with these spanish people... some argentinian and an austrailian. it was pretty fun ... i got to practice my spanish although they spoke better English than I did spanish. hahahha

My second day in Brussels, I first bought a day pass on the metro and headed out to the "Atomium" This is what my guide had to say about it : This is like Belgium's Eiffel tower: its outside of the centre of the city, you have to pay a lot to enter, it looks the same up close as it does from a distance, but you go there anyway because you think you have to. The atomium was built for the world exhibition in 1958 when everybody still believed that the future was bright and that atomic energy would save the world. The nine balls represent an iron crystal, magnified 165 billion times. You can go from ball to ball inside, on long moving staircases." I WOULD go somewhere that had something to do with chemistry...
Then I walked over to this museum for comics, because I'm pretty sure TinTin, the Smurfs, and Asterix are all belgian creations. I didn't acutally go in bec it was really expesnvie, so i just browsed the extensive bookstore.
After that, I went over to this unique brewery called Cantillon. So background: This is like the only brewery left that makes this special kind of beer called Lambic and gueze. They also make these odd "fruit" beers by infusing fruits like cherries, apricots, grapes and raspberries. Legend has it they use bacteria that is only available in the Brussels area, which is what makes these beers so unique. Belgium is really known for their beers .. there are some impressive stats about how many different types of beers they have but I forgot. Anyways, I got to try Kriek: Schaerbeek cherries macerated in two-year old lambic for 5 to 6 months. 30% of young lambic added beofre bottling causes refermentation. basically it has cherries. It had an interesting taste... pretty sour, kinda tasted more like wine than beer... but it was obviously really bubbly. Then I tried the Gueuze: Blend of 1,2, and 3 year old lambic, fermented in the bottle. Can be kept for a long time. again, it tasted pretty sour. from the guidebook: "You will probably think a real gueuze tastes rotten, but that's because you don't' know anything about beer, my friend"
pretty awesome
Ok after that I went to one of the famous Frites stands and got some fries! Belgians are REALLY big on their fries... like they REALLY like that. They come with neat sauces... i tried "americain" which tasted kind of meaty... and spicy. I wouldn't be surprised if it had some sort of raw meat origin because there some dish here called steak americain that is like minced raw beef... hmmm suspiciious. I wanted to get mussels at this one stand but I got there too late and they closed. Oh yeah, and they installed these public urinals against this really old and dirty church ... and i peed there bec. my guidebook told me about it HAHAH "In Italy or Poland, you might end up in jail if you would pee against the church, but we installed a public urinal here to "drain the potatoes". Welcome to Belgium!
So in brussels, I ate delicious waffles, fries, and chocolates... had some unique fruit beers, saw public paintings of tintin all over the city, peed against a church, climbed these massive balls resembling an iron atom, and saw a glorified peeing boy. Welcome to belgium indeed!

More on London

Things I did:
Hyde Park ( the new Princess Diana memorial fountain is lame...its just a stream of water going in an "endless" circle)
Wellington Arch
Portobello Market
British Museum (they have the terracotta warriers here as a temporary exhibit. HA i already saw them!)
St. Paul's ( second time climbing to the top!)
Chinese New Year in Leicester Square/Trafalger Sq (which was CRAZY busy... probably about 400,000 people came)
Had Korean Food (at "bibimbap cafe" and I made kimchi chiggae! satisfied my cravings = )

Dublin

Our first trip out of the country!
It was extrememly cold throughout the whole journey... "land of eternal winter" is what we learned Ireland is also called. All thoughout our trip we ran in to obnoxious Italians who were in Dublin for hte weekend bec of a big rubgy match against ireland. They took over our hostel and were loud = (
Anyways, our hostel was decent, some austrailian came in drunk and gave amy a us dollar. we were confused.
The next day, we did all of the touristy stuff, like Trinity College which houses the Book of Kells. We went to the National Museum which was not that impressive except for the awesome bog bodies...which are strangely preserved bodies due just to chance. Walked by St. Stephan's green to Dublin Castle and had a really well led tour. Dublin castle is a working government building but was a real castle at one point in Dublin's history. This is the building where the new presidents get inaugurated. also, i didn't realize that ireland has a female president.
After, we walked over to St. Patrick's cathedral which was also very impressive.
For dinner I had Irish stew with lamb... and a LOT of potatoes. after we just sort of went bar hopping and came back to our hostel.
The next day we headed over to the Guinness storehouse which was on the other side of town. We took the self-guided tour where they just told us about the process of making it. It was kind of dumb, but at least it came with a free beer at the top where you could overlook the city! We did some shopping and by then it was time to head back to the airport!
All throughout my stay I was reminded of James Joyce... which brings back amusing memories of reading his book "the Dubliners" in high school. oyyy lets just say he wasn't exactly a wonderful view. but i took a picture with his statue nevertheless.
I wish I had taken a bus tour of the rest of the country, but we didn't have enough time. We sort of planned this trip last minute and so many of the hostels were booked ... probably bec of the stupid rugby match. Perhaps I'll make my way back another time.. .when its not winter.

Random Stuff

Just some random things I did other than my main trips.
Took a class field trip to Kew Gardens... the Royal botanical gardens. it was FREEZING and the worst fieldtrip ever. but at least it was free! My prof just walked around, pointed at plants and talked about them. meanwhile, we couldn't hear and I didn't bring any gloves or anything so my fingers were about to fall off. Everyone was really frustrated by the end and half the people just sort of gave up. My prof said we were having a "minitest" in that class..and then when we were taking it he said it was open note! ARGHH
Went to visit the houses of parliament.. and we acutally got to sit in on some house of commons session. It was honestly quite boring! There was so much security.. they installed this like bullet proof screen between the visitors seats and the speakers.
Browsed a lot of the street markets which are close to me... brick lane, spitalfields, and petticoat lane. SO busy on sundays and nothing worth buying... but probably a good place to go if you need to get cheap luggage...
Somewhere in the middle of all of this my computer broke... and it didn't work for a two week period. Eventually I reformatted it and now its in good working order. I don't think I even had any viruses, i just turned my computer on one morning and it said I was missing a system file. wonderful! I 'm never getting a dell again. I say apple is the way to go!

Leeds Castle

Updating again... too bad this is REALLY behind! I'll just make this brief!
We bought these tickets from national express that are like a combined ticket for transport and entry into leeds Castle. We got there and walked through the castle gardens for a while. It was actually a REALLY nice day even ifi t was cold... The gardens has a "duckery" so there are hundreds of birds everywhere... like peacocks, ducks, swans... and probably more. I got REALLY close to a lot of the peacocks it was kind of disturbing.
The castle itself served more as a living quarters than an acutal defense fortress thing... So inside it was all redone by this lady who inherited it somehow. I don't really remember who, but some famous royalty stayed in the castle at one point or another... i think i remember something about henry VII.
The castle grounds also has an aviary... with EVEN MORE birds (all of this with birds is especially amusing to liz and me bec. amy is scared of birds - so we had a lot of fun with that...) The aviary had some endangered birds which i thought was strange. They had toucans, parrots, macaws, weird birds i've never heard of. Ok so after that they had this little labyrinth made out of shrubs. It was really fun... we got lost for a while.. but i finally got to the center and had to guide the others to the end. losers! All of the little kids were beating us!
That was about it... it really wasn't THAT exciting, just something pretty to look at.

Oxford

So originally we had planned to go to Leeds Castle on Friday... Our coach left at 9am, so we left our flat at 8 to get to Victoria Coach station. Stupid district line didn't have a train in the right direction for like over 10 minutes and it was commuting time so the doors stayed open EXTRA long at each station. Plus, victoria normally takes 30 min + from where we are. So we get off the tube and RUN to the coach station, but we already missed our coach. So we had to pay 3 pounds to change our ticket for saturday. Then we ended up buying tickets to Oxford.
We took the "oxford express" there... it only took an hour, maybe a little more. Oxford doesn't really have THAT much to do there except for the university. There are lots of old buildings everywhere, but most of them are associated with the university. Oxford university consists of i think over 40 "colleges." You have to PAY to get into each of them, so we only went into the most famous one: Christ Church college. This is where scenes from Harry Potter are shot! We couldn't go into the Dining Hall, which is like the "great hall" in harry potter and also has some relation to Alice in Wonderland? But everywhere you go there are students and some portions of the college visitors aren't allowed in.
We had a cornish pasty for lunch (yummy!) and then went to the oxford university National History Museum which had random stuffed animals you could touch, dinosaurs, random skeletons... Then we went to this museum that was attached called Pitt Rivers. It had REALLY weird things, like shrunken heads from So. America, mutilated heads, Japanese drama masks, totem poles, voodoo dolls. weird, but kind of cool. I like how Amy spotted this guy that just graduated from Pacific randomly riding a bike on the street ... i guess he's doing some post-grad work in oxford. RANDOM.
Then we walked over to Oxford castle, which is a newly opened tourist attraction. It was originally built as a castle, then converted to a jail (until 1996) and recently opened to the public. We had a tour guide (who called herself our "warden") who told us random stories about how the castle and prison were used. I learned that a crypt isn't where you bury people, its just where you store them before you bury them... and I learned that the staircases twist in a clockwise way to make it easier to defend the castle and harder for the offense to attack because if they were Right handed the positioning would be off if they tried to use a sword or something. Anyways, we saw some random prison punishments like this stair stepper and this CRANK people had to turn... kind of disturbing.
By then it was around 6, so we got on the bus and back to London.

Jan 23 - 24

So, on Wednesday after our class we went to Leicester sq. to buy some tickets for a show. We ended up buying tickets for Avenue Q for only 16.25 pounds, normally like 40. We walked over to trafalger sq. and took A LOT of pictures with the lions hahaha. Walked along the strand until we got to Somerset House. They had this skating rank set up, so we did that for an hour. It was really pretty and the even though the ice was starting to melt, it was really nice! But then some guy fell and hit his head, the paramedics came, blood was on the ice, so... we left. We looked at some exhibits in Somerset House, then made our way to London School of Economics (for Amy).
Had dinner and then went back to Leicester Sq. They were having a premiere for the Bucket List so we just randomly stayed. After like an hour of standing in a crowd of pushy people, we saw Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman! It was really exciting and I almost fell over because people were TOO excited.
After that we went to our show which was nearby. Avenue Q started out in the US and its this play with people that control these Muppets. Its really witty and supposed to be kind of like a parody of lilke the muppets/sesame street? But it was really funny and we had pretty good seats! Meaning not all the way in the furthest balcony.
Thursday night we went to this Bangladeshi restaurant near our school. It was really random... we kind of just wanted Indian food so we all ordered curry, except some "traditional Bangladeshi starter" It was OK... it had some like beans and was spicy... I don't know. The waiter was really nice though and was very confused when we said we were from America. My Lamb curry was REALLY hot , but still good.
Meanwhile, we were planning all of our trips... so stressful!

Oy, its been a really long time...
Starting with the weekend of the 19th,
Since the weather was so horrible we decided to go to some museums for the day. We went over to south kensington, and first went to the National History Museum. It was actually really entertaining even if it was full of little kids. I especially enjoyed the "human bio" section hahaha The main attraction there is the dinosaur exhibit.. which was kind of lame because I dont even think all of the dinosaurs were real fossils. There was this large animated T-rex that seemed to enchant a lot of people.
After that, we went to the Victoria and Albert museum. It had a lot of RANDOM stuff from paintings to sculptures to parts of random buildings. But I really enjoyed this "plaster room" that had these effigies where kings were buried, parts of old cathedrals, and other random buildings. They also had a Korean exhibit.. but it was just VASES and bronzework, nothing I hadn't seen before.
After all of that, we were pretty tired, so we just came back to our flat, went out to dinner and went out for a drink near Brick Lane / Spitalfields.
Sunday I had to do a lab write up (Which i got an A- in... apparently in the British grading system a "B" is equivalent to an American "A". go figure. so whatever, i'm pretty happy with that and makes me feel like pacific actually taught me how to be an adequate "biologist" heh) Honestly, this doesn't feel like school because I hardly go to class! I did some calculations, and i enjoy how I can get straight C's (which im pretty sure isn't possible) and still graduage magna cum laude, and not be rejected from ucsf =)