Barcelona, Spain

Barcelona, Barcelona, Barcelona… where do I begin? First of all this place is the warmest of my travels as of yet with a consistant temperature of like 65-70 degrees with not a cloud in the sky! The first day we were there we decided it would be a good idea to walk down to the boardwalk and lay out in the sun for the remainder of the day and then go see all the sights the following day when the fifth person could join us.

Upon arrival we were surrounded by sun and palm trees... basically anything but clouds

We started the day out renting some bikes so we could travel around the town easier. This trip was more interesting for me than most because I took over what my roommate Felix (The human encyclopedia) usually does and attempted to find our way around town with the girls. We wanted to see the most impressive sight first so we biked up the hill towards “La Sagrada Familia”. When we arrived to the cathedral it was quite an impressive sight:

Walking through a park towards "La Sagrada Familia"

Four of us in front of the enormous building

Three of the four people didn’t want to venture into the cathedral with us because of the long line and decided to once again soak up the sun. While they were doing this, Nadia and I waited in the long line and finally got to witness the most amazing internal structure ever:

Every window looked like this...

Words and pictures dont do this justice

While we walked through the cathedral, we were in awe constantly turning our heads from side to side marveling the stained glass windows and statues. When we finished our tour of La Sagrada Familia, we returned to the other three patiently waiting for us outside and proceeded to bike up a mountain to “Parc Guell”. I cant even begin to describe both the park it self and the view of the city, so here are some pictures:

Taking a break from biking up the mountain towards the park

In Parc Guell, overlooking Barcelona

The most depressing part of the trip came the following morning when we had to leave Barcelona. It was the first time in my travels that I actually thought about “missing my flight” in order to stay for a few extra days, sadly the prices for the returning flights within the next few days were out of my price limit so I had to return to Torino, Italy…. Which of course is a vacation in itself so im not complaining! 

Eating some gelato before dinner

view looking inwards towards town from the boardwalk

I am traveling to Sicily, Italy this upcoming Friday so hopefully I can get back on track with my blogging!

Ciao!

I AMsterdam

Amsterdam is the greenest city I have been in for two reasons… Nearly everyone living in Amsterdam rides bikes wherever they need to go, there are bikes everywhere you look. With bikes comes the chance of being ran over by one, which quickly found out that if we didn’t want to get hit my an oncoming bicyclist we would need to quickly jump to the side of the street when we heard a bell ring, and this happened quite often! The second reason why Amsterdam is a green city is of course the fact that marijuana is legal to buy, grow, and smoke. While we decided not to try any, you could still smell it in the air when we were walking through the streets or nearby coffeeshops.

Have you ever seen a two story parking garages for bikes?!

At a local coffeeshop, they had this painting, I thought that it was interesting, look closely to what he is reaching for

There were two main things that I enjoyed in Amsterdam, the Van Gogh Museum and the architecture in and around the city. I could not believe that I actually got to see the Van Gogh Museum! We rented bikes for the day and took a short ride over to the museum, I didn’t think much about the reality of the situation while cruising through streets with only triangular shaped roof buildings, but once we arrived to the museum, it just kind of hit me that I was actually in Amsterdam getting a chance to see some real life paintings of one of the most famous artists. The only thing about the Van Gogh Museum that was a let down is that we were unable to find the “Starry Night” painting.

Biking to the Van Gogh Museum

Their "I AMsterdam" monument was difficult to get to

Finally, the Van Gogh Museum

As I mentioned, all of the buildings had triangular shaped roofs, I felt that this was unique because I had never seen a place where nearly every single house had the same basic design. Another thing that I noticed was how nearly every other building had either sunk on one side or had began leaning out into the street a little bit. I found this is be very interesting. Lastly, I noticed how similar Amsterdam is to Venice simply because of the fact of the numerous canals weaving and winding throughout the city.

Perfect Picture of Amsterdam, the bikes, the canals, the buildings...

Notice the Triangular Shaped Roofs

The last and probably most funny part of the trip was the Red Light District. We left from our hostel, took an immediate right and we were already in the Red Light District, I quickly began disgusted when I saw 350 pound woman after 350 pound woman flaunting their large bodies behind a door and waving at me to come near them, luckily we had no trouble getting away because they didnt leave their booths so we just continued walking. We eventually wandered around and found the real Red Light District. I felt a little uneasy and awkward walking around buildings with nearly naked women literally throwing themselves toward passing by men and even women.

The perfect ending to the best day ever!

Looking back on it, it just seems hard to imagine a place that legally allows marijuana and prostitution; I can’t imagine raising a family in an environment like that. All in all it was a great weekend in the “Adult Disneyworld”.

Stockholm Syndrome

YES! We are in Sweden!!!

Stockholm is the furthest northern country that I will have made it to during my European adventures, even further north than Anchorage I believe, don’t hold me to that though. The only thing that I didn’t care for about our trip was the traveling to get there and back. We took a two hour train ride from Torino to Milan, then a 45 minute bus ride to the airport, spent the night in the airport and then a two and a half hour flight to Sweden, followed by an 80 minute bus ride to Stockholm itself...

Good thing im Alaskan, I can handle the cold of Sweden

Once in Stockholm, I put on my warm coat and gloves and preceded to find our way to the “Best Old Town Hostel”, which as you can tell by the name is the best hostel located in Old Town Stockholm, we were literally about two minutes walking distance from the Royal Palace. We spent the first day just venturing around old town and getting lost in the streets with the locals. Nearly everyone in Stockholm spoke perfect English so it wasnt too hard to find our way.

Standing outside the Royal Palace...

The second day we met up with a friend of someone I traveled with (Kevin), he showed us around all the tourist areas as well as other little known areas around town. We finished the day off with a hockey game of AIK vs. Modo, This is the first international game that I had gone to and the away team (Modo) has been known for producing players such as Peter Forsberg, Markus Naslund, Henrik Sedin, and Daniel Sedin. The game was no doubt the highlight of my trip to Sweden and I really hope that I get to see more of them!

After a beautiful day in Stockholm, we walked towards the Hockey Rink

During the 2nd Intermission of the Game

You can tell but on the AIK scarf in quotes it translates to "We Are Everywhere"

The one thing that was really hard to get used to is how the young men dressed themselves, at the bars and clubs they were dressed metro sexually so I became really nervous when we walked into the first club because I thought that we had accidentally walked into a gay bar. All in all, I can see why people love Stockholm, it has some amazing sights and the locals are the nicest people I have come across in Europe.

Last day in Sweden, Kevin and I sat and smoked a Cuban Cigar

Nice, France & Monoco

It is 9am on Saturday morning and I am currently riding on a train with Kevin, Chris, Sam, and Molly to Nice, France. Nice is a nice place to go in the summertime because it is right on the coast and supposedly has some pretty amazing sights. The forecast is calling for it to be about 60 degrees so compared to Turin’s 30-40 degree temp it will feel like a tropical paradise! We have brought our swimsuits along with us in hopes that we will be able to go in the ocean, even though we will be the only ones in the ocean, it wont be any different than when we went swimming in San Diego a few years ago.

The hostel we are staying at has been voted for being the top 10 hostels in the world for many years now and was voted the best hostel in France during the 2009 and 2010 years, it is actually a villa a few minutes away from the beach, bars, and many museums and other attractions.

Along our journey from Torino, we went from this:

Train Ride Through the Alps

To This:

Beautiful Ventimiglia, France

After getting back to Torino: I thought that Nice sounded like a cool place to go just because it was on the French Riveria… saying the Nice is a cool destination is an understatement! I cant even begin to describe how much fun we had over there, the one hour train ride along the coast was just the beginning of the fun. We got to Nice and it was about 65-70 degrees out, so we went and checked into the hostel we were staying at and headed directly down to the beach, even though the water was nearly as cold as it is in Anchorage it was still a blast!

 Finally at the beach in Nice!

The Boardwalk in Nice

After spending all of Saturday in Nice, we decided to head to Monoco for a few hours on Sunday with a French guy we met at the bars on Saturday night. He showed us around Monoco for the day, showed us everything from the Monte Carlo to the bay looking up the beautiful mountainside of Monoco. I could not believe how cool this city…. Oh sorry I mean country was! It looked as though they had built the mountain around the city instead of the other way around if that makes any sense. The part I enjoyed best was the style of life that was there, I have never seen so many Ferrari's, Lamborghini's, Lotus' and Bently's in my life!!! Anyways, just like every other picture I have taken in Europe, the pictures don’t do it justice.

The Monte Carlo Casino in background!

The best lunch/view I have ever had! Expensive but worth it.

21 Euro Lunch overlooking the bay of Monoco... finished off with a Cuban Cigar

Overall, I have two complaints about this trip....

1. I was not able to stay longer therefore I will be forced to return to visit it again

2. I forgot my sunglasses at my apartment...

First Post

Hey,

First of all im sorry that it took me so long to create a blog, it was pretty much the last thing on my list of things to do over here... Torino is so awesome! I have so many stories already since ive gotten here, most of which have ended with me looking like a fool, so i feel that because of this I need to learn how to speak more Italian.

Picture on the Basilica overlooking the Alps in the back

A few examples of this are when it was about 9pm and Chris and I were hungry, we went to a restaurant below our house, they didnt have any menus, only huge chunks of salami and fruit, so Chris and I stood there for about 5-10 minutes while the four people behind the counter waited for us to say something, we each just decided to grab an orange and a banana. The person at the register just simply laughed at us because i guess its rude to grab fruit over here without using a plastic glove... who knew?

When we were checking out a gym, one of the guys I was with Nate had a beanie hat on while we were working out, someone came by and ripped it off his head! Turns out it was a huge disrespect to wear any form of a hat inside.... who knew?

Lastly was this Irish Pub we went to, we got a Hamburger and a few beers (Finally something that could fill us up). The owner of the bar came over and found out we were studying abroad, Chris and Felix told him they were from California and the bartender made an impression  of Arnold Schwarzenegger.... classic thing to do i guess, but then i told him i was from Alaska... they love that so much over here! This guy kept bringing me ice cubes to keep me cool, he thought i would feel like i was at home haha. Then his family was celebrating a birth in the family, and he passed out what looked like sugar cookies with green frosting on them to his family, then he called us over and gave us some, I was pretty excited to get a cookie! Sounded great. Only thing was that it turned out to not be a cookie, it was a slice of bread, I thought that was kinda odd to give a piece of bread with frosting, but it got better... it wasnt frosting, it was fish eggs soaked in wasabi to give it a green color. I didnt want to be rude so i choked it down, but i swear i was still picking out fish eggs in my teeth the next three days! 

It is my 13th day in Torino and we have nearly explored the entire city already! This doesnt mean that there is not much to do here, it just means that aside from passing out involuntarily from the jet lag, we have been pulling really long days exploring, getting lost, and eventually finding a familiar looking Piazza or Monument... The main things that we have gone to so far are:


Gettin Fertile...
          The first night we were in Italy we went out to dinner at a Pizza place and then went on a quick tour of the city at night. In one of the Piazza's was this image on the ground in front of a restaurant, it just seemed like a normal looking image of a bull. This is a special bull, a bull who will make a person more fertile, or less fertile, it just depends on how many times you spin on him. The trick is you have to spin on one foot on the bull's testicular region for one complete circle and you will become a very fertile person, if you spin on it more than once, then you are less fertile. simple as that... So our tour guide simply said... "take a spin on the bull's ball's". Earlier this week I actually saw what looked like an Italian couple walking past the bull and on their way the man took a quick spin, wonder what they were planning on doing....

Spin on the Bull...

The Mole Antonelliana
          The Mole Antonelliana is a large structure that I believe was created to be the symbol of Italy, at this time the city of Torino was the capitol of Italy. The Mole was also once upon a time dubbed as the largest standing structure in the world, Italia's prized possession. The structure is now primarily used to keep the tourists busy so they dont bother the citizens as much... Inside the Mole is a Cinema Museum, this consisted of three floors of movie scenes, pictures and such, starting from so really old date (it was last week and i forgot the date... but basically since the art of cinema began) They had some really interesting things in the Cinema Museum but the main attraction of the Mole was the ride up... after we finished wandering around the Cinema Museum we went back to the first floor, waited in a like for 20 minutes and were packed into a glass elevator. You dont realize it when you first step into the elevator, but once you start going up, you realize there is nothing supporting you except for a few cables! I took a video which I will find out how to attach, it was pretty cool. Only bad thing is that the saying about college students that go up to the top of the Mole is "If you go up only one time, you will not graduate".... so because of this I will need 9 euro put in my account mom ;)

Mole from the outside entrance....
hurt my neck trying to look to the top

Reflection of Mole...
Thought the reflection looked cool so I took a picture

The Museo Egizio Di Torino
          The second largest Egyptian Museum in the entire world, it is second of course to the one in Cairo, Egypt. The only museum I have found interesting until now is the one we visited in Chicago on our hockey trip a few years ago... this was until I came to Italy! I have been to three or four museums so far and i sure that i have a lot more to go! I was able to see King Tut, The Sphinx, King Ramesse II, along with numerous other dead guys in coffins, containers used for holding organs and other statues.

King Tut II - Sorry its sideways...
my computer wont let me upload the real one

The Reale Basilica Di Superga
          As we were riding the train up the ridge of the mountain, we were able to gaze upon the city of Torino, the further we traveled, the quicker the fog covered the city. Once we finally reached the Basilica, the only thing of the city we could see was the Mole Antonelliana peaking through the fog. The most breathtaking view I have ever been able to take in! This view of the Alps makes the mountains surrounding Anchorage look like sledding hills that Amber would go on... so you can have a good idea how large they are since the pictures dont do it justice, when I first gazed upon them my words were "thats too bad the clouds are covering the mountains". Turns out that the clouds were the mountains!

In front of the Reale Basilica Di Superga

On the roof of the Basilica by one of the Bell Towers

So many beautiful sights from on top of the Basilica...
Ill show you more when I get home

The Lingotto Factory
          The Lingotto Factory is where Fiat cars were once made, the company Fiat is one of the most popular vehicles over here, basically it is the Ford or Chevy of America. This Factory is now a huge mall, smaller than the mall of america but similar to size i think, it has both stores for shopping and lots of offices on the upper floors like the Dimond Center. The unique thing about the tour of the factory was when we were taken up onto the roof of the building... it resembled a racetrack course for testing vehicles, oh wait! it was a racetrack on top of a 100 foot tall building!!! They had everything from curves like we saw in the Speedway we saw in Florida, probably at about a 45 degree angle, so we walked around this for a while and then headed to the China Powerstation inside, which was a really weird museum, I didnt get the point of it, we couldnt take pictures in there but I snuck two pictures of two Picasso's painting, as I took these, I stepped too close to the paintings and a huge alarm went off, so i put my camera away after that...

Note: pictures of Lingotto and Picasso will come later, they are on my iPhone along with some more pictures

The 2006 Olympic Arch
          The best structure I personally have liked so far is the 2006 Olympic Arch, it looks like the size of a two story house from on top of the Mole, but when I walked under it, i finally realized how large it was! The thing that i thought was coolest about it was how they combined the bridge and arch. The bridge is obviously a stable structure, but the only way that the arc is standing up is because of the 2-3 inch diameter cables connecting from various points along the bridge to the arch. I have yet to explore the remaining building of the Olympics but on the other side of the bridge (the ghetto of Torino) was where the colorful buildings where the Olympians were housed, the further I ventured into the ghetto i realized how much I stood out as an American to everyone who was staring me down wondering how much money I had on me, at this time I decided to turn back and cross back over the bridge.

Picture of Olympic Arch/Bridge taken from the "ghetto" of Torino

The Castello di Moncalieri
          From the Lingotto rooftop off in the distance over the Po River sitting on the side of the ridge was the Castello di Moncalieri, it looked like the size of a fortress placed upon the side of the hill for protection but turns out it is just the home to a very very rich Italian. This area of town is when the money lays, the people with money in Italy live in large houses on the hill, similar to in Anchorage. From the Castle we could see another section of Torino, the more industrialized area, but along with this view we had a chance to see a sunset like I saw in Fairbanks every evening, the only thing was that this sunset was over the Alps and at 5:30pm, not at noon! We also walked down a few alleyways in the area, this is what made me regret my line of work back home. They dont believe is laying down 10 miles of asphalt is a matter of hours, they take great detail in both the larger streets and side alleys with the stones and rocks that the place in intricate designs, it made my jaw drop just thinking about how much time went into making something like this.

Sunset View from Castello di Moncalieri

On our way to the Castello di Moncalieri

So this is just a few of the things that I have been doing since I got here, trying to decide what to see next is not a hard problem, just look in any of the books I took with me and there is always something to do. I will probably be heading to Milan, Italy this upcoming weekend to see some sights and do some shopping I guess since its one of the fashion capitals of the world, except i probably will last like 10-15 minutes and give up on that...

Anyways this place is awesome! I feel weird saying this but as much as I like Torino, I want to leave it and explore the rest of Europe, I think we are going to Dublin for St. Patty's Day and Rome for our Easter Weekend, any other cool ideas like that let me know...

And please let Tim and Ray know that I stumbled upon a Harley Davidson Shop over here.... even in Italy

Even in Italy...

I am sorry that this post is so long, I just didnt know where to start, I know im leaving so much out that I have done but I have to go to my one class for today, I love the school system over here!

Ciao!

The sun sets quickly, just one of the cool looking bridges