General Chat / Cork's France Study Abroad Trip Report Thread

Really nice pictures. Glad you enjoyed Berlin, really lovely city.

Lets try to catch up on the trip reports, shall we? This happened about a month ago, and I've got a Spain report as well.


VOLUME 8: WHIRLWIND 6 CITIES IN 4 DAYS UK TRIP

Day 1 - Thursday, October 26, 2006

Our friend, Ellen, would be turning 23 on Saturday the 28th. That was also the same weekend our first guest instructor was leaving, giving us a chance to make a trip without worrying about having something due on the following Monday. So to celebrate her birthday, we concocted a turbulent whirlwind trip to Dublin and London, spanning six cities over the course of four days. It was a gastronomical spendorama, as my friend Greg put it.


Bright and early on Thursday morning, before the sun was even out, we were walking on our way to the train station in Saintes. It was weird to be awake while it was still dark--weirder when I realized that since we were right before the end of Daylight Savings Time, sunrise wasn't until after 8:00. Quite bizarre.

Our train left Saintes at 7:02 and arrived in Bordeaux about an hour later. Our flight to Dublin would fly out of Bordeaux, connecting at Birmingham, where we'd have five hours between flights.

Bordeaux is sort of like a mix between Paris and Saintes; there's a lot of Haussmannian architecture, but there are also winding, narrow streets that show the medieval development of the city.


Once in a while, a plaza opens up, like this one, which features an "Arc de Triumph" (these are littered everywhere in Europe, it seems) and a random column thingy.


There were also some weird complexes, like this parking structure with a car that is "crashing out" of it. That's part of the facade design, by the way, so don't think cars randomly fly out of buildings in Bordeaux.


The city is situated on the Garonne River. It's brown and dirty looking. And very wide. The dreary sky did nothing to lesson the relative ugliness of the river.


At around noon, we arrived at Bordeaux Airport after taking a bus shuttle. Our flight left about an hour later, and it took about an hour. However, because we were going to Britain, we lost an hour, so it was about 3:00 in the afternoon when we arrived. I just realized I used the word "hour" about sixty times in that sentence. Oh well, this is just an email anyway.

We expected Birmingham to be rainy. In fact, the weather reports said that all of our stops would be rainy. So imagine our delighted surprise when we got off the plane to find it... SUNNY! Fantastic stuff! And with five hours to kill, we certainly weren't going stay indoors, so we headed to a new shopping area in the city center that I'd heard about called the Bullring.


Here it is here. Notice how even the British are USC fans. =D


Our main reason for visiting this mall was the Selfridges Department Store Building, a funky, amorphous blob that was pretty interesting and extremely photogenic, although slightly less interesting in real person. The dots cover the entire facade and are actually pretty big. But the building was pretty cool.


Here's another view.


St Martin's Cathedral is right next door, so from certain angles, pedestrians can see old juxtaposed with new. The Cathedral is the city's oldest, I believe, and was a lot smaller than I thought.


We took a break to finally each lunch... at 4:00. We had gotten through the day only on snacks, so we were starving. This restaurant, Wagamama, was awesome. Fantastic food, with an Asian-Euro fusion twist, and a great decor. And the prices weren't bad either!


Here's another view at the Selfridges Building. Totally groovy man!


Ellen and I walked through the store and went out to the skywalk that spanned over the street. From here, I took this gorgeous shot of the building at dusk.


The Bullring Shopping Center is very stylish and modern in retail design. There's lots of glass, trusses, steel, and that sort of thing. Very contemporary looking.


The mall at dusk. It's a mix of indoor and outdoor retail, and pretty cool.

Overall, Birmingham was a very pleasant city, and I'd love to visit it again. But we had a flight to catch at 7, so we returned to the airport and took a one hour flight across the sea to Dublin, where we checked into our hostel, then went out for a quick drink at a nearby bar before retiring for the night.


The River Liffey runs through the middle of Dublin on its way to the ocean. Here it is at night.


And we close with a nifty shot I took of myself at the bar we were at. I messed up and moved the camera before the long exposure finished, but the result was pretty cool.

Tomorrow, we'd get a full day in Dublin. And wouldn't you know it.. the weather would continue to be excellent!




Friday, October 27, 2006

This day was spent basically walking all around the city, visiting various sites. Dublin's a bustling place, but not so big that we couldn't get anywhere we wanted by foot. It helped that our hostel was located rather centrally.


This cafe was totally badass. And if you disagree, it'll totally kick your ass.


Our first stop was Dublin Castle, a large complex encompassing... basically the castle around which the original medieval city was built!


In the back, we see the castle is complete with "authentic" Irish Disneylandish multicolored castle wall painting!


There's a big lawn as well, so we had a couple that we met take a picture of us.

Oddly enough, we would keep running into the same couple over and over again. They were a student studying abroad in Italy and her boyfriend, who was from upstate new York. Very nice people, but it was hilarious how many times we kept on running into them. After the first three times, we basically parted with "see you later" rather than "good bye," because chances were that we would see them later. Our first meeting was on the bus the previous night. We'd find them again at several other places we'd visit. I just thought that was odd enough to be worth mentioning.

Later on, we stumbled upon the filming of a BBC miniseries featuring Sherlock Holmes, famous detective of Scotland Yard. We chatted briefly with the very nice actor playing Sherlock, then took turns posing with him.


It's Sherlock Holmes! Brilliant!


Another picture of the Dublin Castle complex.


The castle also included a chapel that we went into. It's quite nice inside, showing the elegant and decorative British Gothic style.

On our way to St Patrick's Cathedral, we stopped at Christ Church Cathedral, the oldest church in the city, founded all the way back in the 1000s!


It was certainly quite beautiful, with the weighty gray stone and verdant green lawn making up a great view.


Here's me.

A five minute walk from there led us to St. Patrick's Cathedral, named after Ireland's patron saint.


It's a beautiful building, to be sure.


The same goes for the front.

We wanted to tour the interior, but they were charging for it, and they'd converted part of it into a gift shop. A bit callous, if you ask me. We decided it wasn't worth it.

After lunch, we decided to head over to the Guiness Store House, Dublin's most popular attraction.


On the way, we ran into a random church. I thought it was nice, plus the streetscape is pretty.


After a 15 minute walk, we were at the entrance of the Guiness Store House.

Inside, we learned how Guiness ale was made through a series of exhibits.


It seems that this museum also features the incredible... the spectacular... the BACKSIDE OF WATER!!!!

That's a Jungle Cruise reference for those who don't understand it, but maybe Guiness as Disneyland beat, because it also features the magnificent, the unbelievable...


THE UNDERSIDE OF WATER!!!!

Okay, so that was a little overdramatic.


The building also has a central atrium that's supposed to represent a big ale mug. Literally, on the brochure, there's a diagram showing a building section with an ale mug in the middle!


The conclusion to the tour was a lift up to the Gravity Bar, seven stories above ground, which offered some spectacular views of Dublin.


Another view at the bar, where we got complementary Guiness and a free gift.


And here's a shot of the view. This one looks toward the sea, which you can barely see on the horizon.


Another view, aimed at the Dublin Mountains (which looked more like hills to me).

The night was spent out with the gang, clubbing and drinking. But not in excess, at least not for me.



Saturday, October 28, 2006

Ellen's birthday celebration continued the following day, most of which was spent in Dublin. After drinking the night and early morning before (birthday shots must be done, you know), some of my friends had hangovers. Not me of course, because I'm responsible (that's more for reassurance to my family...). However, what better to cure a hangover than to... take a tour at a whiskey distillery!!


Here we are at the Old Jameson Distillery, which used to make the famous Jameson Irish Whiskey but now stands as a museum.


Here's me waiting. (FAR) EAST SIDE!!!


The interior had a rustic themed feel to it, with a lot of timber to give it a nice 19th century atmosphere.


Here we learned how whiskey was made. It's pretty similar to how most alcohol is made. Prime ingredients are selected, barley is turned to mash, stuff ferments, alcohol forms, stuff gets distilled. Basically, it's a lot of sugar processing.

Afterwards, we had lunch at the Distillery Cafe, then went out to stroll around and find some shopping.


We stumbled onto a very nice pedestrian shopping promenade on our way back to the area of our hostel.


Later on, we found another shopping street, this one on Grafton Street. I found it very charming how much it resembled a Disneyland Main Street (only this one's authentic!). It featured mostly retail clothing and jewelry stores, with a few fast food restaurants and Starbucks scattered in.


Another view.


Nearby was hte Stephens Green Shopping Center, a Victorian-style mall.

At around six or seven, we took a taxi to the airport to catch our 9:00 flight to London.


The airport features super amazing space age industrial airport spoons.


So after waiting two hours because we got through security in all of about five minutes because no one was at the airport, we finally got onto the plane. Here's me on the plane.

We arrived in London about an hour later and made our way to the subway system to find a metro line to take us by our hostel.


This is The Tube. London's subway system is pretty efficient too, rivaled, in my opinion, only by Paris' (which is the best in Europe, methinks).


We emerged after a few stops and walked the remaining ten minutes to our hostel. On the way, I took a nifty long exposure of a church we passed by.

We dropped out stuff at the hostel (which turned out to be very, very nice. Linden Lane Hostel, if you're ever in London. Pretty cheap--except when you realize that 22 pounds is more like $45. Stupid weak American dollar), and went out to celebrate the remainder of Ellen's birthday. And why not? With Daylight Savings Time ending, we'd get an extra hour of going out!


This is what London looks like on a Saturday night.


Pretty nice looking.

After a few hours out, it was time to return to the hostel and get some sleep. Tomorrow, we'd have all of about three hours to tour London. Could we do it? Find out the thrilling conclusion to Ellen's Gastronimical UK Birthday Celebration and Spendorama in the next report!



Sunday, October 29, 2006

Sunday morning.

Checkout at 10:00 AM.

Flight at 3:00 PM

Three hours to tour London...



Cue the clock, and we're off! We started on a gorgeous blue-sky morning, making our way to the nearest Tube stop to purchase a day pass before heading in the direction of the Thames River.


Coming out of the Tube, we got a glimpse of the Millennium Eye ferris wheel, set up for the year 2000 celebration.


The wheel was behind London County Hall, which also featured a Picasso Museum. We walked through the museum. Count that as two credits!


The Millennium Eye was pretty big, and the line to ride it was huge. We were pushed for time, so we merely passed it (another tourist credit), making our way along the Thames waterfront, which was quite beautiful. We crossed the bridge over the river, and lo and behold, what do we see on the other side?


Indeed, none other than Big Ben and Buckingham Palace (credits 4 and 5). Both were pretty neat, although Big Ben is certainly not as big as it must have seemed when it was first built. It's okay.

Our next stop was Westminister Abbey (#6). Unfortunately, I somehow lost my photos of that building (we couldn't enter it due to ongoing mass inside). However, we stopped for about ten minutes and took photos, then skipped right back to the Tube stop across from Buckingham.

Upon entering, we were greeted by the Tower of London castle (#7). Again, my photos somehow got deleted here, but it was pretty interesting. There was no actual tower... at least not in the castle. There's also the Tower Dungeon museum here as well, but we didn't have the time to visited. Those interested in torture and creepy ways of imprisoning people would love it though. And since it was Halloween, the museum gift shop was pretty packed as well!


We crossed the Thames again, this time over the Tower Bridge (#8 )... the famous one that raises for boats to pass. It's got two towers (perhaps to make up for the castle?). On the other side, we came the new City Hall building by Norman Foster.


It's an egg, really. I'm standing in front of a huge egg. But it's got a lot of ecological features, low energy use, and the like. Quite a unique building, right along the waterfron.


A gaze over the waterfront also reveals another Norman Foster building, a huge cigar shaped skyscraper (#10) that looks like... um... a phallus. But it was a great view!

So all in all, ten attractions "seen" in three hours. That includes transportation time. And frankly, it was actually two and a half hours. We overdid it. Hooray us!

Around 1, we got on the Tube to go to the train station to take an express train that would take us to Stanstead Airport, outside of the city. Arriving an hour before the flight left, we trudged through a much busier security stop and got on the plane. An hour or two later, we were in La Rochelle, whose airport is a field.


No literally! It's a field!


But the good thing was that we arrived just in time for one of the most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen. I'll have to do a separate email on this later, but Europe has featured some incredible skies, and this was one of the most magnificent. The blazing oranges, violents, and reds painted a passionate scene across the heavens during this hour of twilight, and it was a breathtaking panorama!

La Rochelle would be our last stop, with a couple of hours to kill before our train back to Saintes. Fortunately, it's got a gorgeous waterfront.


Here's the waterfront at night.


Here's some boats on the water.


And here's the famous fortress towers along the Old Port. Although we didn't have a lot of time in La Rochelle, the time we did spend was quite enjoyable. Hopefully, I can make it there again (they've got a nice aquarium) before I leave France.


So there you have it. Six cities in four days, and a lot of money. Not a bad way to spend a weekend!

Nice photo's Cork. Big Ben is the name of the clock though, not the name of the tower/building. Too bad you missed westminter abbey. It's one of the brilliant (read: funniest) buildings since it goes something like: hey, we have a dead king... now where should we place him... were out of space...ah well , just shove him in a corner or just in the middle of the hallway

Erm.. I know. But since the clock is on a tower, I call the tower Big Ben. Most people do, don't they?

We did hit Westminister Abbey. I just lost my pictures of it. I mentioned this in the non-photo part fo the TR... commonly known as the text.

Erm.. I know. But since the clock is on a tower, I call the tower Big Ben. Most people do, don't they?

We did hit Westminister Abbey. I just lost my pictures of it. I mentioned this in the non-photo part fo the TR... commonly known as the text.

I just read that the tower is also called Big Ben these days, but it hasn't always like that... weird because I really remember that the Big Ben was only the clock itself. Anyway I know you have seen Westminster abbey from the outside, but I meant that you missed it from the inside.

Great picture-trip-report again!

The most funny text however was on the Dublin shopping area:

Corkscrewed: I found it very charming how much it resembled a Disneyland Main Street (only this one's authentic!.)

LoL!, little mistake I guess.... of course it does not at all resemble a Disneyland Main Street, at the best those Disneyland Main Streets attempt to resemble European streets like those....!!! (and NOT the other way around!)

^ No, that was intentional. It's a little sarcastic play on words. Disneyland's Main Street was based on Walt's romanticized view of his Main Street in his home town in Missouri, a view influenced by the European architecture of the general period shown in the snippet you're talking about.

But yeah, it's a little inverted thinking. Very pretty, frankly. I love how Europe has always built mixed use, and in America, it's only now become the "new big thing."

Euros would probably look at Americans and go "Um... I don't get what's so special about having residences above shops."

Well, I reorganized my site and accidentally deleted the photos I had hosted.

Fortunately, I've been meaning to archive my TR's anyway, so rather than work on my thesis paper today, I procrastinated and made a web site archive for my reports.

Many hours later, I've finished transferring everything to web page form, so I'm proud to present:
Corkscrewed's France Study Abroad 2006 Trip Reports Site

Besides the cities I've already covered, there are also sections for Bordeaux, Barcelona, Valencia, Port Aventura, and even a little skiing action in the French Alps!

Here's some eye candy:



























I should note that each page is pretty graphics intensive. This is an archive, so I didn't feel like limiting each page to a reasonable number of photos and starting a new page if each city had too many photos. The result is that some cities have over a hundred photos in them. So um, maybe make yourself a sandwich if you need to wait for it. They load pretty quickly on my connection, but I have fast DSL at my USC apartment.

I also updated my regular web site with two new coaster videos a few weeks ago. Click the sig. No one commented on my topic in the Ad District though.

Valencia

Alps


Wallpapers 1024x768 pleaseeeeeeee....

Brilliant! What a wonderful opportunity. Great pictures and great stories. I really liked the skiing story. Reminds me of my first time skiing. That's why I gave it up for snowboarding. Although I've given that up too.

Hahaha you yard-saled it. Awesome. I can't help but think the Alps aren't exactly the best place to learn to ski though. Also I'm pretty sure they only use the term pizza if you're 8 or younger.

Those are some big fucking mountains though. But I did notice one think that the Northeast has got the Alps beat on: tree skiing. Which is the best kind of skiing.