I'm astonished by the amount of things I somehow fit into the two and a half weeks while Sarah and I met in London to kick off her graduation present (a plane ticket to Europe instead of a party). This past week at home, I've barely done anything more than eat disgusting amounts of peanut butter and guacamole and check out piles of books from the library. It's so vastly different and easily familiar versus the struggle of figuring out subway systems, waking up to 28 other people snoring or coughing in a hostel, dragging myself up at 2AM to catch a plane, trying to deal with another currency, or preparing a full conversation to have in French before approaching a check-out counter...but I feel so full from traveling, so happy and fortunate to have experienced new places, made new friends from NYU that I had never seen before, tuned my ear to new languages, tasted different foods, and now am home and viewing life here a little differently.
In any case, here's the last batch of pictures from the last bit of the journey:
The first day that Sarah flew in, we took a walk from the hostel in London to a rose garden.
She accidentally stuck her hand in bird poop on a bench.
London is smaller than I thought it was. Sarah and I were there for about a week, and we ran absolutely everywhere. We visited the British Museum...
...perused the Enlightenment Room...
...saw some mummies...
...popped over to the Science Museum...
...walked across Tower Bridge...
...and about a billion markets
Admired the architecture of St. Pancras Station,
played with the giant toys in Harrods,
went to the library,
and then went to Hogwarts
The Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio Tour was amazing to see. Sarah was thrilled to see where the surprisingly small sets (essentially in a giant warehouse), where the movies were actually filmed. I was impressed by the special effects, since the set pieces seemed so deflated from what they look like in the films. The sets and props were still incredible, of course, but the computer generated effects truly brought the magical world to life.
I got really excited that I had seen these actual unicorn tapestries at the Cluny. When I was visiting the Cloisters in New York, I overheard a conversation that those unicorn tapestries were the ones replicated in the films, but they actually copied the ones from the Cluny. Yeah, middle ages!
I wish chemistry classrooms looked like this. Maybe then I'd like chem better.
A peek into Hagrid's hut
The Burrow, with magical knife-chopping, knitting, and pot-scrubbing every couple of minutes.
The last room contained this scaled down model of Hogwarts. It was the highlight of the exhibit for me. The castle filled the entire room. Tiny lights twinkled from the miniature windows. They filmed this model for the movies with microscopic cameras.
On our last day in London, Sarah and I relaxed in the beautiful green parks, watched a triathlon, read books, and munched on fish and chips.
Peter Pan statue
Next stop: Amsterdam
Sarah and I agreed that Amsterdam was our favorite city. (Paris is my top, of course, but Amsterdam was lovely to visit...also Edinburgh, which I visited over spring break.) Everything was so clean. They were constantly repainting, sweeping, pressure-cleaning, and scrubbing the streets. We appreciated bikes were everywhere, reconstructed to hold baskets or push extra carts to hold groceries or kids.
I loved the architecture with the big rectangular windows and painted straight lines. With the "I Amsterdam" sign, Sarah commented that the city kind of looked like a friendly cartoon.
We strolled through the Rijksmuseum and saw famous paintings by Vermeer and Rembrandt. I also enjoyed the "Art is Therapy" exhibition.
This gorgeous library was inside the museum, too.
We combined biking and canals by renting a paddle boat, which was a lot of fun, even in the rain and in spite of the fact that we got lost and almost went into the forbidden big canal.
We visited Anne Frank's house. At the request of her father, the house is unfurnished, but there is still so much in the well put-together presentation and small untouched details. Her words are printed on the walls, profound and thought-provoking.
Admittedly, we ate a lot of stroopwaffel and fries
Quickly stopped by the red light district. It looks like certain parts of Greenwich Village.
Checked out the massive and awesome public library. There were giant polar bears, spiral staircase lookouts, elaborately constructed mouse houses, pianos, and cool cubicles.
Next stop: Berlin, where we sat in a park. Sarah and I sat in a park in every country we visited, sometimes not by choice. We spent our first five hours in Amsterdam sitting in a park, delirious and sleep-deprived because we had spent the night in an airport to get on a super early flight, and after arriving, we couldn't check into the hostel until the afternoon. (By the way, Hostel VanGogh was the nicest hostel we stayed in; I recommend it! It's right in the museum square.) We carried on this tradition, fortunately not in such a crazy tired state, in Berlin since our overnight bus got us in early. The park in Berlin was lots of fun, with climbing contraptions and a zipline.
Sarah went to the Currywurst Museum.
Jewish memorial in the center of the city, unmarked concrete blocks. The rows between the blocks were narrow, so everyone had to go through alone, not side-by-side. The center also got deeper, dropping us lower. It was disorienting because it was impossible to see if others were going to bump into you around the corners, kind of like a maze. The sounds from the outside faded away deeper in the center.
We went on a tour here, and learned more about the city's dark history. There were memorials everywhere, and every site we visited seemed heavy, weighed down by its past.
Line of the Berlin Wall
There were some good stories including a victories of people getting over the Wall. One man hot air ballooned over. A janitor and his family ziplined across.
Hearing about the Wall coming down, with Schabowski's blunder and reunited friends and family and parties and champagne and bananas, was reassuring and hopeful after hearing about so much terror. History is unbelievable.
Berlin was seeped in history, with memorials spread everywhere like healing scars. We saw a memorial to the burned books, a window in the ground to reveal rows and rows of empty bookshelves. We saw endless plaques and museums and information panels.
Sarah and I took the train about half hour out of the city to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. It's a museum and a memorial now.
I was amazed to just be standing in such places, and so happy to be able to visit and learn and see the progress of today.
We stumbled across NYU Berlin, which looks like an actual campus and not a house (though I did like NYU Paris's house/apartment/garage set up...and they're moving to a normal campus this summer anyway).
Sarah and I once again got out of the center of the city and went to the DDR Museum, which is an interactive museum with rooms and products to experience what life was like in the GDR.
Next stop: Zurich
After a ridiculous 13 hour bus ride (NEVER sitting on a bus for that long ever again), we arrived in beautiful Switzerland. Due to "finals brain" while booking travel arrangements, I didn't time it well, so we didn't spend much time there. The short time we were in Zurich was spent near the water, looking at the tree-lined mountains and sunset on the water.
Last stop: Paris!
We basically feasted on macarons for our final days of the trip.
We stayed in Montmartre, which I can now tell you from experience, is super sketchy. The views are breathtaking, though.
A final stop to Shakespeare and Co., followed by reading The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick under the square trees in the park behind Notre Dame.
We enjoyed the nice weather in the Tuileries
Sarah got a barbe à papa (cotton candy= "dad's beard")
I finally saw the colonne Vendôme. Hey, Napoleon!
One last visit to the glittering passages couverts
We dined on crêpes at an outside table as the sunset cast a golden glow over the city, and we listened to people cheering and shouting over the World Cup down the street.
Paris, je t'aime et à bientôt!
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