statues, paris, and hot chocolate

Friday we went to Paris.  I was a little nervous about Paris because the pickpockets and whatnot are not fun to deal with, but I made it through the weekend.  First, we went to the Louvre.  In case you were unaware, the Nike of Samothrace ("nike" is pronounced knee-kay and means "winged victory" which is why this statue is probably more often referred to as the Winged Victory of Samothrace; and yes, this is where Nike got its name) is at the Louvre.  And should you just so happen to be wondering, I love the Nike of Samothrace.  Love it.  Seriously.  I also love Classical Greek sculpture.  The Louvre has an absolutely amazing collection of Classical Greek sculpture.  It's amazing how much they have.  I'm speechless. 

Ok, so after the Louvre, we took a lunch cruise down the Seine.  It was fancy.  And of course, it wouldn't be a trip to Paris if we hadn't gone to the Eiffel Tower, which is where we headed next.  We then decided to go check into our hotel and meet back later to go to Notre Dame.  Our hotel was perfect.  Nothing particularly fancy, just simple and exactly what a little Paris hotel should be.  And walking distance to Notre Dame and within a block of a Metro stop.

Saturday, we slept til 12:30pm.  It was marvelous.  We needed it too.  When we did eventually get up, Elana and I made a stop at the Arc de Triomphe before walking down the Champes-Élysées.  We then took the Metro up to a flea market is a kinda shady part of town.  Yeah, we were glad to get back to our hotel after that, though we did have some delicious Nutella crêpes.

On to Sunday....  Kaitlin tipped us off to this restaurant that serves hot chocolate similar to the deliciousness I had in Spain a few years ago.  This hot chocolate is so rich, it's more like melted chocolate than your average hot chocolate from a mix.  It was so good.  Elana and I each ordered a cup and it came in a pitcher.  After pouring a cup for each of us, half of the pitcher was still full of hot chocolate.  I could only drink about half of my cup.  So I could only drink about a quarter of what I was served.  I wanted to take it home with me, but that wasn't really an option.  After that lovely experience, we went to a Salvador Dalí museum for which we saw an advertisement in the Metro.  The museum was very close to the Sacré-Cœur Basilica which we stopped in for a look-see.  From there, the train station was only about half a mile or so, so we walked there, stopping on the way at a pâtisserie to blow some of our euros.  When we got to the train station, however, we found that our train was delayed (as were many others) due to a bomb scare a few hours prior.  Yeah, that was fun.  We finally made it back to London an hour and a half after we were scheduled to, but we made it nonetheless.  It was so nice to take the Tube rather than the Metro as we have decided we prefer the Tube.  And coming out of the Tottenham Court Road Tube stop was like coming home.  It was nice.

digital film

And now for a film of the wonderful time I had in Brighton this past weekend:

37.9 MB
MacLeod, K. (2009). Clean Air. Location: http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/index.html?genre=Pop.

photographing the small things in life

Today I got a reader pass for the British Library.  I am quite proud of myself.  But I will get into that in a bit.  First, we stopped in at King's Cross Station to see and take pictures of Platform 9 3/4 like every other stereotypical librarians.  We then strolled over to the British Library for a lovely tour.  In case you were unaware, the British Library is pretty hardcore.  They don't bend the rules for anyone and they measure their stacks in kilometers.  Whoa.  Perhaps the best part of the tour was when we went into the gallery which had volumes upon volumes of amazingly preserved books and manuscripts.  For me, the Sacred Texts portion of the gallery was the best by far.  Some of the volumes dated back hundreds of years.  I got my Bachelor's in Religion with a minor in Art History and wrote my senior seminar paper comparing medieval Christian illuminated manuscripts to Islamic calligraphy.  I cannot describe how awesome this exhibit was for me.  I found, however, that apparently I know Hinduism best of the major world faiths whose sacred texts were on display at the British Library.  I was able to recognize the majority of the figures and stories for the Hinduism display more than for any other faith.

As my flatmates so kindly reminded me just now, the British Library also holds the world's largest collection of pornography.  While it may seem that I would simply add this for a giggle, it is actually interesting to me because I read the book Libraries, Erotica, and Pornography for an assignment in one of my Information Studies classes (this book was not assigned, but rather we were allowed to chose our books for the assignment with professor approval).

But back to my British Library reader pass.  When Mr. Gets, a friend of the family, heard about my trip to London, he gave me a mission.  Now, Mr. Gets is British himself and apparently his grandfather, one J. L. Theodore-Getz, wrote a few books which are held at the British Library.  However, Mr. Gets thought they were at the British Museum so I had to find their true location first.  You see, some years ago, all of the books in the reading room at the British Museum were transferred to the British Library.  So, I took my mission there.  Now, Mr. Gets is quite a trouble maker so trying to ascertain what exactly he wanted from these books was a bit of a mission in itself as he rarely offers a straight answer.  Finally, I found that he wanted any biographical information that might be in his grandfather's books.  So today, I applied for and received a readers pass, requested the books, sat around for an hour to wait for them to be pulled from the stacks, and finally gleaned whatever information (of which there was little) from the books that there was.  It was all a rather intimidating process, to be honest but at least now I can say that I have a British Library reader pass (at least for the next month) and that I made use of its services.

story in 5 frames

Our class went to the Tower of London and stopped by Shakespeare's Globe Theatre today and our photography task was to create a story in 5 frames.  My 5-frame story actually came later, when Elana, Lynn, Kaitlin, and I went on the Jack the Ripper Murders Tour.  Here is my story:

For the record, I was not actually scared by the Jack the Ripper tour.  Our guide was a very good storyteller and that made for an interesting tour.  The real murderer was never actually caught and there are many theories about who it might be.  Before I came over here, I checked out the book Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed by Patricia Cornwell which argues that the true identity of Jack the Ripper was Walter Sickert.  I only read the beginning but it sounded pretty convincing.  However, our guide didn't seem to agree with Patricia Cornwell.  In any case, the case will likely never be solved and remain a mystery.

On our way back from the tour, Elana thought it would be a good idea to stop by one of the 24-hour shops on our way and buy the most random thing was say.  We ended up having a weird flavor chip (or crisp, rather) tasting party.  I think my favorite was the prawn cocktail, though it tasted nothing like shrimp cocktail. 

Tomorrow is my day to take the group photo and we are going to Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station and the British Library (where I may attempt to get a library card and see the books that Mr. Gets wants me too look into, but we'll see about that).  I am open to creative ideas for a group photo in case anyone has any!

thinking differently

This morning, Dr. Everhart charged me with the task of navigating us to the public library in the Barbican Centre as I am good with directions, though I was relatively unaware that this was public knowledge.  In any case, I got us there in time for our 10am tour appointment.  The Barbican Library is the largest public library in the city of London.  They have a large portion of their library devoted to a music collection.  The Barbican Library is located in the middle of a business district of London so the largest demographic of their patronage is men aged 25-40.  Elana and I couldn't help but note that this is clearly where we need to be looking for our respective future British husbands. 

Our photography focus of the day was "thinking differently" which was not the easiest to capture since we were not allowed to take pictures within St. Paul's Cathedral which was the next stop on our itinerary for the day.  The Cathedral was very interesting nonetheless and we had a very good tour guide, John.  In fact, he showed us the geometric staircase in the Cathedral which was used in the filming of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.  So, we just had to see for ourselves.  The FSU Study Centre has a collection of DVDs in its library available for checkout so we went and checked it out to watch.  Sure enough, the staircase appears about 40 or so minutes in.  (Actually, we were investigating where in the movie it would come in and found that perhaps it was in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban instead so I emailed my friends who are hardcore Harry Potter fans and sure enough, they responded with the exact movie and scene in which it appears - yeah, they are a little more than fans.)

To end the day, I went to the grocery store (as suggested by our new BFF Elvis) to get a kidney pie as instructed by my friend Donnie.  Yeah, Donnie said it was just called kidney pie, that there wasn't actually kidney in it.  Yeah, he was wrong.  It was alright.  At least I can return home to tell Donnie that I tried it.

photographing flowers

Today my classmates and I went to Hampton Court to tour the palace once owned by King Henry VIII.  The palace was beautiful with tapestries and paintings everywhere.  There were also expansive gardens surrounding the palace.  In these gardens, our task was to photograph flowers as a way to learn how to use the macro setting on our cameras.  However, the sky was very overcast and threatening to rain all day long so a lot of the flowers weren't open and it was hard to photograph some, the red (and prettiest) ones in particular.  There was a maze on the grounds that Elana tried out...and failed at.  We did however, shoot a rather funny video about our experience in the maze.  I may post this later with Elana's permission, of course.  Anyway, the grounds and gardens were very beautiful but I am going to be rather narcissistic and post a picture of myself for this blog entry:

Purty, huh?  Yeah, we started to get artsy-fartsy after a while.  If you would like to see more pictures - from today and last week - you can click on the link to my photo album on the left-hand side of this page.  Yeah, I finally got around to posting them all after slacking for a week. 

Later this week, Elana and I are planning on going on the Jack the Ripper murders tour.  We considered going today but the weather made a nap look far more appealing. 

podcast

This is my podcast contemplating the differences between the British Royal Guard and the Tomb Guard Sentinels at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery in the States. Enjoy!

Powered by Podbean.com
2.78 MB

Featuring music from the Royal Guard marching band recorded by Katy Harris Sunday, July 18, 2010.