sagrada familia

all i can say is that it was the coolest place i've ever been. i felt like i was in an enchanted forest in narnia.  there is no where else like it and you just HAVE to go to experience it. 

park güell

situated on a hill on the outskirts of the city (you have to climb about a billion stairs and steep, steep streets to get there...probably a good thing considering the amount of paella and chorizo you've [i'd] eaten), park güell offers beautiful views of the entire city of barcelona and the mediterranean.  it also has the world's longest bench which gaudí designed by having one of his workmen sit naked in wet clay and which is covered with colorful mosaics in abstract designs.  

i'm kind of obsessed with gaudí's colors. i wish gaudí were still alive and would design a house for me to live in. it would be like living in a fairy tale :)

monet at the grand palais: a lesson in endurance

here in paris i've tried to keep complaining to a minimum because really what have i to complain about? i'm in paris! therefore i don't really deserve sympathy. but waiting in line for 4 hours in the cold just to get into a monet exhibit? that's un peu ridicule n'est-ce pas? i thought my feet were going to fall off; they were so cold and tired of standing. comment dit-on "frostbite" en français??? that deserves a little sympathy right? a teensy bit? no? ok fine.

the exhibit was fabulous. the scope of the exhibit was astonishing; there were dozens and dozens of monet paintings from museums all over the world: france, the us, the uk, germany, spain, australia, the netherlands, and even some from private collections. and it covered every phase of his career from his early landscapes to his portraits to his haystack, poplar, and cathedral series to his obsession with water lillies at the end of his life. and to sum it all up there is an beautiful exhibit catalogue that would make a great christmas gift (ahemparentswinkwink).

i've always liked monet's work. i mean who doesn't like monet? but i've never really loved monet. at least not in the way i love manet or caravaggio or matisse. and i was hoping this exhibit would make be love monet. but it didn't really. i still like him and i appreciated being able to see so many of his works in one place, which probably won't happen again, but i didn't fall in love.  i did, though, gain appreciation for how unafraid of color he was. i was struck by the paintings in which he strayed from his usual pallet of pastels to more vibrant colors.  i also really like some of his more abstract works from the end of his life in which his brush strokes are broader and particularly visible and he would leave parts of the canvas blank around the edges giving the painting an unfinished look. i would have liked to have seen monet working on these paintings because by this point in his life he was quite old and nearly blind but the paintings have such a vigorous physicality to them almost like a jackson pollock.  i tried to find a good reproduction but this is the best i can do.

so all the pain and suffering of waiting to get in turned out to be worth it. i feel like i experienced a part of the history of art today because i think it's unlikely that an exhibit like this will happen again anytime soon. and what are the odds it would be this year when i'm in paris? definitely the chance of a lifetime :)

casa mila

also known as la pedrera (the quarry in catalan).  can you believe it was built between 1905 and 1910?!  it still looks so modern now.  i can only imagine how shocking it much have looked in the early 20th century! it was actually an apartment building but i don't think anyone lives there anymore since it's basically a museum now.

i love how whimsical it is.  it isn't the most efficient use of space with its cut out interior (as you can see from the plan) but i like it all the much better for it.  it allows for more natural light. and in today's fast-paced world, i find that the real luxuries are what is inefficient :)

barcelona, te quiero

i spent 3 days in barcelona last weekend and i fell in love. it is definitely among my favorite cities i've ever been to.  it's breathtaking with views of the mountains and the mediterranean, the weather was perfect and they speak spanish there!! i love french but i will always love spanish more.  i think it's a much richer and beautiful language (our secret ok? don't tell the french!). 

since we were only in barcelona for a few days we wouldn't be able to see everything so we decided on a theme: gaudí! perfecto no? his surrealist style fascinates me and really makes barcelona such a unique city: there is no other architect like guadí and no other city where so much of his work exists! the only problem is that i took so many pictures i can't fit them all into one post because it would be super long! so i'm splitting it up by place. next up: casa mila! 

sacre coeur

today my french class was cancelled so i went to explore montmartre a little bit.  actually i headed straight for sacre coeur and it turned out to be the perfect day for it because it was cold and cloudy so there weren't so many tourists. 

from sacre coeur you get a fabulous view of the whole city. it's breathtaking! the interior of the church is beautiful too but photography is not allowed so you'll just have to take my word for it :)

a street performer. he reminded me of a cross between the fiddler on the roof and the toulouse lautrec character from moulin rouge.  he was quite entertaining!

ps. coming soon: beaucoup de photos from my trip to barcelona last weekend! :)

my walk to school

my walk to school is only about 30 minutes and is quite pleasant so i try to walk as often as possible. today i decided to photograph some of the places i pass on the way :)

this is the street where i live. c'est charmant, n'est-ce pas?

lille

last weekend i went on another nyu trip this time to the north of france, near belgium.  first we stopped in arras where we visited caves used as battle camps by british and french soldiers during the first and second world wars.  then we went to cambrai where we visited the factory where les bêtises de cambrai are made.  les bêtises de cambrai are candies.  bêtise means mistake in french and they're called this because the recipe was discovered by accident when the sugar was overheated.  the next day we went to lille, which is the fourth largest metropolitan area in france. 

the opera house in lille.

i found this church very interesting architecturally. when construction began in the 1850s it was designed as a neo-gothic church but it took so long to build that in 1991 they decided to add a modern façade instead of continuing with the neo-gothic style.  the result is that the interior is very traditional and reminiscent of the great gothic churches of france but the façade is modern, with references the characteristics of gothic architecture: the three doors, pointed arches, stained glass, and emphasis on height. the center section of the façade is made of white marble which allows sunlight to pass through it, which i found to be a delightfully modern reference to the gothic emphasis on light through cut-away walls with stained glass windows.

amsterdam

this weekend i went to amsterdam with a group of friends because we had the day off today for all saints' day (it's a national holiday).  i was really looking forward to seeing art and i did get to see a lot. we went to the van gogh museum and the rijksmuseum, where i got to see a few vermeers and some rembrandts.  we also saw the house where anne frank hid and wrote her diary during nazi occupation and went on a really interesting walking tour of the city.  

the canals with the fall colors were pretty, but overall i found the city depressing and uninspiring.  i was homesick for paris the whole time.  i left amsterdam with no desire to ever return but grateful that i can call paris home for a little bit longer :]