Unfortunately, this is the last picture of the dwarf. His head caved in when I dropped him at one of the London art galleries. Tile floors don't go too well with ceramic dwarf heads. I left the remains in a hotel garbage can in London next to King's Cross - St.Pancreas underground station.
I've purchased a used one but he/she doesn't look anything like this one. I tried to find the store that I bought this one from - it's in Peterborough and they had millions of them - but I couldn't find the store. Damn it.
The sun is shining down here and the birds are chirping a lot. However, it's still very cold and my flat has moderate heating, at best. The food, candy, and clothing is expensive and I get paid a low wage. Only 5 more months, though.
ed
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Guinness Factory in Dublin
Another well timed visit. The Guinness Factory had just recently been renovated and we got to visit it with its new viewing bar. This is Dwarf with his free pint of Guinness. The Guinness here tasted less bitter and much smoother. It went down like iced tea. The tour itself was something like 900 floors - or felt like it. We didn't get to see everyting because we wanted to get our drinks but it was well worth the money. I wouldn't doubt you could make a whole evening of it.
Cathedral of Our Lady
This is the large cathedral in the middle of Antwerp. We arrived after a 90 minute train ride from Brussels and we had an Italian dinner here. It was a very nice city but everything was closed by the time we got here. Well, everything except the Red Light District, of course.
Atominum stairs
Here's Narv inside the belly of the Atomium. Cool pic which makes him look like he's Cuba Gooding, Jr. in Gattica or something.
Atomium
The famous structure built for the 1958 World's Fair. Though we weren't lucky with the date to visit the European Union, we were lucky with this date as the Atomium had just re-opened after a couple of years of renovations. We were allowed to move into all of the little spheres except for the restaurant sphere and the kid's sphere which were not yet open.
European Union
This is Dwarf outside the European Union. The EU building is only open to the public 1 day of the year. The day we went was not that day. We were promptly told that we weren't allowed in. We left and it started raining.
Girl pis
To make things fair, there is also a statue of a girl peeing. Unlike Manneken pis, the city of Brussels are would rather visitors not see this one. There is no mention of the Girl in conventional travel guides and it took us a little while to find her. She's found in a dead-end alley and she wasn't peeing...they'd turned her off. As well, she was behind bars, unlike Manneken. There was a lot of weird things written on the wall about her and I think a lot of people don't like the idea of having a statue of a girl peeing. We were the only tourists at the site.
manneken pis
This is the famous mascot of Brussels. It's a statue of a boy peeing. There are two stories that go with this statue. One of the stories has the boy being statue-worthy because he was found peeing on a stick of dynomite or a large firework. By peeing on it, he put it out. Otherwise, it would have exploded and burned down the city. The other story is a very prominent and rich man of Brussel, his son went missing. The statue marks where he was found and what he was doing when he was found. They dress him up depending on the special occasion. He has something like 500 or so different costumes and there is actually a museum that you can go to and see them. In this picture, he is wearing an old Vancouver Canucks uniform celebrating the 15th anniversary of their last visit to the finals. Actually, it's him dressed up with an Olympic Gold medal.
Cathedral of Saints Michel and Gudule
This is the inside of the magnificent Cathedral of Saints Michel and Gudule. It was a very nice cathedral. This is Narv standing in front of a wooden thing. I don't remember the significance of the picture. Though, doesn't Narv look stunning?
Place du Petit Sablon in Brussels
This is one of the statues within the large park that is Place du Petit Sablon. The park was across the way from our hostel and though it was a nice park, it looks much better in the books than it is in person. A little shady and somewhat unkept, it had the same feeling of walking around portions of Stanley Park. Plus, it was really, really cold.
Duomo in Milan
This is the roof of the Duomo Church in Milan. As all things with height in Europe, for a moderate fee anyone is allowed to climb the stairs and run around on the roof of this church. It's pretty neat to be able to climb the roofs of everythng but when we got up to the roof it didn't feel as sturdy as it seems it should to allow people to run around on it. However, having said that no one died during our visit and that's good, right?
Torino Arcade
This is the enterance to a large arcade in Torino. It's really quite neat but being open at both ends, it was pretty cold.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Gold Medal
The Canadian women posing with their golds. This was a pretty cool thing to see as it was the only game that we went to that the team we wanted to win did win.
Canada vs. Sweden - Gold Medal
This is the view of the game from our seats. This is right after the end of the game and Canada winning the Gold Medal. It was very loud and very exciting but it was disappointing that it wasn't sold out. I'm sure that a lot of Americans that had purchased tickets didn't show up when the US women didn't advance to the final. I'd say the place was only 2/3 full. The crowds were good but not as loud as a Stanley Cup playoff game or anything.
USA vs Finland
This is the view of the US/Finland game from our seats. The game wasn't that great. The US won handily and we were really tired.
Canada House
Here's Canada House, the most popular pavillion at the Winter Olympics. It took something like 3 hours to find and when we got there it was closed because Wayne Gretzky decided he wanted to see it. So, for safety concerns, the police closed it down as Wayne and Vicki Gabreau ate Canadian bacon or what ever inside.
Olympic Curling
The third event that we went to watch was Women's curling. It was pretty cool but no one was there. There were three teams playing on the four sheets and all three teams that we were rooting for - so Canada would have a better chance of making the playoffs - lost. Regardless, the Canadian women made the medals.
Mascots
Here's Narv with the images of the 20th Winter Olympic Games. This was funny not for what was happening during the picture but what happened afterwards. The blue thing on the right flicked Narv's hat and started laughing. I guess you had to be there.
Canada vs. Finland
This is the view of the ice from our seats. We were something like 5 rows from the ice.
Canada vs. Finland
Obviously, we thought Canada was going to cake walk through the Fins but, of course, Canada lost 2-0 and we had to deal with all of the talk from the Finnish fans. The atmosphere before the game was amazing...at least 2/3 of the crowd were Canadian and they were trying their hardest to get going. However, after the first Finnish goal we didn't hear much from the Canadian fans for the rest of the game.
Russia vs Latvia
This is my view of the ice from my seat. The Latvian fans are crazy and they were chanting heavily during the entire match...even as their team got their butts handed to them 7-1 or whatever. Narv's seat was suppose to be next to me but because he had all of his luggage with him the usher made him sit higher up in the stands. There, he met the most important guy of our trip: Eduardo. Eduardo, a high school student took us everywhere we needed to go and generally took care of us for the day. If it wasn't for him we'd probably still be there trying to find the enterance to the Curling games.
London to Turino
Our flight to my first Olympic experience was delayed by an hour our so by fog. The flight was pretty amazing because if I had to guess I'd say at least a half of the plane was full of Canadians making their way to the Olympics. Underneath this jacket is Narv trying to get some shut eye.
Casa Batllo
The fourth Gaudi that we visited, it is a weird building that the owner had asked Gaudi to redesign to increase the amount of natural light that entered the building. At night, they light it up and it looks even more impressive.
Parc Guell
Another Gaudi, it's a huge park that overlooks the city. It's made up of weird things built out of sedementary rock. In the middle of the park is Gaudi's last home which the city has turned into a Gaudi museum. (The city has like thirty different Gaudi museums.) Very weird park.
Casa Mila or La Pedrera
Another Gaudi, it used to be an apartment block but is now a museum. He built the roof up with weird statues of warriors that look amazing in the light of the night. It's super cool but enough of Gaudi, right?
Top of the Sagrada
This is the view from about the top of the Sagrada. I don't know what the phallic tower is in the background.
Fabio in Barcelona
This is Fabio. He's another med student that we ran into and I believe he was from Portugal. Here he's looking at a map of the weird wonderland-type place we decided to go spend half the day to find. If you can believe it - I can't believe we did it - this centre, which we paid 15euro to enter, was a tourist site that contained different pavillions representing Spanish life of all the regions of Spain. (Look, it's Sicily and over there it's Valencia.) The idea was to be able to visit all of Spain without leaving Barcelona. It was weird that we went to this to get a feeling for Spanish life while we were in Spain. Whatever. Never again.
Olympic Stadium
This is where the opening and closing ceremonies of the Barcelona Summer Olympics took place. Now, it is the home of FC Barcelona. Though it looks somewhat impressive here, it's actually a really crappy and delapidated giant stadium.
Barcelona Museum
This is the painting on the ceiling of the Barcelona Museum. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the Museum but we did anyways in the spirit of competition. This is my picture. The other picture is Karen's.
Barcelona
This is Barcelona from the top steps of the Barcelona Museum. I believe (but might be wrong) that it was the Royal Palace of Barcelona before it became the Museum. This was the first full day in Barcelona and it was very cold even though the sun was out.
Gothic Region of Barcelona
This is the Gothic area of Barcelona with its narrow alleys and super high buildings. The Gothic Area is suppose to be the party area of Barcelona and it had tons of touristy things to do. I met Karen on the plane. She's a fourth year med student from The Netherlands. She was really knowledgeable about Barcelona which was good because I didn't know anything about it.
Friday, March 10, 2006
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