the arrival of spring

it has been a month since the last post. nothing exciting has been happening so far, but the good thing is that i got two projects down. finally. oh and i popped by netherlands for the last weekend trip of the spring term.

amsterdam - vice city
amsterdam has been reputed for its red light district and its liberal policy on recreational drug use. however, one sad thing is that the government is clamping down on the vices amsterdam offers. the number of coffeeshops and the size of the red light district has decreased tremendously over the past few years, and will continue to do so for the coming years. so if you want to legally try some recreational drugs, it better to do it as soon as possible before it gets totally banned. oh and if you do try weed, it's best to sit down and chill while you smoke/consume it. walking around to tour a city after consumption of weed is a BAD idea.

if only they had railings like these in sg

den haag - the political centre
though amsterdam is the capital and largest city of netherlands, den haag is the city where the government rules from. there's nothing really spectecular about this place, but it could be the fact that i was walking around in a sleepy nauseous state, thanks to amsterdam.

dusseldorf - point of exit
following den haag, we made our way to the german city of dusseldorf, because it was enroute to the airport where we were going to fly off from. there was nothing really outstanding about dusseldorf, save our lunch at the food market. there's nothing more enjoyable than eating a nice hot plate of pasta (or bowl of fish soup) when it's freezing.

speaking of which the cold wintry weather is finally drawing to an end with the arrival of spring. spring is truly a magnificent season. with warm temperatures ushering the blooming of flowers everywhere, hyde park truly becomes a place bustling with life. as i go for a late afternoon jog around hyde park, i see people everywhere playing soccer, rollerblading, walking their dogs or just simply having picnic on the grass. if only the temperatures in singapore were more forgiving.

the past month in a nutshell

as couples out there rejoice in the romantic (and heavily commercialized) atmosphere of valentine's day, i sit in my room alone and wallow in misery over a breakfast of sausages and ciabatta, with three insanely boring online lectures to watch.

5 weeks of the spring term has passed and with only 6 weeks left till the easter break, i'm approximately halfway through my exchange. the past month has been rather interesting, with activities planned almost every weekend (except the first, where i spent the whole day in my room watching hitman reborn).

copenhagen - home of butter cookies
the second weekend of spring term was spent travelling to the danish capital of copenhagen. the night before we took off was spent celebrating the (belated) birthday of one of the australian exchange students. that ended rather late and since we had to catch the early bus to stansted, we didn't sleep that night. so we
arrived at a freezing copenhagen extremely zoned out. true to our travelling style, we still forged on to explore the town despite our weariness, going around to see the major touristy sights, including the statue of the little mermaid. after spending the whole day walking, we arrived back to the hotel at around 5pm. that night i slept for 14 hours. anyway the next day was spent exploring the hippie town of christiana, where the law is traditionally less strictly enforced (drug peddling used to be tolerated). photography is strongly discouraged. however in recent times the authorities have been clamping down on this area, so when we went there it seemed rather tame.

one of the canals

weird statue

free outdoor skating rink

opera house in the background

little mermaid statue

stockholm - scenic city
the next weekend was spent travelling to the swedish capital of stockholm. this time round fortunately most of us managed to catch some sleep the night before we flew off. stockholm is arguably one of the most scenic cities i've been to. it wasn't just the natural beauty it was bestowed with thanks to good geographical positioning. the build up of the city was pretty well conceived as well. nice wide streets, simple yet elegant architecture, and in general the city looked very well maintained. trouble is that the weather wasn't very forgiving, and reached as low as -8 degrees during our stay there. it was so cold that my feet started to become numb. oh and it's really expensive as well.

nice wide streets

view of the river

the sunset

the sunrise

changing of guards

the following weekend was spent playing touch rugby for ICSS (Imperial College Singapore Society) at the london games, which is essentially a gathering of singapore societies all over the UK to compete at certain sports. there was a warm up training session on saturday before the actual games on sunday. having not played touch rugby since the last IHG, it was really fun to pick up the touch rugby ball again and toss it around.

and essentially that was what happened in the last month. the weekdays were pretty boring though, just attending lectures and doing project reports. tomorrow however i'll be heading off to amsterdam, sin city. hopefully the space cakes will live up to their reputation.

italy/spain trip - part 1

italy - the land of duomo-s, piazzas, pizzas, pasta and street peddlers

well it's the winter break in UK, and i embarked on a backpacking trip to italy and spain. waking up at like 3am to catch the 430 bus to stansted, i faced a blast of chilly london air when walking to the pick-up point. at least i thought it was cold. little did i know that my escape from wintry london backfired, and i had to brave much colder winds than this.

before this post turns into some long narrative of my entire trip, i will attempt to summarize the trip as succinctly as possible. the order of cities which we visited were bergamo, milan, venice, florence, pisa and finally rome.

bergamo: a tale of two cities
the first destination in the italian leg, the city is divided into two distinct parts, the upper city on a hill and the lower city in the valley. we only explored the upper city, since it was more historical compared to the modern lower city (and thus contains more sights) and also because we could get a nice view of the lower city. needless to say, the upper city was colder, and was snowing lightly. but we were fresh and energetic, and had lots of fun making snowballs and snowmen. after goofing around sufficiently, we headed off to milan.

the upper and lower cities

the snow

the panorama of the lower city

milan: the fashion capital
the second destination of the italian leg, milan is home to brand names such as prada, dolce & gabanna and armani, and is the luxury shopper's paradise. however, we didn't really spend much time here, having goofed off too much in bergamo and reaching only in the evening. no matter, we are budget travellers after all (extra emphasis on the budget part) and weren't planning to indulge in high-end shopping. after dumping our bags in the hotel, we headed off to the duomo before check the city out. serendipitously we managed to pick up a partially used 10-travel train ticket, so our tube ride back to hostel was free.

the duomo

some statue

venice: the tourist trap
leaving milan early in the morning, we then headed to venice, the famed city with bucketloads of waterways. it is said that half of the people on venice are tourists. i'm guessing the other half are the shop keepers and restaurant staff. upon reaching the island, we were greeted by the sight of countless tourists taking photos of everything they laid sight on. okay i'm exagerrating. anyway venice is really quite a unique city. the whole city is filled with narrow walkways and little streets, allowing only the movement of pedestrians but not motor vehicles, and the different islands are connected by bridges. so it is not unusual to head down a path only to reach an uncrossable canal. this makes navigating in the city a living nightmare. fortunately the city is pretty small, and there were some streets signs around.

as expected of a tourist city, prices of pretty much everything were inflated. i might sound abit of a killjoy, but venice is pretty much just a city with damn hell lot of longkangs. and if you are willing to fork out 40 SGD for someone to row your ass along the longkang, then you can hop onto a gondola. i'd rather much spend that 40 bucks feasting on a buffet after a hard day's work of rowing along the kallang basin.

view from the train station

one of the numerous waterways that run through venice

big ass canal

piazza san marco

saint mark's basilica

florence: for the culture vulture
our next stop was florence, the capital of tuscany, where we spent two days (new year's eve and new year's day). being home to famous artists such as leonardo da vinci and michelangelo, florence is epicenter of the italian renaissance. however, i'm not really interested in artwork, so i didn't bother going to the museums to view the actual pieces. google images will be sufficient for me. much of my time here was pretty much spent roaming the city to see piazza after piazza, church after church. the arno river runs through the middle of the city, and views from the bridges across the river were spectacular. the view of florence from piazzale michelangelo (located on the hill on the south side of the river) was pretty awesome as well.

i had the fortune of spending new year's eve here, and we had a chance to see how the italians celebrated their new year. the streets were filled with throngs of people, and at the stroke of midnight people were popping champagne bottles and toasting to one another. thanks to the large number of piazzas (i.e. large open spaces) around (which served as ideal launching pads for fireworks), there were plenty of fireworks (big and small) lighting up the sky. irritatingly, there was this variant of firecracker which produced a damn loud explosion. it sounded something like a grenade exploding, and if you were unfortunate to be near one when it detonated you will become temporarily deaf (and partially permanently if enough of them exploded around you). nevertheless it was quite an eye opener.

the view of the river

some piazza

the duomo of florence

panorama of florence

pisa: home of the most spectacular engineering mistake
we left florence around mid-morning to head to pisa to visit the iconic leaning tower of pisa. it was meant to be a day trip so we would hang around pisa for 5 hours or so before heading to rome in the evening. however we over-estimated the time required in pisa. after visiting the tower of pisa and the church it was meant to serve as a bell tower for, we were like 'what's next?'. and we didn't really find a suitable answer to that question. we ended up walking around the town of pisa, hitting a few piazzas and churches and the river that runs through pisa to take some photos, before heading off to catch the train to rome.

cheesy shot with the leaning tower

the church

some piazza

the same river that runs through florence

rome: where all roads lead to
the final city of our italian leg, rome is the captial of italy. nestled within the city of rome is the smallest nation in the whole world, the vatican city. our hostel was located at some quiet street behind the main train station, and looked rather dodgy. but it was surprisingly decent. anyway the first day in rome was spent visiting st peter's basilica at the vatican city, the mother of all churches. the religious paintings, statues and interior design were quite breathtaking. and then my camera decided to die on me. we also climbed up the cupola (which was like 500 plus steps) to catch a panorama of rome. good thing we went there early, because by the time we left there were a few hundred people queuing to enter the place. the queue to enter the vatican museum (and sistine chapel) was bloody long though, so we decided to visit it the next day, only to discover later that it will be closed. anyway we went to visit some piazzas (which had alot of stores selling food and souvenirs, reminiscent of a pasar malam) and climb up the hill at the west end to catch another panorama of rome. other notable places we visited during the two days there included the colosseum, palatine hill, the pantheon and the trevi fountain.

there are two things about rome that irks me. the first thing is that the queue to get into the attractions are incredibly long, several times longer than the queue to get lor mee at old airport road. this means that if you don't get there early enough, you'll have to spend an hour or two in the queue for some popular attractions (st peter's basilica, vatican musuem and the colosseum to name a few). secondly there are tons of street peddlers around rome, selling stuff from like roses, camera tripods, umbrellas (on rainy days), and even those bubble generating toys. anyway the whole place felt really commercialized, which i didn't really like. anyway we ended off our italian leg camping overnight at the airport in rome to catch the early morning flight to spain.

entrance to st peter's basilica

the piazza where people were queuing (the line formed two circles around the piazza)

statues in the basilica - last photo before my camera died

the colosseum

palatine hill

some piazza (again)

airport campers

italy/spain trip - part 2

spain - the land of zara, churos, tapas and paellas

after a very uncomfortable night on the rock hard floors of rome's ciampino airport, we were on our way to sunny spain. or at least what we thought was sunny spain. little did we know that the weather ahead of us was going to be the total opposite.

the order of cities visited were girona, barcelona and finally madrid.

girona: the ghost town
when we touched down at girona airport, i noticed something amiss. why the heck was there frost on the airport vehicles? when i stepped out of the plane i got my answer. it was freezing! we boarded the bus to girona, tired and cold. not the ideal condition to go travelling in. but still we forged on, walking around the town of girona with all our barang barang. it was 9am when we got there, but the streets were almost completely empty. we explored the eastern part of the city, which was the more historical part and contained most of the sights. soon we got too bored, too cold and too miserable and thus decided to head off to catch the train to barcelona.

the empty streets of girona

more empty streets

the pool that froze over

a damn big church for a small town

barcelona: my favourite city
our train ride to barcelona was slightly confusing. the train made an unscheduled stop, so we were pretty puzzled when we got off at the supposed stop only to discover that it wasn't the correct stop. there was probably an announcement made over the PA but we didn't understand a single word of spanish. nevertheless we jumped onto the next train and made our way to the hostel to dump our lugguage and give our shoulders a well deserved break.

barcelona is a pretty cool city. there are lots of funky architecture around, thanks to this architect called gaudi, who was extremely fascinated with the nature and decided to incorporate them into his building designs. when not having gaudy facades (pun intended), the rest of barcelona's buildings are pretty modern and well maintained. coupled with the wide streets and structure town layout, barcelona was a refreshing change from the dreariness i felt in italy. not only that, barcelona is by the sea, so it has some rather lovely beaches and nice seaside views. the bad thing about our stay there was that it rained and hailed on our second day, but if the weather was fine (and warmer), barcelona and her beaches will definitely be a fine option for a holiday.

sagrada familia - some swanky gaudi church

a more normal church

the barcelonian harbour

the hail on our second day there

yes hail

funky entrance of guell park - another gaudi project

beach side property

the (abandoned) wintry beaches of barcelona

madrid - shopper's paradise
we soon left barcelona on one of the high speed bullet trains bound for madrid. cruising along at speeds of up to 301km/hr, we were soon in madrid after two and a half hours.

madrid is somewhat like the mecca for the mid-budget shopper. there are tons of clothing stores around, ranging from zara to springfield to some brands i have never heard before. within a 500m radius one can find like 2 or even 3 stores of the same brand. and the stores are pretty large as well, some being 3 or 4 storeys high (catering mostly to female fashion obviously). as for touristy sights, madrid can be covered within a day, but shopping at madrid deserves another day at least.

it snowed on our last day there, which got us kind of excited, until we realised it meant that our flight may be delayed. walking along the snow covered streets proved pretty tricky as well, as they were very slippery. when we got to the airport, we had our worst fears confirmed, that our flight will be delayed by 8.5 hours. fortunately it wasn't cancelled, because that meant we would have to catch an even later flight, and all of us weren't too keen on camping overnight at an airport again. eventually we reached back london, where the temperatures were more forgiving than those we experienced in italy and spain. ah the irony of it all.

the iconic bear statue of madrid - representing the battle between church and state

the royal palace where the royal family does NOT live

oldest restaurant in the world

plaza mayor

crystal palace

snow in madrid

(more dreadfully) snow at the airport