Filed under: Travel
Before I begin I have to mention that Ray missed his Eurostar train. He forgot his passport and didn’t realize until we arrived at King’s Cross. So there’s a blurry photo of Platform 9 3/4 because I was holding both bags without anything to do for 40 minutes. But he got on the next train. That wasn’t even that bad – on the way back from Paris he left his Eurostar ticket in our hotel room and had to buy another ticket. His parents promptly lectured him to get better at planning ahead. And eat vegetables. He stopped eating with us and just eats a ham sandwich and pasta with sausages every night.
Joining me this trip were Steph, Julie, and Eric from WashU who go to SOAS and King’s College. Can you believe there’s a School of Oriental and Asian Studies? Yeah, me neither. I was recommended to go to Le Refuge des Fondues right on the bottom of Montmartre for dinner the first night. I’ve never had fondue before, and I’m not sure if I was supposed to eat those “appetizers” before the cheese arrived. We should also have asked for a pot of the meaty stuff. Too bad. I liked that they gave us Kir Cassis (although the sugar was the best part) and served us wine in a baby bottle. It was cute.
Ended up rushing to the Eiffel Tower – but ended up being about five minutes late and we weren’t allowed on top. We saw plenty of drunk Americans walking around to compensate. The Metro was on strike that week so it was confusing getting around, but at least the first day we didn’t have to pay for anything.
The next morning we woke up early and went to eat breakfast near the Louvre at a fairly cheap place. Except fairly cheap is very expensive in Paris when you want to sit down. Our French was so poor, despite the fact that Julie took years of it, that they just didn’t serve Eric his omelette. We asked the waitress several times, but she just nodded and said it was coming. Then we asked for our check and it wasn’t on there. How rude. Despite the fact that meals were expensive, I think I ate better in Paris than I had on any vacation (except I also spent a lot more money) – but the pastries are ridiculous there. Every little shop you’re tempted to buy something.
We walked to Ile de la Cite and saw Notre Dame. Ray and Eric decided it was okay to donate about a euro to take a five euro candle that you were supposed to leave in the church and light as a prayer? Or something, I really have no idea how Christianity works. It’s not like they’re stealing from God. It was raining that morning so we rushed to the Musee D’Orsay. It’s a former train station renovated with all the impressionist crap they kicked out of the Louvre. Ray met up with his friend Olivia from high school who was studying in Paris and we walked around. I didn’t know that you could take photos in Museums like that. Really cool place though.
Walked through the Tulleries and after pronouncing it har-DEEN for so long, I completely forgot that the French actually use their “j” properly. Strolled down the Champs Elysees and noticed a sizable group of asian tourists in front of the Arc de Triomphe. There were about eight peace signs in their collective hands. My one regret is not trying to jump into that photo. Afterwards, we strolled into the huge Louis Vuitton store and watched as more asian tourists would sit there and drop down hundrd euro bills like it was some sort of drug deal. Scary sight.
We unfortunately had to pay for the Metro at this point, and rode to the Louvre because it was free for students Friday night. I tried to reenact a photo of me sleeping with my mom carrying me in the Louvre, so I forced Ray to pick me up on one arm. Twice. By the way this really has to be the most ridiculous museum in the world.
Woke up early to climb up Montmartre – not after engaging in a mini black friday with a bunch of poor Parisians in the area, basically because Steph had to buy a new pair of shoes because well, she brings one pair of small slip on flats that really don’t hold up well in the rain.
The girls really wanted Long Champ bags so we went to the store. I was considering getting something, I mean – it’s a Parisian brand, and I was in Paris (meaning an incredible gift) – but honestly, they are notable because they make a bag out of parachute material. I guess they expand, but you can’t put anything in it when it’s small, so what’s the point. I specifically asked this question and the person really did not have a good answer.
Julie left to meet her friend, so we went to meet up with Olivia again and went to the Latin quarter. This was really confusing because I thought this was something like a latin-american/spanish quarter, not just something that had to do with the Sorbonne. wow. So confusing. I guess it has to do with the French Quarter in NOLA? I don’t know. I was so confused. We met up with some of Olivia’s friends in Paris as we rescued Kate from a creepy French guy with black leather serial killer gloves.
We concluded the trip with a trip up to the Eiffel Tower despite the best efforts of the Parisian students to get us to go clubbing some 30 minutes outside of the city. I suppose you don’t really get to go to the Eiffel Tower that much. Unless you’re Julie. It’s her fifth time in Paris.
So the Craven Cottage actually has a cottage. It’s pretty cool. It’s on the bottom right corner of the pitch from this angle, and it has a nice balcony where I assume only the select fans can watch it. It’s also in a really cool area, just off of the Thames. It’s such a small stadium with ~30,000 seats which you can compare to University of Michigan’s “Big House” which had more than 100,000 fans see Appalachian St. kick their asses.
Anyway, headlines everywhere read about how Fulham conceded a late lead yet again to only come out with a draw – however, considering how terrible their defense is and how many blown opportunities they had in the first half. Especially Kamara, holy crap. I know he scored but that was the easiest tap in I’ve ever seen. Basically he would get the ball all alone on one side of the pitch and dribble it out of bounds or take way too long to take a shot or shoot one right over the post or make a horrible cross to no one. And yeah, their defense is terrible. If Blackburn had anywhere near the opportunities that Fulham had – the score would have been like 5-0. Also the foul call for the first Fulham goal was pretty dodgy I thought. Oh yeah, and they play Song 2 after a goal. Obviously.
So tracking American soccer star Clint Dempsey, they really hounded him because I think they knew Kamara was terrible. Numerous times Fulham would still throw it into Dempsey even when he was doubled. The funniest thing I think about soccer is this ridiculous play where Dempsey and a defender were chasing down a long pass in the corner. But the defender goes ahead of him, and you can see Dempsey is slowing down and basically has his arms in front of him when he is. And then the defender just rolls and tumbles forward over the ball as soon as he feels Dempsey’s hands graze him. Ah, the Europeans. They are such pussies. At least on the soccer field. This would never happen in rugby.
The Blackburn fans were definitely intense, dancing and chanting the entire games a la Cameron Crazies. Except I really couldn’t make out what the hell they were saying, whether it’s because their accents were terrible or the fact that I didn’t know any of the Blackburn players. Still, a pretty entertaining game due to the fact that it barely met professional football standards.
- An interesting article about being libertarian and how that affects Ron Paul. I think it’s really cool how he managed to set a one-day GOP record of $4.3 million on the internet alone, just because it was Guy Fawkes Day. And the crazy thing is he didn’t even organize it, some supporter did. More of a comment on how the two party system is completely failing this country in the eyes of every college-aged citizen.
- The thing about Ron Paul is, it’s admirable that he holds onto his strong, non-interventionist-support-the-constitution beliefs, but I’m scared about how someone like him would react when some things could go wrong. For example, I personally don’t think the private market is a solution for social security – nor can the government cease to regulate things related to the environment (Al Gore would freak). Would Paul be flexible and relinquish his small government principles? I don’t think so.
- I cracked a couple of eggs on the way back from ASDA yesterday and decided that I had to make something with them, to go along with the leftover turkey from the Thanksgiving Zach had organized on Thursday. So I made korean pancakes. Actually they turned out to be just fluffy omelets due to so much egg and not enough flour, but still, pretty good. I didn’t think San Diego would be a place that I missed for its Asian cuisine, but Southern California really had some good stuff.
- The thing about two story clubs with multiple dance floors is – it really just gives an excuse to play the same songs in multiple locations over and over again. It’s ridiculous. I mean, I guess you can’t go wrong with playing Beautiful Girls three times in one night, but I’m sure other people tend to get upset.
- Josh McRoberts, I hope you’re happy sitting on the bench for Portland playing behind the likes of Raef Lafrentz. That second round contract feels good doesn’t it? I’m glad the rest of the NBA is smart enough to see what Duke has seen all along: a marginally athletic power forward who wishes he was a point guard. Well, at least you look happy.
Filed under: Bullets
- It’s really weird that everybody is going home for Thanksgiving and I am staying here. Everybody is so excited to be getting away from their classes and I really have done less work all semester than I would do in one busy week at school.
- On that note I found out that this girl here is really, really homesick and doesn’t seem to like living in England and traveling at all. Granted, she’s had two bad experiences with some long trips but still kind of sad. She started a countdown to when she would be back at Duke.
- One thing I do miss about Duke, the basketball games, now with stupid new online walk-up line policy instead of the already stupid wristband policy – all in the attempt to boost attendance. Stupid freshman. But then again, when your team is 8-8 in the ACC, how do you expect people to get excited? Anyway, we may not be as well known as Princeton is around in these parts, but at least we can kick their ass. Honestly that score is deceptively close since we were up by 30 in the first half. How do you like your eating clubs now? Bitches.
- While we’re on this sports fix, another link to a Gilbert Arenas article stolen from TrueHoop. Maybe the next time I’m visiting a rich consultant friend in D.C. he can score me some courtside Wizard’s tickets..
Why did three women from Iowa travel halfway across the country, create blinged-out t-shirts, rent a limo, buy a second set of courtside seats, take a 10-hour trip that brought them home at 5 in the morning and spend nearly $10,000 to get a jersey from a player they have no natural reason to care about? Julie considered the question. Her daughter, she told me, thinks that Gilbert and Julie are similar: they relentlessly pursue their obsessions, maximizing their fun along the way, without regard for whether that makes them “different.”
- Oh, and this guy is a Redskins fan and D.C. native (I totally didn’t plan that), and when he found out that the Chargers were going through the Norv Turner experience he started a blog. Here’s the latest. And seriously who the fuck calls an option pass on 4th and 2.
- Moving away from this – despite a ridiculous cost due to a horrendous exchange rate, I decided to buy tickets for CSS and Justice on Dec. 3rd. Coincidentally, this is the day that I return from my pilgrimage to the Netherlands. Joining me are a few new people: Robin, whose friends like to call him ‘Hood; Jesse who has also scaled the mighty tree nine at UCSC, and random girl who got upset that she was charged a pound entry into some bar and made me feel bad so I walked back with her. Better start getting ready to D.A.N.C.E.
- My recent subscriptions to elbo.ws and hypemachine have led me to this recording of a Girl Talk performance in Seattle. I like it just because it’s so similar to the performance I saw when he came to Chapel Hill in December (since it’s a January performance). Notably on Smash Your Head he adds Paula Cole aka Dawson’s Creek Theme Song to Biggie. Why not?
- Regina Spektor performed at Duke yesterday, even though she was sick before. My school is so hip. Kind of. Nancypants also is excited about the potential of a combination of The Roots and Third Eye Blind for LDOC. I don’t believe for a second that’s happening, but it would be really sweet.
- In the same conversation she told me that my editor Varun nabbed a McKinsey full time offer away from our favorite DSG president who shared movies off of his server back in the day. Pretty sweet. In an unrelated story, I remember I was talking to his roommate once about how sometimes he would find Mr. Wolf rolling sushi really late at night. Strange.
- Despite my doubts, Ray’s friends ended up booking the hotel at Paris. Yes, apparently I actually get to stay in Hotels since they are so cheap and plentiful in Paris. Well, kind of cheap. Cheap enough.
- As soon as I get back I am hoping to get into the Fulham vs. Blackburn match with Mr. Brothers – where I get to cheer on Americans like Clint Dempsey … probably get the shit beaten out of them by Blackburn who are 5-1 or something ridiculous. Oh well.
- I am going on an asian vacation disguised as a ski trip to Utah from the 23rd to the 27th. Too bad none of my friends know how to snowboard, which is ridiculous. I guess they’re all from Southern California. Oh wait none of them do any water sports either. Right. At least we play soccer. Yeah, we don’t celebrate Christmas. Oh well. Though if you have watched the season three finale of weeds, you realize just how crazy Christianity is, and I won’t ruin it for you but Doug has an amazing scene. A couple amazing scenes in the season actually. I love Doug.
- On a final note, I will try to make it down to Mexico this break. Because down in mexico… well I don’t really know I’ve only been once. I just wanted to link to that video. Make sure you have your passports!
Filed under: Lifestyle
So after a couple away messages filled with strange Michael Vick references, my new roommate Ben (as I am officially removed from my housing requirement) leaves me a message and lets me know that we have a dog. She’s a pitbull pup named Penelope. She is eight weeks old. We are going to train it for dogfighting.
Oh Penelope, I will feed you mangos. She’s filled with air so that when she swallows oxygen, she floats up. I will volver with a present for you.
Hopefully this will help me overcome my fear of animals.
I have tickets to Paris on the holiday that you Americans refer to as Thanksgiving. I like to consider it the day you celebrating fucking over the indigenous people to achieve your manifest destiny. God I miss home. The last time I talked to these people, one of the girls wanted to go to EuroDisney because she had been to Paris so many times she wanted to see something else.
I also have tickets to Oslo and a return ticket from Stockholm. My parents have a horror story that they shared with me when they went to see the Nobel prize ceremony, about how it was cheaper to rent a car so they drove a while in the snow until they almost hit a truck and spun out in the road. Mm, scary.
Filed under: Travel
Once upon a time we all traveled together to Italy. Unfortunately, since everybody had a little trouble getting along, three separate groups were formed. Zach went to Barcelona on Thursday early. Austin, Mark, Preeyanka, and Monty (short for Montserrat) coincidentally enough ended up having the same flights to Barcelona and back from Madrid, so we went together. Again. Due to near mishaps and paranoid travelers, a decision was made to go to the airport four and a half hours early. It takes about an hour and a half to get there. Right. Anyway, I decided to stay up all night and ended up cooking for myself at 4 a.m. and didn’t even need to eat until 7 p.m. the next day.
I should mention that Ray and Zach had an issue with their computer science professor, affectionately known as Max due to students showing no respect whatsoever for any teacher at this “uni.” Essentially, he had given them an exam during reading week and let them know only three weeks before. Originally they planned to just skip the exam, but found out the weight was going to be 40% of their grade. This pretty much forced them to change their plans as the professor proved to be unreasonable. So, Zach had to fly back from Barcelona early and Ray had to cancel the Barcelona trip altogether and pay really expensive flights. Thus, they kept making the “Max face,” consisting of an awkward combination of gritting teeth and a protruding chin – with eyeballs going around the room and making a loud “uhhhh” sound that sounds close to Scooby Doo. Jinkies.
Anyway, with my Moroccan roommate Yassine, some of us set out to Barcelona. Fortunately he spoke Spanish, French, and Arabic and could translate for us most of the time – except in Barcelona, they actually speak Catalan. Annoying. We had to fly into Girona and after plenty of delays, we finally got to Barcelona at about 5:00 p.m., 11 hours after we set out. We went around La Rambla that night and vastly overpaid for one of the worst meals I’ve ever had, then went around and saw the shops and the street entertainers. One showed off his ventriloquism by making his Kermit the Frog puppet play the piano. Later we walked around the port and enjoyed a bucket of cotton candy while jazz music played as there was a concert for the Barcelona Regatta race. It’s weird hearing people sing so well in English then revert right back to speaking Catalan after applause.
We stayed in a hostel close to La Sagrada Familia, otherwise known as the most popular construction site in the world. There’s this place called Montjuic, loosely translated to “Mount Jew” that houses a fortress and the 1992 Olympic games which we trekked up to the next day. Pretty cool. Those Jews get everything. Unfortunately coming down the castle one of the cable cars shut down before it was even 1:30 p.m. and we had to walk quite a bit. But we finally found a subway stop and made it to the beach. I haven’t been there since I was a naked little boy (there’s photographic evidence). We finished the day with the Picasso museum. Despite being in his native city, there really wasn’t much there from his cubist phase except for Las Meninas, which we also saw later in Madrid. I think I’m beginning to understand more and more modern art. Maybe.
The next morning we left for Casablanca and the long ride to Tangier. Despite the fears from some that felt I was going to a third world country, I thought it was a fairly metropolitan city in constant construction like many developing cities in China, except Tangier is in an incredible location on a double peninsula with an amazing bay. So no pollution. We stayed with Yassine’s family and he showed us his room, or “studio” where he used to record stuff. We listened to his demo and other music. He told us that he had an opportunity to play for over 500,000 people but was unable to find a band as he usually plays most of the instruments by himself.
Ray and Zach then arrived at midnight right after their exam, and we went out to the Tangerine, a bar nearby. Seriously, Tangier is “Tanger” in French. And they can definitely grow oranges and orange-like substances. I don’t know why I never put this together. Anyway, there we randomly found a few people from Yassine’s high school. Two twins were also celebrating their birthday on the same day and due to a close relationship with the bartender, they ended up paying for our drinks.
We woke up and registered for classes. We’re good kids. After some terrible paella in Barcelona, we finally had the home-made huge pan style paella that only seems right, and we went out to the beach on the Atlantic side. There are no maps of the city of Tangier available because well, the government is afraid of bombs I think. But anyway, I’m pretty sure we went to the beach by Cap Spartal because that’s what I read from the easyJet inflight magazine. Can’t go wrong there. There was a lighthouse. But yeah, the beach was ridiculous because there was so much wind that every few minutes the sand particles would just rush at us like a sandstorm. But the weather in London makes any beach seem amazing. Later that night we went out to celebrate Ray’s birthday with his favorite food, hamburgers. Seriously. So we went to this place called Eric’s where they made their burgers with really sweet bread, an egg on top, and some cheese and grilled onions. Not bad. We went out to another bar and hung out for a bit before heading home.
For the last day in Tangier, we woke up early and all got haircuts for basically the first time since the summer. We had authentic Moroccan couscous for lunch, and then went out to see the Kasbah and shop at the Medina. Annoyingly, everybody kept saying “konichiwa” or “arrigato” as I walked by because Japanese media filters well to Africa apparently. Unfortunately, this did not help me negotiate. Even though so many of them were so hospitable. We walked further downtown and saw a lot of the sights that were used in the Bourne Ultimatum, including the café and the location of the rooftop chase scene (I haven’t seen it yet, but I made Tai download for me). Yassine told us that Paul Greengrass actually went to his high school and they had a talk about using Final Cut Pro. That’s one degree right there.
We went to Madrid the next day. Shortly after we arrived, we had to go on the metro to the city center and our hostel and due to it being so crowded, someone tried to steal my wallet out of my back pocket (didn’t think to put it anywhere safer since I just got out of the plane) and when I quickly spun around he elbowed me in the face and ran off of the train. Anyway, I told my little story to Kassity and she feels inside her bag and realizes that her wallet was actually stolen. Awful. So after we got to our hostel she immediately has to call and e-mail her parents about canceling all her stuff. We ate dinner at Museo de Jamon, which was pretty exciting until we realized it was just a chain restaurant.
At our hostel bar we met two girls from Villanova, one of whom dated our suspended “star” quarterback in middle school apparently, and somehow the conversation went to a guy named Joe Costello, who Ray knew from high school. Of course drunk Ray was a big fan of Joe Costello’s and kept on talking and talking about him, with intimate details about his hairy arms and how it seemed like how the hair would transfer if he touched someone. Naturally the girls asked us if he would be okay later. We walked around Madrid for a little and then went to this club that was free, including free drinks for girls.
Ray awoke from passing out on top of his sheets and left for Toledo the next morning to meet his friend Casey and we walked around Madrid. It was nice because there was a Spanish holiday and thousands of people were gathered for mass outdoors. We went walking out past the palace to a park and rowed boats and road the cable cars before we got back. Then we met a really nice Australian girl who was an au pair in Milan and told us stories about randoms spraining her knee from behind and hospitalizing her and her travels through Europe. We ate some bocadillos for dinner, loaded up on sangria, received some complimentary shooters, and then went back to our hostel where there was a John McEnroe look-alike DJ sporting a tennis racket so we decided to get Crazy in Love like Funk Soul brothers. We met up with some of Zach’s friends from high school and they went to some crazy five-story club called Teatro Kapital, but I ended up coming back and talking to this guy from East Carolina about his adventures in Interlaken, Switzerland doing the high roping courses and swinging from ropes while being thousands of feet away from the ground in the alps. Something for the future, perhaps.
Due to the late night (the Spanish really do spend time partying until 5am pretty regularly), we slowly woke up and went to the Museo Nacional del Prado and saw the Goya exhibits – who is pretty crazy in his own right – as well as the non-Picasso Las Meninas. Walking around the nice park I saw some Spanish wedding photographs taking place with bridesmaids clad in bright orange and noticed how the Spanish love to lisp their “c’s” and “z’s,” just because a king used to do it. Strange stuff. We went to the airport later and Ray came back extremely excited about spending 87 eurocents to go out the previous night and get free drinks through theft and the occasional homosexual who offered him shots. Maybe it was just the lisping though. It’s confusing overseas.
HiBAiSHi 
