Oh the Places You'll Go...

I know it's been 10 days, so I apologize to anyone who's checked my blog and been disappointed that there wasn't a new post recently. But here it is! The moment you've all been waiting for, my blog post for Sept. 26th. In 10 days, you would not believe what I've accomplished, I titled this blog post "Oh The Places You'll Go" after one of my favorite Dr. Suess books, only because I feel it's so applicable to my trip in London, and more so, greater Europe.

When I left you last, I had seen Buckingham Palace, Avenue Q, and Parliament. But in the last 10 days I've traveled quite a lot. We'll start with last weekend in particular when I traveled with five other Elon in London students to Paris, France. Of course, this was my first trip to the beautiful country of France, but you may be surprised all that I saw. On Friday, we woke up at 4am in the morning to catch a night bus to the Thames river, where we picked up our coach about an hour or so later and got on our way toward the Coast. I saw the cliffs of Dover for the first time in my life in the early morning hours after daybreak and that's the port where our coach drove onto an enormous ferry, which was our source of transportation across the English Channel. I've never been on anything like a cruise ship before, but the ferry was amazing. I got a number of good photos of the coastline of England from the top deck of the ship and of course, by the way, I collected quite a lot of photos over France-weekend regardless, 415 to be exact.

Anyways, we arrived in Paris later that day in our coach around 4:30-5:30pm, and drove straight to the heart of the city, near the Eifel Tower and got onto a riverboat along the River Siene to do a river cruise of the city. The first night, our group had already seen all the highlights of the city via boat. Notre Dame, the Louvre, Eifel Tower, all the many bridges built over the course of French history, the original island that Paris was discovered on, etc. Then of course we had some time afterwards to take our tourist photos in front of the Eifel Tower itself and then called it a night. On Saturday, we were up early and at it again after a quick breakfast at our hotel. I must say, I am not a picky eater, but the one thing that I will mention about food in Paris, and maybe some of the greater world, is that people are a fan of warm milk, I may be ethnocentric to some degree, but I must say, I'm just a huge fan of a cold glass of milk in the morning, or in my cereal or whatever, but needless to say, I managed anyways.

Regardless, Saturday was jam-packed. We started the morning at the Sacre-Coeur Basilica, which after a climb of all the hundreds of steps, overlooks the entire city of Paris as the sun was beginning to situate itself in the sky. Wow, what a humbling experience. Where the basilica is actually located is an artisan town, and it has been for hundreds of years. Street artists wanting to charcoal sketch your picture are everywhere, musicians in the corner streets playing their woes, and inside the basilica, you'd never expect the amount of faith that is present there. It's a very humbling experience to be around so many individuals with so much faith in what they believe in. Anyways, it was a great opportunity to reflect and just kinda chill out for some time. Following that, we took the back streets off the hilltop to see some of the original windmills that stood atop of Paris before the Basilica was built and following that, we went to see the original Moulin Rouge. The windmill on top of it, is actually a fake windmill, not a real one, or a working one, and no, we didn't go inside, it apparently is like 85 euro per person to have some sort of meal and see the can-can dancers, but regardless, it was a tourist attraction anyways, for better or worse.

Following that, we hopped back on the bus, and headed to Notre Dame Cathedral. WOW! What a place! I took a lot of photos there, not only of the cathedral, but of the people there too! I didn't climb to the top, because there was a fee, but it was so gorgeous. It's crazy that I always have to remind myself that history here in Europe is so rich, and ours back in the states is so young. These cathedrals and churches I've seen so far, took so many years to build, and have so much history within them as well, and in addition to being tourist hot spots, they're honestly fully functional churches with active congregations. Nevertheless, I've been so impressed by all of them so far. After Notre Dame and a quick lunch (by the way, I did have plenty of baugettes while in France, not too shabby) we were back on the coach and headed to Versailles. The guys on the trip decided that if we were going to France, and couldn't make it to Normandy, we were definitely going to Versailles, because we've learned about it so much in our history classes, we just had to see it.

The Palace of Versailles, is absolutely stunning, and did I mention ridiculously GI-NORMOUS! (I know mom that's not a real word, but gargantuan doesn't describe it effectively.) I couldn't even fit the entire palace in one photo frame, it took like 4, and I still haven't figured out wide-angle shots completely yet, but I'm pretty sure it can't be done anyways. King Louis XIV who had the idea of building the thing, knew how to live right, that's for sure. Talk about a wild MTV cribs video he'd have, the place is great. We didnt' actually tour the palace, or walk through it's two golden laid gates, but what we did do, is walk around the entire thing, to the even more impressing 200,000, yes, 200,000 ACRE gardens. Jeez, I would hate to be a landscaping crewman working for King Louie back in the day. Beyond the palace there is this giant fountain which starts the original terrace of the gardens, followed by a half mile walkway alongside of shrubberies and greek/roman inspired statues leading to the Grand Canal. There, we ate at a small authentic and pricy French cafe, people watched, which is very popular in france, and watched all the romantics and the families take boats across the canal, and of course, took more photo opportunities.

After exploring Versailles for the afternoon, we were back on the coach toward Paris again where we were dropped off at the Eifel Tower, and of course, our crew went to the very top. I used to have a severe fear of heights, but I'm getting a lot better, I mean, especially when you're in a rickity old-timey and shaking elevator traveling almost 1000 feet in the air. The view is phenomenal. We went up at sunset, and after the long wait, were up in the air 1000 feet for nightfall, and subsequently watching the city of Paris light up and become a firestorm of shining lights. The Siene is beautiful from the top, every bridge highlighting the water, Notre Dame and the Arc de Triumph can all be seen, and no matter where you're at, the view incredibly extends to the horizon. They actually serve champagne at the top of the Eiffel tower, which I thought was hilarious, but I believe it's due to the amount of people that propose to their girlfriends on the top of the tower. Which by the way, Paris, has a little bit too much PDA (public displays of affection) for my taste, but that's neither here nor there. Anyways, it was rather funny, because after seeing a couple in wedding attire ascend to the top of the Eiffel tower, a couple of the guys in our group staged a "wedding proposal" to the girls with us, and on both occasions that it happened, all of the people around us thought it was real, and as I took pictures of it, all of the other tourists thought they just had witnessed something magical, haha, I found it amazingly humorous.

Nevertheless, I didn't mention that I also saw the famous square in which Marie Antoinette and other famous French leaders were executed by guillotine, the prison in which they were held, the supposed resting place of Napoleon Boneapart, the Arc de Triumph, the obilisque donated by the Egyptians in peace time, as well as this giant monument built by Napoleon out of 230 some cannons solely as the foundation, which I found interesting. Not that he needed those 230 cannons at waterloo or anything, but those are just minute details. Anyhow, Sunday morning came around and we went to the Louvre for a number of hours. There are 250,000 exhibits in the Louvre, spanning thousands of years, and artifacts from all sorts of places across the globe. I got my picture in front of the Mona Lisa (a lot smaller than I imagined lol), Michaelangelo's Aphrodite, saw the Code of Hammurabi (one of my favorite exhibits. Wikipedia it later, but it was basically the first ever law/code written in the world actually down on stone by King Hammurabi, who was one of the credited rulers over like Babylon/the Middle East during the short time after the Egyptians and such...by the way, the laws included things like beating your wife and other such ones, it's quite comical by today's standards)...if you didn't already know, I'm a complete nerd. Some other highlights included an authentic medieval mote, paintings galore, the statue of Ramses II, mummies, sarcophogai, and plenty more. Of course I got my picture at both the outside of the main entrance to the Louvre, which is the modern glass pyramid, and also at the inverted glass pyramid, just like Tom Hanks from the Da Vinci Code.

So that was basically Paris/France in a nutshell, it was a crampacked weekend and I slept a lot in transit. After my return, I went back into work on Monday/Wednesday, and I must say, I'm absolutely having the time of my life at Xtreme Information. On Wednesday, I got to use some fun equipment and work on a product called "The Reel" that we put out every month, that highlights the best advertisements in the world and in the UK in the past month, and gives the contact and details of every production company, agency, sound editers, post-edit people, and directors as well. The ads are selected, and put on a DVD and then sent to our clients. Which of course, beside each description of the add, there is a picture thumbnail of the advert itself. Well, to make a long story even longer, if any of this makes any sense at all, basically what I did was viewed all 100-150 ads for the next month, and freeze-framed the commercial or short at a highlighted or artistic or graphic moment, and following that, I took a high-resolution photo of that moment as well. Basically what all of that means, is next month when the new issue of the Reel comes out, every single photo used in the product that will go out to the clients, was selected and made by me. Kinda cool right? It's awesome because I'm getting actual experience and my work is even getting published.

Last night I also attended the live recording of a BBC radio show entitled "The Chat Room" or something like that, which was hosted by Clive Anderson, who's the guy who was the host on the British Version of "Who's Line is it Anyways" if you've seen that. It was a satirical show about current events and pretty hilarious, it was cool to be apart of a studio audience for the first time.

Nevertheless, school is very hard, I have so much work and I'm trying to keep up as well as attempt to do a few things here and there and oh wait, live in a big city too. I hope you all have been entertained and that you'll tune in again soon, hopefully I'll post a little sooner as well. Please keep the emails and comments coming, it's great to hear from home. Take care all, and of course, as the Brits say, CHEERS!