Sunday, September 30, 2012
You know your jealous
Friday, September 28, 2012
Portugal
Alright on to Portugal. I must admit that I was not expecting anything going into Portugal, I just thought it would be cool to go there and that we would finally have enough sun to go chill on the beach. I did not expect to fall in love with Lisbon, particularly the Alfalma district. It was beautiful, full of little winding alleys and buildings built into the sides of slopes leading to the ocean in a manner that reminded me of pictures I have seen of Greece. It was absolutely amazing and we all decided that it was one of our favorite ports so far (Galway is still ranked number one because its Ireland but this was an extremely close second). The first day Danielle, Amy and I had a scavenger hunt that we signed up for through SAS. I was super excited because I think that a scavenger hunt is such a unique way to get acquainted with a city. We split into three teams and my team was Danielle, Amy, Isaiah (my super awesome RD), Laura and Conner. We started at the main square with a huge arch that was put up in rememberance of the disasterous earthquake and tsunami that had occurred. We were given guidebooks that held our clues and tasks for what we had to find and do. Most of the tasks required us to learn something about the city’s history or its landscape. We had to run up and down hills, through a castle, past churches, purchase sardines, drink some cherry brandy, and ask locals questions about landmarks or famous Portuguese people in history. It was SOOO much fun, we had a blast! Naturally our team won and we got the coolest prizes ever! They had gone out and gotten hand-painted tiles with the Semester At Sea logo painted on them. For those of you who don’t know tiles are HUGE in Portugal and so that was very special!
The second day all we did was chill at the beach. We got a big group together and just went to lay out and read and swim a bit. We went to a beach that people had recommended and it was beautiful, there was a little cove on one side that we stayed near and we even went cliff diving off of the rocks bordering the cove—it was such a rush! We got a couple of scrapes climbing up there but nothing major and it was totally worth it :)
The third day we went to the Oceanarium which was awesome—we got to see penguins up close along with a large variety of fish and other sea creatures that are not found in North America (or at least not in our zoos). That was really fun and we ran into some of the little kids on the ship and hung out with them for part of it which made it even better—you know how I love kids. Well, sorry if that was short or nondescript but I’m tired so I am headed to bed. Love you all!
~Colleen
One more note from Belgium
Hey everybody how are you all? We are sooo busy here but its great and I love it! Sorry that I haven't sent any real messages since Belgium but we have been working on projects and papers and getting things planned for the Canary Islands now that we are going there instead of Morocco. Anywho, I just wanted to say one last quick note on Belgium before moving on. When we were docked in Antwerpen there was a bridge that followed along the side of the river that was just a cool lookout point and had a restaurant on one end. Coincidentally this bridge was about even with deck 4 of our ship and about 20 feet away. So the entire time we were there (six days) people were walking along and looking at the ship and taking pictures and it felt a little bit like we were a zoo exhibit lol. The best part was that the day we were leaving there were tons of people there and even a band! They waved and talked to us and took lots of pictures--which we totally photo bombed! The people taking the picture would see us being goofy in the background and zoom in so that we were in the pictures :) It was really funny but we seriously felt like we were in the zoo so we came up with a little list of why SAS and the ship is like a zoo and here it is:
1. They feed us basically the same thing every day at scheduled times
2. They train us
3. There is a special doctor always there just for us
4. They clean our cages
5. People always stare at us and the ship
(there were more but I can't remember them right now)
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
More Pictures :)
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Paris Pictures
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Important Update!
Hey everyone--I am sorry that I have not been able to update lately but it has been a bit crazy here. This is an IMPORTANT UPDATE for those of you who do not get the parent/family e-mail from SAS. (for reference we are currently docked in Lisbon, Portugal and will be sailing to Cadiz, Spain tomorrow)
The University of Virginia and ISE staff at the offices in Charlottesville have been monitoring the situation in the Middle East and northern Africa for awhile now. The situation has unfortunately been escalating and today there were people outside the US Embassy in Casablanca shouting anti-US sentiments. Therefore, the organization has officially cancelled our stop in Casablanca, Morocco. Instead, we will be spending two extra days in Cadiz, Spain and additionally we will spend two days in the Canary Islands. I want you all to know that they are taking care with this situation and that our security is of the utmost importance.
~Colleen
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Amsterdam
After spending the night on the ship Amy, Sarah, our friend Zach and I headed to the station to take the train to Amsterdam, after about three hours and one mix-up where we got off at the wrong station (oopsies) we made it to Amsterdam! One of the girls who I did the Harry Potter tour with, Allie, had told me about this amazing pancake place that was just about a block down from Anne Frank's house and since we really wanted to see the house we thought it was the perfect place to stop for lunch. Basically, you get these pancakes that are the size of a small pizza and are topped with almost anything! I, of course, got banana/chocolate :)
After we ate our gigantic pancakes, okay so after we ate most of our gigantic pancakes, we headed to Anne Frank's house. They do not allow photography inside so I cannot show you pictures, if you want to see it you should go for yourself--which I highly encourage. You enter through what used to be the Jam shop and manufacturing center that was run by Otto Frank (Anne's father). The house/shop was left as it was after they were found out and the Nazi's raided the place. Otto felt that leaving the rooms empty was a remembrance of all those who lost their homes, their livelihoods and in some cases their lives and so the museum is mostly empty rooms. They did, however, provide models and pictures to show what they place looked like when the Frank's and others lived and worked there, which made it all the more impactful. In what used to be Anne's room they have preserved/restored the pictures that she cut out and glued onto the walls to make the room look more cheery and all over the museum they have painted quotes from her diary onto the walls in plain, straight, black lettering. It was very humbling and somewhat depressing because you could feel the tension in the air. All of the windows had been blocked by black curtains and people were crowded in the tiny rooms that were shared by the eight members of the secret annex. In some places they played videos of the events that took place or interviews with Frank Otto and Miep Gies (one of the office members who helped the Franks). At the end of the museum there another video of survivors who were Anne and her sister's friends and classmates. There was also a room which held her original diary and pages of the notebooks and spare paper that she continued her stories on.
After we had finished touring her house we wandered around for a bit and went to see the royal palace (we think, at least that's what the girl in the sandwich shop told us it was). The weather was looking a bit rainy so we thought we would take a canal cruise in a covered boat through the city, which was really pretty, especially because the sun was setting and coming through the rain clouds in really cool patterns and colors. Here are some pics from the canal tour:
Thats all for now--e-mail me about your lives because I want to hear about what you all are doing too!
~Colleen
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Paris Day Two AKA all of Paris in a Day
Since we went to Disneyland the first day we had one day to do pretty much everything else in Paris—which resulted in us running around the city for at least twelve hours looking like energizer bunnies but hey, we did it! Our hostel was decent and had a kitchen so one of our goals was to find mac and cheese to make that night because we’re college students and college students+kitchen=mac and cheese. It’s a basic equation of life.
Lets start at the beginning though, with the best crepes you can ever imagine. We found this cute little café that had heaters (it was a bit chilly) right near the Notre Dame that had these amazing crepes. Sarah and I got nutella-bananna with whipped cream and they had these really good nectar-juice drinks, I had mango :) After breakfast (or dessert depending on which way you want to look at it), we kind of hopped on with a tour group walking buy that had a really funny tour guide talking about the Cathedral and Charlemagne and the Hunchback of Notre Dame and so on. We followed their group for awhile simply because she was a really good tour guide and then broke off because we wanted to go inside. The inside was gorgeous—especially all of the stained glass. There are two circles which are, if I remember correctly from Art History (and there is no guarantee that I remember anything from that class) they are called the Rose Windows or something similar. They are amazing and I will put a picture up soon—because I forgot to put one up earlier today, oopsies.
Thinking ahead we wanted to go check out the Eiffel Tower to see if we could get tickets to go up at night (we didn’t know that if you got a ticket you had to go up immediately). After taking pictures from just about every angle we talked about what we wanted to do for the rest of the day and decided that Danielle and Amy would stand in the hour plus long line to get us tickets for the tower (again we thought we could get tickets for a later time—our bad).
Meanwhile, Sarah and I wanted to check out the Louvre, specifically the Mona Lisa. We left the Eiffel Tower at 1400 and wound our way through the maze that is the Paris Metro (the subway) to the Louvre where we found out that every sign we saw pointed a different direction for the museum. We finally found our way to the actual entrance and after purchasing our tickets and finding a map written in English we promptly went directly to the wing housing the Mona Lisa (my mom is going to kill me for this by the way because I am sure she could spend an entire day and then some at the Louvre), vaguely noting the statues and paintings we quickly walked (ok sort of ran) past. We saw the Mona Lisa and took a good number of pictures after admiring the painting which, as I’m sure everyone who has seen it in real life has told you, is smaller than you would think. I wanted to see the statue of Aphrodite, so we wound our way through to that wing, again peripherally noting whatever we happened to pass. After that we attempted to walk directly to the Ancient Egyptian wing, only to find ourselves lost in a Medieval Moat. We eventually conceded and asked a somewhat crabby museum worker for directions. Finally locating the great sphinx and the statue of Ramses II we had finished our whirl-wind tour of the things we most wanted to see at the Louvre and then proceeded to see everything else on our way to the exit, as we passed through almost every single exhibit on the way out. We decided that anyone who wants to take a tour of the Louvre (a normal one, not the Colleen and Sarah speedy special) would simply have to walk to a random point in the museum and then follow the exit signs and inevitably they would walk through every exhibit on the way, therefore making their way through the entire museum. Leaving the Louvre in just under an hour after we entered, we attempted to re-trace our steps back to the Eiffel Tour and made it back by just after 1600 making our entire trip just over two hours.
We had been sitting under the Eiffel Tower for about five minutes when Amy and Danielle showed up begging us not to hate them. They then explained that when you wait in line for tickets you have to immediately go up and so they did—they also told us that they had bought Eiffel Tower mac and cheese for later. We were not mad at all and told them that as long as we could steal some of their pictures (and eat some of the macaroni) we would just go up later that night ourselves. We were all starving by then so we made our way to a near-by pizza place for dinner where our animated waiter teased us the entire time but made up for it by helping us figure out where the rest of the major monuments we wanted to see were located and how to get there. After dinner we hit up the Arch de Triumph, though we did not go up, and then headed to the train station to get tickets for the next morning. We made our way down to the Pantheon after that and then found a grocery store to buy supplies for our beloved mac and cheese. Amy and Danielle headed back to the hostel to make half of the mac and cheese for dinner and shower and Sarah and I headed back to the Eiffel Tower so that we could get our chance to go to the top.
Thankfully the line was much shorter when we got there and a good thing too because just as we got into the first elevator it started to rain. We made our way to the top and were mezmorized by the city lights sprawling below us. We took pictures of everything that we could and then hurried back down to get away from the rain and the wind. The inside part had a list of sorts running all around the edge and it pointed toward different monuments/natural wonders around the world and stated how far away they were and which country they were in. We made sure to take a picture of things from every country that we are visiting (or had visited) on the voyage and had fun exclaiming, “we’re going there, and there, and we have already been there…”
It was a great day but a tiring day and after making some mac and cheese (which was amazing by the way) we crashed and went to bed. Back to Belgium in the morning where we basically just hung out and traded pictures. Amsterdam tomorrow—more later.
Love and miss you all <3
~Colleen