When In London...

...make your way to Marrakesh.

Again with the ‘impressionistic’ updates (to borrow a term from my AP US history teacher). I have two essays due in the upcoming week and a friend flying in to visit from Dublin on Wednesday, but I don’t want to forget the things I wanted to say about Marrakesh before then!

It would be a stretch to say that being there was like being in another world (anyplace that has a McDonald’s is obviously Earth — other planets would likely have more sense), but it was definitely like being on another continent. That fact hit home before the airplane even landed; when I looked below me as we began our descent, instead of streets, towns, and city lights, there was red dirt, green fields, sunlight reflecting off thin streams of water used for irrigation, and slate-blue mountains in the hazy distance.

We took a taxi from the airport to our hotel — yes, not a hostel, a legitimate hotel, complete with TVs in the rooms, our own showers that we didn’t have to pay extra for, and continental breakfast each morning. The exchange rate being what it is (roughly 7 Moroccan dirhams to an American dollar), we could afford a little more class than usual. The taxi ride was an entertaining ordeal in itself: there being, apparently, no such thing as traffic police in Marrakesh, the five of us plus our driver managed to fit (along with our hand baggage) inside a car only designed to seat five. I was probably the smallest person there. Four girls shared the back seat — I didn’t even notice if the car was equipped with seatbelts, but I’m inclined to think they didn’t even bother.

Although Marrakesh is pretty touristy in its own right — and the government is doing a lot to promote that aspect of it — it has its rough edges, especially if you’re a white female. We weren’t there during the normal tourist season, so except in the marketplace, we ran into very few tourists on the streets. We weren’t actively hassled (except by vendors trying to sell us things, who referred to one or more of the girls at some time or another as “Hannah Montana” and “the Spice Girls”; we also got asked if we were looking for fish and chips, and whether we were on facebook) but something just seemed different. It wasn’t until one of my friends pointed it out that I saw practically no women (tourists excluded) in the city. There was the odd woman (some in full wrists-to-ankles covering, plus head scarf) doing her shopping at the local market, or speeding along the street on a bicycle/motorcycle hybrid (there are both pedals and a motor; these were surprisingly common), but even they disappeared when the sun went down. Outside the tourist center of the walled city of Morocco, 95% of the people I saw in restaurants were men. I hadn’t realized the kind of inherent menace there is in that until this trip. I was never hassled (and I’m also very good at ignoring what people say and just walking by — the ability to navigate Sproul Plaza at lunchtime without being inundated with flyers and appeals apparently has uses outside of Berkeley), but on the first day especially, something felt a little not right.

This being said, as soon as I had a map in my hand and a general feel for the city’s arrangement (as well as the promise of vigilance from the one male member of our group, God bless him), the feeling went away pretty quickly — and in a way it was something I’d been prepared for, having done enough googling on the subject to get an idea of how conservatively to dress. (Despite approximately 80 degree weather, I spent my time in jeans and t-shirts.)

I am now going to admit to something that, in any other city, would feel like a bit of a cop-out. You know those big red sightseeing buses? Well, there’s one that runs in Marrakesh, and my friends and I took it. It was a great way to figure out where everything was in relation to everything else without having to get lost on the way, and a great way not to walk around in the heat but still get a feel for the place.

My favorite part of being in Marrakesh was visiting the marketplace they’re famous for. I’ve seen its name transliterated in about a billion different ways, but the back of one of the postcards I bought calls it “Jamaa El Fna,” as do the signs in Marrakesh itself, so that’s the one I’m going with. You can get lost in there — in fact, my friends and I almost did. They sell everything imaginable — leather goods, home herbal remedies, ceramics, dried fruit and nuts, scarves, jewelry, live chickens, pig’s heads (freshly removed from the pigs in question) — and you are expected to bargain with them for what you buy. I came home with a hand-made leather purse with an intricate openwork design on the front flap which cost me the equivalent of $25. Other things that came home with my friends included dried apricots, carved and inlaid wooden boxes, and small ornamental daggers.

The market by night is radically different from the market by day. Around the time the sun begins to set, stalls and canopies start appearing in the plaza in front of the market, and soon enough there are a hundred little tent-restaurants ready and willing to serve you everything from traditional Moroccan food to french fries. We ate at one of these restaurants on our last night (ours was #89, I think — the menus are all basically the same, and they use their stall numbers as differentiation). I had kebabs, couscous, really good bread — and, it must be said, really good french fries. Apparently, they’re universal.

The last day of our stay, we took an excursion through some of the Berber villages situated in the High Atlas Mountains. Along with other tourists, we got in a great big van driven by a local tour guide who navigated the windy mountain roads and explained the scenery that rolled past as we gained altitude. In concept the trip was pretty touristy — the van stopped in several locations so that we could get out and snap the obligatory photos — but behind the tourist motivation were vestiges (small, but there) of a more authentic Moroccan experience. To some of the “natives,” we were obviously a way to make money through the sale of traditional arts and crafts. But to some of them we were just a blip on the radar, a small disturbance in a daily routine that (for them) probably hasn’t changed too much over the last few decades. It’s probable that a lot of them had never even been as far from home as Marrakesh.

That day, we ate lunch in a small former hotel, high up in the mountains, which served a very traditional multi-course Marrakeshi meal: bread, salad, vegetable tagine, roasted chicken, finished off with a small glass of mint tea, something Morocco’s known for (and which lives up to the hype — but granted, I was a mint tea fan to begin with).

There are some places that you go to once, just to say that you’ve been there, and to know for yourself what that means. And there are some places you go to and know you’ll come back to. While preparing for this trip, I sort of suspected that Marrakesh would fall under the first category, but after having been, I’m not so sure. There are, of course, plenty of places I plan to go to for a first time before I make a return trip to Marrakesh (or even to Morocco), but in some future where I am obscenely wealthy and can travel wherever and whenever I like, I can see myself ending up back there — even if only to share the experience of the place with a different set of people.

...va a Barcelona.

The update on my Reading Week trip is going to be split in two, not just because I visited two cities and countries (and continents!) but also because I don’t quite have the time to sit and write out the whole thing at once! But right now I have just about enough time to write about the three nights and two full days I spent in Barcelona. (I haven’t managed to upload my pictures yet, but my photographer friend Drew who was with me on the trip has his up; you can view them here.)

One of the first things that I liked about the trip was that the four years I spent studying Spanish in high school suddenly seemed much more useful. Despite the fact that Barcelona is the center of the Catalan region, which has its own peculiar dialogue (called Catalan) which is about as different from Spanish as Italian is, it’s still in Spain so everyone speaks Spanish in addition to Catalan and I was impressively able to make myself understood. Also, the street signs are (sometimes) in both languages.

I’m not usually all that into pure architecture — I appreciate buildings that have a history as well as a beautiful facade — but my favorite things about Barcelona were purely architectural and 90% Gaudi (Cliffs Notes version: he was an architect associated with the movement known as modernisme and built a lot of really awesome stuff that makes me think of a cross between early Disney fairytales and Dr. Seuss). Saturday, our first full day in Barcelona, was spent visiting the two coolest Gaudi sites in Barcelona: the Sagrada Familia and Parc Guell.

Sagrada Familia is a giant unfinished cathedral that rears unexpectedly out of the heart of the Eixample section of Barcelona. It’s massive, intricate, and still under construction. Gaudi spent the last years of his life working on this masterpiece, knowing that he wouldn’t be alive to see it completed; since his death, other architects and artists have contributed to different aspects of its current design (Gaudi did leave behind some plans, but apparently a lot of them were destroyed or lost during the Spanish Civil War). It’s a little schizophrenic as a result, but no less beautiful. The interior is still very stark, with most of the design work having been done on the exterior, but the two facades which are complete (only one of which was completed by Gaudi) are stunning. I personally favored the facade that wasn’t designed by Gaudi because its style is a lot more sparse; there’s a lot going on still, but it’s mostly going on in one color, at least, and with a lot fewer random elements.

When we were there, you couldn’t see half of the church’s interior because they were doing construction work on it, and overall the interior is (as I said before) not that impressive. But it’s worth it to pay to go in because only from the inside can you take the elevator (or stairs) to the top of one of the church’s towers. We did, and I had another Eiffel Tower-esque experience (albeit at a much decreased height) in which all of a sudden the church was a lot taller than it had seemed from the ground — and it seems pretty damn tall when you’re standing at the base of it, feeling like one of the towers ought to fall over any minute now! This is why I like climbing things: it gives you a completely different idea of how tall things really are.

After Sagrada Familia we went to Parc Guell, which was originally meant to be a posh housing development outside of central Barcelona…however, it was far enough from Las Ramblas (the main boulevard) that no one wanted to live there when Gaudi began it! (Ironically, now some of the most expensive Barcelona real estate is near Parc Guell.) The result is a large park sort of in the middle of the city, with a few instances of classic Gaudi design. The gatehouses at the entrance to the park look like literal gingerbread houses; there is a terrace at the top lined with mosaic benches ergonomically designed for comfortable lounging. (We took advantage of this.) We spent a couple of hours just wandering the park before heading back to central Barcelona and Las Ramblas for dinner.

Barcelona is the #1 city for pickpocketing, and most of it occurs on or near Las Ramblas, the busiest pedestrian corridor in the city. My friends and I escaped unscathed, but I can understand why so many people lose their wallets there: we weren’t there during tourist season and the place was still pretty busy, especially on a weekend night. The actual street which cars can drive on is separated by a giant meridian which is a pedestrian zone, full of stalls selling wares, street performers, living statues, tourist traps, and outdoor dining for the many tapas restaurants lining either side of the street. We ate at one of those restaurants (albeit at the inside portion) two of the three nights we spent in the city. I cared less about the tapas and more about the fabulous chicken paella. Somehow, neither I nor any of my friends ever managed to get a picture of all the food — possibly because we were too busy eating it!

Sunday, we spent the morning in the Picasso Museum (mostly his earlier stuff — more mature works are at the Prado in Madrid, I think — but still well worth the admission fee), the afternoon strolling Las Ramblas, and the late afternoon/evening making our way to Montjuic, something larger than a hill but smaller than a mountain atop which rests a fortified castle looking out over Barcelona’s harbor. The view of the city from there rivaled the view from Parc Guell (and there was a castle!). Apparently, Franco took over the place during the Spanish Civil War and made it into a stronghouse. It’s not a very castle-y castle in the medieval (or even gothic) architectural sense, just a place on top of a hill with a lot of guns around it so that you’d be an idiot to try to storm it. But it had a clear view of the ocean — the first time I’ve seen the sea since leaving California! I do miss saltwater, apparently.

We turned in pretty early because we had to catch a bus back to the airport the next morning to continue our journey to Marrakesh. (Stay tuned!)

...talk some more about Paris.

Yes, this is the real Paris update you’ve all been waiting for. I’m afraid that since it’s been a week and a half (and since I have visited two more cities, two more countries, and one more continent since then!), my recollections won’t be as prolonged or vivid as they might otherwise have been, but you’ll have to bear with me through a rather impressionistic update. You can also look through my scenery-heavy pictures here.

Friday, October 30

We caught an early-morning flight out of London Luton airport, which is perhaps the most awkward airport in London to get to (although I can’t speak from authority, since I’ve only flown out of three of the five thus far). We had to get a taxi at 5:30AM in order to get to the airport in time to make it through security and be ready to board our plane on time. We arrived in Paris (at Charles de Galle, and after some more experiences with Ryanair, I have to tell you how rare it is for a discount airline to fly into a major airport) and took the RER train from the airport to Gare du Nord, where we took the metro straight to our hotel (Hotel Picard, inordinately proud of its two star rating). It was cheap and really just a place to sleep at night, but I’m totally fine with that, and it was only two blocks from Place de la Republique, which is pretty centrally located on the Metro, making it easy to get from place to place. I frankly love the Paris Metro; it’s easy to use, efficient, and clean. It doesn’t have the same kind of branding applied to it as the London Underground, but it doesn’t need it; the metro stops are still signed (for the most part) with the art deco-inspired signs developed when the metro was first implemented.

The first thing we did when we got there was go to Pere Lachaise, a very large and fairly well-known cemetery that was within walking distance of Place de la Republique (it would have been a very fast metro ride, but we wanted to find some food and some espresso along the way). I was a little tired and a little hungry and, at times, a little annoyed (it was very easy to get lost in Pere Lachaise, and none of us had maps), but the cemetery was beautiful. If any of you have seen the film Paris, Je T’aime, it’s the same cemetery that has Oscar Wilde’s grave in it. (For those of you who haven’t seen it, I’d recommend it, keeping in mind that it’s a bunch of short films and the caliber does vary.) I saw the grave of Wilde, as well as Eugene Delacroix (painter of “Liberty Leading the People”), Moliere, Chopin, and others that I can’t at this moment remember. Me, Sam, and Jess split off from the boys (Nav and Oren) pretty early on and spent three hours wandering through the place, trying to find all of the graves on our lists, but also taking the time to really enjoy the place. I took so many pictures, and they can’t even begin to capture it. The weather was just the right shade of gloom, the leaves on the trees were yellowing and beginning to fall — in short, perfect cemetery atmosphere.

After Pere Lachaise, we went to Montmartre and climbed the hill to see the church of Sacre Coeur. We went in, but didn’t climb to the top; it was a chilly, overcast day, so the view was obstructed by fog. We did, however, ride on a merry-go-round and giggle like small children, as well as eat our first Parisian crepes. (They were yummy!)

Saturday, October 31

Since Reno and Drew had class on Friday and couldn’t fly out with us, they came in Saturday. We had an unintentionally leisurely morning waiting for them to arrive, but once they got settled in and we got breakfast (for me, this consisted of croissants and a shared bottle of milk from the small corner store across the street from the hotel — thankfully Oren is also a nonfat milk drinker), we made our way to Ile de la Cite, arguably the center of Paris. This island in the middle of the Seine is home to Notre Dame, Saint Chapelle, the Conciergerie prison, and the Palais du Justice (and probably more, but those are the big things that I know about that are there). After having spent my entire summer reading and re-reading A Tale of Two Cities for work, actually seeing the sites of events during the French Revolution was impressive — for instance, Charles Darnay is imprisoned in the Conciergerie while he awaits his execution, and it is in this prison that Sydney Carton changes his life for Darnay’s.

I don’t even know what to say about Notre Dame, except that you can’t possibly do it justice. I want to learn French now (even more than I did before) so that I can read Victor Hugo without translation and see if he manages it. We climbed all the way to the top of one of the towers of the church, and the view out over Paris was spectacular. We also got to go up inside one of the bell towers and see one of the bells — one that they still actually ring. I was surprised how accurate Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame was to the architecture of the place; I even found individual gargoyles that looked a lot like the ones that come to life in the movie.

Inside, there was choral music playing, and the clouds cast alternating light and shadow through the hundreds of panels of stained glass. Paris taught me, among other things, that I am in love with stained glass. St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican might be the largest church in the world, but to me, it pales in comparison with Notre Dame. My friends (who have not yet been to Italy) laughed when I exclaimed at how much more intimate it felt — of course it’s still huge, but it’s nowhere near on the same scale as St. Peter’s. And perhaps that’s why I like it. It feels like a better compromise between God’s scale and man’s. I can actually imagine services being held at Notre Dame, and the next time I’m in Paris I would love to attend one.

Afterwards, we crossed the bridge to Ile de Saint Louis (a smaller island in the Seine) where we had lunch and ice cream accompanied by a beautiful view before making our way over to the Louvre. It was late afternoon, but I had remembered reading somewhere that the Louvre was open until 8pm. We got there at 4:30ish only to learn that it closed at 5:30, so we decided to come back the next day, and instead made our way over to the Eiffel Tower. Our timing was perfect; we arrived just as the sun was setting, about ten minutes before the tower lit up.

You don’t really realize how tall the Eiffel Tower is, even when you’re standing under it. At least, I didn’t. It wasn’t until I got up to the first observation deck, which is maybe a third of the way up the tower, that I realized this thing is big. This realization was followed in quick succession by the realization that I still had another two thirds to go up. In the elevator that takes you from the middle observation deck to the top, my ears popped. Oren and I were both squeaking like little girls about how we weren’t sure we’d be able to manage the height, neither of us being terribly fond of tall things. Jess had been before, and Reno is a self-proclaimed heights junkie, so there was a little laughter at our expense.

By the time we got to the top, we were high enough up that the entire view was shrouded in fog. It made the ground seem even further away — like it wasn’t really there, or like I was just looking at a picture. Frankly, it was probably easier that way than if it had been clear out. I would have been much more scared by the prospect of seeing exactly how far up I was. The fog made everything seem surreal, and diffused the light from the tower in strange ways. My knees were a little shaky, but I’m going to take the liberty of attributing that to the amount of walking I’d done that day.

Sunday, November 1:

Me, Oren, Jess, and Reno spent four hours of this day wandering the halls of the Louvre and being generally awed by the art. Nav and Drew were supposed to join us, but they were apparently out until 4AM the night before (we later learned they got caught up in an impromptu jam session on the banks of the Seine?) and we wanted to be there when the museum opened so the four of us left without them. Sam had been to Paris multiple times before and there were other museums she wanted to see, so she left us.

Originally we hadn’t wanted to go to the Louvre on this Sunday because it was the first Sunday of the month and admission was free; we were sure the crowds would be ridiculous. But since we had come too late the night before, we shrugged and just planned to show up early. Frankly, I didn’t have any problems with the crowds; there were a lot of people, it’s true, and in some places there were too many camera flashes going off for my liking (even though you’re not supposed to use flash in the museum), but we still saw everything we had really wanted to, and some things that were beautiful that I didn’t know were missing from my life until I saw them.

The first and foremost among this latter category is the partially intact sculpture known as the Winged Victory of Samothrace. This woman, arms and head missing, nonetheless stands victorious at the top of a staircase at the end of a long passageway, the museum seemingly designed around her. Winged Victory was more impressive than anything else I saw in the Louvre, all the famous and typical pictures included. The only things that came close for me were Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” and David’s “Coronation of Napoleon” (which takes up an entire wall — it’s about as big as Napoleon’s ego).

After the Louvre, we decided to make our way toward the Garnier Opera House, made famous by Gaston Leroux’s novel (and later Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical) The Phantom of the Opera. We were planning on taking a guided tour, but it turned out we should have asked ahead — a matinee performance was scheduled, so the theatre was closed to tourists. We strolled back in the general direction of the Louvre and found a cafe where we had croques madame, very French sandwiches involving cheese, ham, and fried eggs. We met back up with Sam and walked in the rain (it was a very gloomy weekend) to the Musee d’Orsay, which houses impressionist art, but we didn’t end up going in since the lines were so long. Jess and Sam split to visit the Rodin sculpture garden, and along with Oren and Reno, I made my way back to Place de la Republique, where the three of us found a comfortable cafe and drank hot chocolate for a couple of hours. They read, I wrote, beginning my NaNoWriMo novel by hand in a small journal I purchased at the Louvre, with an image of Winged Victory on the cover.

Monday, November 2

We went back to the Garnier Opera House, and it was a good thing we did, because not only did we get in to see the opera house, we also got to take the guided tour, because we happened to be there in time for the one that was in English. The theatre is gorgeous, and walking through there felt like being part of Phantom of the Opera. (Sidenote: after getting back from Paris, Reno and I booked tickets to see Love Never Dies, the musical sequel to Phantom, during its opening run in London this spring. Will it be terrible? Probably. Will that still be awesome? Definitely.) Since Jess and Sam were gone, and Nav and Drew were basically doing their own thing, the day was really relaxed and we just took our time.

After the Opera House, we got coffee and cheesecake before heading back in the general direction of the Louvre and Notre Dame. We strolled and just checked out the area. Reno and I went into Saint Chapelle (reinforcing my love of stained glass), after which we found this strange American-style diner (Happy Days Diner, I believe) just across the river from Notre Dame, where we got cheap meals, which we ate in the plaza in front of Notre Dame before returning to our hotel, picking up our bags, and catching the bus back to the airport.

...fall in love with Paris

I don’t have enough time to provide a full update — November has started and with it, my frantic novel-writing; by this time next week, I will be in Barcelona, about to depart for Marrakesh, and very little of that is planned yet, aside from plane tickets and a place to sleep — but I find it necessary to relate that I spent a long weekend in Paris and fell in love.

It’s a different kind of love from the one I feel for London. Queen Mary is another “home” now, and this city feels contentedly mine in a way that only Berkeley really rivals. I still remember the first time I ever went to London, with my hopes all up, and I got this giddy feeling the instant I stepped off the plane, like being there had turned on some kind of switch and lit up something new.

Paris wasn’t like that — I landed at Charles de Gaulle airport at about ten in the morning Paris time, after having been awake since four in the morning London time in order to get to the airport, etc. I don’t know when it hit me that I was actually there. But once it did? The beginning of a beautiful friendship.

I’ve always loved French history. It’s part of the reason why I like romanticism so much — it’s a literary and artistic movement inspired in large part by the actions of the revolutionaries in France in 1789. I spent the summer reading and re-reading A Tale of Two Cities and thus getting to know Dickens’s Paris like the back of my hand. When I was walking the streets, everything came back to me, and even if I didn’t have a map in my head, I could tell you who the streets were named after. I love London for its history, as well, but the history in Paris has a different flavor to it, something I can’t quite pin down.

In four days, I saw so much that I had wanted to see — everything, in fact, that was on my list, and more besides. And yet I still know that there is plenty that will pull me back. It’s hard to say that I like it better than other places I’ve been, because all European cities are different, and admirable for different reasons. But still, I think it wouldn’t be entirely incorrect to state that, after London, Paris is the second most amazing city I’ve seen in Europe, and that I know I’ll be returning.

...go to Rome!

I spent three nights and two full days of this weekend in Rome. I was there for a week or so during July, and this was my fourth trip there in total (the first being six years ago, when I was just fourteen), but every time I visit, the city has something new to give me. This time, I met up with my friend Andy, who’s studying at Trinity College in Dublin for this school year and who had always wanted to go to Rome but had never even been to Europe until his trip to Dublin. With my more-than-average knowledge of the history, myth, legend, geography, and even language of Rome, I led us on a two-day whirlwind tour of all of the major sights and experiences, including:

the Vatican Museum + Sistine Chapel;

St. Peter’s Basilica + climb to the ‘cupola’ (the pinnacle atop the dome);

Piazza Navona;

the Pantheon;

Piazza di Spagna/Spanish Steps;

Trevi Fountain;

Piazza del Popolo and Via del Corso;

Borghese gardens;

Victor Emmanuel Monument;

Roman Forum;

Colosseum (properly known as the Flavian Amphitheatre, in case you were curious).

In fact, the best question is probably what we didn’t see. We didn’t cross the river and hang out in Trastevere, we didn’t go into the museum at the Villa Borghese, we didn’t rent Vespas…and really that’s about all that we didn’t manage that I have at some point done or wanted to do.

My favorite part was being in the Forum at sunset; I took more pictures in that one hour than I did at any other site we visited, I’m almost sure of it. There’s something beautiful about Rome at sunset, but the Forum at sunset in mid-October was totally breathtaking; I’ve never seen anything like it, in Italy or elsewhere (though Florence, near the Arno River, during a summer sunset comes to mind). I also really liked climbing to the top of the ‘Vittoriano,’ as the Victor Emmanuel Monument is called in Italian, and seeing the city from there, something my family and I had never done. The days were long, and there was a lot of walking, but I had a fantastic time — mostly because I’m slowly becoming more and more familiar with the city and its culture. I’m even getting confident enough in basic Italian to ask for directions, order a meal, and always say my pleases and thank-yous (not to mention read street signs and purchase train and metro tickets). Actually, it wasn’t until after I’d gone through the whole process in Italian that I realized the self-service metro ticket machines could be made to display their instructions in English.

This upcoming weekend will be spent reading Nicholas Nickleby and writing the first essay of the semester (a close textual analysis of a passage from Jane Eyre) because the weekend after that, I will be making my first ever trip to Paris! Then I have one more week of instruction before I get a whole week off for ‘Reading Week,’ in which technically you’re supposed to study and catch up with reading, but when I and my friends will be spending two and a half days in Barcelona followed by three and a half days in Marrakesh. I’m really excited to be doing so much traveling and experiencing so many different places while I’m here, but I’m equally excited to be able to call London ‘home.’

(I’ll post a few of my favorite pictures from the trip on this blog, but you can find a larger selection of them here.)