Seeing the Sights...All in One Day

4th Weekend Trip: London

London is by far my favorite city that I've visited thus far. I've never felt more at home. It could be the shopping, the polite people, or just the fact that I'm in a place where everyone speaks English. Walking around London is like walking around a royal village. Everywhere you go, you're graced with statues of Lords, Dukes, and Sir's. It almost gets overwhelming with how many royal names you come across just tooling around the city. First day, we all visited Buckingham Palace for the 'Changing of the Guard' ceremony, which was unfortunately cancelled due to rain. We still got to see the guards though! Somehow, we managed to find guards outside this other palace and my friend Lauren managed to make one of them laugh. Drew quite the crowd too, seeing as they're forbidden to even smile.

Buckingham Palace

Lauren makes the guard laugh

Favorite Moment in Barcelona

Beaches in Barcelona

Market Day

The St. Joseph market on Las Ramblas is by far the most popular food market in Barcelona. It takes up only a small plaza behind an alleyway, but once inside, it's a condensed maze of fruits, seafoods, spices, cheeses, and chocolates. Any grocery store would easily be put to shame here.

3rd Weekend Trip: Birthday in Barcelona

Sagrada Famillia Church

busy day at Las Ramblas

I couldn't have asked for a better place to celebrate my birthday weekend than in Barcelona. I was pleasantly surprised at the community there, considering that I didn't speak any Spanish. The weather was perfection, and while the people who actually lived there bundled up in coats and scarves, my friends and I were out in sunglasses and sandals to enjoy the sunny weather. This place is very rooted in the artistic scene, which doesn't surprise me. The sidewalk artists we encountered were just the modern makings of their predecessors like Picasso and Gaudi.

Favorite Moment in Stockholm

Going aboard the 'Matilda'

The Land of the Pretties

Stockholm is notoriously known for its beautiful people. I don't think I've ever seen so many pretty people congregated in one place. Everyone here is white, blonde, skinny, and dressed to kill. The fashion scene is very up to date, and there's no one here behind trends...except maybe us. Even sitting in McDonalds, we would see these supermodel-looking Swedes strut in, while here we are typical tourists in our jeans and T-shirts. McDonalds seems to be the happening place at night, everyone ends up coming here at some point. But other than McDonalds, Sweden itself has a lot to offer in terms of things to do and to look at. Every building is a different color from the next: yellow, pink, green and brown. Daytime is a shopping mecca and place for cafes and juice bars. Nighttime is a whirlwind of gorgeous Swedes hustling in and out of night clubs. It's definitely an electric city.

view from our apartment

We decided to go to one of Sweden's well-known flea markets to get our hands on some antiques. This place was far outside the city in an underground basement of a shopping center. There was even an admission fee, which just made it all the more intriguing. Once we got down there...I think the best way to describe our reaction was overwhelmed. The place was cluttered. Booths were filled head-to-toe with jewelry, chandeliers, and porcelain tea sets. The back had paintings, carpets, and furniture next to all of the antique tea sets. And there wasn't just antiques. People were selling old electronics, clothes, and records. I managed to get a cheap painting, so I'm very excited to bring a little piece of Sweden back with me.

Swedish Museums Are Full Of Surprises

Typically, museums abroad serve as art history venues, with lots of iconic paintings and sculptures. Sweden takes a different approach where their museums revolve around the unique and the bizarre. Their Vasa Museum, a modern art museum, features many contemporary art pieces in the abstract art era. There's also the Fairy Tale Museum, which is mostly a kid's attraction but that didn't stop my friends from climbing all the the playing structures and beating little kids down the slides. The museum my friends and I visited was a Swedish cultural museum called the Nordiska Museum.

From the outside, the Nordiska looks like some sort of Swedish palace, which I'm sure is what it used to be seeing as the inside was just as glorious. The main exhibit this season is Swedish fashion over the years. They covered traditional folkland garb to the current 'cybergoth' scene. It was definitely an eclectic collection for such an old museum. Also featured was an impressive photography section (shoutout to Prof. Beermink!) with a wide collection of old cameras and photographs. They even had an original daguerrotype alongside a 50's Swedish housewives photo collection. Segwaying into my favorite part of the museum was the 'Men in Bathing Suits' exhibit. This was basically hilarious portraits of men's swimwear, from  old-fashioned onesies to leapord thongs. There was even a wooden diagram of different tanlines a man can acquire when wearing different kinds of suits. Very worthwhile, I highly reccomend it.

2nd Weekend Trip: Stockholm, Sweden

After getting a late start in arriving in Stockholm at midnight, we were all looking forward to exploring the city the next day. The area by our apartment was a more mellow part of the city, with several pastry shops and bagel cafes sitting around. Across the street was an extremely convenient 24-hour 7-Eleven. Yes, there's a 7-Eleven here. And one crummy hot dog from the place costs 29K. Kronum, the Swedish currency, is one fifth of the US dollar, which basically means that everything here can be extremely overpriced. Coffee and croissant costs around 75K, and a dinner on average costs 150K. So while you feel overly cautious but also slightly pimp-like for taking out so much cash in one time, we realized it was really only twenty to forty US dollars.

This place was beyond beautiful. On the way to the museum, we found this bridge along the stretch of the harbor and walked around the snowy docks. There was ice just starting to break up, but for the most part the harbor was frozen over. We walked along to see all of the different boats, all with great names like 'Aphrodite II' & 'The Matilda'. It was surprisingly warm given the snow on the ground. Even standing on the pier, the wind wasn't even remotely as cold as we thought it would be. Great afternoon.

Favorite Moment in Amsterdam

climbing the letters of 'I Am Amsterdam' sign

Dam Square

This was the mecca for Amsterdam culture right here in Dam Square. It serves the ultimate center of the city and hosts not only ancient churches, but fantastic shopping. In the Square itself is a broad plaza of cobblestone with a large palace (currently under renovation) serving as the main focal point. Nine times out of ten though, one wouldn't even notice the large palace (covered in construction tarp) because the oddly dressed street performers were far more interesting. The Square sort of reminded me of Hollywood Boulevard, where you see famous movie characters waiting for tourists to take pictures with them. We saw a Spiderman, a wolfman, and a very assertive Freddy Kreuger. Why these characters? I have no idea, it could be that they got inspiration from the Madame Tussaud's museum across the street.

Dam Square in the day

Dam Square divvies up into several skinny streets of shopping, restaurants, and coffee shops. Walking down one street alone, you basically encounter three H&M stores, about five sandwich places, and about ten souvenir shops. My group and I definitely conquered the designer outlets, along with the best falafel place in the city.

Dam Square at night

Nighttime in Dam Square is just as busy as it is during the day, Everyone's out and about to hit up the local bars and clubs. It's more of an environment that we're used to, especially since the Spidermen and Freddy Kreugers don't come out at night.