Can’t help but notice it’s many times REDDER than impression (from school textbooks), but it’s clearly excessively painted this year for Visit Malaysia 2007.
Thankfully across Dutch Square and Melaka river, original shophouses from the colonial days are still intact. Beautiful, would return to sketch given time.
Midway through the old city, we met a rambling old man. Very very educated with perfect English rambling about his paintings and reciting crazy bits of trivia perfectly, like postcodes from Sydney suburbs and all the Presidents of the United States.
One of the many fort walls going around the island’s weak points. The stone walls appeared to be at least three metres thick. No surprises it’s still standing after all those wars.
Oh yea, and that gate is a human powered drawbridge, with its doors lowered.
As I went around the island, I realised it’s truly an open museum. This place has artifacts from medieval forts (with moats and drawbridge) to WWII anti-aircraft guns.
Another Antoni Gaudi work, the organic nature of his work appears much more fitting in a landscape project.
Jeff meets Tara Reid, sadly I wasn’t there when it happened. Only found out while sorting photographs after I got back to Sydney.
The origina of the much-copied Gaudi lizard, you can find them in souvenir shops all over Barcelona. The rest of the park is made with more humble stones, but still amazing nevertheless.
I sat here a long time observing this thing, wondering if inspiration struck when he was picking up his fork from a bowl of melting cheese.
The Casa Mila, which is also known as the La Pedrera (trans: quarry, in Catalan) was finished in 1907.
This organic theme continues inside, surprisingly very colourful and well-lit.
The roof slab is actually warped! Note Sagrada Familia in the background.
The Casa Batllo is a renovation, so possibly more attention to ornamentation happened here. A fantastic example of Gaudi’s stylised formal and colour mastery in stone, glass and ceramic.
Intended as a Roman Catholic basilica, Gaudi was assigned this project in 1884. He spent 40 years especially the last 15 years of his life working on just this one building, dying in 1926. The thing is, he not only anticipated that it won’t be finished in his lifetime, but projected it’ll take a few hundred years more!
Thanks to computers nowadays, it will be completed in 2026. Yes, that’s not a typo – even with today’s technology his ideas still take an incomprehensible amount of time to realise.
This photo is flipped 180°. In order to resolve the complex load transfers, he hung bags of lead to strings and worked out his geometry upside down.
The studio which he worked, located underneath the church.
The city dates back to the Neolithic (almost stone age) times, that’s how old it is. But I find despite their super rich history of excellence in architecture and culture, where have the Greeks’ drive for perfection gone?
The Parthenon.
The Acropolis. They are literally replacing the original with marble replicas, so come here before it’s fully replaced.
Ancient Agora. Not much, except for one reconstructed building, how much fun can looking at ancient strip footings be?
The Hephaitos temple. Have a funny impression of that guy after watching Alexander the movie, but amazing Greek temple nevertheless.
This is really cool for me because just ten months ago I had a tour of the “Silk Road” in China. Now I’m standing on the other end, it’s magical !
Gondolas
And their owners, business doesn’t seem to be too good …
The city is at least ten times more confusing, but it was actually fun getting lost! After an hour I got tired of it and decided to pull out the map, only to find that it was completely useless. And we’re not alone, every two or three corners we turn, there’s a bunch of people there trying to figure their maps out. Venice’s a tourist trap? Hell yeah.
After some Venetian Pac-Man, we miraculously found San Marco’s square.
There are street names but no street signs, the bus maps are close to useless and the tourist information is no help at all. We had to ask for directions along the WHOLE way. Eventually for the last few stops we resorted to taxis to get from landmark to landmark. Just can’t be bothered saving anymore, we only have one day to see everything.
Colosseum. Many “gladiators” outside provoking us for photos.
Some people could not get in because they were “dressed inappropriately”. The smarter ones brought scarfs and sarungs.
Pantheon. The span is at least 20 metres, built 380 A.D. I think. Civil and Structural engineers, there’s no keystone in the middle. Architects, there’s no glazing for the 2 metres gap, what about the rain? Now Go Figure!!
Fontana di Trevi. I saw some people fully dipping their heads in, and others drinking from it. Ewww…
Spanish Steps. At night lots of people just hang out here, other than that, nothing special.
Oh yea, I also managed to bump into the Italian stage for Live 8 at the Ancient Auditorium.
Michaelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello … and rest of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, all come from this place.
David’s butt, a less famous view but just as finely sculpted by Michaelangelo.
The famous Ponte Vecchio, rows of shops on a bridge. What’s with the squatting motif beside a river?
The Duomo, impossible to grab a snapshot of the entire building.
By the weirdest coincedence, we met someone from UNSW! She was standing two persons behind us while queuing for David. Junyi and Jeff were stunned staring at each other for 5 seconds.
Funny bit is she decided to tour Italy only a few days ago, but to meet of all cities in Italy, in such a big place as Florence, to be in the same queue, two people apart, at the same time, is just …
Despite our limited budget, we decided to make an exception for this city to splurge a little on dinner! I noticed a rather nice restaurant next to the laundrymart, so we dropped in.
Man, I wish I have a “Gastronomique Encyclopaedia” or something. My limited stomach vocabulary could only recognise two items, “degustation” and ” foie gras”. Since it was only €25, I decided to go for it.
Now, you have to understand that Jeff is a vegetarian (only food that does not involve killing).
Talking to the waitress in a mix of broken French and English, we finally managed to communicate that Jeff cannot have “meat”, she repeatedly pointed to foie gras on the menu and said “no meat no meat”. Jeff, being a bit of a kiasu (a “low risk-er” for you aussies) decides to follow the advice of the waitress, and ordered the same dish as me.
Besides that one-off incident, I have a very good impression of this city. Full of life and character, must return! But next time, with my Gastronomique Encyclopaedia !!!
Typical Lyon street, lined with restaurants.
Art class at the square, most of the kids look like they don’t want to be there though …
Castle like church on the hill
Wish I could use one of these without looking like a snail …
The Versailles Palace is located pretty far off from Paris itself, not to mention our hostel. Halfway we got confused with the platform signs and nearly got to the point of complete panic. The moment we figured our metro map out, our train flew past us. Took us a good run to the other end of the platform. I think this was the point where I hurt my right knee.
After all that chaos, we still did not manage to go in the palace (closed on Mondays). By the way, the gardens are HUGE, maybe 3-4 kilometres long !!
There’s just too much to see, I now understand the need for monthly membership. We went to the famous ones, like the Aphrodite (Venus de Milo), Winged Victory of Samothrace (Nike), Slave Boy by Michaelangelo, Code of Hammmurabi…
Our first architectural pilgrimage is pretty amazing, considering it was finished in 1977. There was no water in the surrounding pools + fountains, which is bummer because that was something I was looking forward to see in real life.
