At long last, Paris!

I know I've been promising this for a long time, but I've finally gotten all of my pictures together from Paris in order to create this lovely blog! I realize that I'm about a month behind in my posting so you're hearing about things a month after they happen, but after I hand in my last assignment tomorrow I've got a whole week to get ready for my first exam so I'll try to post a couple times in there and catch up a bit! Maybe even write a bit about stuff that's happening right now! How novel would that be? Anyways, on to Paris. Over our fall break I decided to go to Paris. I was prepared to go alone, but I was looking around to see if anyone was interested too, and one of my fellow IFSA students, Mary, decided to come too. So Saturday morning we began the lengthy and painful travel procedure. The order was this: bus to train station, train to Glasgow Queen's Street Station, bus to Glasgow Central, train to Prestwick Airport, plane to Beauvais airport, bus to downtown Paris, tube and walking to hostel. It was great times. A long day, needless to say. Here we are early in the day, on our first train I think.

When we first got there, we were hungry, but feeling lazy and cheap so we just stopped in at this little quicky mart convenience store and grabbed some sandwiches and such to make a little picnic on our bed!


I unfortunately bought more food than I could eat that evening (cheese and meat) and didn't want it to go to waste, so I invented a fridge in our sink! They had taken the plug for the drain away so that guests couldn't accidentally flood the building, so I wrapped on the of the little round bars of soap in a bag and stuffed it into the drain as a plug, and then double wrapped the food in bags and floated it in the cold water! It was pretty effective actually. Mary thought I would make a good boy scout.


The next morning we went out intending to just wander in the general direction of the Eiffel Tower and Arch de Triomphe. Luckily we didn't jump right on the tube or we would have missed this open air market that had sprung up! Tons of amazing looking food and fish and cheese and breads. I wanted to try some cheese but was scared of them and too hungry to risk getting one that I didn't like, so I ended up grabbing a nice authentic french Falafel! Mary got some huge grapes that we ate for the next couple of hours.


After the market, we decided to hop the tube over to the tower since the day was getting on already. When we got out from the tube station it was just a short walk until we were staring straight at the tower. A pretty impressive structure, if I may say so.


One of the many "hey, everyone else speaks french, lets just take pictures of ourselves" photos.


Here's a shot from almost underneath. As you can see, it was a very nice day out.


The lines to get up were pretty lengthy, and one of the legs was closed so we had to wait maybe 30-45 minutes to get into the tower itself. In that time I managed to become more impressed by the architectural aspects of the tower. The whole thing is basically a custom made erector set. All the pieces were pre-made in a factory a ways off and then moved to the site and assembled with tons of plates and rivots. As far as I could see, no single piece was much longer than 10 or 12 feet. What's really impressive to me is that when you're building something 100's of feet wide and many times taller than that, and you're doing it with 10 foot sticks, you really don't have much margin for error! A slightly incorrect angle of length at the base would become more and more emphasized the further up and away you went. So, the amount of designing that was required to make the tower absolutely astounds me. It also makes me wish that people would build more things these days that are just attractive or meaningful, but not necessarily practical. (Not to say the tourist trap that is the Eiffel Tower isn't practical, it just makes me think about it's origins.)

Anyway, here's a view to the north-west once we got the first level of the tower. You can see Trocadera plaza and all the roads radiating out from it. Pretty cool.


Over here is the Arch De Triomphe. Now it's basically a giant roundabout but you can still see the spokes of the roads, and it's easy to imagine the road having gone under it at some point. (More on this later)


And finally, a panoramic view off the north-east face of the tower. I don't remember what a lot of that stuff is, but it's pretty and so is the Seine river.


This is us on top of the tower. I held the camera out through the safety grill and took a picture back at us. It seemed amusing at the time.


This is the only picture of the tower that I took that wasn't identical to all the 50 billion photos the other tourists take every year. From the top, looking down, the sides almost seem to run parallel to each other! I think it's a pretty cool optical illusion.


When we were done enjoying the excitement in the Tower, we headed down to the Arch de Triomphe. It was just a short walk away, and when we got there we found a little plaza area with a bench right next to the arch. We sat there for a while and chatted and watched the people go by and admired the Arch.


It was pretty awesome to see the change as the sun went down and the lights turned on around the Arch.


It was also at this point that I noticed the pattern running around the edge of the Arch. Having just finished with Metamorphoses over the summer, I immediately recognized it as a Greek Key. I'm not sure why it was there, and the research I've done doesn't indicate any serious meaning for it. I think that it was simply a copy of old roman architecture, and they used the Greek key without really intending to. But I'm probably wrong.


By now we were tired from walking and standing all and went back to get some sleep in preparation for a full day in the Louvre! The next day we got up early and took the tube to the Louvre (there's actually a tube stop that leads directly into the complex under the Louvre). I don't really know how to describe it other than saying that it was absolutely overwhelming. First of all, the building it's in is amazing. The glass pyramids, the water, the architecture. That's all enough to warrant a visit, even without being full of the most amazing pieces of art!


Here' the picture made famous by The Divinci Code. Where the two triangles meet. Unfortunately, underneath it is a food court, not the tomb of Mary Magdalene. What really impressed me though, (I don't know if you'll be able to tell from the picture) was the fact that none of the diamond shape plates that compose the pyramid are touching each other! They are all suspended about half and inch apart by the internal frame. Just one of those little things that I enjoy noticing.


So, on to the art. This was the first room I went into. (Obviously the picture was taken later once I had worked my way up.) It's just a big open courtyard full of the most amazing statues and sculptures. Seriously, almost started crying when I walked in here. To see so much art and talent and beauty all at once really takes your breath away, quite physically.


On the other end of the wing, there was another sculpture garden. I don't think I realized quite so clearly before my visit to the Louvre, but I really prefer sculptural art to painting and photographs. I think it just has to do with the way my brain works and I can relate better to the act of carving and chiseling than I can to the act of painting.


Speaking of paintings though, I really liked this one. It's a classic virgin and babe painting, but I really liked the way that Mary was looking out towards the viewer. It impressed me a lot.


This is the "Winged Victory of Samothrace." I actually had to look up the name. I recognized it and was familiar with it, but I couldn't remember what it was called. I seem to do the same thing with people though, so I don't feel too bad.


These next two are photos of "Eros and Psyche." By now I'm thinking there's a trend to this trip as this is the second direct connection to Metamorphoses. Not only is it cool to have these strange connections, but I really like this piece. The curves, the arms, the wings, the empty space. Etc etc. Now I feel like an art critic, haha! Oh well, I still liked it.




There was obviously a ton more that I saw, but in some places I couldn't take pictures, and even if I wanted to post all the pictures I did take, it would take way to long to comment on them all. We went back around 6 and just crashed. Funny how exhausting wandering around looking at art can be. That night I also realized that my iPod was running out of batteries and I would be a very sad Quentin if I didn't have my book on "tape" to listen to on the way back. I also realized that I didn't have a European adapter for my charger. Out came the boy scout in me, and I went on a mission to solve the problem. The only thing I had with European prongs was a power converter, but it didn't have the ground line, and the sockets were recessed into the wall, so I couldn't plug the thing in. (It's the brown thing in the picture.) So, I ran down to the convenience store and grabbed an extension chord for the European plug, brought it back up, sawed off the plastic buffer on the end, and plugged everything in. The last problem was a loose connection between the iPod charger and the converter, but a couple of connected twist ties looped around solved that problem too! The end result: a fire hazard that also charges iPods! Woohoo!


The next day we went to see Notre Dame, which was cool, but once you've seen a couple cathedrals, they all start to seem a little similar.





After that we just wandered around and bought some postcards and had some delicious crepes with cheese and chicken. Soooo yummy. And they made them without cheating too. They would just pour the batter onto a flat round hotplate, and then spread it around with this crazy wooden wide and flat hoe-shaped thing.

I kinda wanted to go out that night and see what the night life in Paris was like, but we had to leave kinda early the next morning to catch our flight and Mary didn't really want to go out, and I wasn't too keen on going out on my own much either, so we ended up hanging out and reading Harry Potter and listening to music / book.

So, that's it! That was my trip to Paris! I hope it wasn't too disappointing after talking it up so much for the last month. Next I'll post some pictures from Elyse's visit, and then I'll try to get some pictures of campus in the fall and maybe even a few of the SUDS kids and our performances or parties! Speaking of which, I auditioned for the next show, The Prime of Miss Jane Brodie, and there's an American in it, so I might actually have a chance! They post the cast list tonight, so I'll try to get back on here and let you all know if I got it or not. Until then though, I love you guys and was thinking about you on Thanksgiving. We all got to have some T-day food, but it was a little too formal and restauranty when we were all comparing it to a nice evening with our families. Still, it was nice to get out. And at least I'll get to be with a family for Christmas! That will be nicer than ending up in a hostel somewhere. Love you all, and happy holidays!

Days gone by . . .

This post is not going to be directly about Scotland.

Hannah recently posted a picture on her blog that really hit a nerve with me. It's a picture of me pushing the merry-go-round at buckhorn. I don't know why, maybe it's because I missed buckhorn this year, or maybe it's because this picture is such a complete representation of what buckhorn means to me, but it made me very nostalgic and a little sad. It was one of those moments when you make a sudden realization without meaning to. In my case, I suddenly realized that I'm grown up. I'm not a kid anymore. I still act like it sometimes, and still try to get away with it when I can, but I'm not the kid I used to be. I grew up playing on the merry-go-round every year, and when I got bigger I would push the younger kids just as an excuse to still play. Now I'm here in Scotland on one of the biggest adventures of my life and that merry-go-round has been taken down. I don't know how to explain it entirely, but I'm sure if you know me I don't really have to. It feels like the end of a very amazing part of my life. I'm sitting here wondering what buckhorn will be like next year. If I'll go. If I'll love it. If I'll be the same Quentin there that I have been every year since I was born.

My life is amazing right now and I am so proud of myself for everything I'm doing, but I'm going to miss being a kid.

Huge-Ass Inverness Weekend

I can't keep up! I've got so many things to write about and so many pictures I want to post and not enough time to do them any justice. Right now I should be reading lecture notes, but instead I've decided to catch up a little bit with my blog. I'm only a month behind now . . . . .

We left at 8:00am, which my body interely did not approve of. As demonstration of it's disapproval, it decided to sleep through the alarm and not become conscious until about 7:55 when Celeste called. No time for breakfast, I barely managed to dress, grabbed my bag and ran out the door. I am happy to report that I was not the last one on the bus! I am, however, unhappy to report that I didn't manage to get my camera packed because it was charging overnight. That means all the following pictures are stolen, which I will also use as my excuse in case they are of poor quality. That means we're taking another trip back in time! This time were going to Friday the 13th of Oct (creepy, I know).

After about an hour, our little Stirling group joined up with the IFSA kids from Glasgow, Edinburgh, and St Andrews (130 people in total!!) and we headed off for our first stop.

Scone Palace (that's pronounced "skoon" for all you US Americans out there). You can see it on the left there. What's really awesome about it is that it has been continuously inhabited for a bunch of centuries, and we were only allowed to visit the bottom floor because the top floor is the living space of the family! Imagine living in a Palace. That's crazy. It was really lavish but we couldn't take any pictures inside, so just imagine it for me.



While we were there we also got to see a falconry display. I'm not quite sure how these events were related, but it was pretty cool to see. The one on the right was the best trained and the oldest, but the owl was hilarious! The best way to discribe it is by comparing it to a cat. Just in the attitude. It wouldn't do anything the trainer asked until it was sure that there was going to be a good chunk of food at the end. So funny.



Also near the palace was the chapel/church were all of the kings (of scotland I'm pretty sure) had been corinated. It was gated on the inside, so I couldn't do more than just look in.












And, of couse, there was a graveyard. I've been seeing a lot of those lately. I think I'm drawn to them because they tend to be very green and overgrown and quiet. Not a lot of tourists in the graveyard unless there's some one famous buried there.







Then back on the bus! Obviously we're college students, and this whole "getting up at 7:30am" thing is wreaking havoc on our systems. I managed to get a couple of good shots of the snoozing beauties. That's Mary and Marguerite, and then Gregg and Daniel. Such Cuties.











The next stop was a working sheepdog farm in Kingussie. It was actually quite amazing. The guy had about 12 sheepdogs (all Border Collies of course) and he could command them each with individualized sounds from a whistle. He did a demonstration and sent one of the dogs out to round up maybe 20 sheep and bring them back. Then he would tell the dog which way to drive them, which direction to circle; he could even tell the dog to just lie down where it was. Now, this was all about 1000-1500 feet away. Absolutely amazing. Appearently there aren't many sheepdog farms left because there was environmental laws passed that crippled them, and then they retrospectively realized that the sheep were a necessary element to the loval environment and now they're trying to reverse the damage. I'm shady on details though.

Oh, and he used ducks to train the puppies!! Soooo cute. I wanted to steal them all.






















We also got to watch/help him shear a sheep.


I want to take you home with me!!!














That night we got to our hostel in Inverness and went out to a pub called Hootinanny's. And with a name like that, of course we had a great time! They had some delicious ales from the Black Isle Brewery, which I enjoyed immensly. In fact, I enjoyed them so much that I convinced Celeste to carry me! (Don't worry, I'm not as drunk as I look in that picture. I promise. Is that a little wierd for y'all? Yeah, little ol' Q enjoys his beer. Oh well, moving on)















The next day we went to Cairn Gorm Mountain, as you can see from the sign below.

To get to the top, we took this interesting train kinda thing. There are two carraiges, and they are connected to each other so that they can operate as counter weights against each other. The track was built with one line most of the way, but it divides for about 50 feet in the middle into two tracks so that the trains can pass each other. Pretty impressive I thought, and probably the most efficient use of energy. There was also all this jazz about how they had taken 50 billion pictures of the landscape when they were building the track and when they moved a rock or a piece of moss they were sure to put it back exactly where it came from. ... Maybe a little over the top, eh? Dad, Karen, (anyone else) why would they be worried about being sooo exact?


From the top, the views were pretty awesome. We only had a few minutes before the clouds rolled in though. Once the clouds surrounded us, it kinda felt like buckhorn on those years when we couldn't see from one lodge to the next for all the fog.























Nathan should like this next part. Our next stop was the Glen Grant Whisky Distillery. We got a tour of the distillery and then got to taste the two malt whisky's they produce. The process starts very much like beer. No hops though. Malt, water, yeast. But then they distill it 3 times by basically boiling it in a thing like the one in the picture below. That helps seperate the alcohol from the water. Then when it's around 50-60% ABV, they stick it in casks to age. The ones we tasted were a 12 year old in a bourbon cask, and a 6 year old in a sherry cask. The Sherry was delicious. A lot heavier and sweeter.



This is where they stored a tiny amount of the barrels they age it in. I think it was warehouse number 7, out of maybe 12? It was the only one still on the same property as the distillery.













Behind the Distillery there was a lovely garden where Mr. Grant would go to entertain his guests. He was also awesome enough to have a safe built into a rock so that he could store a bottle of whisky and couple glass to offer his justs a wee dram after viewing the gardens! How awesome is that! Here is the path leading into the garden.










Then back to Inverness for some more Hootinanny's and stories from Dave, our scottish guide. And some food and sleep.


On Sunday we get up early and head out to get on a boat, which took us about half way down the very long Loch Ness. Sadly, not very exciting. No monster sightings, and lots of cold stinging wind. I took more pictures with Mary's camera, but I haven't gotten them yet, so this is all you get.










Our boat then landed at Urquhart Castle on the shore of Loch Ness. This was a very pretty castle, and the sun had decided to come out by now. The only problem was, we only had about half an hour here, and it was full of tourists. Not the best combination. I would like to go back some time when it's empty and just wander around and enjoy the views of Loch Ness.













Then we started heading towards home, but on the way we stop at the most amazing place I've seen here so far. The only name I have is Glencoe, but I don't know if that's the name of the mountains, the valley, the exact spot we were, or what. Whatever it was though, it was absolutely beautiful. This picture doesn't even begin to do it justice. Big rolling peaks with streams cascading down the sides. Patches of lush green trees. Some crags sticking out here and there. I wanted to just start walking and climbing and wander around for a full day and see where I ended up. But no. Instead, we got 20 minutes to frickin' take pictures. That was it. I was so pissed. I am definitely going back there.











And that was it! We hit a little gift shop on the way home, but nothing too exciting.

It's nice to have a beautiful campus to come back home to though. It makes it feel less sad when you get back from an amazing trip. The wallace monument still makes me smile everytime I walk outside my room.


I love you guys and think of you often! An update of more current stuff is coming soon, so just hold your horses till then.