VALENCIA, SPAIN
We took an overnight train from Paris to Valencia to get here for an extended weekend holiday, and to see parts of Spain, here we have what we call "Calatrava World". This is a series of buildings done by architect Santiago Calatrava, who at the moment is pushing the limit of materials and engineering in architecture. It is an architects students mecca, the buildings are doing things that we only wish we could get away with in more projects. This complex consists of an Opera House, Planetarium, and a Science Museum. Out of the famous architects that MPLS has gotten over the past decade, Cesar Pelli, Herzog and De Meuron, Jean Nouvel, Calatrava has yet to design something. Milwaukee got him for their art museum, and after the 35W bridge collapsed, it was released that he had strong interest in the designing the new bridge, but it was instantly shot down for fears of cost over-runs and time it would take to construct.
We only stayed in Valencia for one day, and then it was time to head to Barcelona.
AMSTERDAM
We arrived here for a class trip, just before the weekend began, and found it to be one of the strangest, beautiful, and unique cities of northern Europe. Before coming here, me and my companions knew little of it, except for its pop culture references as being a place with very open laws for their coffee shops, we had no idea that it was a historic city built over canals with great architecture (though leaning over). Our tour with our professor took us through the newer sections, which consisted of newer developments on top of older industrial areas; it was not as interesting as the old town. When going through the tourist areas, it was shocking to suddenly find us in the middle of the red light district, which was like the back door of disney with all the camera bags and fanny packs. At the end of it I found one of my favorite bizarre French cars, the Cirtoen C6, it is very French as you can see, style for the sake of style, doing things you would never see an american car do; it even has a reversed curved rear windshield! By the end of the trip, we were very happy to be back in Lille, the sun had come out, and we were in more familiar surroundings.
