Non-building Pictures

Winner of the Golf Match



At the monastery



Verona Main Square



Jon checking the Guggenheim to make sure it is real.



I found a cute Turtle



Drinking and Drawing on Napkins... we cant even have a drink without doing some designing.



For everyone who is wondering what went on when we were NOT looking at buildings (I know its hard to believe that we did anything but that)... here are some people shots. Sorry that so many of them contain just Jon and I but the last two weeks we didn't have anyone besides ourselves to take pictures of... except the ducks of course.

scarpa: brion cemetery

carlo scarpa is a maniac. he's an obsessive beast. i'm infatuated with his drawings and work.

this is an addition to a cemetery he did for a family's new burial area. the italian cemetery system works more as urban design, with block arrangements and caskets entered into apartment-like structures above ground, versus the more typical american model or a picturesque/pastoral/elysian field. this project of scarpa's is filled to the brim with symbolism, allegedly atypical for a modernist (or second generation modernist).




when we visited this place, we met the caretaker of the cemetery, who happened to be the owner representative on site during the construction of this project. it lasted 9 years. the old man said scarpa was there almost every day. he would check pours and walk through the manifestation of his drawings and often order things ripped out and redone or rearranged. this is not the work of a quality control inspector, but the result of a dedicated engineer/artist with a practically unlimited budget and an OCD search for a design's perfection.



the guy we spoke to was indeed quite old. he had known the couple buried under the large arching thing personally. he radiated with pride as he shared his stories, walking us through the elements with his hands gliding on the concrete ripples. he was like a little kid when he unlocked the incredible circular door leading into the family's private chapel.



it may be hard to put together a complete idea of what the place is. it's not the fault of the pictures; rather, it's just hard to capture the whole thing in a couple quick shots. the site bends into an L, and there are too many wide open spaces and very contained internal/inhabitable objects to get a one-glance gist. it's a real experience that requires walking through, as the construction itself, aided by the use of symbolism, spins an abstract narrative. (i mean, maybe i could've taken some better pictures, too. if only i had a helicopter...)



also, it's impossible to draw for class. my sketchbook work for this visit was totally lame.

the start of catching up: photos of the church of the autostrada

now that we're home and have closer to normal digital authority, i'll try to kick off getting out a good little summary of the entire second half of the trip, i.e. post-rome. bare with me: we have 5.5GB of photos to wade through. to start, perhaps somewhat anti-climatically for most people, is a small presentation of a church built in the fascist modernist era, 1930's i believe, dedicated to the saints of the towns around florence, and dubbed "the church of the autostrada", which is like calling the morman temple "the cathedral of the beltway". for anyone still keeping score, michellucci (sp?) designed it, and if you think it's cool, try google image searching for corbusier's "rauchamp". this building was spectacular to visit.

bathing in bilbao

bilbao is now my most favorite city to visit.

this morning we went to baths in a spa in our hotel (that i booked). i consider this research for understanding hadrian's villa.

colleen took us on a wild last-hurrah beer and rum marathon this afternoon.

home tomorrow, sort of. (terminal 1 awaits)

Tartarugues

For all of you tartarugues back home.. this one lives at the foot of Antonio Gaudi´s Sagrada Familia (no its not finished yet).. we saw this Gothic "Cathedral" yesterday along with almost everyone of Gaudi´s buildings/architecture in Barcelona.. on to Bilbao tonight... we somehow do not have our connection cord for uploading pictures and are therefore not able to show you the great picture of Jon kissing this Tartarugue!

mastering the art of escalators

colleen wondered why all of my stories about sevilla, and spain in general, were about eating and drinking. i think she understands now.

thanks to her, though, we managed to storm around the city of barcelona like mad this past thursday. a brutal, but productive, insightful, and outstanding interjection among the cultural ingestion.

but first, sevilla: yes, i did indeed get in touch with carmen, and between carmen, raul, the tapas, and the cruzcampo beer, the four years since our last almuerzo pinched together, vanishing seamlessly into our last XXL siesta. colleen, well acquainted with the idea of cultural immersion by this point, held on very well to the barrage of food, cold beer, and flurry of spanish stories. with carmen and raul, though, it is never difficult to laugh. raul had to leave to get back to work after lunch, and colleen, carmen, and i marched around triana trying to find a bar that was actually open (july is NOT the high season in sevilla). lucky enough for us, we found one with republican-strength air conditioning, and castro-strength cuban sweet rum.

in short, lunch started around 300pm, and the whole event ended with carmen getting a call her doctor's office informing her she was quite late for a 730pm appointment. colleen and i went back home, brushed ourselves off, just in time to meet raul for dinner. ole!

we also toured the cathedral, scaled la giralda, migrated through alcazares, blah blah blah. i was bummed we missed a bullfight by one day, and la vela, a week long religious festival, which is also an awesome party, by three. in the end, though, i'd think we were both happy to escape the 42 degree C heat (do the math: 9/5C + 32, right?) and our attic w/o AC apartment. hopefully by our next trip, sevilla will have it's proper face on, if not with a functioning metro, then at least life back in the centro. -sorry, krissy, it won't be quite as picturesque, but all the great places will be open for you to... experience. raul and carmen are waiting for you! i might have to give you a training session before sending you off. [sorry, couldn`t find your homestay street in malaga, by the way. maybe the family are nomadic gypsies?]

so, one flight, two trains and a taxi later... another city.

mission one in barcelona: el xampanyet. no complete sentences necessary- one bottle catalan champagne, colleen ate sardines, we closed down the place, and stumbled around the gothic quarter before 6pm. we also meandered down to the water, back up las ramblas, the mercat, and plaza catalunya. instead of saying we did nothing, i would say we took a day to 'absorb', both the city and the cava.

we made up for it yesterday, with a march of death tour, starting with mies van der rohe's barcelona pavillion, to gaudí's battilo (sp?), milá, sagrada familia, and parque güell. we have approximately one million pictures, and even some good diagrams. unfortunately, we are unable to post any. i think we officially killed our flip flops yesterday- not good since i don't think we have any other shoes to wear.

our hostel has been fine here. pension victoria, for future reference. good rate, clean room, smelly water, and only one cucaracha.

finally, museo picaso does not allow you to sit anywhere. fortunately, el xampanyet is just up the road on the right.

time to go take a look at zara's rebajas. i could really use a new not-smelly shirt. hasta bilbao! wish us luck on our overnight train: 10pm to 755am. ciao.

things back home...

from this picture i can only deduce:

1. barber's in new england have been on strike since before i left the country
2. showering has become unfashionable
3. that magic trick where you put the pea under a cup and move them all around and then guess the cup that the pea is under and you're always wrong... remains a very cool and impressive trick
4. home depot had a special on lawn furniture sets
5. vesi still doesn't imbibe




pat's my favorite rockstar, mostly because of his great assortment of groupies.

looks like sweaty + mangey is in. lucky me.

sweat causes head acne part II

sevilla is:

more hot than rome.
more sweaty than rome.
more not-letting-you-sleep than rome.

colleen seems to be surviving well, with minor exception, but i'm on my fourth day of minimal messy sweaty oozy mattress=radiator sleep. so, i'm really not sorry if i'm not entirely coherent in this post...

somehow i convinced colleen that it would be a better idea if we balked on her return to pompeii, in the blistering heat of southern italy, and instead flew into the trenches of the blazing inferno that is andalusia in july so that i could check on my own european roots. a callous, selfish powerplay, but necessary, and i'm paying for it.

leaving como, we trained it down to milan's airport and realized our room accomodations were the anti-spectacular second floor lounge of the god-forgotten terminal two at milan-malpensa. in all honesty, we past the night pretty easily and very safely, and caught our also-god-awful 645am easy jet flight to malaga without too much problem. fortunately, we learned that our bilbao-milan + milan-philly maneuver will be staged entirely in the luxurious and fashionable milanese terminal numero uno waiting lounges. can't wait.

malaga, it's nice.

but torremolinos is where we stayed, i.e. colleen booked the room. torremolinos is a bizarre northern european resort town. lots of naked germans. great place for family bonding, like naked moms tackling their teenage boys playing monkey in the middle (shudder) with lots of jumping (double shudder) and lots of... oh god it just wasn't right.

the beach, though was very relaxing, and we snoozed off and on to make up for the airport night. the waves were reminscent of delaware's, but warm, and we can now say that we frolic-ed in the costa del sol, which i think sounds glamarousish.

we were able to take the 25minute train ride up to malaga a couple times, though. malaga's much larger than i had imagined and has quite a splendid euro-outdoor mall. the cathedral in the city's center is also a sight to see: incomplete and a lost-in-translation pastiche of triumphal arch facade + watered down alberti meets michelangelo meets a little spaghetti western mission style prop. krissy will have plenty to entertain herself with. and remember that sevilla is only a 2.5 hour train ride away.

a glance over my shoulder tells me that 1. colleen wants to leave soon, and 2. colleen is writing stuff about sevilla, so i'll just cover day one here.

miraculously, i had gotten in touch with my sevillano buddy raul, a 27yo architect i hung out with a ton during my two previous visits... four years ago... and he arranged for a super cheap apartment owned by a mutual professor friend of ours in the kickbutt barrio triana. raul picked us up from the train station and we headed out to the campo, the so-called country-side, where a friend of his had a family weekend house with a pool and a barbeque planned that night. sure enough, colleen's first night in 'sevilla' was indeed not actually 'in' sevilla, and was also completely surrounded, sunk, and abandoned in spanish. somehow, by the formula of beer and dirty cosmo articles, she seemed to pass the time effortlessly and all the guys were jealous that i was dating such an elegant and sophisticated woman.

we swam, drank cruz campo, ate, played a video game or two, swam, cruzcampo-ed, swam, cruz-ed, ate, and then passed out... it was great fun and all eight of us there were incredibly drained the next day. breakfast, which was actually lunch, and actually arond 3pm, and actually at a mexican restaurant (go figure), was fairly painful for all in attendance, as we knew we should eat, but really we just wanted to lay on the cool air-conditioned tile floors of iguana rana and call it a day right there.

now, we're settled in our sweet, boiling apartment in triana, one block-ish from calle betis and the river. we've marched around the city core, and now we have to shove off from this internet cafe to meet raul for dinner at my most favorite place in all the world, las rejoyas, one block from my old home in sevilla.

we're booked at a cool looking place in barcelona, and just got confirmation at a totally awesome joint in bilbao, a few blocks from gehry's guggenheim.

we've been wondering how 150's been going back at UMD, how lisa's doing at GTM, and if the flooding has mutated into the dreadful mid-atlantic hazyhothumid.

one week left!

Sweltering Spain

So my four years of highschool spanish are paying off slightly although it is much more fun to have translators or go charade style (especially when I was trying to understand some of the girls at the pool party that we went to... they were reading "Cosmo" and an article about"60 sexy things to do for your man" or something like that)... Yo no se. Anyway, I am continually impressed with Jons, or Juanillo (as they call him here) ability to speak Spanish...his Spaninsh class in Sevilla must have paid off (what did you get in that class Juanillo?)..

Last night we went down a small street in Sevilla where we slid through a red door and into a small courtyard where we went through to a large room. Everyone in the room was focused on the flemenco dancer in the front of the room! Juanillo ordered some huge pitcher of something called Agua Sevilla...that seemed to contain lemon flavored juice, sugar, whipped cream, cinnamon, and plenty of alcohol. Needless to say we could not finish the whole thing! The dancing and music, clapping, and singing were all an amazing experience! Today we went into the Cathedral, the largeset in the world according to cubic volume... it is difficult to tell though because many of the bays are filled with elaborate altar pieces.. my favorite part was the tomb that supposedly contained Christopher Columbus...we decided that it was the most impressive tomb we have seen yet.. then we climbed to the top of the tower (no day is complete without tons of walking and climbing!) the view was spectacular!

So far in Spain my favorite things have been:(in no order)
1. the beach at Malaga..
2. Pool party in Sevilla at Jons friends place
3. Understanding any part of what anyone says in spanish
4. Cruzcampo beer
5. Jon making his hair fro like Michael Jackson
6. Flemenco dancer
7. Cold showers
8. The cathedral at night
9. beating jon in the video game that his italian friends play (the tally now includes fooseball, mini-golf and kickboxing)

Babysitting in Como

Jon informed me that I have written only one entry recently compared to his 5.. just since we are keeping statistics I felt as though I should update everyone on the minature golf Como round.. match play goes to Colleen 4 and 2. Stroke play also goes to Colleen who beat Jon by 10 strokes ( in mini golf!) ..dont worry, pride will surely evoke a rematch..

In other sports, Jon also lost a close match of fooseball 6-4.. after begging for a rematch it was granted and I, feeling sorry for him, let him win the next two matches. He will likely write some tall tale about how he came to loose to a girl but do not be decieved, he was crushed!

I feel as though few words have been written on the end of our summer course and my final week as a college student.. in Como we were introduced to Terragni, a modern architect who began working here in Como in the 1930s (at the age of 23!)

Highlights of Terragni s work included tours of two apartment buildings as well as a school. Ironically, three of the other buildings that we visited in this leg of the trip, one by Terragni, the other by Mario Botta, and the last by a woman whose name escapes me at the moment, were three of my favorite visits of the trip. Unfortunately, these two school buildings would have been so unbelievably perfect for me to look at while working on my thesis project (also a school) and my professor (who was on my committtee) (and who is extremely familiar with these buildings) never mentioned to me that I should look them up... Although I was extremely sad and livid at the missed opportunity, I did get plenty of motivation to push my project toward the right outlet. (Jon and I have been brainstorming)

The last day of the program was held in Switzerland, we traveled to a large castle across the border..the steep staircases were worth the views at the top of the towers. Also, Jon and I have discovered the delight of digital video on our cameras.. We have now accumulated video of 1. a view from the top of above mentioned casetle, 2. duck feeding (almost a daily ritual..jon apparently loves ducks), 3. Italy winning the world cup (best one yet), and 4. hydro-aerobics on the side of the alps along Lake Como set to the lyrics of some cheesy raunchy american teen toons - i think that they should stick to Italian operas.

We have decided that since we just spent the past 6-8 months non-stop working on school stuff we would make it easier and cheaper on ourselves and stay in Como until flying to Spain. Southern Italy and Cinque terra have been compromised however I think that we were biting off more than we could travel... instead we have had time to catch up on sights in Como (today we visited Bellagio, and Varenna along the coast of Lake Como.. thank goodness there were hungry ducks there to feed), attepted to fix our tan lines from sketching in Rome, and we are just cracking the surface of the multitudes of things that we now want to read about-invesitgate-discuss as a result of the trip.

Yesterday we wandered down the lake to find the public pool. On the way we watched a sea plane take off, watched more ducks (jons idea), and stumbled upon the museum that we had been searching for for a few days. As it turns out the pool was all we had anticipated and more...

Rules for the pool -

1. Bikini bathing tops are optional for 70 year old women slathering their snake like sagging skin in oil.

2. The hot tub is not a hot tub.. rather it cost extra euros because it is a hydro massage! Apparently acting like an unknowing american does not get you a smile or a chance in the hot tub-hydro whatever..

3. Anyone wanting to go into the pool area must first walk though a turnstile which results in a shower of water.. you apparently must be wet before entering the pool..but that is not all...good thing that you are able to go through and get your hair wet..otherwise when you put on your mandatory rubber-condom -swimmy cap you would rip your hair off!

4. Do not take off your rubber-condom-swimmy cap in the pool otherwise the 70 year old lifegaurd in a speedo (who probably is married to the topless "something about mary" old lady - see number 1) will yell at you in Italian. Luckily we kept our rubber-condom-swimmy caps on and looked like idiots.

5. Italian mothers will trust anyone apparently. I was asked to babysit a young sleeping curly haired cutie (no not jon) while he was sleeping for a few minutes! Luckily he didnt wake up and I didnt loose him.

Okay, more to come later, probably no more pictures for a while but hopefully sometime next week!

the most popular haircut in como...

is the como-over. bud dum ching. not mine, to be honest, but sooo the style of my father that it had to be broadcasted.

our work is done. the program has ended. and colleen and i now find ourselves for the first time together without anything to do. it is on the verge of amazing.

only the verge, i say, because our first day Done, this past saturday, we were both pretty useless and incoherent as we tried to process the idea that colleen has finally finished college after only 6 years. although, i admit, i have been often useless and incoherent throughout the last weeks of the trip, only capable of drawing and mumbling something bitter about richard meier's stupid church or bernini's impossible-to-draw ellipses. today, monday, was Internet Day, our day for digitally spending money that exists in neither of our bank accounts. a button for easy-click donations will be posted for the convenience of all readers shortly.

i dont mean to complain. we are in como, italy. i'm not sure if the news made it to the states, but italy also just won the world cup. that's a big deal for a lot of reasons, none the least of which was the resurrection of italy's struggling road flare/air horn industry.

como is situated on a sweet lake in the alps. by sweet i mean scenic on the outside and septic on the inside. colleen and i have spent quite a few hours sitting along the water's edge, but tomorrow we will hunt for the public water-side pool. dont get me wrong, this place is nestled at the "alp's mezzanine", and charming enough for george clooney to buy himself a summer cottage. and by cottage i mean mansion.

to abruptly wrap up, our ever-changing schedule appears like so-

tomorrow is swimming day, followed by boating up the river to bellagio the next. no clue what we'll do thursday, but we'll spend it as long as possible in como, then take the latest train to milan for our extremely early flight to malaga, spain friday morning. we will stay one night in malaga in order to search for the beach and a picasso museum (picasso and antonio banderas are both native malagalians) (for all gulliver's travelers buffs out there, you may remember the malagalians to be perpetually tan and tipsy, and plotting to stew gulliver/ted danson in a giant paella...)

from malaga to sevilla, sevilla to barcelona to bilbao to milan to philly. then work for 16 years straight to pay off all the bills. òle.