Minor note

Host sister is on the right.

Cinque Terre

Thomas and I went to Riomaggiore, Italy, a part of Cinque Terre (Five Towns?) on the coast of the Mediterranean. I enjoyed it the most of all the places I’ve been so far in Europe. The weather was great, probably around 50 or so during the day, and the sky was clear and sunny all 3 days we were there. We stayed in a hostel in Riomaggiore, which was the eastern most of the five, but took trains or walked / hiked to the other cities. They were all very small and very Italian. Apparently the beaches get pretty packed with tourists in the summer but there was hardly anyone there due to the time of year, which was nice. Anyhow, I uploaded a boat load of pictures to http://photos.yahoo.com/d.provost so be sure to check those out. Alright, off to watch Terminator 3 in the mini theater room at AIB. Sweet, eh?

Some Dusseldorf Action

The town in Germany that I am staying in is called Dusseldorf. It is about 20 minutes by train north of Cologne (Koln). I am staying with a host family that lives about 45 minutes by tram from the school I attend, AIB. They live on what is called a sports area, which is basically a rec center. There is a track and field, outdoor basketball goals, indoor basketball goals, soccer field, excerise room, and a few other things. They rent out 4 rooms in a seperate building, so that is where I and another gentlemen from A&M are staying. They treat us nice there, and run a small bar / resturant type thing upstairs. This is where we eat and have the occasional Gatz beer (local to Dusseldorf).




This is my room. The only english channel is MTV, so I've been watching a decent amount of Cribs and Pimp My Ride, coupled with some European football and handball.


One of three Frank Gehrey buildings in Dusseldorf. They are right next to each other, the other two are silver and white. I think the locals refer to them as 'The Three Drunk Brothers' or something like that. I have some philosophical differences with Mr. Gehrey but I must admit it is really nice having these neat buildings in the scenery every day.


We went up in this thing on the first day to get a bird's eye view of the city. Booya.










This is the building my school is in.


This is what I see when I walk out of AIB. Pretty swank.








Some pics of the sports area. It's set into a wooded area, I saw some kids sledding out there the other day. Anyhow, that's all for now.

Paris and Luxembourg

Pictures for Paris and Luxembourg are both up at http://photos.yahoo.com/d.provost

I don't have much to say about Paris. It was nice being back for the first time since I lived there in the 8th grade. I don't think anyone else had been there so we hit up the main stuff, Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triumphe, Notre Dame, etc. I enjoyed going to the Musee d'Orcy, a museum containing mostly impressionist works. I know for sure that I appreciate museums much more now than I did back then. We also went to a concert opera in the Opera House. This is basically an opera, but it isn't acted out, just sang, and the orchestra is behind them. It was a pretty cool experience but also fairly boring.

After being in Germany for a week, some of decided to hit up Luxembourg for our first travel trip with our Eurails. Since it's pretty small and contained we just made it a day trip. I enjoyed it, and a day was definately enough time to spend there. It was a nice place to walk around in without any specific sites to see. We stopped at a cafe to get some coffee (it was pretty cold out) and the shopkeep found out we were from Texas, and kept making gun noises and shooting us with his finger gun, like a cowboy. He was a spirited chap.

Sorry these are pretty brief, maybe the pictures will tell a better story. I should start writing these closer to when they happen.

Pictures

Just a short post, I've created a photo album on yahoo and will be throwing most of my pictures up on there. I will only select the most choice ones to display on the blog. The album can be viewed at http://photos.yahoo.com/d.provost

Reminder to myself, this is what I need to discuss:

Paris
Luxembourg
Prague
Dusseldorf

I'll try to slam a couple entires tommorrow, or at least upload some pictures.