"In Bruges"

Last weekend I went to Belgium (Brussels, Bruges, and Ghent) with my Renaissance Art class. We saw a lot of pretty things :)


First we went to Brussels -- this is the Brussels town hall.

Having a nice town hall is the Belgian city's way of showing off how cool it is.

Other buildings/sculpture in the main square.

While we were eating lunch, a bunch of people marched through the street and stopped right by us to play music. A really cute older couple started dancing in the middle of the band!

We were wondering what the cause was for the celebration. Then we realized it was Oktoberfest, hence the German flags.

This really cool dude was making art in the middle of the street with mostly just spray paint and cardboard.

!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then it was back on the train and off to Bruges!

Bruges is an itty bitty fairytale town that has been completely left behind by the industrial revolution. It was a very prominent trade city in its time but now it's just nice and quaint, with a ton of architectural and otherwise art-related treasures.

The city has a lot of canals. I'm just showing off my photography skills in the rain ;)

This is the dining room in the hostel where we stayed. It was such a relaxing environment!

Bruges town hall.

Right next to the town hall is the Church of the Holy Blood.

This silver case contained the relic of the holy blood, which was basically a test tube with red liquid in it that was thought to be the blood of Jesus Christ.

Even though I don't agree that the red liquid they keep is actually the blood of Christ, I still found the space to be extremely inspiring. This is a church that is still actively in use for worship, and we saw many people coming to venerate the holy blood. Seeing these people who are so devout in their personal beliefs is an amazing experience.

We went to the Church of Our Lady and saw what I was most excited to see...

...Michelangelo's "Madonna and Child" (The Bruges Madonna)! Look at the way the Christ child's left hand is all sprawled out -- Michelangelo was definitely observing how real babies play with their little fingers!



After Bruges, we made a quick day trip to Ghent to see Jan and Hubert van Eyck's "Ghent Altarpiece." My camera died before we got there (though I'm sure I wouldn't have been allowed to photograph the painting anyway), so I have no pictures in Ghent. But the altarpiece is amazing and definitely worth googling.

I thought I'd show you a picture of my art history professor, Paula, who I absolutely adore.




The only shot I have of her is in profile, but I think you can still make out how adorable she is. I've actually been really missing my Mom recently, so it was nice to have both her and Mama Donna around this weekend. They're such motherly figures!

More Theatre and New Friends: Part II

Greenwich

We took a boat across the Thames River to Greenwich.

And Gertie got to steer the boat because she's so adorable!

This was one of the first things we saw when we got there. Apparently I'm a burlesque dancer. Who'd have thought?

pretty pretty pretty

PRETTY PRETTY PRETTY

This is my pal Sam -- she's one of my best friends on this trip! I also really enjoy Mark Montgomery creeping up behind us ;)

We went to the place where time originates from. The red ball at the top of that building moves up and down the pole every hour.

Here I am straddling the Prime Meridian. I'm in two places at once!

The keeper of time (imagine that in a really deep, theatrical voice).

I figured now would be a good time to post some pictures of just hanging out around London and introduce you all to some of my friends here.

 

The redhead on the left is Deborah, one of my flatmates. Sam is on the right, and she lives just down the street from me (the boys in the boat picture I posted above are some of her flatmates). We were just chilling in the student lounge at school in-between classes.

These are some of the people living in Nido, which is a dorm room sort of situation a little farther away from where I live. They came over to hang out at our flat because we have much more room! Gertie is all the way to the left, Tatyana is in the middle, and Devin is on the right.

The rest of the family! Alex is my roommate, and Susannah lives with Deb.

These are our British friends, Kier and Stuart. They work as "detectives" at the Sherlock Holmes museum next door to us. We pass by them every day, so we decided to befriend them!

P.S. Stuart "fancies" me ;)

More Theatre and New Friends: Part I

Yikes -- It's been so long since I've last posted! These past few weeks have been BUSY.

We recently went to see what I think has been the best play of the semester so far. It's called "A Disappearing Number," and it was devised by the Complicite Theatre Company (which is a more performance art/physical theatre sort of ensemble).

The narrative itself was absolutely beautiful, and the ensemble performed with an honesty that blew my mind. The show involved a lot of maths, and they were used really well: the mathematics definitely informed the emotional code of the play. Since my high school theatre director was also my math teacher, theatre and math have always fit together for me in a really strange and beautiful way -- so I really enjoyed the combination. All in all, it was a show that appealed to both the heart and mind, which I really appreciated.

(P.S. I bought the script in case anyone wants to read it!)



Goodness, other things that have happened...

We've been on several fieldtrips:

Shakespeare Walk

This is Mama Donna, who led the walk. She's also our Grinnell-in-London program director and surrogate mother.

We pretty much walked through a lot of pretty courtyards where Shakespeare's plays would have been performed before actual playhouses (like Shakespeare's Globe) were built.

Then we walked over the millennium bridge (also known as the Harry Potter bridge because it's the one that gets torn up by the deatheaters in the 5th movie).

Oh look, it's St. Paul's Cathedral.

We learned something interesting about these short pillars that keep the cars from driving up on the sidewalk. Apparently they have a duel purpose: This one dates from 1812 and was made to look like a cannon with a cannonball coming out of it. Silly tricks of wartime.

This is the oldest dock in the city.

P.S. That's the Thames River.

We passed by Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.  Well, the rebuilt one anyway -- the original burnt down during a production of Henry VIII.

Some of the guys from the program.

This is where some bear-baiting, which is disgusting by the way, would have happened. Bear-baiting was like the Brit's version of gladiators. They chained up a bear and let wild dogs tear it apart. Not cool. But this is a pretty little area...

Another beautiful cathedral.

Tower of London

Trebuchet!

Tower Bridge.

I got a picture with some actors wandering around as townspeople. He even let me where his hat since I asked so nicely ;)

This is just a model of the whole Tower of London place, just so you can see what we visited.

Traitor's Gate. This is where people like Anne Boleyn would have been brought in and led to the execution block to have their heads chopped off. Poor Anne!

We went into the Bloody Tower, but my camera died so I didn't take any pictures of the torture devices. I'm sure you're all pretty disappointed about that ;)





We also got to see the crown jewels, which were actually really cool! But I couldn't take pictures because of the rules.