Mini-Holiday | Paris #5

This will be my last post about the mini-trip I did to Paris back in July. This post doesn’t have a particular theme. It is mostly just random photographs I took while I was there. This time we decided to wander more around the city, which wasn’t that great of an idea because of the heat wave. Either way, it was a good chance to stroll down a few of the fashion high-end streets: Rue Saint-Honoré and Rue du Faubourd Saint-Honoré. I tried to take a few photographs of the fashion houses’ window displays but it was absolutely impossible. The only ones that managed to be somewhat okay are the ones below. I really wish I had more photographs because those window displays were absolutely amazing, original and gorgeous. And I can say the same about the stores’ buildings.

All of these photographs were edited using the programme ‘pixelmator’.

Mini-Holiday | Paris #4

I decided to make the Paris underground as a unique theme not only because of the photographs that I took, but also because I wanted to express a bit of my opinion on it. I’ve traveled in three different underground systems: the Portuguese one, the English one and the French one. Any doubts that I had that our system wasn’t that great, they were all confirmed when I used the other two.

I’m not going to include the English one in this discussion but it is definitely several times better than the one we have. Honestly, I don’t know why people hated so much the new coaches that the Lisbon underground had for a few months – they were so much more spacious and visually appealing. Anyway… The Paris underground is also a much better system than ours. I would say that the coaches have probably the same quality, even though they actually have more seats and somehow an appearance of more space. Some of the coaches also have a really good map of the stations – it lights the button of the station you’re in, so it’s super easy to know where you are, where and when you bees to leave.

Nevertheless, what is really good about the Paris underground system is that it is indeed FAST! Not the apparently fast as ours but the really FAST FAST. It may seem that it doesn’t matter but it actually makes a really big difference at the end of the day. Also, the time that you have to wait between trains is almost perfect (and this is something that the Paris and London underground have in common). I know we’re talking about two larger cities than Lisbon with a whole lot more inhabitants than we ever had but still the time that we have to wait for a train is ridiculous. We’re talking about a different between waiting for one or less than a minute (two minutes in the most extreme cases) and waiting for five or more minutes. The best part it’s when we’re in the middle of rush hour in Lisbon and there’s an 8-minute gap between trains. And yeah I know what the second photograph shows, but trust me, sometimes it said it would take more than 5 minutes, but in reality it was a lot less than that.

The other reason for which I created this separate theme was because of the publicity posters that I photographed in one of the stations – Bastille. And in some way this was also due to my obsession over the band ‘Bastille‘ – but that’s not the point here. The posters in the first photographs are completely random but I found them to be really visually appealing. And the remaining ones are merely referent to the ‘Minions‘ film, something for which I’m also obsessed. I think these posters were brilliant made.

All of these photographs were edited using the programme ‘pixelmator‘. You can check the remaining posts from my trip to Paris here, here and here.

Mini-Holiday | Paris #3

And in the meantime, I’ve also totally forgotten about this post (and others) that I had in my drafts folder. These are still photographs from my three-day trip to Paris back in July this year. In order to not publish all my 50+ photographs in just a single post, I’ve been publishing tiny groups of photographs at a time, creating somewhat different themes with them. You can check my other posts here and here.

So today’s theme is Paris in general. I have already present a post featuring the Parisian architecture, so I guess this is a sort of continuation, considering most of these photographs consist of buildings (historic, religious and civic ones). All of these photographs are of different parts of the city, and they were taken from the Notre-Dame Cathedral. In this way, this is exactly the view that you have from the cathedral – unfortunately too touristic these days, as pretty much everything else in the major cities of Europe.

This time we decided to stay in a rented apartment. In some cases it can be a lot cheaper than staying at hotels, and having access to a proper kitchen makes it easier for you to control what you eat and how much money you spend, if you’re on a tight budget. I don’t think the building where we stayed is in any of these pictures (especially in the last two because they’re more zoomed in), but I can tell you guys that the building is very similar to the ones you can see in the 10th photograph.

These photographs were edited using the programme ‘pixelmator’.

Mini-Holiday | Paris #2

And moving on to my second post about my mini-holiday in Paris, this year. For those of you who haven’t seen the first post (you can check it here), I’ve decided to share some of the photographs that I took in a series of posts, in order not to flood y’all with dozens of them in just one post. I’ve also decided to explore a somewhat different theme in each one of these posts. Thus, today’s theme revolves around the Parisian architecture, probably one of its main attractions.

Some of the photographs that I show you below are completely random. With the exception of the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 12th photographs – Louvre Museum, Opera House and Sainte-Chapelle/Palais de Justice, respectively -, the rest are just random buildings that I decided to photograph. I believe that the buildings in the 2nd and 14th photographs are completely representative of the Parisian civil architecture, as the bridge in the 10th photograph.

I really loved the statue in the 15th photograph. It’s different in a good way and really interesting. There are buildings in these photographs that I cannot identify because I don’t remember what they are now. The statue in the last photograph is located in what was once the Bastille prison. For me, it is a shame that there is nothing left of it because I’d love to see it, even if it were to be only ruins of the building.

Lastly, the bookstore in the 13th photograph was somewhat a suggestion from the owner of the blog “Sweet Stuff”. She talked about it a few months ago and I decided it would be a lovely surprise for my mum, since she loves books. This bookstore is quite the find in Paris because it is an English bookstore in the middle of Paris; something that I never expected to find, considering how protective the French are about their language. The bookstore is lovely and has an amazing collection of books. The only problem I found in it was the price of the books, which is nothing unusual when foreign books are imported – their prices are always higher that those practiced in the native country.

These photographs were edited using the programme ‘pixelmator’.

Mini-Holiday | Paris #1

I have already mentioned this before, about a month ago or so, but anyway… After the end of my Masters and the beginning of my internship in France, I spent a few days in Paris in what I called my mini-holidays. At the beginning of this year, I thought that my internship would only start at the end of July, which would give me plenty of time to travel between it and the end of my Masters. My intention was really to do a trip around Europe for two weeks but in the end there was simply no time to do such a trip. However, I can’t complain because I got the chance to go to Paris for a few days.

The last time – the first one actually – that I was in Paris was 11 years ago. It feels like a lifetime ago and even though not that many years passed, I’ve noticed really big differences between then and now. The city is a lot more touristic, a lot more confusing and crowed. Everything is more commercialised now which is a shame. But the rest is still the same. Parisians are still annoying – no offence though -, its architecture is still something to die for, amazing food, especially pastries.

In order not to flood one post with dozens of photos, I’ve decided to share them in a series of posts, each one with a different theme. So today’s theme is churches. I’m pretty sure that one of the first places people go to is the Notre Dame Cathedral. If we already thought that the queues were too long the first time we went there, which explains why we didn’t get in then, I believe it was even worse this time. If we think about individual people or families that go on holiday, it isn’t really a problem. The problem is actually the groups of tourists that are one of the most annoying things ever. They’re too big, too loud and too slow. They’re the main reason why the queues are so gigantic.

Either way. The first photographs are from Notre Dame. I’m sorry for the not so good quality of them, especially the ones inside because we were not  allowed to take photographs with flash, so they’re kinda rubbish. The last four photos are from the Saint-Séverin church, located in the Quartier Latin, and close to the apartment where we stayed. As additional information, both churches are from the Gothic period.

All of these photographs were edited with the programme ‘pixelmator’.

Holland: One Day @ Apenheul Primate Park

Before the deadline for the first draft of our thesis (which is actually the only draft we need to hand in), me and a group of friends decided to take a day off from the thesis craziness to go to a primate park. So a few days ago we went to the Apenheul Primate Park. This is a zoo located in Apeldoorn, in the Netherlands. This zoo has been open since 1971 and displays now more than 30 different species of primates

It is basically the same as a zoo, except for the part where it is only focused in one single order – primates. And also except for the part where some animals are actually free and allowed to wander around, even in the middle of the public. To be honest, this makes for a much better experience. This park is a big as many city capital zoos, so you can all imagine how many specifies of primates are indeed represented in this park and so much space it has. This was absolutely an amazing experience, especially because I managed to be very close to some of the primates. Unfortunately, none climbed in to my shoulder as they often do. It was amazing to observe orang-utans, bonobos and gorillas and realise how much similar they are to us, or us to them. It couldn’t have been a better physical example of the resemblances shared by two species in the same evolutionary branch.

The park is well-organised and they paid attention to some very important details. For instance, they provide us with monkey proof bags for our belongings – which aren’t more than just normal bags with a sort of lock. Even though some animals are totally free to wander around, there are always people in those places to make sure that they are safe as the public too. The park has all different species of primates, even some species that aren’t present in the wild anymore and whose only examples in Europe are in this specific park. The only thing I found disappointing about this park was the fact that they had no chimps. They are really one of my favourite animals (along with the rest of primates) and I would have loved to have seen some of them.

Let me tell you now that you’re gonna get spammed by dozens of pictures of primates, which are one of the most adorable orders in the world. The first few pictures show the park, while the remaining ones are of the primates. These pictures were edited using the programme “pixelmator“.

These are some of the habitats of the primates. I can imagine how much different they are from the actual habitats, but then I guess is better than anything. There is plenty of room for them to wander around, especially for those of them who have more freedom than others. The park itself provides a wonderful walk through the wild, considering that a good percentage of it is not the zoo, so people can walk freely there.

These are black-capped squirrel monkey and they are one of the most adorable creatures in the world. This is the wrong thing to say but I really wanted to take one home with me. These South American squirrel monkeys are found in Bolivia, Brazil and Peru. They are one of the few species that are actually completely free in the zoo. It’s easy for you guys to get one of them to jump into your shoulder. You just need to kneel close to one of them and they’ll generally jump into your shoulders. But we gotta be really careful because they are sneaky and little thieves.

From top to bottom: crowned sifaka, red ruffed lemur and ring-tailed lemur. In a way (because taxonomic classifications are really hard to understand if we’re not in this subject) they all belong to the family of Lemuridae. There is a part of their enclosure which is totally open, so they can also wander around even in the middle of the public. However, I only saw one red ruffed lemur do it – and he actually scared a few kids. And at this point we witnessed a group of ring-tailed lemur chasing a peafowl. It was quite funny to be honest.

And here we have the zoo’s group of bonobos. Along with the common chimpanzee, they are one of our two closest relatives. It was absolutely amazing admiring them and realising how much alike our species are. Unfortunately, they are and endangered species only found in a 500,000 km2 area of the Congo Basin in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Central Africa. The little ones was also one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen. The first photo of the bonobos is actually one of my favourites: I’m pretty sure that could have been a photo of one of our common ancestors with the rest of the great apes.

Moving to another species within the family of great apes, I present you guys the group of Bornean orang-utans. As a curiosity, they actually share approximately 97% of their DNA with humans. I wasn’t able to take many good photos of them because of the glass, of the fact that one of the little guys couldn’t stop still for a second and also because there was a lot of people inside that building.

From top to bottom: Javan lutung, western lowland gorilla and ion-tailed macaque. I believe that the best time to see the gorillas is when they are doing one of their shows with them. Apparently, you have the chance to throw apples at them, for feeding let’s be clear. I’m to assume that they have a large enclosure, so it is a bit difficult to see them because they will never always be in the same part of the enclosure as us.

And now moving to the biggest spam you’ll see in this next: Barbary macaques. They are a species of macaque unique for its distribution outside Asia and for its vestigial tail. They are found in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria and Morocco and El-Kouf National Park in Libya along with a small population of unknown origin in Gibraltar. They provided me with the best experience in the whole day. Because you may ask… Well because the tiny one (that you can see in images 4 to 8) was really close to have jumped. And I so wish he had done it. In the 8th photo you guys can actually see how close he was to my camera. By all these photos you can see how much in love I was with the little one. He is adorable adorable adorable.

From top to bottom: unknown (I’m sorry but I couldn’t really identify them; I should have taken note of their species name), emperor tamarin, Goeldi’s marmoset and Gray langurs. Emperor tamarins are absolutely cute with their white moustache. At the end of the day, this was an amazing experience and I am so glad I decided to go.

Holland: One Day @ Amsterdam #2

With my parents over during the Easter break, we decided to go back to Amsterdam. The last time I visited the city was more than a year ago, and I had totally forgotten how chaotic it is with all the tourists it receives everyday. And if tourists didn’t provoke enough chaos already, because they are completely unaware of the bike paths, some companies have decided to implement bike tours around the town. It would be fine if people were actually used to ride a bike in busy towns, but that’s not usually the case. Needless to say, chaos is even bigger now.

This time we didn’t visit museums or anything like that. We mostly decided to just wander around the city, getting to know a little bit about it. We ended up by spending the whole morning in one of the main commercial streets and we found a couple of very interesting shops. I wish we could have some of them back home. And we had the best brunch/lunch ever: a delicious and gorgeous apple pie with cream (you can see a picture of it here).

We decided to visit one of the Protestant churches that there is in Amsterdam. I can’t remember the exact name of the church, but is the one located close to the House of Anne Frank (you can see photos of the church below). I must say it was quite disappointing, if we compare it to Catholic churches. I had never been inside a Protestant church so I didn’t know how much they differed. They are architecturally speaking interesting but they really don’t have the same appeal that Catholic churches have.

And lastly, we wandered around Amsterdam’s chinatown. I was going to say it is small but since I’m never been to any other chinatown, I can’t really say that. All the photos that I present here were edited with the programme “pixelmator”.

Holland: One Day @ Delft

In one of the days that my parents came to visited me in the Netherlands we decided to spend one day in Delft. This is a city and a municipality in the region of South Holland. It is located close to Rotterdam and The Hague. Delft is known for its historic town centre with canals, Delft Blue pottery (Delftware), the Delft University of Technology, painter Johannes Vermeer and scientist Antony van Leeuwenhoek, and its association with the Dutch royal family, the House of Orange-Nassau.

Once again, it was not the best of days because it was still cloudy and rainy. As you can guess this is not exactly the exception, but considering that we’re in Spring already, it feels a bit annoying that the weather hasn’t really improved yet. All these photos were edited using pixelmator.

One of the things that I liked most about this city is that it reminds me a lot of Brugge (in Belgium). I am saying this not only in regard to the buildings themselves (as you can see in these photos), but also in regard to the general layout of the city. However, there is only one Brugge (in my opinion). The architecture of this city is without a doubt its highlight. I must say that this city is even more pretty that Leiden itself, which is already a really pretty city. It felt like Delft had more historical buildings, so to speak. I just felt is was more beautiful.

The only thing disappointing about this city is its churches. Well, this something quite disappoint throughout the whole country actually. Because they are a country of protestants, their churches are not exactly the same as those in Catholic countries; and it’s not like they had a Gothic or a Baroque period. I feel like that their churches are not really worth the visit, unless they are free of charge.

Holland: One Day @ Rotterdam #2

With my parents here for their Easter holiday, it was time to take a break from my thesis and do some traveling. In the next few weeks I will then be posting a couple of posts about the cities I visited (some new around here, others not so much) and with photos that I took too. I will start with Rotterdam, a city that I had previously visited in February (you can see the post I made about it here), and that I decided to show to my parents. It wasn’t the best day in terms of weather. It was cloudy and rainy sometimes, so the photos aren’t at their best level. They were consequently edited with pixelmator.

We started by visiting the new Market Hall (or “Markthal” in Dutch), which is a residential and office building with a market hall underneath – hence its designation. This market hall was opened on the 1st of October by Queen Máxima of the Netherlands. This building comprises 288 apartments, a 4600 m2 market space, a 1600 m2 horeca (this is an abbreviation that means hotel/restaurant/café) and 4-storey parking garage. As you can see from the photos of the market (the first ones), the highlight goes to its ceiling which is absolutely beautiful and amazing. It was painted by Arno Coenen. This is a market worth visiting; that’s for sure. It has fruit/vegetables stands, flower stands, cookies/chocolate stands and several restaurants or smaller stands selling food. Everything looks amazing and I am sure they taste even better.

Next to the market we have the famous Rotterdam cube houses (or “Kubuswoningen” in Dutch). They are apparently famous but we just happened to see them because we decided to walk around the market. These houses were created by Piet Blom who decided to tilted the cube of a conventional house 45 degrees, and rested it upon a hexagon-shaped pylon. These houses are located on Overblaak Street, right above the Blaak Subway Station.

Holland: Life in Leiden #4

After being in the Netherlands for about 6 months or so, I haven’t also talked about my experience of living by my own. Because of past experiences, I thought it would be a good idea to share an apartment with another person: it would keep me occupied and I wouldn’t have crazy ideas. However, I quickly realised I never actually needed something like this, and I should have just opted for an individual bedroom (with shared facilities). That was not the only reason why I chose the residence where I am now, though. This is the cheapest one that the university offers and that was the major reason why I chose it. And fortunately, it ended up by being the closest residence to the faculty building, which is something quite awesome.

I seriously love when the northern countries of Europe complain about how bad the southern countries are. Oh well honeys, you seriously need to look at your own belly buttons, and especially at your little precious Netherlands because consumer service here is a JOKE! Honestly, the next time someone says something bad about us southerners, I will punch that person in the face really hard. This being said, I will let you know already that there’s gonna be a lot of complaining in this post…

But beginning with the positive side of all of this: I am saving money. Yeah that’s it. Well, actually is not the only good thing about this residence. One of my friends also lives in this building which means plenty of get-togethers with our group of friends, dinners and movie nights. As I said, the building is only 5-minutes away from the faculty by bike (not so close if we go by feet though). It is located in a residential neighbourhood, which makes it a very quiet place (thank god), close to shops and several parks (but then again, where isn’t a park in this country?). However, it appears that Dutch people consider this as a bad neighbourhood, which made me realise two things about them: first, they really have NO idea of what a true bad neighbourhood is; and second, for such a liberal country, they are FAR more racists than what we could ever thought.

And now for the bad things. I’m going to keep this as short as possible. First, this building has no common area whatsoever, so there’s no chance of getting to know your neighbours or something like that, unless you end up meeting someone at the laundry room – which is another big fat JOKE. So second, we have the worst laundry room ever. It’s not only dirty (which is something that the company that owns the building should take care of), but the machines are also most of the time broken. Are they fixed immediately? Oh hell no. Have a few days passed? Then maybe they are fixed by now. Are we accused of lying when they’re broken? Yes we are. Third, we were left out of hot water three times in just one month. Plus, we’ve had countless problems with our internet connections Fourth, were the apartments clean when we moved in? No, of course not. Did we pay for them to be clean? Yes we did. Did it actually happen? No it did not. Fifth, the shower in the bathroom is the most annoying thing ever. We cannot control the temperature of the water. One minute is warm enough, then it gets super hot, you add a bit of cold water, and BAM, it’s freezing now. And then you have to use as little water pressure as possible or otherwise you will flood the entire bathroom.

DUWO, which is the company that owns this building (and several other residences in the city), has the worst costumer service, EVER. I’m not even exaggerating here. When we have any complaints to do, or any repair requests, we have to do them online. Do we receive answers? No. There’s no kind of reply from them. When we call them, are they nice, helpful? No, hell NO. The worst part of all of this is that everyone complains about their services, and this has been happening for years. I just don’t get how does this company still exist if they have such a bad service. They actually had a review column in their website, but because people were giving their service bad ratings, what did they do to it? They took it down, obviously.

And finally, as for the experience of sharing an apartment… I’m living in a studio, which means that everything is shared. There’s a bathroom separated from the rest, just as the kitchen, but then the living room, dinning room and bedrooms are all together in one room. This means that there’s no kind of privacy, unless you close yourself inside the bathroom. After the first month, I was already tired of this situation and desperately praying to have my own bedroom back. This made me realise that I’m perfect to live by myself, alone, and not actually share an apartment (unless it means having my own bedroom). But then I think that maybe this wouldn’t be that bad if I actually had normal roommates.

I’ve had two different roommates (including the current one) and they were both from South America, which means sunny countries as Portugal. I don’t known if it’s a latina thing, or if both of them are afraid of the dark, but they can’t keep the freaking curtains closed during the night. It’s the most annoying thing, waking up at 5am with the sun rays in my face. It’s awful. I really like to sleep in dark environments, thank you. Then we would think that girls are tidy and clean. NOPE, not at all. Well, at least not these two. I seriously loved when my current roommate commented once that she can’t live in a place where the floor is dusty. Yeah I would get that if it wasn’t for the fact that she always leaves the kitchen and bathroom an entire mess after using them; and let’s not speak about the mess that is her side of the room (papers on the floor, shoes and clothes all over the furniture and floor, etc.). The bright side, it’s only four more months.

I wanted to share some photos just not to leave this post with a gigantic text, and because I had no idea of what to put here, I decided to take photos of tiny details of my part of the apartment.