This horse is a part of the Murphy sculpture garden on UCLA campus. Its author is Deborah Butterfield. Believe it or not, the horse is made out of metal, beautifully made to look like wood. The garden’s patron wanted to create a space to appreciate beauty from the most abstract to the most detailed forms. The garden also includes four …
North America trip day 3: Grumpy sea lion and farmers’ market
San Francisco is hyper urban, but the main tourist attractions are bisons and sea lions. The family I was staying with told me a story that pier 39, where sea lions rest, used to be a private pier for boats. Sea lions started assembling there after the great earthquake, and the people who were using the pier were driven away …
North America trip day 2: buffaloes and hippies
The second day in San Francisco was super interesting. We started from a hipster cafe called ‘Phil’s’, where local hipsters hang out. I noticed that hipsters in Europe dress by far more colorfully than in the US. The coffee was really good for americano.
North America trip day 1: the Mission
I’m doing an American-style ‘eurotrip’, but in the US. I learned about the concept of ‘doing Europe in 7 days’ in high school English class. Now I’ll try to ‘do’ the US in two weeks. I started with observing the legendary murals in the Mission, San Francisco. Surprises so far: some advertisements are in Spanish only, and the ubiquitousness of …
Dubrovnik – the expensive urban and natural paradise (II)
First part . Outside of the Old Town, a picturesque fortification attracts not only tourists, but also the theater and cinema industries. It is also used for rock diving. On it, the official motto of the former republic, ‘freedom can’t be sold for the whole gold in the world’, is inscribed. The republic’s nobility (men only) elected their representatives to …
Dubrovnik – the expensive urban and natural paradise (I)
Visiting Dubrovnik for the first time got me asking why I never thought about going there before. I am not surprised why it attracts so many people – there is everything for every taste… except, perhaps, budget travel. The popular Croatian city rests on the remainders of the once-prominent Republic of Ragusa, which was known for its vibrant economic and …
Luxembourg’s treasures II: Vianden castle and chairlift
People go to Luxembourg to earn money or to buy cheap fuel – the rainy country is not a popular tourist destination. But people who already live there tend to travel quite a bit – travel inside the country, which has the highest GDP per capita in the EU, is obscenely cheap (EUR 1.3 to go by train or bus …
Luxembourg’s treasures I: The Mullerthal Trail
Luxembourg is not frequently visited by tourists, and I have an impression that the country doesn’t promote itself as a tourist destination. Why should it? The world already comes there to pick up the paycheck. Germans go there to fill the tanks of their cars (lower taxes). Streets are already overcrowded with people who commute to the tiny country from …
Unexpected objects and sights in Paris in 2012
For various reasons, I visited Paris three times in 2013. I didn’t feel like blogging about it, because there’s not much I can say about Paris that people wouldn’t already know, and I about it during my first visit there. But as I go through old travel photos in my computer and delete some, I will share a few interesting …
Short visits to Bologna and Prato
During my trip to Italy (see blog entries about Milan and Tuscany) I had short stopovers in Prato (Tuscany) and Bologna (Emilia-Romagna). These are both ancient cities with a lot to see. In Prato, we had very little time. Prato is famous for its religious architecture, as well as South Italian and Chinese migrant communities.