Dads gone, but Uncle Stanley was here to Babysit

This past week has been an interesting week of work.  Our third project was put on hold due to the arrival of Stanley Hallet, a former dean of our Architecture school that still sticks around.  He has a background in video and photography, so he decided to teach us a new skill.

With the help of a fantastic camera, Corin, Steph Cervantes, and I were assigned to spend a few hours on Via del Corso.  All we had to do was just experience it, and then express our time through photos. The 3 of us decided that since we were assigned a street, we would focus on movement and how people travel up and down the road.  

We started fairly in the center, in front of Basilica dei SS Ambrogio e Carlo.  After taking some photos in that area we started walking north, towards Piazza del Popollo.  There we had a lot of fun taking photos of the seguay testers and Corin managed to photo-chase the flower man around the piazza until he noticed.

One thing my entire class enjoys is the short busses that ride up and down Via del Corso.  They start at Piazza del Popolo, which gave us the idea to, well, ride the bus down the road.  We had a lot of fun being squished on that tiny little bus all while taking photos of the buildings wizzing by.

We got out of the bus half way down the road, near the small piazza with the big Fendi store, saw an asian tourist in a bright orange track suit, and then continued our walk down the street.  Once we hit Piazza Colonna, we decided to take a quick gioliti break, and then we returned to our walk.  We got distracted by a street artist (and then I got distracted by a pigeon).  At the end of the road was Piazza Venezia, the location of the monument for Vittorio Emmanuel II.  There we found JoJo returning from her day’s project, took a few creeper shots, and then decided it was getting late, and we should be going home.

We added a peppy beat to our photo montage, and presented it to the class thursday afternoon.  All the projects were unique and enjoyable.  We are so used to a 2-D drawings pinned up behind us for each of our presentations.  We all enjoyed this assignment because of how different it was.  The purpose was to focus on people experiencing architecture and the city, instead of analyzing the architecture and the city itself.  We all had a fun week with Stanley Hallet, and we all definitely learned a lot. 

Click here if you would like to view our masterpiece  

Spring Break Photos

 San Stephano Rotundo

r"e"united

Frites + Mayo. not bad

 The Baked Potato Shoppe

Visuals of Istanbul

 A lovely view of the Blue Mosque, and some birds

 Bakleva... please... =)

 Haggia Sophia

 Kitty knows whats up

 Turkish delights <3

 Making friends all over the globe

 The Muses

Asia

Spring Break, Shitfaced

So I am back from Istanbul, and then what? oh right, time for Spring break!  I will keep this one a bit more abridged than the Istanbul post.

We land from Istanbul, I have a few moments of lunch, chill, whatnot. Brig is about to leave with Corin and Andrew to go to studio and print their boarding passes for their trip to Germany.  I better go downstairs and say goodbye to the boys since idk when i am leaving to meet with my parents.  I enter the boys room and Speer yells “LISA THERE YOU ARE! Youre parents were just outside the window, i sent them around, go get them!” And that is when my spring break began.

I was with my family in Rome for the weekend. They got to see all the great sites of Rome I’ve been to, in addition to many other new things to me.  On saturday night, my uncle took us to his friends house in Rome for an authentic italian meal. It was completely awesome and different, and i got to practice my italian =]

Sunday was a papal morning and then a night of me being sad because i dont want my family to leave rome, but i dont wanna miss out on my spring break plans. 

Creepy man at Termini at 5 am but i managed to escape. I met a cool Serbian girl on the train to the airport, and 2 really awesome just out of college students on the plane.  We talked about Summer Hights High.  I then land in Amsterdam. Our hostel is right across the canal from the Red light district. Awesome.  I then got to go into the Van Gogh Museum.  Even more awesome.  I eventually got to try the signature french fries with mayo.  It was delicious. and i Had my first Amstel. I hope my mom is proud of me.

Liz and I decided the last half our our week would be spent in Edinburgh, Scottland.  It was a beautiful city.  Corin and Brigid also joined. We got to go into Mary King’s Close which is famously haunted and, much like the fake haunted forest we went to in Maryland, managed to scare the bejesus out of me.  There was a place we had lunch at one day entirely dedicated to baked potatoes. I have had more potatoes in the last week than i have all year. 

story time: back in the way way day before plumbing, Edinburgh had tall (10-14 story) buildings, that they had to use a bucket as a bathroom.  every day at 7 am and 10 pm they were aloud to yell “guard-e-loo” (not sure how it is actually spelled) and toss the bucket of the days waste out the window.  10 pm is also the time that pubs would close, and since men would go right from work to the pub, they would drink a plenty, and then walk home. When they would walk home, odds are, someone was shouting “GUARD-E-LOO” and since they were drunk, they would dizzily look up, into the darkness, and then, only if they were lucky, would the droppings land right on their face. hence: “shit faced.” learned that one on a rando tour we went on.

In the end, i had such a great week. do i wish i spent the week with my parents in italy? part of me does, but in the end, i know that I got to experience 2 cities i have been wanting to visit, and i had so much fun at both of them.

The Rome of the east: Istanbul

Many moons ago, when Constantine finally recognized Christianity as a religion and put a stop to Christian persecutions, he wanted to relocate the capitol of the Roman Empire, in order for Christianity to properly flourish.  He found the rundown, yet centrally located city of Byzantium, renamed it Constantinople, and then built the Haggia Sophia, a grand church in his new capitol.  When muslim was becoming a popular culture and religion in the east, it too took over Constantinople, building many mosques and taking a few churches (most notably, Haggia Sophia) and transformed them into mosques. The name of the city too was switched to Istanbul, as we call it today.

Now that you have a brief history lesson as to the importance of the city of Istanbul, you can imagine why it is the perfect location for an Architecture student, studying in Rome, to at one point visit Istanbul.  Without further ado, here is my abridged week in Istanbul, in my signature bullet point form...

Arrival Day:

-Bus to airport at 11

-slept entire flight

-landed 5pm (-1 hr time difference) in Asia!

-Bus ride to hotel, stuck in much traffic, learned key Turkish phrases

-Dinner on top floor of our hotel: amazing views of Haggia Sophia and the Blue mosque

-the food was interesting yet good. our desert jiggled.

-“my sister accidently bought bread and butter pickles once and it ruined 4th of july” -CFT

-class night walk. We get bakleva. love.

-watched Turkish drama with JoJo

Day 1:

-5:30 am prayer call. to them, this is a peaceful, holy part of their day. to us, its just plain strange

-Haggia Sophia.  I walked in and was awestruck. It is massive and amazing.

-Spice market. “hello spice girls!”

-Emily wanted bakleva after lunch, we searched spice market, couldnt find one she wanted, meanwhile we ate a free sample of turkish delight at every stand. estimated 1/2 kilo consumed... without paying

-Emily gets pooped on outside Mosque Yeni Cami. the headdress is causing her peripherals to not see the poo on her arm

-apple tea = yummmm

-more bakleva

-froze

-Turkish bath: not as awkward as i thought. very warm and refreshing actually

-Nargila bar on the top floor of a building that contains rug stores. 

-Tim couldnt get the elevator door open when we reached the bottom and it shot back up “sorry were closed” and we were sent back down, laughing hysterically

Day 2:

-Blue Mosque

-Little Haggia Sophia

-Grand Bazaar time!

-Made friend at ceramic store

-Returned to spice market where Emily, Brigid, Corin and i continued to eat as many free samples of turkish delights as possible

-Turkish delight salesmen tells me he wishes his daughter had my eyes

Day 3:

-Mosques Mosques and more Mosuqes

-and more freezing

-looks like a protest down that street, perhaps we need to reschedule walking that way.... 

-lunch at awkward hotel

-Istanbul Archeological Museum = AWESOME!

-Carpet shopped, met “Uncle Ismet”

-found out about protest “right wing funeral, many people go to make sure he is in the ground. i hate him too” -Ismet

-Kelly is raking up the rugs

-Nargila bar with Eric, we collectively designed a mosque while there that was a 17 sided figure.

-Met an awesome Turkish rock star. Saleh Sabr. I know that because he found us on facebook. I dont know how.

Day 4:

-Toured hans (places connected to the bazaar)

-Saw creepy mannequins and ugly wedding dresses. CFT wanted me to try one on. no.

-rando turkish man speaks turkish to eric, fast. we decide to blindly follow

-leads us through dark stairwell and to the roof of the han. bests views ever.

-Back to shop in the bazaar with Em and Joj

-spend about an hour looking at plates in this back corner ceramic store, while jojo is on the other side looking at tiles.

-continue around bazaar. 2-3 hours later, we pass near that area, the guy recognizes us and invites us to come back to his dark alley bazaar shop for tea. hey, when in ... istanbul

Day 5:

-omg. the sky can be blue in Istanbul? say it aint so!

-Palace. not mosque. what?!

-uncle Ismet gets us turkish pizza. i dont want to know whats on it, i just know i love it.

-Spice market shopping

-Then back to bazaar. Emily and CFT buy teaspoons from awkward tea stand. its more awkward than i am making it sound

-go into carpet store, this carpet man is NOT Ismet and squeaks a lot

-Dinner in Asia, ferry ride necessary.

-thyme tea, or as we preferred calling it, “pee tea”

-little boy grabs steve, oh god, our first interaction with attempt of pick pocketing.

-strange guys at ferry terminal act strange near me

-we all decide to run home from the ferry.  not our brightest of ideas

we left for Rome first thing the next morning, and thus, the beginning of my spring break. which will be covered in another blog post.