9- Amsterdam Again.

Today started out kinda sucky. Our repeatedly emphasized plans to leave at promptly 10am so we'd make our 10:30 train was met with last person drifting out at 10:15. We still made it to the train, but the real problem came when we found out that some deal we'd be getting was no longer available- so not only did we have 5 hours of round trip train ride, but it'd cost 42.50 euro- yeah basically 60 bucks. Nuh uh. Well I still wanted to go cause what the hell, it was our last day, we were gonna see an iconic house, and the North Sea, and we were here to see architecture, we were at the train station, I was all prepared. But majority wanted to stay, so stay we did. Admittedly I could have gone alone if I'd wanted.

Instead we had another day around town. A few like minded souls decided to walk around for a few hours. That started with fries. Thanks Jason for modeling them.

and thanks for riding this tiny motorcycle for me :)

This is a cool castle-y restaurant near our hotel. Did I ever mention how we're a street away from the Red Light District? Lots of hotels, corner food places, tourists, stoned people, etc.

John (another future roommate, who's hysterical, and loves things like tiny cars) was checking out the open urinal. This thing is a little circular fence where you go to pee down a little drain. Many of them just empty into the canal.

We walked to the zoo, which was 18.50 euro!! So we got a free show from the fence of camels, monkeys in the distance, and some like longhorn kinda cows or something. What the heck...

John for example, loved this car. I did too, since it had limo seating in the back, with three tiny flip down seats behind the front seat facing backwards. Remarkable!

We then went to a playground and did some climbing of things. Jason and Dave took a nap on top of the tree house.

Then we went for a hike to the waterfront near-ish to the train station. Saw this building. Some like architecture institute or something.

Pretty cool looking. Expensive looking for being so small though...

We crossed a cool looking bridge in search of a building...

And we found it. Renzo Piano's NEMO, a Science Museum of some sort.

Cool looking. There's a pirate ship next to it...

From the "prow" side of the building...

The whole top of the building is stairs sort of, or a deck kind of, which we climbed a giant staircase to get to. There you have nice views of the city. Hard to see but its Shawna, Alex, Dave, Jason, John, and Britta, L-R.

One of the great views of the city from up there.

THEN we split up. Janis and I kept pushing on through to see more.

This is the new Amsterdam library, and next to it is some kind of school.

The school up closer, with sawtoothed windows, library up close.

The sawtooth windows. They have the color-changing film on them too!

Columns holding the back of the library up. Actually condos there I think. Amazing.

A view out the library, of the train station to the right, city to the lift, and current condo construction in front. Its a masterplanned peninsula kind of space.

Some interior of the library...

The next building. A music theatre of sorts. Great cantilevers.

Cool building. See the footbridge on the right over the canal?

Here's the footbridge. Amazing shapes, cool engineering with tension cables and compression shapes.

Another shot of this black unit cantilevered-ish.

Some random cool looking thing.

The terminal for the cruise ships that apparently leave Amsterdam...

An interior of the terminal.

Our day ended by meeting for dinner around 5:30, walking bloody forever to this Japanese noodle place (that was good for groups, and tasty, and not too expensive) and then taking pictures with the whole class and Jimenez in front of the I AMsterdam sign. We walked back, got some gelato (I can't wait to try different combinations EVERY day in Italy- today I got Red Grapefruit that was SO sour!) and then came home to pack.

I'm going to bed by 10:30 to be up by 5 in the lobby by 5:30 to leave by 6 to be to the airport by 7 for a 9:30 flight which gets in at 11:10, then we meet Xavier, the prof in charge of the Barcelona program, at the school at 1:30. As a group of 21. We have a lot of luggage and hafta get all over high heaven together. Gonna be a mess.

Toodles.

8- Utrecht

Beard-face. (DAMMIT, its beard-fah-SAY!)

By the way I finally finished my snack that had been sustaining me during the days- Trader Joes chili pepper mango slices. Those have been my daytime subsistence. I had my last one a couple days ago. Sad face.

Today we caught one building we missed. MVRDVs WoZoCo building. Sweet cantilevers, more color again. Glass balconies. On the way back to a bus ride to the University of Utrecht we stopped at Albert Heijn XL, basically the super grocery, which here basically means almost actually as big as our normal grocery. I got some more whipped yogurt. Rock on. And some stroopwafels. Wafer-y cookie things that have been soaked in like csrmelized honey. Yum.

Balconies

And more balconies. A lady who lived there who said her English was bad asked if we liked it, cause she lived there. I said "yes, and my Dutch is bad."

Backlit by the gray sky, they look pretty cool.

I have like fifteen minutes to finish this blog.

Look at all the cantilevered apartment units!! Amazing!

This one was falling down though.

We walked around UU for a couple hours, seeing Will Arendt's university library, OMAs Educatorium, and after walking right by it (*I* saw it but didn't know we were looking for it) went to UN Studio's something building. We looked for it for like thirty minutes, skipped going in a cool building that I ASKED to go in, that WAS cool because when looking for the other, I went inside real quick.

Arendt library exterior.

Windows up close.

Windows up closer.

Top floor had a tree garden. And some guy in the window with a camera.

Soaring spaces, all black, white, red.

Squishy furniture.

A random colorful building.

OMA's building. Concrete and glass.

Same building. Shapey! See those curved spaces? That's where the upcoming pictures will be from of body-surfing...

Jason holding up Jessica. This was taken at an angle- cause Katie's feet down below are on level ground. Still cool though.

The body-surfing ramp inside. Oh wait for the videos...

Some cool building connected to OMA's

There was some opaque glass in the floor, over another floor. We decided to take pictures. You can't see anything from above because its darker below, but from below you can see a lot! Pretty cool. Me and Jessica...

Me and Jessica

Me and Dave

Me and Dave

A walkway over the street to the black library.

The auditorium. Colorful seats. Man I like color.

A sort of skateboard bowl with stairs.

This is a building!! Basically a giant bridge- and basically the same thing OMA showed us a model of that they designed as a gateway to Dubai....uh, did they not see this one?

The building we didn't go see. Since there were clearly three glass tubes on the roof probably extending through the building, I wanted to investigate.

Sweet atrium up to a skylight in the roof, with big red stairs in them.

The atrium from the other side...

Instead we saw another Neutlings & Reijdik building that was ugly outside and not working inside. Was supposed to have a giant pool slash fountain that cooled the building, and was empty. My theory is we didn't see what I wanted cause it wasn't on the list and we didn't know who built it. Lame.

The kinda cool inside, with seating booths......

And the ugly outside, that basically had worms embedded in the surface.

After too much walking and waiting in the sun, we got onto a triple bus (two accordion hinges- pretty common) that was ridiculously packed. We hadta ride it for like twenty minutes.

We got to historic downtown and saw a front half of a church built in the 1400s, a plaza built where the middle of the church used to be, and a tower that was the back half. Weird.

The tower from afar

The back half of the church that we couldn't go in...the middle of the church doesn't exist.

Then we got some food (creamy mustard soup and cherry beer for me) and headed home. Tonight is my friend Jessicas birthday. She wants a candle in a brownie.

My cherry beer, and my roommate Dave.

I also noticed some very clearly lean-y buildings today:

Crazy.