Je suis ici!

 Hello all. And yes we are both alive : ) Been taking the past few days to get acclimated and become a little less nervous about wandering about barely knowing the language. Here you will see an exhausted photo taken after a long overnight flight and layover in Dublin...trekking home on the train from the airport to chez nous (our home) in the 15e arrondissement. The apartment is just perfect; tiny, cozy, and efficient. It really helps simplify life when you only have the bare essentials lying around and a few items in the fridge to cook with. Less decisions, yet more frequent shopping for sure! I've been to the store almost every day now picking up enough to carry home and get us through another meal or two. Today, Adam and I will attempt our first outdoor market to stock up on some fresh edibles for a great Sunday meal. More to come from that soon.

Château de Saumur

(Continuing from our visit in Tours...)

The next morning (I think this puts us at Friday) we had a bright-and-early start with a quick intro to the history of Saumur from Tricia, which led us right to the castle in town. Ya know, 'cause French cities have those on occasion.

The Château de Saumur was originally built to defend against invading Normans in the 10th century. Then it got destroyed, built again, burnt, gifted, turned into a barracks, a McDonalds, a prison, and eventually transcended to where it is today: a tourist mecca that inspired Walt Disney. Okay, some of that I made up, but more of it is true than you may suspect (prison: yes; McDonalds: not so much).

With the cloudless skies and finally ample time, the students relaxed, explored, and had quality time with their sketch books:

More pics here.

The field trip continues here.

Saint Gatien's Cathedral

(Continuing our field trip from the Vinci Conference Center...)

If you haven't noticed, we had perfect weather for this weekend. Cloudless blue skies every day.

To wrap up our afternoon at Tours, we walked over to Saint Gatien's Cathedral, another structure built over several hundred years due to fires, financing, wars, etc. You would have to zoom in on the high-resolution version of the above image, but you can see many slight ornamental and detailing differences between the two towers. The north tower (if I'm remembering correctly) was built first at the very start of the 16th century, followed by the south tower several decades later, and even this change in time was sufficient to warrant new details and an upgraded facade.

One of the most striking aspects of the church is the organ, a massive thing placed just below a beautiful rose window at the south end of the transept.

As usual, more pics here.

And the field trip continues here.

Vinci Conference Center

(Continuing our field trip...)

We stopped in Tours to see the Vinci Conference Center. This building took us back to 1993 when Jean Nouvel designed this structure-with-a-baseball-cap that overlooks a major intersection of the city.

I think this played a key role in the weekend to keep things balanced with the many "old" places we were visiting (churches, abbeys, cloisters, that sort of thing).

One of the interesting aspects of the building is that it hangs the interior assembly areas, and therefore provides column-free, multi-level interior spaces.

That shiny "ceiling" is actually the belly of a large auditorium. Kinda cool huh? And of course, more sketching:

More pics here.

And the field trip continues here...

Bye Bye HED

Today marks my last day of work. Sad to say goodbye from everyone who's taught me so much these past 3.5 years, yet so exciting to know that a week from now, I will be far far away living this whim of a dream Adam and I had joked about doing for so long.....to just run away to Europe to take a break from life. It's so weird to think we actually made this happen and he's already there living it.

Yesterday the office took me out to lunch as a final goodbye, and it was such a surprise to see so many show up. It's those little things that makes a girl fee kinda good about herself.

Au Revoir HED. Thanks for Everything : )

Pont de l'Europe

(Continuing last weekend's field trip from the cathedral at Orléans...)

To finish our morning in Orléans, the bus dumped us out in from of the Pont de l'Europe (Bridge of Europe) where we had a few moments to scarf lunch (mmmm, memories of raspberry tart), take some photos, talk about the bridge, and sketch a bit.

It's a Calatrava bridge, the same designer / engineer that did the Milwaukee Art Museum. His bridges seem to be staples for European cities, and they're so iconic that they've become a brand. So goes the way of the starchitect. But this was likely the first such bridge the students had seen, and they seemed to really like it. And by crossing the bridge on foot, they experienced the details and rhythms that make these bridges so attractive.

Click here for more pics.

And the field trip continues here.

Haircut

Being a backpacking junior in college living in Europe seemed to be a good time to let my hair grow long. Really long...

That was almost ten years ago. I'm all growns up now, so I believe there's a small expectation for me to keep my hair in a reasonably professional state. Don't let this fool you; the French (at least in this world of an architecture school) have a broad range of accepted hair styles — both on their head and on their faces.

A google search turned up this page and this page for reference. Study time.