Posted by martin on
Monday, 18 August 2008 at 14:34
My final night was spent in Cherbourg, from where I got the ferry back to Rosslare. I had most of a day in Cherbourg, but because I had to lug my big rucksack around with me I wasn't able to do very much. I wanted to visit the museum of the sea, with centrepiece a decommissioned nuclear submarine, but there was nowhere I could leave the rucksack. So I just wandered around, enjoyed being near the sea and sat in the ferry terminal - which, like the Stena terminal in Belfast, didn't really feel like it was designed to be walked to.
Tags france, holiday
Posted by martin on
Friday, 15 August 2008 at 20:47
After leaving Limoux, my next stop was in Tours, near the low end of the Loire. This was quite a bit further north, so pleasantly cooler than Limoux and Barcelona. It was a quiet and pleasant city. Its most famous feature (for me anyway!) was as the home of St Martin. His tomb was a popular pilgrimage site from the Dark Ages onwards, although the huge church over it was completely destroyed in the French Revolution. The tomb was rediscovered later in the 19th century and a new smaller, but still large, Romanesque basilica constructed. The Gothic cathedral is rather less impressive. I also got a nice surprise of free entry to the Musée des Beaux-Arts, because it was the first Sunday of the month.
Tags france, holiday
Posted by martin on
Wednesday, 13 August 2008 at 20:26
After Barcelona, we went to visit some friends from Belfast, who moved to the south of France a couple of years ago. They now live on the edge of the town of Limoux, near Carcassonne. We were joined here by Clare, and I stayed for four days. This was a much lazier stay: life involved lots of meals outdoors and swimming in their pool. We also on two evenings drove to nearby villages to watch dancing performances in the streets - such free cultural activities, laid on by the local government, seem to be common.
We had one more active day, when we visited the Cathar castles of Peyrepetuse and Quéribus. My guide book describes these castles as "romantic", but I don't think there's much romantic about castles that were built because you would be burned at the stake if you were caught. They are perched right on the top of rocky mountains, and there is quite a bit of a walk up - so at the second one I stayed at the bottom, while Dad and Clare went up.
My "photos":http://www.martinorr.name/2008/Photos/Holiday/ from the holiday are now online. There's not very many, after removing bad ones, none from Barcelona and Limoux since Dad and Clare were taking plenty, and none from Nîmes because my batteries died.
Tags france, holiday
Posted by martin on
Tuesday, 12 August 2008 at 10:01
After Nîmes, I spent a week in Barcelona, meeting my parents who had flown out there. It was very hot but I enjoyed it a lot (I also enjoyed having parents to look after me again). It was surprising how limiting it was to get along with none of us having any idea of the language (either Spanish or Catalan) - I'm sure I found it easier in Italy.
The Modernist architecture is particularly impressive. Sometimes it is a bit ugly, but I liked most of it - and sometimes it was hard to believe that the buildings were built as places for people to live in. I liked the Sagrada Familia's innovative take on a Gothic plan, and think it will be a wonderful building when it's finished. Being full of construction equipment, it didn't have much of the feeling of a place of God at the moment. It was interesting to see a cathedral in the middle of construction, and think of this as a process spanning centuries - just as it did in medieval times - and inspiring to see the church building on such a vast scale.
Tags holiday, spain
Posted by martin on
Sunday, 10 August 2008 at 21:39
After Lyon, my next stop was Nîmes in the south of France. Unfortunately, on my way from Lyon to Nîmes I left my Interrail pass on the train, so I had to purchase tickets for the rest of the trip. Largely as a consequence of that, I didn't go to Avignon, about 30 minutes by train from Nîmes, and where I had planned to go for a day. This gave me time to get a bus to the Pont du Gard aqueduct, a pretty incredible piece of Roman engineering - a bridge with three layers of arches stacked on top of each other, 275m long across the top and 49m high.
The other thing in Nîmes is an almost complete Roman amphitheatre, still in use for bull fights - remarkably similar to what the Romans used it for. When I was there, it had a stage set up in the centre for concerts. I think it is a good thing (as in Cambridge) when historic buildings remain in use, especially for something related to their original purpose.
Tags france, holiday
Posted by martin on
Saturday, 09 August 2008 at 10:09
Sorry for the recent loss of service on this blog, because Rails on the server was upgraded. I'll try and catch up on posts from my holiday over the next few days.
I spent two days in Lyon, which had more worth seeing than I expected. The old town is on a steep hill, and the youth hostel was half way up the hill, so there was a lot of climbing. The town is at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Sâone so you can't go far without crossing a bridge.
My favourite bit was the nineteenth century Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière, on the top of the hill. The outside is overly fancy, but the inside is right up my street - classical basilica plan, decorated with large mosaics showing scenes from church history connected with the Virgin. I also visited the Musée des Beaux-Arts, with lots of fine paintings, and the textile museum - important because Lyon was a centre of silk-weaving, but not very exciting.
Tags france, holiday
Posted by martin on
Thursday, 17 July 2008 at 14:30
I have spent two nights in Amiens, a city in northern France. Its cathedral is striking mostly for its size, the biggest Gothic building in France. It has a pair of oddly asymmetrical towers on the front. At night, the normally white front of the cathedral is illuminated to show the colours the statues would originally have been painted. It makes it look magically alive, and must be quite a feat of projection to illuminate all the little bits of statues in different colours.
On my way from Amiens to Lyon, I passed through Paris, walking from the Gare du Nord to the Gare de Lyon. I don't want to stay any longer in Paris, partly because I don't feel like anywhere so big and busy just now and partly because I already saw quite a bit there a few years ago.
Tags france, holiday
Posted by martin on
Sunday, 13 July 2008 at 21:12
I have just spent a week at the National Mathematics Summer School in Birmingham. Forty-two fourth/fifth form students are invited, the idea being to expose them to a broader range of mathematics than they get in school. Six sixth-formers are also invited; as well as being given some maths of their own, they are expected to look after a group of the younger children. I was at the summer school myself in 2001, and as a senior in 2002, but haven't been since.
This week had a strong geometrical flavour - four of the seniors' five sessions had a geometrical or topological theme, and there was much building of models of solids, either from plastic kits or origami. I gave the seniors a talk on hyperbolic geometry - a change from the Euclidean geometry I usually do at olympiad training camps. I think it went pretty well, and managed not to be too hard for them. I felt like I had not much to do overall at the camp, despite there being surprisingly few permanent staff. Still I enjoyed it, and it reaches a lot more children than the formal Olympiad training scheme.
Since the summer school finished on Friday, I have been staying with my aunt in Hove. I visited the magnificent Brighton Pavilion, the hilly town of Lewes and Seaford, on the sea. Tomorrow I am going on to France.
Tags holiday, imo, nmss, travel
Posted by martin on
Monday, 14 August 2006 at 11:58
Rome is huge - everything always takes longer to walk than you expect. There are so many things to see that even without that there would have been lots I wanted to see but didn't have time to. Fortunately I did have three full days which was probably the minimum time worth anything. The things to see are also very varied, with lots of ancient ruins as well as many more recent things (indeed most Roman churches seem to be a couple of hundred years newer than those in the north of Italy).
The queue for the Vatican Museums two or three times longer than the one in Florence but it moved much faster and only took 45 minutes. These museums are huge and have lots worth seeing (the most famous being the Sistine Chapel, but I preferred the Raphael Rooms) but they close early on Saturdays and I only got 2.5 hours inside - I could have spent much longer.
Centuries of Christians have quite a lot to answer for in their treatment of their Roman ruins - many have been turned into churches or had statues stuck on top of them. I suppose this does at least preserve the buildings; many other ancient buildings had their stones removed to build things like St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican.
Now in: Belfast
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Martin
Tags art, holiday, italy
Posted by martin on
Thursday, 10 August 2006 at 16:42
One thing that struck me about Florence was how old the city centre is - all the modern shops are in good, solid stone buildings from the 15th century. It is claimed that the Renaissance began with the competition the city held in 1401 to select the artist to decorate the doors of the Baptistry; today you can't see the doors very closely due to the number of other tourists in front.
The Uffizi, the main art gallery, is also packed with tourists; I queued for two hours to get in. On the other hand the Bargello, the sculpture museum, had no queue at all and some equally interesting works of art, including two of the entries for the baptistry doors competition (for which you had to submit a bronze panel showing Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac).
Now in: Rome
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Martin
Tags art, holiday, italy