LiFeInSiNCitY

2007-11-12T04:21:00.002+08:00

PictuResQue PaRis

Paris, city of excellent cooking, orderly buildings,
magnificent structures, romantic spots and
lousy driving.

Trip to Paris was a unplanned one, cos initially
i was intending to do it during my end trip. But
yeah... i don't mind going there another time now.
=P

First stop after we threw our bags down was to
head for a restaurant for some french cuisine to
pacify our ever-growling tummys (well, tat doesn't
apply to Jo =X ). French food is really the greatest
in europe so far, probably cos they take pride in
the things they do. Escargot, fois gras, roast duck
apple upside-down, creme brulee and even the
simplest medium-raw steak tasted so thumb licking
GOOD!

Okay, sheesh... i'm beginning to feel hungry now.
1st touristy spot : Sacre coeur, this church gives
me the chills, i dunno why.. but i think that the
church just don't exist there. even in the picture,
it looks like its photoshopped into a blank picture
of the sky... Anyone agrees with me? =X

Next up! Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir,
yes boys, the mother of all caberets!!!
Moulin Rouge! This place is just so pretty
from the outside, make me wonder great
it is inside. But a ticket cost like 74 Euros,
so yeah, we decided that we will come back
again when we start earning the $$$

After a long but relaxing walk from the moulin
rouge, we have come to the avenue, where
all beginner french students will be most
familiar with..... Avenue de Champs-Elysees!
and a the start of this avenue there is a huge
round about where the Arc de Triomphe (below)
stands towering over the 12 avenues that stretches
out from it.

Mona Lisa - The happiest woman on earth.
The next morning its straight down to the
renowned Musee de Lourve. Where the lady
Mona Lisa resides. To complete explore Musee
de Lourve, one would have to take at least a
day, but time was against us, so we decide to just
go see the great dame. There were tons of pple
queuing up to see her royal painting-ness, plus
she was behind all this protective barriers and
glass... the best shot i could get of her was this...

Artsy photo taken outside the Lourve

After a morning at at Museum, its down to the
residence of Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre-
dame. Situated in an island in middle of the river
seine. Notre dame cathedral looks just as it was
depicted in the fairy tale.... fantabulous!

Last up, the Icon of Paris, Tu Eiffel or Eiffel Tower.
This place is really really really the gem of Paris,
Visit it to understand what i really mean.

Below at the lift entrance of Eiffel Tower:
The 2 lovely ladies traveling avec moi,
Joanna and Shihui.

Eiffel tower by the night

Eiffel Tower(close up) by the day.

This is the end of the Paris journey......
3 days is definitely not enough to cover
the whole city.... Will definitely be back
in the near future and spend my time
'people watching' too.....

P.S: this is currently number 1 on my
Europe most beautiful cities ranking.

2007-11-07T01:38:00.000+08:00

= EasteRn EstaCy =

Hello Pple! It's been a long time since
i blogged... been so many places i don't
really know where to start =P
HAahaaa

Anyway, 1 block of studies is OVER!
so we decided to go to eastern europe
during the 'Holidays'!

Before i start, let me say how magical
eastern europe is... Things appear to
'stop in time' and it really makes you
feel like you time-travelled back to the
16th century

First stop: Prague (Praha)

The historical center of central europe
where the huge Prague castle stands
on top of the hill overlooking the whole
city.

Below: The Charles bridge is by far the
most beautiful bridge in europe, with
statues adorning both sides of the bridge
and views of the prague castle and
numerous watchtowers. You just want
to stand in the middle of the bridge
and soak in the serenity and beauty of
the place

Prague at night is even more amazing, we went
for a Ghost tour where the guide spoke exactly like
the guy from 'Ripley's believe it or not'. He was
an amazing story teller and we got to know the history
of the buildings in prague and he even taught
us how to 'spot' ghost!! woooooooooo....

Next up, Vienna... The capital of the Habsburgs
who once ruled the whole of central europe. Every
palace here is about the size of sentosa i think.. haha

Oh, in case you guys don't know, vienna is quite a
developed country and it has the best coffee in europe
*even coffee from the vending machine taste good!

Below: The best chocolate cake in the europe
(or maybe even the world). That's what the girls
and other people say... but i DUN agree =X

All righty, apart from the capital of austria, we
went to Salzburg, the birthplace of music prodigy
Mozart! Here, we got a magnificent view of the Alps,

The atmosphere here is just amazing, you see cottages
lining the slope of the mountain ranges, and the smooth
following river that separates the scenic city into 2.
Definately one of the places to consider for retirement!

Artsy pic of some place in salzburg

Anw, time is running out... will try to
post krakow if i have time...
Love all you guys!
Take care!

MeLv =)

2007-10-06T02:19:00.000+08:00

!! Ocktoberfest !!

Ladies and Gentleman, one of my goals
in Europetrip has been accomplished!!
--------> Ocktoberfest!

While most of europe is known for its
beeer... Nutting beat the munich festival
of ocktoberfest! With characteristic 1litre
mugs of beer (that the min you can order),
and all different kinds of german cruisine
(with an overdose of salt)

Ocktoberfest is this big carnival cum beer
fest that last for 3 weeks every year in
munich... It's festival where woman wear
their traditional 'expose!' bavarian costumes
and men in their tight kinky Lederhose!
Yummy!

Here a picture of Lionel, me, rick & kenneth
at the entrance of the 'playground'

The huge ferris wheel in the heart of the carnival

Sverre,Pang & Ismael in the Hacker Beer tent (think
they are HIGH)

Oh did i mentioned? the first day, we went to the
tents at 2pm and could get in.
So all of us had to go to the city center to grab
some ocktoberfest beer to drown our
disappointment =X ---> which explains the pic
below

The Singapore Beer Brigade in OcktoberfesT!

The Hacker Beer Tent (Theme: White Heaven)
This is one of the 10 beer tents...
By the 3rd jug of beer, we were among the clouds...
hahaa...

Crowd goes mad when the music starts playing
at 12pm... Stand up and lemme see your hands!

Look! Beer was so good that Mr Ocktoberfest
Lion just had to have a sip! haha

Well then, that's the end of this post..
Jio me if you guys are going to the next few
ocktoberfest k? PROST!!

2007-09-19T01:28:00.000+08:00

Report!: Capital of Sin

Hey guys, finally got time for a breather and
to blog abit....

Went to amsterdam last wed & met up with
ely and goldfish who came from Oslo....

Was there for 2D1N, and i have to say that
Amsterdam was really a break from the usual
'postcard' pictures places in europe

Hey, its a different kinda experience!
Sex, Drugs & welll... more drugs.. hahah
Oh i forgot to mention.... GAYS too!
Look! they even have a gay and lesbian info
counter to guide them to GAY points.. hahah

One of the nicer background in the tourist-
populated amsterdam.

Next up! The heineken experience museum!
Guys who like heineken must go there!
You get like 3 glasses of heineken free
which is totally worth the 9euro entrance
fee... inside there are lotsa interactive stuff
about heineken and the gift shop ROX!!!
Nef and i bought quite a few senseless
stuff there and "KOP" alot of coasters! =)

Another place not to miss is the Sex Museum!
This is like a porno place lah! every photo, article,
item, statues has got something to do with the
phallus! Too bad no sovenier shop =X

Real Chastity belts used in ancient times,
thought they only existed in shows... =X

Before all this started, we went on a canal tour
Ely start taking out all the sweets and chocs &
told us she wants to try finish all the chocs in
OSLO... hahaha! (staying true to her motto in life)

Below: Ely brought mini-ash along, and was taking
a photo for him.... (Hilariiiioous!)

Now to the interesting part, DRUGS!.... Fyi,
Amsterdam sells speed, mushrooms, weed,
space cakes, cannabis and many different
DRUG-sweets in their sovenier stalls.
Its like 'WAH! i reached another world'
Never in my life will i get to see so many
drugs lying side by side and i get to BUY
them =))))

Here's a picture of the hemp chocs,
taste like the ritz sport choc =)

After dinner, we are all anxious to get our hands
on the main highlight of amsterdam... SPACE CAKE!
However, it was super disappointing, not only
the cake looks and taste like the Sara Lee cake,
it din have any effect on us... Hmmm.. maybe cos
2 of us shared 1....

Well, sidetracked abit... after 2 days of amsterdam,
ely and goldfish came back with us to maastricht to
stay for the night! Ely had a dare with me tat she
will wash her hair with heineken after seeing i have
so much heineken in my fridge... hahhaa!
And boy... Tripleeee Elame never fails to give us
a good laugh!

P.S : those who wan to see the video can get from me =P

Well tat's all folks! till next time!!! School sUX
but travelling rocks... Guess this is what they
call equality in the world eh.... sHrugS!

Au Revoir!

2007-09-12T03:14:00.001+08:00

Brussels's Mussels

Bonjour!! Greeting from belgium!

Made a short trip down to brussels
& brugge during the weekends with
the NUS & SMU pple... Well weLL,
what can i say... ... Just like how
Netherlands can be summarised
into Sex, Drug and Rock&RoLL,
Belgium is the Land of ChoCs,
Beer & Mussels! haahha..

Let's just skip straight to the mussels, the
heavenly place to eat them is at this restaurant
called CHEZ LEON, its like 2 stories restarants
that serve mussels in all the varieties you can
think of, 4 of us shared 2 plates of mussels plus
an appetiser, main course and dessert each.
Bill was ard 21 euros per person.
Quite expensive i know, but its super worth it

Below: An enclose city centre that looks so
much better than raffles hotel =X

Baked mussels 'pizza' and fried mussels =))))

Name of the restaurant if you guys are holding
back ur saliva already... haha

Other than food, belgium has the 'Old & Magnificent'
building to offer too.. Below is a church
i think is 100 metres high, the SMU gals
snap some photos of themselves jumping
up and down in front of it, which was really
hilarious...

This is the place in brugge (apparently they call it
the venice of northern europe) Well i hope Venice
will be so much nicer, cos most of us fell asleep
during the canal tour =X

And yea... to add to the romantic aspect of
brugge, they have horse carriage rides too!
Yeah... veri lovely rite? (wait till u smell and see
the horses' crap all over the city =X)

Another 'postcard' picture taken during
the boat ride.

Dingsheng, me , nef and Lionel

Our 'Quan Jia Fu' photo! (NTU, SMU, NUS)

Tower in the clouds

Going amsterdam this tuesdaY! Cya guys till then!
Miss you all!!

2007-09-08T02:41:00.000+08:00

+ Hunger MoDe +

I'm actually doing this post cos i'm
waiting fer dinner and is bored..
Sch here is really tough... Pple acty
read all their stuff and contribute
non stop in class... Especially those
Germans... =X

Luckily the partying makes up for
part of it... Here's a photo of us in
a recent mad party!

*missing cereal prawns!

2007-09-05T02:41:00.000+08:00

!1st day of School!

Went for 2 lectures today, after which
we have to assemble in our subgroup and
discuss when we are going to meet up to
prepare our next tutorial.... Crazy man,
This Uni is SIAO ON!! Lucky is S/U...

Anyway the nationality of students here
are so diverse, like i got this grp mate,
she's from philipines, but her parents
stayed in germany and she's studying
in holland! yes.. tat's a mouthful when
u try to explain it to ur peers...
Going to another party in an hr's time
so yeah.. here's some pics for u guys to
see....

At the peak of montijuc, barcelona

Spot the similiarities between the 2 pics =)

Tres AmigoS! yEEee hAAAaaa

2007-09-04T00:20:00.000+08:00

-= LazY monDay =-

Been a very lazy and groggy monday
morning, played poker with Dingsheng,
Kenneth and others until 3 am after
our trip to the coffee shop. We managed
to wake up at like 1 pm today and made
our trip down to the supermarket for our
weekly groceries

Here the BUY of the day!
-> 24 bottles of heinken -S$16
-> Satisfaction from it - Priceless!

*sch starts tmr... wat a bore...=X

2007-09-02T20:58:00.000+08:00

= Hola from Iberia! =

Hey guyS! if u haven seen me or heard from me
in awhile, so sorry... i was spending my last 12
days touring Spain and Portugal. Lots of Sights,
Sounds and Sensations which i cannot possibly
describe in one posting. But here's a summary
of the Sunny Iberian Peninsular =)

Journey :

Barcelona - Valencia - Madrid - Porto
- Lisbon - Porto - Madrid

First stop, the catalonian capital - BARCELONA

One place u MUST go to in barcelona is
Sagrada Familia... This MAGNIFICENT
temple started building 100 yrs ago
but till now it is still not complete,
dun think it will ever be complete
50 yrs later too... the temple is
so massive and detailed that you
could stand in front of a wall for and
hour to look at each sculpture.

And there's LAS RAMBLAS, the
orchard road of barcelona, the street
buskers here are so much more interesting!
They have pple acting as ATLAS (the dude
holding the world on his shoulders) and Julius
Caesar and even a woman in a catsuit meowing
inside a dustbin... haha!

Valencia... this spanish city was really boring
for the first part of the day, as we found that
it was not as nice at barcelona, however we
managed to find this humongeous oceanarium
park - Structures here are very futuristic,
reminded me of the Airship in Final Fantasy!
Oh in case u are wondering.. the foreground of
the pic below is acutally a manmade structure
filled with water! there are as big as 10 football
fields =X

Well below is the bullfighting ring... a pity we din
get to see it.. though my other frens went and took
a video of it.. so yea, shall kop from them! =P

LisboA! This pretty city by the sea is a very
romantic place to go... the place is just so
relaX. The skies are always clear blue and
so is the ocean. I'm standing in front of a
beautiful plaza by the sea tat greets all the
vistors tat come to lisboa! =)

Below is a view of Castello de something
something.. haha... basically, its a castle on
top of the hill which ancients empires built
to protect their land against sea invasion
(most cities we visit have at least on of it)
But really, from here u could really see the
whole view of the ocean.. just reminds me
of TROY, where Helen is the FACE that
lauched a thousand ship and i'm HECTOR =X
whahahaaa...

P.o.r.t.o!! P.o.r.to!!! chants the crowd at the derby
match between porto and sporting lisbon! My
FIRST LIVE soccer match in european.. The
experience in so intense! Portugal soccer fans
are so strongly loyal to their teams and it made
our spore-msia match atmosphere look like crap
The 40 Euro tickets was definately worth it!!

Wondering what the dish is below? it's blood
sausages! It has a very interesting taste though
i'm not going to try it for a very long time...
because its made up of congealed pigs blood
stuff in a pig's intestine then fried (i noe some
of you might be feeling nauseous now =X)

Last stop - Madrid! the capital of Spain. This
place is just so filled with monuments and gigantic
palaces that it really makes u think how rich the
Royalty were in the past. Below is the national
park where u have a huge lake in front of the
very grand monument. Pple can rent row-boats
and enjoy the scenery while feeding ducks.

Cannot help but choose this pic to post.. This is
their Ministry of communications. Swee rite?
I dun mind working there... oh yea.. All the
castle-like buildings in spain is either occupied
by the ministries or the banks... so there is hardly
and chance to go in and look ard at the interior =(

And yeS... we have come to then end of our journey
with tired legs, smelly clothes and a hungry stomach
only 1 thing is full... Our memories!

Till next time!
Adios!

2007-08-17T23:24:00.000+08:00

-= Long Live the Queen! =-

The first of many mini trips in Netherlands!

1st stop: Den Haag! The place where Queen
Beatrix lives. The architecture in netherlands
is so freaking good that every few steps i take,
i have to stop to take pictures of the buildings!

Alas... here is where the Queen lives: Huis ten
Bosch Palace! A majestic palace right in the city
center and behind a lovely lake.

After enjoying the city sights, we went to the
beach! Its very windy over there... and its
19 degrees celcius! wonder how those kids can
stilll continue building sandcastle half naked...
Haaahaa
Below is a picture of the 'Taj Mahal' Hotel which
is directly overlooking the Sea! must be very
romantic at nite... =)

Next stop: Rotterdam... this place was bombed
to bits during the world war II and was rapidly
rebuilt after the war, thus the architecture here
is relatively more modern.

Below is the MAI muesuem with all the funny
funny structures.

We went to one of the musuem and bought a
'friend of the museum' card which entitles us
unlimited visits to all museums in holland! =)

Look at the art pieces inside a random art
museum we went to! Nice rite?

They are paintings by Van Gogh and Rembrandt
and some paintings had very interesting
explainations that helps you enjoy the painting
so much more!

Anyone can remember what the painting below
is?

Yeah...its the tower of BABEL! remember the
movie staring Brad Pitt? anw, the painting is
so intriguing, look closely and u will see thousands
of people each doing different things. Wonder how
the artist can paint such tiny creatures and have
so much time to think of what each person is doing.
Well, guess tat's why i'm not an Artist... haha

All righty man... this post is long enough to
qualify for GP essay... hahaha...
Till we meet again! Adios!~~

2007-08-15T01:57:00.000+08:00

New Code Number +310626693455

Went to the city central again to get some necessities,
pass by these places called snackeroom and saw fries
with many different sauces and i tried this -->
Goulash - Basically is like satay with lotsa fries
but the satay is super HUGE and the fries can
feed a pig! hahah

This is where all the cafes are gathering ard.
Super good place to chill in the sun but prices of
the food is EX EX EXpensivE!

Everything in maastricht here is basically in Dutch
(shrugs) but luckily most people noe how to speak
english... sO is also better to ask for help than to
try figuring out what the crap the sign is saying =P

Oh!! wanna complain something! the milk here
is super sour!!! think they just stored straight from
the cows udder! YUCK!

2007-08-14T04:10:00.000+08:00

Finally in the City of Sin!!!

After 13 hrs of flight, 3 hrs of train, 1 hr of walk,

We are finally here!! The lovely City ofMaastricht!

Now for some introductory pics:

Here's the hostel which i will be staying for the
next 5 months:

After settling down, its time to get out to shop

& Sightsee!

The river muse:

The city square:

And my biggest haul of the day- A 2nd hand bike!

So many things more to say...but i guess have

to stop here le... gOing to go to beD! =)

2007-07-13T00:32:00.000+08:00

Tattoo For Thoughts

Totally inspired by this picture!

Dunno izzit the Abs or the tattoo..

Hahah.... Anw, happy belated bdAe to CAT

and a advance one to KAR

2007-07-08T13:21:00.000+08:00

God created Aston Martin

Hi everyone! testing out my blog, for starters,

Lets take a look at the hottest babe on the planet!

Vrroooom!