Chicago (一)

Well, after almost one month without talking about my trip with Naochan to the US, I will write a bit about our 4-5 days in Chicago. I will not follow a log-wise style as I did for NYC, but I will deliberately be more chaotic ;-)

Well, today i will put some photos of the area around the Tribune Tower, one of the coolest buildings in Chicago, and some of Chicago style pizzas. If Chicago has to be defined in one word, it should be ARCHITECTURE. Buildings are so beautiful! In 1871, one third of the city was burnt by an uncontrolled fire and all the financial district had to be built from scratch. That makes most of the buildings very modern.

Chicago is also the city of Blues. There are many live shows in pubs and houses of blues downtown. Besides, here the first controlled nuclear reaction took
place thanks to the work of Enrico Fermi and others.

Well, here you have some photos...

The first one is the Tribune Tower, the building of the famous newspaper "Chicago Tribune". This is the beginning of a trendy shopping area called "the Magnificent Mile". Our hotel was in this area, and so was the conference hotel.



Next to the Tribune Tower, the Chicago river comes from Lake Michigan and gets into the city. The area which is the end of the Magnificent Mile and the beginning of the Loop (financial area) presents many beautiful skyscrapers and bridges over the emerald blue river...



If you continue walking along the Magnificent Mile heading North, you will arrive to our hotel, the Water Tower, John Hancock Observatory... This is a building next to our hotel.



And this is the view of the Water Tower from our bedroom...



One of the most typical things in Chicago are Chicago style pizzas. In my opinion, they are more like pancakes than like pizzas... The pizza base is more than 1 cm thick!!! The toppings are like in any other pizza, but with too much of everything ;-) That's American style :)



In this restaurant, you can also see why Chicago is the city of blues. Have a look at the picture of the Blues Brothers.





That's it for today!

Mustard Plug

Some nice ska from the MidWest before going to bed.... ska ska ska....

Rotterdam

Last Sunday, I went to visit Rotterdam. I had been the night before for a nice farewell party for Nacho, a colleague Spanish Trainee who is leaving for JPL/NASA this week. That night i noticed Rotterdam was nice and I had never visited the city, apart from shopping and partying.

The city is the second largest in the country after Amsterdam and in my opinion is the only place in the Netherlands that looks like a city. Historically, its city center was destroyed by nazis in 1940 and was built over after world war II. That is why the city looks so different from the rest of the country. This year, it is the world's architecture city or something like that. Actually, there are high buildings and cool designs. I was very surprised by this city and I would recommend a visit. One day or even half would be enough.



Not only buildings are cool. These lamp-posts move from time to time and their height changes:



This is a nice commercial area near the train central station. I read it is the first open shopping mall built in the world and they learnt how not to build them once they finished this one...



In this panorama of the city, it can be seen the only medieval thing that survived the bombings of 1940, a nice church, together with the modern high buildings downtown.



And some interesting/cool/bizarre buildings next to the cube houses...



And these are the famous cube houses, the Kubuswoningen. Can you imagine living in a place like this?!



And this is the old harbour, called (surprise!) the Spanish harbour. In the picture you can see it written (well, it means something like Spanish bridge...). Our influence during the years before the Golden Age is still in the country ;-)



This is one of the 2 cool bridges in the river. I don't remember its name... shame on me...



Ahhh, and this one is the other one, the famous Erasmus bridge. I took this picture because of the small beach created next to the river... It was cloudy and almost raining, but still, some people were trying to sunbath... Dutch...




Well, this has been Rotterdam!

Edam and Volendam

Last Saturday, the weather was too good according to Dutch standards (22 degrees and sunny), so Seppo, Cynthia, Amruta and me went for some tourism. I decided we should go to some of the little towns north of Amsterdam. There were several options, but we decided to go to Edam firstly. So we took a train to A'dam and then a bus to the North.



After 40 minutes, we arrived at Edam, in the middle of the countryside. According to my guidebook, Edam is maybe the most beautiful town in the Netherlands. I was a bit reluctant to believe that, but it was actually quite nice. It is the typical cozy Dutch town which appears to have been taken from some fairy tale: canals, bridges, colourful houses and flowers everywhere.



Edam is internationally famous for Edam cheese. Together with Gouda, Edam is the most famous sort of Dutch cheese.



This is downtown. The typical narrow canal with a bridge and flowers and colourful stuff all around.



We were lucky and could see a small bridge being put up so a small boat could continue its way along the canal.



The town was really small so, after a while, we got tired. The girls decided to come back to Leiden, but Seppo and me stopped at a small fishermen town called Volendam and I don't regret having stopped there! It was quite nice and it was relaxing to sit down in the rocks in a pier in the North Sea.







These two visits were really nice and we could visit the 2 kinds of Dutch towns:

- the fairy tale town: Edam
- the fishermen town: Volendam

Two different aspects of this country I live in.

Record de visitas del blog

Pues eso, que estamos de celebracion en el blog. Hoy se ha batido el record historico de visitas con nada mas y nada menos que 234 visitas y 201 visitantes en el dia de ayer. Cuando llegue de trabajar ayer, le eche un vistazo al contador a ver por curiosidad si la gente se animaba a leer despues de unos dias de muy baja actividad y sorpresa! llevaba mas de 150 visitas! Como suelo creer en la causa-efecto y no creo que la casualidad haya creado tal numero de visitas, alguien sabe la razon? Dejadme algun comentario! no os limiteis a echadle un vistazo al blog! Como habeis llegado hasta este pequenyo blog?

Por cierto, muchas gracias a todos!



Update: Ya hay solucion al misterio! El blog de Aitor salio en meneame.net y recibio mas de 6000 visitas! Algunas de ellas siguieron el link de su blog al mio y ya esta, misterio resuelto!

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Today we have something to celebrate in the blog. Yesterday, the historical visits record was beaten! It got 234 hits and more than 201 different visitors! When I came back from work, I checked the visits counter to see if people started coming back to the blog after some really low-activity days and surprise! I had gotten 150 hits!

Reason: My friend Aitor's blog got more than 6000 hits because he was referenced in meneame.net. I guess those 200 people arrived at my blog from there ;-)

El camino a la paz interior

Muchas veces no sabes lo que la vida te depara, ni lo que te espera al girar una esquina. Las cosas mas obvias son las que encierran los mas preciados secretos, las que hacen que lo complejo cobre sentido. Al crecer, las verdades absolutas se vuelven inestables, la realidad un tapiz de grises en donde el blanco y el negro no existen. La busqueda de la paz interior cobra sentido entonces. Por el momento, no se lo que es ni como encontrarla. Pero, desde luego, si existe y es posible obtenerla, debe encontrarse tras un camino de piedras como estas...

Surface computing

Fierljeppen

Naoko-chan told me last week about a very cool thing she had watched on Japanese TV. It is a Dutch sport called Fierljeppen. For the classical wikipedia description click here.

Basically, this sport consists of jumping a canal with a long pole. First, the fierljepper runs a short sprint, jumps to take the pole, tries to climb upwards while keeping balance and when the pole falls down, the athlete jumps as far as possible. In a country with so many canals, it can definitely be useful. I should learn and go always out with a pole... i would save a lot of time just fierljeppening the canals! ;-)

Some examples of what this sports looks like when practised by professionals:





And this is what happens when you or me try to do it:

Vacaciones en Almansa

Yes, the title is right, holidays in Almansa, my home town. What a pleasure to go back home! It has been a ten-day holiday which has charged my energy up for the next months. The thing I enjoyed the most, besides family and friends, was the beautiful sun and the time spent in the swimming pool, just relaxing or refreshing. Temperature was extremely high, between 35 and 40 all the time, which made swimming even more pleasant!

I arrived on Friday morning and the differences with respect to the Netherlands were so clear... suddenly, there were mountains, the ground was brownish/yellowish with not so many vegetation, not a single cloud on the sky...



Next day, my family and I went to Alicante, where my uncle Javi lives and I could finally meet my new cousin: Daniel. He is less than one month old and for the moment he is tiny ;-) He will be like Pablo (my other cousin) in no time though!

And once in Alicante, I went to see the beautiful Mediterranean sea... I missed you friend, so vast, so blue...



These days, I relaxed in many ways:

1. Playing videogames. PS2 and PSP were one of the best ways to kill time... I bought "Need for Speed Carbono" and my brothers and I could finish it in 4-5 days. It was a nice time!



2. Of course, good food! Have a look at this paella, well, "arroz con puntas"...



And the star of my summer vacations! my friend the swimming pool!



There, I could:

3. Refresh... the temperature was so high that swimming was necessary and nice!



4. Do nothing... just relaxing and sunbathing under the last sun rays of the day...

SPAIN ROCKS!!!

夏休み

今から8月6日まで夏休みです！ スペインヘ行きます! 行ってきます！！

From now until 6th August I will be on summer vacations! I will go to Spain! See you!

Desde ahora hasta el 6 de Agosto estoy de vacaciones! Me voy a España! Hasta luego!

Je suis en vacances jusqu'au 6 Aout! Je rentre en Espagne! A plus!