Europe Tour Blog

The National Gallery

The dark gloomy clouds hung over us as we waited for the National Gallery to open. Everyone penguin huddled in a circle to keep our bodies warm from the harsh blizzard set upon us. Icicles started to form on the lids of people's eyes. Quickly we were becoming more and more susceptible to frost bite. Mateship was the only thing that allowed us to hang on to our dear lives. Then suddenly the doors started open, we were saved.

Ok so I might have over exaggerated a bit. Our visit to the National Gallery started like any other day. We caught the underground to Trafalgar Square and waited for the museum to open. When it did everyone seemed to enjoy the fantastic ride on the revolving doors. Some of the well-known paintings that we viewed included Baptism of Christ, Monet Snow in Argenteuil and The Rokeby Venus. After admiring the pieces we sat down for bite to eat in the gallery's restaurant. There we indulged in some beautiful food that made our taste buds say, "thank my bountiful master/mistress for allowing us to party with such food".

We went to the opera house to see Don Giovanni. This was problematic as the opera is Italian and the subtitles were in French, meaning that no one knew what was happening despite our overflowing knowledge on the subject. However, neglecting these small cons, it sounded good. And the seats were comfortable.

From Hannah ^.^

We went to the Palace of Versaille in Paris and it was magical. There was gold everywhere and the garden was magical. We arrived at the garden at about 11 am and we went through the garden first and we all felt like royalty as the classical music played. The fountains display was amazing and I'm sure we all would want to live there; the secret café, the statues in the caves and the square trees made us feel so lucky to be inside. The palace itself was giant; there were massive painting/murals, amazing mirrors and really big windows. I'm pretty sure we all spent heaps of money in the gift shop to try to be like royalty but the best part was all the pictures we took.

Bread for the Win!

The Paris Norm

Monet's Garden

This is the very same scene from the famous painting. It's better live.

The Gardens of Versailles

The View from The Eiffel Tower

Mia's Party in Stratford-upon-Avon

Europe Blog - Josh

On Tuesday, 17th April, our 14th day on the trip we began the day with a visit to the Musee D'Orsay. After a long and annoying wait in the pouring rain being forced to listen to 'gypsies' yell "umbrellaumbrellaumbrella!" repeatedly we finally made our way inside the vast building that was formerly used as a train station. The walkways through the sprawling central space was fill with sculpture carved from different stones and occasionally done in metal. The galleries were trough doorways that lead off of the walkways around the edge each into their own individual exhibits one of which was on Van Gogh. It was also interesting to find that one of the galleries was filled with wood carving, the majority of it assorted furniture but at the back there was an animal section with a polar bear carved out of what looked like marble, it seemed a little bit out of place but it looked wonderful.

The sculptures were definitely the standout of the Musee D'Orsay and after collecting possessions from the cloak-room and a small adventure through the two-story gift shop I think that most of us left satisfied with what we had seen.