Awesome Amsterdam

The next city on my traveled to list was Amsterdam.

If you want to go to a enormous but still somewhat of a small European city with tons of European charm, Amsterdam is your place. In fact besides Paris I'd say Amsterdam is a must visit city in Europe.
The Red Light district in Amsterdam is no longer a seedy place but instead it is an adult Disneyland. It looks like it could be a seedy place but the city cleans it every morning and the place is crawling with Police.Amsterdam is also great for walking. Unlike other world cities, you can easily reach all of Amsterdam's main attractions just by walking. Nothing was farther than 30min away from each other.
It is also important to note that picture taking is not allowed in any of the popular tourist attractions in Amsterdam. Some places like the Anne Frank House I can see why, but other places I had no idea. Nonetheless I still enjoyed my visits at the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijks Museum.
Another one of the larger tourists traps was the Heinekin Experience. To call it an experience is a total overstatement. Instead it was the most involving advertisement that anyone will ever pay for. Yet, I would recommend everyone visiting the city to check it out. It was quite fun.

Hamburg

Hamburg, known to uninformed people as the home of the hamburger.

However to the informed person, Hamburg is Germany's second largest city. It's not much of a tourist city. I would say it ranks behind Munich and Berlin in terms of tourist attractiveness.
Then why would I visit? Turns out that the Swedes love education, not only is school free here, they take you on trips. Thus I went to Hamburg with my class for free.

We had the opportunity to visit the planning offices in Hamburg and to take a tour of Hafencity and Wilhelmsburg. Unfortunately none of this is good blogging material therefore I'll just leave pictures and yes I did have a Hamburger in Hamburg.
It is also important to note that Hamburg was quite affected by World War II, this is most visible when walking through suburban areas. Bunkers were on every couple of blocks, most of them turned into playground, but there was this massive bunker in an area that we visited. No one has been able to safely remove it for the last 60 years and currently hamburg plans to turn it into a platform for solar panels.

Barca, Barca, Baaaaarrrrrrrca!

So my first real trip out of Skander land was to Barcelona.

Pretty much one of the most architecturally diverse cities I have ever been in. The city is beautiful in way where tourists come and see the sights yet the people of Barcelona don't give it shit. In my short period there I sensed that the people of Barcelona know that they live in a vibrant city and that tourists will come no matter how shitty I treat these current tourists.
A second thing to note is that this city is the city of Gaudi. I know that I was guided around by Lonely Planet and tourist guides but everywhere you look you see the influence of Gaudi. New bank buildings with just a slight touch of Gaudi. I can understand why though, his works are quite amazing. To me he designs less to please the eye but to evoke some sort of emotion.

For all the Canadians reading this, Barcelonians don't start partying till 2am. To pre drink and to pre game is to start boozing at like 10 till 2ish.
I must mention that their beaches were very beautiful. Walking around that city was an absolute joy. If you ever go, train only when necessary.

I also had the privilege to watch a game at Camp Nou. Such a fun experience, if only people were that into hockey back at home.Next stop: Hamburg, then Amsterdam.

Now pictures!!

First Post of my Exchange

Hej,

Sorry for taking so long but finally I will begin my blogging.

The first thing to point out is that Sweden is cold. Much much colder than any weather chart prepared me. Ever since I got here there hasn't been a day over 0 degrees and on my trip to Copenhagen it was about -17 degrees by the water. However it still quite fun walking around in Lund where shoveling sidewalks or salting streets is non existent.

I'll begin where I am currently on exchange, Lund. It's a small university town that is packed to the brim with bars and fallafel places. As far as I know there are only 2 McDonald's and 1 Burger King but there are about 30000000000 fallafel places all open till hungry drunk hours. So needless to say I am sick of them. A unique but great feature of Lund is that public is drinking is allowed, thus leading to good times. Especially since your beer always stays cold as you wander.
Anyways enough writing, PICTURES:

Second largest Ikea in the world. Ikea is Sweden's unofficial supplier of everything. The first thing I saw as I was entering Sweden was Ikea.Like I mentioned above, this place is COLD.


One of the greatest things about Lund is it's proximity to Copenhagen and Malmo. Above are pictures from Malmo, one of the greenest cities in the world. It's not terribly exciting but it was a nice day trip.Lastly these are some photos from Copenhagen. It is one of the nicest cities I have been to, of course it is possibly the most expensive. To put it into perspective, their mixed sushi plate of about 10 pieces of sushi on sale in the airport cafe came out to about $20 something Canadian. Even Tojo's doesn't charge that much and he's widely considered the top sushi chef in the world.

More posts to come on life at Lund and my Barcelona trip.

Heading off on Exchange.

I'm gonna be blogging my travels through this blog.

Right now I'm about to leave in 3 days, still have many a thing to pack.

Incredible yacht design

So this yacht design is incredible. I have never seen anything like it. Of course you would expect nothing less than amazing from the collaborating duo of the director of Hermes and the director of Wally.

Check out the pictures on the site.