The Coolest Church You'll Ever See

After pirating around Genova, Operation: RELAXAFTERACRAZYYEAR commenced as Emily and I hopped on a cruise ship out of Savona for a few days of island-/port-hopping and unlimited drinks ;)

First stop: Barcelona!

Let me just say, Barcelona is awesome. Really. 

Right off the boat we ran into a cool metal art thing. So out came the camera!

We stumbled on a massive covered open-air market which was full of stands selling pure fruit juices. They were delicious:

 

Barcelona was home to Antoni Gaudi, an incredible and fascinating architect. this was a house he designed (and I think lived in for a while). The line was too long to go inside, but the outside is pretty great:

Next, the Sagrada Familia. Ho. Ly. Shit. This church is cool.

There was construction covering most of the outside so I didn't get a good shot of it, but in the bottom portion you can see a bunch of scenes from Jesus's life/death in jagged sculpture.

But the inside...

(no words necessary...)

Spiral staircase? Yes please. 

pretty...

We exited on the other side, which was a completely different esthetic from the front, and showed images from Jesus's birth. This soldier caught my eye. Just, you know, killin babies..

Due to limited port-time, we had to cut our sight-seeing short, in favor of obligatory Tapas and Sangria.

Note: in Barcelona, the tapas plates are much bigger than tapas plates we have in the U.S. An afternoon snack turned out to be a very filling dinner. Totally worth it.

Barcelona, I'll be back!

Pirating in Genova!

After a long year of grad school and an exhausting 5 weeks in circus school, I was more than ready for vacation. Luckily my good friend Emily Rossi was willing to accompany me on some exciting travels. More than that, she's a real business-person-adult and got us a discount on a hotel. A REAL HOTEL. 

And that hotel had the most amazing breakfast.

Yes, your eyes do not deceive you. In addition to fruit, delicious bread, several kinds of delicious cheese, smoked salmon sausages, pastries, and mimosas, they had bacon. REAL BACON. I was so excited I had to start the post with that, even though it actually came after the next to photos (tricky me!)

We arrived in Genova in the evening, checked into our hotel, then wandered the streets getting a feel for the city and looking for dinner. It was strikingly deserted. Apparently Sunday nights aren't to hopping there. After staying close on several dark and empty streets, both large and small, we finally stumbled on a perfect, truly-Italian, neighborhood restaurant, and ate in peace and company. Then we ventured back out into deserted alleys and found our way to the port (which is very much like many American port areas - think Baltimore, but more Italian).

The port area was lovely and filled with large pieces of odd art. Like this tunnel.

Surprisingly, the sketchy, empty-street portion of our evening was finished well before this sketchy picture was taken.

Things got creepier/more awesome when we found THIS SHIP:

 Clearly we'd be returning in the daylight!

Then next morning, after the aforementioned amazing breakfast, we checked out what the hotel had to offer. Of course the roof provided lovely views of the city.

But clearly the most important feature of this hotel was the place that trained us for our inevitable return to the pirate ship we'd found the previous evening: PIRATE SHIP PLAYGROUND:

No seriously, it was really cool.

Emily tried to pull the ship.

It didn't turn out too well for her

After we felt sufficiently pirate-trained, we took to the streets again, finding them much more lively than before.

I don't know what these buildings are, but they're pretty.

Not half as awesome as the TIRE AND TRASH DINOSAUR

Right?!

Then we checked out Christopher Columbus's house. Because that's what you do in Genova, apparently.

However, rather than paying the 12 euro to tour the inside, we opted to pay the 5 euro it cost to climb around on the PIRATE SHIP!

You would have too. I mean seriously, there were a whole clan of guys like this dude on the outside...

and gigantic anchors inside!

And of course lots of ropes, masts, cannons, and all that. I started playing with camera settings

I like the way these two turned out :)

There were some really cool details all around the ship. I wish I knew more about the history of it. But I was more interested in playing and seeing all the awesome things.

and Emily...um...had a good time.

That Time I Joined the Circus

As part of our MFA program, my cohort members and I had the exciting opportunity to spend 6 weeks at the FLIC Scuola di Circo in Torino, Italy, getting a broad, intense, exhausting, fun, challenging, exhausting, awesome, and exhausting introduction into the world of circus arts. 

At the end of our time there we put together a performance for which we choreographed our apparatus routines, generated transitions and supplementary material, and put it all together (in just a few days). 

Here are some shots from our final show:

We did balancey things:

Nicole on the Rolla-Bolla

 And flippy things:

Mickey on the sphere

And arialy things:

Chloe on the Tissue

and objecty things:

Sophie and a ball. Object Manipulation!

And ensembley things:

yeah...weird stuff

and partnery things:

Jared and Mickey on the Chinese Pole

and sometimes (actually often) scary things:

Me on the tissue

Awesome scary fall!

and CRAZY things!

It was an excellent (and exhausting) few weeks. And yes, PLEASE try this stuff at home!

Photos by Emily Rossi

Fun Things! Fun People! In Turkey!

Aside from the trip to the lake, we were pretty much confined to a college campus during our stay in Turkey. And since they kept us quite busy, it wasn't until the end of the week when I brought my camera out to prove that we were there!

The view from a hill on campus. Please note the snow-covered mountain in the background.

Daily coffee and ice cream in the courtyard. Who would have guessed I'd drink an entire Turkish Coffee by myself??

Obligatory (and surprisingly successful!) group photo in front of the festival posters:

Berkay, our awesome guide/handler throughout the week took that photo, and then proceeded to direct an artsy photo shoot with us, resulting in several crazy and cool photos, like this one!

This is Berkay! He's the greatest!

I insisted on recreating the poster image with him:

Then traditional Turkish dancing commenced on the lawn. For the second time that week!

Aaaaaaand so did impromptu acrobatics. And since we'd created minotaurs out of 1, 2, and 3 people for our show, we decided to find a 4 person minotaur! 

Success! Also, we made lots of friends from all over the world! Here we are with folks from Turkey, Iran, and the Czech Republic!

Apparently this festival is a big enough deal that the governor of the town came to the award ceremony. He's the balding guy in the dark suit on the left. The car was about the most exciting part of that arrival...

Award ceremony time! Look at all the trophies and cool stuff wrapped in shiny stuff!

Claudia was recognized for teaching an awesome workshop:

And we got the Jury's Special Award! Holla!

And I leave you with...

This:

...Because we're weird like that :-P