Central College Abroad

For the two weeks after fall break I have been filling my time with mini adventures. The Friday after fall break the Central Program took everybody to the palace of Het Loo and museum Kroller Muller. Het Loo was a palace for the House of Orange built in the 17th century for the royal family to treat guests to hunting and vacationing in a remote part of the Netherlands (remote is no longer a word associated to the Netherlands). In the mid-20th century the royal family decided to turn the palace into a museum for the public. The palace was gigantic and beautiful. Filled with thousands of paintings, wild game trophies, and the largest back yard I have ever seen. Close by was the famous Dutch museum Kroller Muller, which has the second largest Van Gogh collection in the world. The museum is surrounded by a large park in which a few friends and I explored. The museum itself was nice and had loads of Impressionistic art as well as loads of Cubism too.

The next weekend, two of my friends and I headed of to Paris. Three college boys sharing a hostel room in the City of Love, who knows what will happen. Well we did what everybody does: Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Arc de Triomphe, Montemarte, Musee d’Orsay, Notre Dame, and the Moulin Rouge (from outside of course). I had never seen so many famous things at once in my life: Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, The Thinker, and Liberty Leading the People to name a few. I must say that now being in Europe for two months, I have become somewhat desensitized to great art. From what was once “Holy cow a Van Gogh!” is now “There’s another Van Gogh…whatever.”

I must admit that we didn’t eat any fancy French cuisine, but we did eat some French food. I must of eaten a hundred croissants and other pastries, crepes, raw oysters, and of course one Royal with Cheese. In the end, Paris was a success.  

For the record, my camera was on the fritz all trip and this was the only picture of Paris I was able to take. See Royal with Cheese.