What a weird dream ...

Recently, I have been having a weird nightmare that the entire world has turned upside down.

The Eiffel tower, once crowded with tourists trying to take just another selfies and locals enjoying their brunch on the lawn nearby, is now completely empty. Not a single person or a single car on streets, but pigeons remain packed surrounding the area. Some even notice that these birds start to chirp a little bit louder than usual.

A tree

The First Post about Museum of Fine Art

The first topic that came to my mind during my visit of MFA this time is about "the perspective".

The perspective from where you see the painting actually change how I feel about the painting, especially couple landscape paintings from Monet. I found this is a unique way to experience the art like I never did before. You can't really do it from the photograph of the painting online or elsewhere. This makes me appreciate my time going to different art museums more.

The two photos below show the same painting but at a different angle. Looking at the painting at the 45 degree angle gives me a sense of three dimensions from the painting which is gone as soon as I stepped right outside the painting.

Valley of the Petite Creuse, Claude Monet, 1889

Trip to Peru Miniseries: Day 4 - Lima

I decided to separate into a post for each day. You can find more post here for Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.

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I had to wake up early (6am) again to catch my flight to my one day trip to Lima, the capital of Peru. Another day, another city. I read up some information about Lima but didn't really plan the exact path for the trip.

The first thing I did in Lima is meeting up with Guillermo near his office. I met Guillermo back in UChicago as we were a student at the InterVarsity group there. We had a great ceviche (spicy seafood salad) for lunch. He also showed me how to use the metro (which is, surprisingly, a bus on a special lane! instead of a train) to get around the city.

The Cathedral, Lima

Trip to Peru Miniseries: Day 3 - Machu Picchu!

I decided to separate into a post for each day. You can find more post here for Day 1, Day 2, and Day 4.

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I woke up at 4.30am to had some breakfast since it will be another long day for me. I left the hostel and get the bus station at around 5am and had to wait for 30 mins for the first bus to leave towns. As I was waiting in line, I saw the same 3 siblings just got to the line and also met the same group of American whom I met in the hostel in Cusco. We exchanged a little bit but didn't really end up stay together in the end. I arrived at the gate for Machu Picchu around 5.45am, but since the gate opened at 6, I had to stand in line for couple minutes. The wait didn't last long and I finally got inside.

5.30am waiting to catch the first bus up to Machu Picchu

Trip to Peru Miniseries: Day 2 - Aguas Calientes

I decided to separate into a post for each day. You can find more post here for Day 1, Day 3, and Day 4.

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The next day started pretty early as I had to take a taxi (again) to the nearby town to catch the train to Machu Picchu. This is a disadvantage for people who travel alone as you have to pay for a taxi by yourself and public transportation is not really an option here. The hostel called the taxi for me and he sent me to the train station about an hour before the departure. I was early. I also managed to talk to the driver to set up the time for him to pick me up on the way back the next day. The train that I took was from PeruRail which is about $150 for a round trip. It is not cheap by any standard, but the cheapest option is to take a van and a bit of hiking (several hours), which I don't really want to do. Most of the seats in the train are in a pair of 4 with the table in the middle. I was alone so I will definitely have to join some groups of people on this journey. Luckily, they were the nicest people that I have ever met during my time of travel. They are the 3 siblings (I think) from Warsaw, Poland. We didn't talk much at the beginning, but because the train took 3 hours to get to Aguas Calientes, which is the town near Machu Picchu, we ended up talking to each other for the last hour of the journey. Having been travel alone for the past few days, having a good conversation with people who shared the same experience was such a great break from being alone.

On the trail near the train track to the Waterfall (Cataratas)

Trip to Peru Miniseries: Day 1 - Cusco

Before I start this post, I had to say that I didn't try to write the whole miniseries about this trip, but as I wrote about the story, there are more and more stories that I wanted to write down as a reminder for myself and share to other, and the post becomes really long for my typical post. So, I decided to separate into a post for each day. You can find more post here for Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4.

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Even though this trip comes from the observation in South America as a starting point, I will not talk about my observation run, as this is my fourth time going to Magellan, and I already talked about it few times in previous posts.

Instead, I will start the story with my first flight from Chile to Peru. I had to stay in the airport from around 9pm to catch the flight at around 5am the next morning. That was 8 hours layover. It wasn't super exciting since everything close around midnight except Starbucks in the terminal. I tried to sleep in the airport, but couldn't really fall sleep as I was worried about my luggage. Unfortunately, this flight was delayed until like 6am, which made my flight landed in Lima, Peru at 8am which is just one hour before my next flight. I had never been to Lima before so I don't really know what to expect at the airport, how the custom works and where I should head too. Once I landed, I had about 45 mins to get to my next flight. I ran to the custom, ran inside the airport, and finally reached my flight in time with about 5 mins to spare. And that was just the beginning of the trip that I travel alone.

Plaza Mayor de Cusco with Cusco Cathedral in the background

Journey to the Total Solar Eclipse 2017

The planning for this trip is very different from any other trips as it was the first time that the focus of the trip is one particular event at a particular time and nothing else. The trip was formed rather quickly as I found one of my physics friend who is also interested in going to see the solar eclipse. We looked up the map and decided where in this solar eclipse path that we can potential go with rather cheap flight tickets and no driving involved. After few hours, we decided that we will fly to Atlanta and will take a bus to a nearby (4 hours drive) town, called Columbia, SC without knowing anything about the town or anyone there. I later learned once I got to the city that it is actually the capitol city of South Carolina. You would not have guess that if you did not visit the state museum there. 

We flew Spirit to Atlanta on Saturday afternoon before catching a late evening bus to Columbia. We had to wait for the bus in the middle of the night for an hour. I thought that the station should be indoor with restrooms and restaurants. I was completely wrong. We in fact had to wait on the sidewalk. The bus took about 4 hours to get to Columbia and 3 AM. I was tired (from traveling and probably jetlag from my previous trip). We managed to get to the hotel with a plan that we will visit the state museum the next day for the eclipse glasses. 

SC State Museum with the telescope dome at the top pointing to the sun