Category Archives: Travel

Barcelona, part three: Gaudí’s Casa Mila!

By Jessie | Published: November 22, 2009 Leave a comment
The widow Rose Segimon, heir to a vast fortune amassed by her first husband in the American colonies, remarried Pere Milá, an important Barcelona businessman.  The wealthy couple wanted to build a residence in Passeig de Gracia, so they hired the most expensive and famous architect at the time — Antoni Gaudí.  The construction took [...]
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Barcelona, part two: Gaudí’s Casa Battló!

By Jessie | Published: November 21, 2009 Leave a comment
From 1904 until 1907, Gaudí worked for the industrialist, Joseph Battló Casanovas, reforming a house built in 1877 and located in Passeig de Gracía in Barcelona.   The decoration of the house expresses a fully-fledged modernist language.  However, the Barcelona population was somewhat astonished by the work, given the time period, and coined it as [...]
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Barcelona, part one!

By Jessie | Published: November 20, 2009 Comments closed
I recently returned from a long week in the beautiful city of Barcelona, a place I’d never been to before.  It was warm and sunny and just what I needed as a reprieve from the late-fall (early winter) rain and dreariness here.  I could definitely envision myself living in Barcelona; there is so much inspiration [...]
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We’ll always have Paris

By Jessie | Published: August 22, 2009 Leave a comment
“Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s’ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient.”  — Rimbaud, Une Saison en Enfer
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Les billets

By Jessie | Published: October 9, 2008 Leave a comment
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In which things get historical

By Jessie | Published: September 14, 2008 Leave a comment
Crossing the Berlin border on the S-Bahn. A 45-minute journey across Berlin’s center on the train travels above where the Berlin wall used to run. The ride looks like the video above. The first station is called Friedrichstrasse, where there was once a border crossing. The large stone building with the glass dome is called [...]
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Voyeur

By Jessie | Published: September 11, 2008 Leave a comment
Cities make people into voyeurs, whether or not they care to be. In New York, I often find myself peeking into lighted parlor windows when walking through the East and West Villages at night, imagining who lives there and why they opted to paint their walls turquoise or mango or mauve and not eggshell. We’re [...]
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