This is me at Gaudi Park. It sits at the top (or near the top anyway) of a hill that over looks Barcelona. The benches here are really famous, and you can only see a little of them. Behind me is the house that looks like the gumdrop house from Candyland, but my big old head is in the way. Then there is the rest of Barcelona and then the Mediterranean Sea, which is a giant port.
This is my favorite Gaudi building. It is a representation of St. George slaying the dragon (it's a dragon on his pile of bones, e.g. the skull balconies). The picture does not do the building justice. It also made me root for the dragon, but that's more about me than the building or the story.
This is the most famous of the Gaudi buildings, the Sagrada Familia. They've only been working on it for 120 years. I think they said it's about half done. The coolest part to me is that Gaudi determined the measurements of the building by hanging sandbags upside down on strings and then doing the conversions. It was a non-traditional method, to say the least. So much so that modern day architects were not sure if his measurements were correct, so they did the calculations using math (not sandbags) and Gaudi's measurements were exactly correct. Take that establishment! (Sorry, I'm trying balance the fact that I'm the man's lawyer and that I don't agree with the man on a lot of principles.)
The next stop was Madrid. This city got sold short because it was the last city on the trip, it was so hot, and it was the end of August -- meaning everything was closed. I was so tired of traveling and being with strangers (who weren't really strangers anymore). Also, almost all of the tour of the city was by bus, which doesn't feel organic so it's hard to get a good feel for the place. Also, I had to finish up the gift shopping which is only because I'm a big procrastinator. The awesomest part was visiting the Prado Museum with a local guide. She taught me a lot about the history of art and some truly amazing artists. My favorite was Goya but that's probably because he went through the most diverse periods and created new concepts on how art could express the world. Depression seems to change art in a profound way and it was coming through his depression that Goya created The Dog, which is the only poster I bought during my whole trip through art museums. Below are two of my pictures.
This statue is in front of the palace (yeah, I forget that Spain is a monarchy, too). The reason that it's cool is that it is the first statute where the horse is on its only standing on its back legs (the pose was taken from a portrait). The interesting part about this is that no one knew how they could get the statue to stand up. They had to have some Italian mathematicians do the math in order to figure out the geometry (they told me the name, which I recognized, but I can't remember who it was because it's been almost two months -- I think DaVinci, but that seems so obvious and therefore wrong, maybe Michelangelo). The picture is washed out because I don't know how to use my old school film based camera well enough. Most of my film pictures look like this (if they turned out at all -- stupid winding mechanism...).
This was the view of Madrid from my hotel room. It was the only room in the group on the 12th floor, so I had a phenomenal view, including the sunset. I did walk all around Madrid, mostly trying to find a tobacco shop so that I could buy the last few stamps I needed to mail out postcards to my family. That literally took five hours. I found stamps at a tobacco shop where the owner did not speak a bit of English (weird being in Spain and all) and I barely can say hello in Spanish. So a brief pantomime session later I got my stamps. Then I stopped at a pay phone to use up the last minutes on my phone card (because a phone at a five star hotel cannot accept a phone card !?!). After I hung up, having been cut off by using up all my time, I look down my shirt and saw that I had been pooped on by a bird. BASTARD BIRD! I had made it through the whole trip being warned about the probability of bird shite and I got pooped on on my last day!
So, that's my trip in short summary. I have forgotten a lot of details, but I have over a thousand pictures and a scrapbooking project to remind me. I will do another post or two about the road trip part, but you've now gotten a good taste of my trip. It was fun, interesting, exhausting, and a great way to introduce me to a couple of beautiful countries.
As for my first week at work, I'm strongly opposed to being awake for so long starting so early. I prefer the 10 am wake up. Also, my work clothes used to fit so much better. Stupid metabolism and fried chicken.
I am also officially a CA resident (new license and all) so I get to vote here now...but I also have to pay more attention to election news.
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