Where to go when France is closed

Leaving Barçelona was an adventure itself. France was having one of its apparently frequent strikes. We got to experience 2 kinds of strikes in one week!

First was a big deal; Sarkozy was dead set on raising the retirement age from 60 to 62. Goodness gracious! So the public sector of France decided to do strikes. For us, that meant that we were leaving Barçelona but we couldn't go to Geneva, because France was in the way. We found this out at the train station. (Side note: not having internet phones is a huge hassle! Whenever anything changes, we never know about it, and it's always hard to find wifi [they say wee-fee :-]!)

We decided to take a train day anyway, and hopped a train to Irún (Basque country, right on the border with France). The hope was that we might get a chance to pop over the border, but it ended up that we just stayed in a hotel that night. The next day we made it up to Anglet for a night at the youth hostel there. On the way, and for one of the first times, we struck up conversation with a young student from Barçelona named Alexandra. She was taking a weekend trip to Bayonne (near Anglet), to relax from the stress of being a college student. We explained how crazy America was, she explained how crazy Spain was, and we marveled at how crazy France was. We ended up meeting a French Foreign Legion soldier from Mongolia on the way, who gave us some beer. That was nice of him. I gave him some beignets.

We all parted ways in Bayonne and we took a long walk to our hostel.

It's a sufing hostel. What'cha expect?

Campers, tents, and surfers. Makes me wish I was 19 and a surfer.

Very reasonably priced, and it was about a 5 minute walk from the Atlantic ocean.

Anglet/Bayonne/Biarritz local bus service isn't creepy at all.

We went down, took a couple of pics in the fading daylight, and then grabbed some dinner at a Tex Mex place right on the beach called “Chili's.”

Chris is a Chili's veteran bartender, and said that it looked like a knock-off, but everything we ate had that little je-ne-sait-kwa, the sauces were creamier, the breads were richer. All I all, it was a very tasty meal.

Chris finds that guacamole is spelled the same in French and English!

This was called the Sweet Cappuccino, but it was just some brownie-ish stuff and a cap, so I did the only sensible thing; I put the brownie in the cap. Then I ate it!

Margs and Guac and Chips and Salsa! It's a Chili's!

Of course, since it was a hostel, the other people in our room were obligated to come back loud and drunk. But after they left to compose themselves, came back, wrestled and tickled each other a bit more, they settled down, and we all managed to get some good sleep. We checked out the next morning (we forgot to tell the people we needed to leave early, so there was a bit of a panic regarding Chris's passport still being stuck in the office, but things worked out) and we caught the train to Paris.

The end of the Barçelona

Just a quick recap before we move on. It seems that we're sliding into a pattern of blogging after each city, and today's our last day in Paris, so we'd best get Barça done before we get behind.

In the end, and a week-ish later, we're still pretty much in awe of Barçelona. We'll have to see whether or not the feeling stays or fades, and I'm well aware that our joy there might be more than a little bit influenced by the difficulties in Rome. But there were just some very nice vacation-y vibes going on. We haven't had a good stove to work with yet, but we pan fried a trout and cooked up some mussels we got at the big Boqueria Mercato one evening. The fish cost us 3 euro, a pound of mussels 1.50. So good!

Here's some veggies, since we ate the seafood before we could get photos :-)

We had a couple of nice snacks along the beachfront in the Barçeloneta neighborhood. From what I read, they actually revitalized the beachfront (as in, they made a beachfront by dredging up sand from the nearby ocean) not too long ago, and it seems to be holding up well. Although my dad says he tried to surf the Med last time he was here, which I'm sure was in the early-mid 70's, we did see one day of waves. That being said, it was a pretty ugly day, weather-wise.

They have a couple of on the beach sort of shack restaurants that serve up uniformly good sangria. I'm a fan of the sparkling kind, but you can't ask for that kind of thing. Either they have it or they don't, and I'm not going to get up and leave just because my sangria don't talk back. Even though it was the Med and Spain and sea level and all, we could feel fall starting to kick in there as well. There was a general feeling that we'd definitely need to consider some colder weather clothing once we got to Paris, so as not to freeze to death from exposure to The Freezing Fog of London. More on that later.

Coffeewise, we ended up with a couple of really good options. First was Cafe Magnificent, which is actually the premier roaster in the city. They recommended Federal [Café] as their favorite cafe in town.

Federal from the street

Federal Cafe

Federal was pretty good, but, for our money, the shots they were pulling at Magnificent were our favorite, and they were a lot closer to where we were staying. And cheap. Flash forward to Paris, where a double of espresso costs as much as 5 euro!

In the end, we opted out of the FC Barçelona game, but I went to a smoky café and enjoyed it with the rowdy locals. Even that was pretty exciting.

Happy Birthday, Chris!

Hallelujah Mr. Gaudi!!!

So I took these a couple days ago during our visit to La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's last/greatest unfinished masterpiece. It's almost been 100 years since the process was started, and the community continues to work. Each generation has been provided with an opportunity to add to its appearance, and all have tried to keep to Gaudi's original wishes and aesthetic. What is complete now is nothing less than unbelievable. Not that Sean and I want a cathedral for a home, but there are plenty of projects and ideas by Gaudi that we'd love to have incorporated into our own home some day. Sean's commentary below... I deny any complicity in these rantings. All the words below are his. I just wanted to take pretty pictures. I'm just going to sit back and let the Catholics have him...

Antoni Guadí's huge cathedral is so sturdy, they are using the towers as cranes! No kidding! Also notice the scooters. We're still in Europe, folks.

An unruly mob has settled in for its daily siege of La Sagrada Familia. La sigh.
There were stormtroopers in the expurgated Bible, but they were expurgated, which is kind of like literary excommunication. But Gaudí, using his wizard-like powers of resurrection, resurrected the stormtroopers. Here they wait in suspended animation, for the 2nd coming of our lord Jesus Gaudí, aka Gaud.

I suppose, if you're a stone person, you think other people come from stones, too, so you might one day just walk up to a stone and tug on it, and not be all that surprised when a person emerges. That's the miracle of La Sagrada Familia.
Jesus, we can see you.
The top is not a sun, it's a rotating cross, and the three balls aren't balls, they're representative of the holy trinity, and the 18 little figures aren't little figures, oh, wait. Yes they are. But the other stuff isn't what you think it is. That's also the miracle of Gaud. Everything means something else.
All kidding aside, this place is unreal. After all of the cathedrals we've made a point to visit on this trip, going back to the Gothic and Baroque stuff is going to be difficult. Gaudí really did his own thing, and I'm surprised that I don't see more explicitly derivative works out in the world at large. Except on playgrounds.
All kidding back front and center. It's the flying mummy! A very important story in the Bible, the flying mummy parachutes from holy planes to deliver the word of mummification to all the little mummies of the world.
Sometimes, in life, you feel lost in the woods. Unable to find your way. But it's just a metaphor. Until you come to La Sagrada Familia. Now you're lost in a granite forest, for real, and your metaphorical crisis has just benefited from a miraculous shift in perspective. You're not lost in your life; you're lost in a building!
With a camera! So you take pictures as breadcrumbs, and once you're out of the "woods", you can look back and say something like "I'm glad I went through that, but I don't want to go through that again." And this is the story of why people draw maps of their churches in the back of their Bibles.
Maybe I should go this way? It seems to go straight. Moving slowly, I shouldn't set off the motion detectors...
Some of them are windows. Some of them are doors. One of those sentences is false. Some doors glow. Go.
That's a decorative staircase, that is.
We totally want our own hobbit house. 900 ish sqft., and it looks so quaint!
Gaudí designed this confessional.
This is a scale model of the upstairs in the crypt. The tour goes through the crypt. Where Gaudí is buried.
Here's a link to an explanation of this inverted hanging model, although, now that I think of it, the name sort of says it all...
Click on this one to see all the little details. Gaudí was actually alive to see some of this one done, and, once again, as we learned from our audioguide, everything means something.
Look! A way out!

Images of Parc Guell

Today was Parc Guell, another in a large pool of crazy, amazing, beautiful projects by Antoni Gaudi. Not much to say other than it was hard to leave. These are not all the pictures, but quite a few. Enjoy!!

"Cosmos", statue near side entrance

Ceiling mosaics under central terrace

Another mosaic under terrace

Sean amongst the columns of the central terrace. Beneath were several street vendors selling jewelry and scarves, as well as a stunning Spanish guitarist

Fountain and lizard along the front steps leading up to the terrace. Folks kept getting pictures with their hands in the lizard's mouth... I have no idea why. So it was hard to get an image without hands in it.

View along one of the walls that line the main staircase up the terrace looking out onto one of the 2 "gingerbread" houses at the main gate.

Looking up from the main entrance to the terrace

An elevated view of the edge of the terrace. Columns support the structure from below. Above, there is a winding bench the lines the entire structure decorated with broken tiles. There was a small cafe located near the back, and several street vendors and performers scattered about including an Indian flute player with 5 dogs sleeping all over his lap. It was pretty amazing.

Kids crawl into one of several nooks located along the sloping walls under one of several bridges located in the garden/park.

The design of the bridges has Gaudi written all over them with his spirals, and tapered columns.

The ceiling of one of the passages

The outside of the Gaudi museum located inside the park.

Think of Gaudi as the Spanish Frank Lloyd Wright. He was inclined to design several of the elements in a home including the tiles on the floor, mosaics on the ceiling, and the furniture. Although my impression of him is that he was much less of a control freak compared to FLW... and very, very Catholic.

Beautiful mirror located on the 2nd floor of the museum. You were able to take photos as long as you didn't use flash. Sorry if the images are a bit dark.

Beautiful table located in one of the bedrooms upstairs.

The coolest doorknob... Ever.