Barcelona Architecture

If your not a fan of Gaudi don't bother coming to Barcelona. His architecture is everywhere, and it is impressive . Sure there are other influences and beautiful areas but in the end Gaudi wins the day. Here are a few pictures but really you should just come here and see it

La Pedrera

exterior of Casa Battlo

window in Casa Battlo

ceiling detail in Casa Battlo.

stairwell in Casa Battlo

chimney on Casa Pedrera

 bench with view at Parc Guellentry to Parc Guell

Sagrada Familia

Barcelona Food

 After about a week of no sleep and heat we decided it was time to move. We found a place in a nice little neighbourhood called Poblenou, only a few minutes walk for Monique to her office, only 15 minutes walk to the beach, plus it has air conditioning. In front is a large pedestrian avenue with a little bit of car traffic and the usual late night diners and drinkers, nothing we can't deal with. Things are suddenly very enjoyable.

  The food here has been fantastic with lots of good seafood and local fruit and meats, cheeses and of course bread. For the most part the kids have enjoyed trying new things and walking through the markets and looking at some of the local fare on display. (Pigs feet, rabbits, fish and seafood of every sort, as you can tell by the above photo)
When we eat out one of the girls favorites is a local tapas dish we call tomato bread, essentially toasted baguette, olive oil, salt and  the innards of a tomato smushed on top. Delicious and basically a staple item at every meal.
There are many different ways to eat here:
Tapas- small plates of food shared amongst diners, kind of like ordering a whole bunch of appetizers to make a meal.
pinxos- where you choose small portions of food and pay per serving that you take, usually a flat rate of about 1.50 euros per plate.
Set menus- where they give you  2 or 3 options for each course in the meal and you pay a set price.
 or  you can make your usual choices off the menu.

Did I mention that we went to the chocolate museum, yes that is a picture of the girls having a mug of liquid chocolate, a local speciality. The ticket for the museum was a bar of dark chocolate, needless to say that was gone half way through the museum visit. A quick poll rated this as the favorite museum we have been to.

















And finally a wonderful dinner on the beach, literally one step above the sand. Our first dinner out in Barcelona, with great mussels, paella, fish and of course Emma found chicken on the menu.

Barcelona

interior of the Sagrada Familia

It has been quite the week here in Barcelona, hot and sunny! A very diverse city with beautiful architecture and history, and luckily a nice new Metro with air conditioned trains. We started off the week with a walk around the 'hood, first to the Sagrada Familia. Designed by Guadi and still being worked on today, it is projected to be finished in another 20 years. There are 4 construction cranes poking out of it, with workers crawling all over it.


Next we went to the Barcelona Aquarium, which was pretty good, not as nice as the vancouver but it did have one big draw... the Shark Tank..

The shark tank was about 250 feet long and you stood on a moving walkway with tank surrounding you on three sides.

You could count the teeth as they swam by! Awesome. Then it was off for a quick lunch and down to the beach. Endless beach for what looks like miles, right in the city. Totally packed with people, it can actually be hard to find a spot for three towels near the water, which makes for good people watching. Everyone here takes there sun seriously, with a lot of people walking around with skin looking like well worn shoe leather, in places where it should really be white. Nice warm water and sand, all you need for a good holiday.

(apologies for the lack of posting, but the internet has been unreliable and slow. we have been trying to upload video of the shark tank, come back later to see if we succeeded)

Shark Tank Barcelona from chris bulowski on Vimeo.

Arc de Triomphe by Natasha

(My apologies but i have been unable to upload photos and video becasue of our lousy internet connection.)


When we were in Paris for the weekend we went to see the Arc de Triomphe. If you havent heard of the Arc de Triomphe, it is a huge monuement at the end of the Champs Elysees. You can actually go up on top of it and look down, we haven't done that yet but will when we return for a longer stay. The arc is in the middle of a huge roundabout with at least seven lanes of traffic and cars and motorcycles going everywhere with total disregard for the "lanes".  This is also where the bicycle race the Tour de France ends.One of the other things we did that weekend was walk to the Jardin de Luxembourg, which is a big park, both in the sense of a playground park and a walking park. The gardens were very orderly and completely symmetrical. There was lots of important looking statues with pigeon poo on them which was kinda funny. We also stopped at a little market along the way and got some delicious cheese that was just awesome! We also got some fruits and had a good lunch. In the middle of the Jardin de Luxembourg there was a pretty big pond where you could rent mini sailboats and they would go around with the wind. The playground part of the Jardin de Luxembourg was pretty cool as well, it had something kinda like a flying fox only different. It was also huge! And good for all ages, even little pre-schoolers.

Eiffel Tower by Vera

for video click here


On the weekend we were in Paris, we went to the Eiffel Tower after we had dinner. We saw the sparkling light show that happens every hour after sunset.There were lots of people selling stuff like mini Eiffel Towers they came in difrent colours like green,red, bronze and silver. We are going to go in it some other time when we come back.

Sweating in Barcelona

Quite a start to our stay here in Barcelona, we were booked on the discount airline Easyjet out of Paris, nothing but the best for employees of Vision Critical, so it was lucky that we arrived at the airport early. After two hours of standing in line with our luggage, while watching mysteriously as people who were behind us somehow leapfrogged ahead to the single ticket agent that was working. We were then told the wrong gate to go to, then the flight was delayed, then they changed the gate again. Once the plane was in the air it was great, 1 hour and 15 minutes and we were in Barcelona.
  Taxi ride into town to meet the landlord of our rental appartment, only problem, the taxis, we needed two because of all our stuff and people, claimed that they did not accept credit cards only cash. So I had them drive me to a bank machine and back again. Finally rid of them we waited a few minutes for Paco the landlord.
 He did not dissappoint, very nice showed us around the place set up the internet, tv, etc... all at about 10:30 pm. Our appartment has no a/c, but we did find a couple of fans that we set up in the girls rooms, then we opened a few windows to try to get a breeze. We closed the windows shortly after going to bed because it sounds like there is a highway outside our window. A fitful sleep.
 Tuesday morning we did a little shopping for the kitchen supplies, lazed around then went for a walk around the hood. Just a few blocks away is the Sagrada Familia, more on that in another post, and beautiful tree lined boulevards and of course people riding scooters and motorcycles eveywhere. Beautiful sunny weather about 30 C throughout the day.
  Laundry time, after a long weekend in Paris it was overdue, unfortunately the washer started spewing water across the kitchen floor on the first load! A quick phone call and a couple hours later someone comes by to look at it, only to tell us it needs a "tecnico". Who knows when that will happen.
And now I will just make a list of the rest of the things that seem to be happening or not:
 - the wireless internet seems to work about 10% of the time
 -one of the showers backed up and came close to flooding the bathroom
 -it seems that on our street the noise never stops, because the garbage trucks come at 2 in the morning.
 -did i mention that there are about 10 large garbage bins the pick up and it takes place over about an hour
 -then there is the usual stuff that does not seem to be in the kitchen, serving bowls, oven mitts, tea towels.....
 -but there are 5 corkscrews! We are set, now if only there was even a single wine glass. Maybe thats how you have to drink here, straight from the bottle, that way you can sleep through all the noise.

Oh well, I'm sure tomorrow will get better when we start seeing some of the sights.
(This post was entered at 4:30 am, only now is it finally quite and the internet is working)

Weekend in Swanage

It was another beautiful hot weekend here in England and we headed down to the seaside town of Swanage. Left early on saturday morning to beat the traffic, always lots of traffic on the weekends. On the way Monique had heard of a place called The New Forest, it is shown on the above link for the map of Swanage, where there are horses that basically roam wild throughout the parkland. Everyhwere you go you see horses in little groups, sometimes in the forest and sometimes in the parking lot or on the road blocking traffic of the small villages that are in the New Forest. The horses are owned by local farmers but essentially roam freely throughout the forest.

 After the New Forest we headed south to Swanage and the fine sand beaches that stretched for miles. All along the beaches are small sheds, side by side, that you can rent for your holiday. In them are beach chairs, sun umbrellas and the like, cost is about 100 pounds per week,that way you don't have to lug your stuff to and from the beach. Quite handy, many of the locals own one and will even have a small fridge and microwave oven or barbecue to cook right there at the beach. The couple in the picture lived in Swanage and owned this "cabin", along with the cabin you have the rights to the land in front of it so you can set up your chairs, etc... right on the sand in front.

the couple above very kindly told me all about the cabins and even stayed for a picture.

After an afternon at the beach we walked the boardwalk back into town for dinner. Had another Italian restaurant recommended to us, it seemed quite busy, looked good. Unfortunately it only looked good, the food was atrocious to say the least. Even Vera could not eat her spaghetti, how can you ruin spaghetti? Everyones meal was very dissapointing, so we headed down the beach and had a big desert at the place we should have gone for dinner. I must say it is not surprising that the U.K. ranks third among nations in obesity, especially after seeing the food that they eat on a regular basis. Looking forward to heading to Barcelona in the next few days.

London Zoo by Emma

Today we went to the london zoo. It wasnt as good as some other zoos but still pretty cool. they had a reptile house which is where part of the first harry potter movie was filmed. They also had burrowing owls and birds and the regular animals but they also had tapirs, which are like half rino and half hippo or something. The meerkats were sooo cute and they even had a red panda that looked like a monkey. They also had Okapis which are part giraffe, zebra and donkey i think. They even had pigmy hippos and hyenas and bearded pigs and warthogs. The gorillas didnt do much other than lie around and the tigers and lion were all sleeping. They had a bug museum too and they had like black widow spiders and rats and things like that in there. It was really cool because you even got to go into a squirrel monkey exhibit and a bird exhibit nad we were only a few feet away from the monkeys and the birds although they were in different enclosures. They had an aaquarium too but it wasnt that good and i think that if you want to see fish then you should go to a real aquairum. They had otters too but we didn't get to see them. other than that it was a pretty normal zoo.

we are looking at a monkey walk the rope above us.

Then on the way back to the tube station we walked by the camden market which is like the punk part of town. There were people with red hair and jackets with like metal studs in them and stuff and they were selling stuff for like two pounds for a scarf.

Harrods by Vera

Today we went to Harrods. It is one of the most expensivest  stores in London  and one of the bigest stores in London. First we went strate in and saw some purses. One of the purses were 500 $! then we went up up  and up.When we got about half way we got off. Into the KIDS CLOTHES ! There was lots of really expensive clothes.It wasnt that exiting.Then we went into the toy spot! There was the fake snow stuff. There were  people showing you  items there was this sticker thing that I liked.You would peel off some of the out side stuff .Then she took some tinefoyle stuff' and prest then there was the couler that she wanted on the head then finish it with diferent coulerts then gave it to me. There was also a guy who had this flying saucer thing that was made out of cardboard and it would hover in between his hands and just floated there till he caught it and did cool things with it. There was another guy who was doing a magic trick with a red light ball or thats what I thought it was, he would put it in his mouth then it would reappear in his hand when he opened his mouth. He would put it in one ear and out the other. It was very cool.

 Then we went to the pet department and saw some kittens for sale for 1000 pounds ! They had tons of pet clothes, some were costumes, some were rain jackets, shirts, skirts and tutu's. That's about it.