Spanish Holiday III: Barcelona

I have been to Barcelona previously: about ten years ago with the family on vacation, and then three trips here for work: I visit the Universitat Autonoma in the suburbs for research collaboration with Tim Myers and his group. It is a very pleasant city, easy to see why it is so popular as a place to visit and work.

Veronica and I had the last week of our vacation here. We could have spent longer, although I have to say it was a relief to leave the place we were staying in. It was an AirBnb apartment, large and nicely set up, but with poor ventilation, mildew, and the new car smell "air freshener" to cover it up. At the end of the week I had to say goodbye to Veronica for a month and go back to work, but at least I can breath again.

Although I have been to see them more than once before, I was happy to go again to the Pedrera (Casa Mila) and the Sagrada Familia with Veronica. Even over the ten years since I first saw it, the Sagrada Familia has had significant progress towards completion, which they now list as 2026. These are both amazing places to see for the architecture and the details of the designs down to the door knobs. I would happily see them again! Besides these top tourist places, we had a day on La Rambla, a day at the beach, a day shopping (well, Veronica shopped and I lazed about near the apartment), and saw the Saint Antoni market near our apartment (not far from the Placa D'Espanya). This is still a market worth going to: the one off La Rambla (La Boqueria) has very little variety now.

We did a couple of noteworthy things in the evenings. We saw a European Cup game, between Barca and Eindhoven. The local team won 4--0 and we saw three beautiful goals by Messi. We also went to the Palau de la Musica Catala, a beautiful theatre where we saw a performance that was a mix of opera and flamenco.

Then our vacation wound down to a close. I went with Veronica to the airport to send her back home, and then moved out of the city to the Autonoma. I have the same kind of room I have had before, very nice for a visit of a month or two, and this time I scored a room on the top floor of the view side of the building and have a deck. 

I am not sure if the pictures do it justice, but it is a beautiful view. I can look at it while I type this at the big desk in the room, and out on the deck table which is great except in the heat of the day (29C today). I did a couple of rounds of shopping, for food and a few kitchen things that I "needed" that did not come with the room. I will be comfortable here, and hopefully productive. It is a soft entry back into work as they have a long weekend here due to the Barcelona holiday, La Merce. 

Spanish Holiday II: Ronda and Granada

In Seville we rented a car to do the next two legs of the trip. It was a Fiat 500X, a sporty little four door car with 6 speed manual transmission. I got to be the driver, Veronica navigated. I am not sure who had the harder job. Spanish highways were easy driving, but getting through the maze of narrow, one-way streets in the city was stressful. I had trouble figuring out how to get the car started in the rental car lot. When we called the attendant over, it became clear that it would be easy to start the car if only we had got into the right one (next to the one we were in). After stopping for lunch at a roadside tavern, where we had the Spanish version of a bacon cheeseburger with fries (but much nicer), I realized I could not get the car in reverse to back out of the parking spot. I toyed briefly with the thought of pushing the car out of the spot and continuing forward, but then I realized that reverse gear can come in handy in many situations. Veronica used Google translate for a phrase to ask for help and a troop of men from the restaurant came out. It turns out there is a Fiat "trick" which involves lifting a catch under the knob of the gear stick to be able to get into reverse, which they all knew right away. I thanked them all and they laughed at me, good-naturedly. The next real car adventure was finding a place to park in Ronda, but we got lucky.

Ronda sits on the top of an escarpment that has a great view over the countryside. There is a park where you can enjoy the view and we had a picnic supper there. There is a rather picturesque bridge that joins the two parts of the town over a gap in the ridge. 

The next day we visited the Cueva de la Pileta (the Pool Cave) where we had a tour of a huge cave that had been used by prehistoric tribes who had made cave drawings, still intact. We could not take pictures in the cave, but here is one I found online. This is some kind of sea fish, which would have been found only quite a distance from the cave. It is hard to imagine getting around in this huge cave without modern lighting. If your torch went out, you would be screwed deep inside the cavern. 

We then drove on to Granada, where we managed to navigate through the city and return Fiat. I have to say I was happy to be able to get into a taxi at that point and leave the driver to it. We had really started to feel better, enough that I could enjoy a gintonic. At best, getting one is a great show -- they bring out the big glass of ice and the bottle of gin, and pour in a rather random amount (somewhere between a double and a triple) and then you add your own tonic. Look at that beauty, and Veronica is quite attractive as well. 

The main tourist attraction in Granada is the Real Alcazar, the last Moorish fortress to fall to Christian conquest. We had a tour (again, the only way we could get tickets but another interesting guide) that included the military castle and some of the palaces. More great moorish design, more reasons you would rather have a Moorish regime than a Christian one. Later that evening we took the bus up to the hill area Albaicin, which overlooks the Real Alcazar. More great views, an example in the last picture below. 

Taking the bus up the hill was an adventure in itself. It was one of those small busses but even so as it followed the mostly one way streets of the old city, there were places that had less than 5cm clearance on both sides. I was glad again not to be driving myself. 

Spanish Holiday I: Madrid, Seville, and Cordoba

I am on sabbatical this year (July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2019) and so am not teaching. This allowed me to take vacation time that matched Veronica's the first three weeks of September. We have a bunch of places we want to travel to together (perhaps more than life remaining to us will allow) but decided on Spain. We started in Madrid (flight from Vancouver to Paris, then transfer), then moved on to Seville with a day trip to Cordoba, then drove to Ronda for two days, two days in Granada, and then we flew to Barcelona for the last week (just arrived).

Let me describe the first part of our trip in Madrid, Seville, and Cordoba. We started the trip with a bad cold we brought with us, that dragged on through the first week and a bit of our trip. However, we still managed to do minimal touristing every day and saw all the things we really wanted to see. In Madrid, the number one stop was the Prado Museum. It is basically only paintings, which is not really my thing, but there were some notable ones. Veronica was keep to see the Nude Maya by Goya from a documentary she remembered seeing as a child.

I liked The Witches by Goya, originally a mural on a wall in his house. I think he must have been a role player...

I also liked Christ Falls on the Road to Calvary by Raphael. I am not knowledgeable about art, but I liked that there are so many interesting things in this painting. You can look at it for quite a while and still find some bits you had not yet noticed. 

I got the pictures of the paintings from the internet, so didn't violate any rules in the museum. We also visited the Cathedral, including the crypts where you have to walk on rich, dead people. 

We also visited the Palace, which had a great view and a lamppost I told Veronica she could get me as a present.

I am not much of a shopper, but I would have bought these shoes if only I didn't have my chronic foot problem that is helped by sturdy, stiff-soled shoes.

We then travelled to Seville by the fast train (250+ km/hour). We are staying in apartments using AirBnb, so we have had a kitchen and laundry in every place so far. Veronica set this up, and our whole trip so far. It has been a good way to travel and I can say (now we are in the last apartment in Barcelona) we have had no real duds in terms of accommodation. The apartment in Seville (the courtyard is shown below left) was in the Plaza de la Encarnacion which has the Parasol Metropol. This is a huge structure that is part art, part architecture, that you can take an elevator up in and get a view, and there is a bar. This combines many of my favourite things! 

The giant tree in the last picture is a ficus. Watch out for your house plants, they could destroy your whole house! 

Veronica came with a knee problem, so we have been trying to take it easy on the amount of walking we do. Luckily we can afford taxis when we have all our luggage (and with two people, it does not cost so much more than transit). In Seville, we took a horse drawn carriage tour to save our energy for a tapas tour we did in the evening. 

Our first attempt to get into the Real Alkazar was met with a huge line for tickets. We went a few days later with a tour that provided tickets. This is a pretty common thing here, so be prepared to book through a tour agency if you really want to see something. There is an additional cost, but the guides we have had so far have been value added. The Real Alkazar gives the scenes of the Dornish court in Game of Thrones, so that made it a bit more fun for me. 

We took a day trip from Seville to Cordoba. Here, there is a mosque from the time of the Moorish settlement of the Iberian Peninsula. I really like Moorish decoration -- it covers everything floor to ceiling but is quite subtle so it does not feel like too much. When the Christians took over, they built a small cathedral in the middle of the mosque (really). According to our guide, this turned the whole place Christian. Below are sections of the mosque (left) and cathedral (right). 

Another tourist sight in Cordoba is a pedestrian bridge, originally built by the Romans. They had come to Spain for olive oil and wine, still a good thing to get here. We had some time to kill before getting the train back to Seville, so we took a loop on a city bus for a cheap tour of the town. 

Through many of the places we have visited, we have had pieces of the history of the Moorish settlement and the later Christian victories over them. The Moorish conquest took ten years, the later Christian conquest eight centuries. It gives you a sense of who was actually welcomed. The Moors were scientifically enlightened and tolerant of other religions and cultures. The Christians brought Pogroms, the Inquisition, and book burning. Maybe Europe would have been better off letting the Moors take over. Maybe the US should elect a moderate muslin president... 

August Camping in Alberta National Parks

Veronica and I went camping in early August through Jasper, the Athabasca glacier, and Lake Louise. We are actually on the next trip already, in Seville after a few days in Madrid, so I will update you live on the progress on that trip in the next post.

The first stop was Kamloops where we stayed with my father overnight and took him to breakfast the next day to celebrate his birthday. Great to see him and spend time with him. The next day we drove up to Jasper. We had a small accident on the way up -- as I was trying to move out into a passing lane I misjudged the speed of the truck in that lane behind me (and he did not see my signal) and we had a side-swipe. The egg was only slightly cracked, fixed later for the $300 deductible. Good news was that no-one was hurt in either vehicle and I am loaded down with insurance. First accident I have had that was my fault in 35 years of driving. I will try not to make a habit of it!

First few nights were in Jasper. We camped in the Whistlers national park campsite, where against expectation, we were allowed to have a camp fire. We realized this was an essential ingredient of camping for both of us. We visited Malign Lake and rode up to the top of a mountain on a gondola (the SkyTram) and got great views of the mountain ranges in the park. You can see we had the smoke that was blowing all through North America, from local fires but also from California, Ontario and Siberia.

We then drove down the Glacier Highway, stopping at the Athabasca Glacier on the way where we took the tour onto the glacier (my birthday present). This glacier (and many others) is rapidly disappearing. The accelerated rate is a sign of global warming if you still need to be convinced by scientific evidence. This is a tour I remember doing 45 years ago with my father and stepmother, and it brought back some good memories of that childhood trip. 

 

   

Then on to Lake Louise, camping at the national park site there. We saw Moraine Lake, Lake Louise and took the lift up to the ski area, where we hiked around a bit through the alpine meadows. The smoke got heavier and heavier at this point of the trip, from Lake Louise, down to Kamloops (spending another night with my father) and then on to Vancouver, where the smoke was very heavy for several days. So, no particularly good mountain pictures from this part of the trip. 

Here are the two camps V&B. Of course we should have expected it, but we were surprised at how cold it got at night (30+ degrees during the day, but single digits at night). Veronica had to buy woollen socks. 

Celebration of Life of Dorothy Robinson, formerly Saunders, née Jackson

My stepmother, Dorothy Robinson, died recently at 93 years old. She had suffered from dementia for a number of years. My father had been looking after her at home until just a few months ago when she moved into a care home. My father experienced real grief through the end of her life as he watched the woman he loved disappear, so the grief at her death was still present, but softened somewhat by that prepayment.

Dorothy (Dot) spent most of her childhood and early adult life in the Lakes District of BC (between Prince George and Prince Rupert). It was not an easy life but she was never daunted by the need for hard work. Her life, and her relationship with my father which began when her two children had grown up, are both interesting stories but not mine to tell. I first met her when I was around eight years old and, as part of the joint custody that my mother and father had of me, I spent many holidays with my Dad and Dot over the years. Having recently divorced myself and found a new romance, I appreciate now how generous Dot was accepting me as part of their lives almost every day of vacation my father had. She never showed resentment at having me around, in fact I think she grew to love me. I regret it is too late to thank her for her part in raising me -- I know I was ungrateful at the time, like many boys.

Of her many quotable remarks the one I still enjoy the most is "I will never have a fiftieth wedding anniversary, but I have had two twenty fives".

The celebration of her life took place at Babine Lake, where the family have a rustic cabin that Dot's son, John, now owns. I drove up to Kamloops and spent the night with my father there, then we drove up together to Prince George and stayed at the house of Gloria (Dot's daughter) and her husband, William. My father, at 91, is still a very capable highway driver. The next day William drove us all to Babine, where many of Dot's family (including a number of great-grandchildren) had assembled. I like the family a lot, although we don't see each other very often. It was especially nice to have a chance to catch up with Lisa, Gloria's elder daughter, who is my step-niece but only a couple of years younger than me. A few words were said, and ashes scattered. It was a simple event, all about family, that I think Dot would have liked.

  

Above left are a bunch of the family, with my Dad centre right in the background, and on the right are William and his grandson (Dot's great-grandson) also William. Below are Gloria and John. They are my step-siblings although they are quite a few years older than me. We didn't grow up together at all, so I have never really thought of them as siblings although once when I was applying for Canadian government security clearance I needed to list them. I do like them and enjoy their company. 

A bonus to the trip was the chance to see Babine Lake and the family cabin again. I had spent a lot of time there are a kid and into the early years of my own children. It is a beautiful area.