Barcelona Day 1

Well this is very late getting posted.  I think Kris and I both know what our New Years Resolution needs to be... post more promptly!

We had a great week between Barcelona and Athens.  We'll probably combine the 8 days into 3-4 posts, so it's manageable for us to write, and for you to read.

We started our trip off on Saturday Dec 12, after I had finished my courses for the semester (exams went pretty well as far as I can tell - aka a mark of low 70s), and Kristin finished a Saturday shift at the clinic.  We left Loughborough at 4 pm, and drove down to the outskirts of London, to Stanstead airport (one of Ryanair's hubs), for our flight to Barcelona.  Not much to talk about, Ryanair promised nothing but a flight to Barcelona and delivered exactly as they promised.

We were late arriving to Barcelona, so had to take a taxi.  Unfortunate for us, our first experience was the most negative one of our trip, as the taxi driver we had spent the entire 30 min drive texting on his mobile, missing traffic signals, weaving in and out of traffic, and then got lost, and continued to charge us, including about 10 euros extra in unknown tariffs for the drive to our hotel.  We filed a complaint to the taxi company, but decided we wouldn't let it disrupt or corrupt our first impressions of Barcelona.
Our hotel was fantastically situated, right in the heart of the old gothic quarter.
Following all of the driving, planes, and taxis, we were zonked, so quickly fell into bed and called it a night.
We started the day off slowly on Sunday, because we had been up so late.  When we did get up, we walked out into the Catalan sun, and made our way down to the bottom of Las Ramblas and the harbour area to start our day's exploring.  Despite failing to find the first two geocaches we searched for (and a yelling at by a security guard somewhere for not quite being on the wrong side of a security barrier), we had a very nice walk around the harbour area, seeing a number of the shops, yachts, and much smaller craft moving about.  We grabbed our coffee and breakfast on the go, before starting to make our way up Las Ramblas itself.

Walking around the harbour area

This is the monument at the bottom end of Las Ramblas

Las Ramblas is a pedestrian walkway that runs probably 3-4 kms from the harbour area up to Placa Catalunya (Catalonia Place), one of the major transit hubs and traffic circles in the town.
Like many of the cities that we have visited so far, we found Barcelona to be quite easy to get around, especially walking in the downtown, but also using the transit system (more on that for tomorrow and the following day).
We slowly made our way up Las Ramblas, stopping to check out the shops, buskers, and street vendors along the way
Kris in particular loved the street vendors or 'blanket men'.  They are unauthorized vendors selling various goods (often counterfeit designer items like purses), but from whom it is actually illegal to buy.  By actually purchasing something from one of these 'blanket men', the patron can be fined some not-insignificant fine (50 or 100 Euros).  It's similar to the purse sellers in New York City, who pull-up their blanket, and disappear at the first sign of a cop nearby.  The cops seemed most interested in just making their day hard, by traversing the plaza just often enough that as the blanket men get set back up, the cops walk through again.  It's got to be a difficult way to make a few bucks.

The blanket men setting up

While on Las Ramblas, we did see several talented still life artists - including this one that Kristin felt somehow compelled towards.

Still Life?

Scariest collection jar ever

We also nearby picked up our first geocache in Spain, including a travel bug, Earl Numbers (you may notice a striking resemblance to the Count from Sesame Street).  He wants to travel the world, so we'll keep him with us for a while.  He and Tin Man can become good friends.

This is Earl Numbers, or newest travel Companion.

We, almost by accident, stumbled upon the Guell Palace, which is a Gaudi designed architectural masterpiece in the heart of Barcelona.
Warning: Gaudi Intermission
So Anton Gaudi was a famous architect, and (adopted) son of Barcelona.  He is considered (still today) one of the best architects in modern history, and is responsible for many truly iconic buildings throughout the world, but with a concentration in Barcelona.  His most famous work is the Sagrada Familia (more to come on that), but he is also responsible for Guell Palace, Park Guell, and at least a dozen other truly iconic buildings around Barcelona.
Look at the pictures below to see some examples of his work, but it's truly unmistakeable.
His designs were so unconventional, that when he graduated from Architecture school (having already developed his own style in the preceding years), it's often quoted that his headmaster commented "We have either graduated a genius or a fool, and only time will reveal which is true".

So Gaudi was commissioned by his patron Guell to build a palace in the centre of Barcelona that would rival those of any aristocrat at the time.  Gaudi designed and built a striking palace for the Guell family to live in.  It's incredible to see how he used different materials and patterns to provide sunlight or shake, encourage ventilation, invoke awe, or impress the guests who would visit the palace.   At one point, the accountant of Guell, seeing how much the palace construction was running over budget, took the figures to Guell, who commented "Is that all he's spent?".

The outside of Palace Guell

These doors were designed so that you cannot see in from outside

But you are able to see out from inside.

The basement area, where horses were kept.

This is typical of the stained glass throughout

An embossed leather bench

The outside of the palace bay window

Every ceiling was different, and as ornate as this one.

This is the main ball-room / hosting area, with a 3 storey dome, and windows along the outside so that the family could look down upon the guests without being seen themselves.

These are the chimneys around the palace.  Each one is, once again, completely ornate.  There are many prints of all of these chimneys.

This is the outside of the main dome in the central hall.  The windows and vents provide ventilation and light throughout the day and year.

Following the tour around Palace Guell, we were quite hungry, so stopped into a restaurant just across the street for some wine, beer and tapas.  I think it's impossible for anyone to be in Spain and not be well fed, or drink well.

Back on the street (and still only half way along Las Ramblas), we continued trekking north.  As it was starting to get late in the day many of the vendors had closed up shop already, but there were enough to still keep the streets busy enough.

We got to Placa Catalunya around 6, and it was fully nighttime at this point, so we thought we'd go to the top of El Corte Ingles (Spain's The Bay), where there is a restaurant  and decent lookout on the city.  Being completely ignorant tourists, we picked the wrong Corte Ingles (there are two around this circle), and the top floor was just kids clothes.

We were starting to push closer to our dinner reservations at this point, so we didn't try the second lookout, but found another fairly major road to walk back towards our hotel and dinner reservation.

Now, completely by tourist luck, we stumbled onto the Catalan Christmas Market (which was not in the same location as I had found prior to our trip).

Barcelona wins the award for most streets lined with lights.

Barcelona has three different markets, one which is very Catalonian, one that is more German, and one that doesn't really fit either of those descriptions. Luckily, this was the main market we wanted to find, because it is where you will find all of the rather peculiar Catalonian traditions.  It's worthwhile saying, that you haven't seen a nativity scene, until you've seen a Catalan Nativity scene.  They often are made out of pieces of wood foraged from the forest, and will include, mosses over the tops, water features and dozens of characters.  It's impressive to see, and this is the market to get the latest in Nativity Scene fashion.

However back to the catalan traditions...  The first, is the Caganer, which is a porcelain figurine, much as you would find in a nativity scene, that Catalonians place in each others nativity scene.  The peculiar part of this, is the figurine is squatting down, with a steaming pile behind him.  I haven't the foggiest idea how this came about, but what I have been able to find out is it symbolizes the natural cycles, namely that poop becomes fertilizer, and the fertilizer promotes new life, like Jesus and the animals also in the stable.
The second Catalan souvenir we wanted to get while we were there was a Caga Tio or Tio de Nadal.  This is a log, which is cut on both ends, has two legs attached, a face painted on the cut end, and a red hat glued on top.  It is the job of the children in the house to take care of the Caga Tio for the whole month leading up to Christmas.  If they do well, on Christmas Eve, Caga Tio is covered with a red blanket, and all of the children beat the log with sticks, singing a song that loosely translates to "shit, shit, give us candies, if you don't give us candies, we'll beat you with sticks'.  The children will then reach under the red blanket, to find small sweets and gifts (similar to what would be in a stocking).
Similarly, I don't know where this originated, but we were able to find a small Tio and bring him back with us too.

Caga Tio

Warning: many Caganers below:

Caganer

Books about Canager and Caga Tio

And themed caganers, including the Queen, Darth Vader, Tony Blair, Obama, Sponge Bob Squarepants, Frosty the Snowman, Bart Simpson... and on and on it goes.

Very oversized caganers

Even a Venetian Gondolier

While we were bummed there wasn't any mulled wine at this market, we were treated to a choir of what we believe to be med school students singing out front of the church in this square, trying to raise some money (though we don't actually know what for).  The sound and atmosphere captured us still for a few minutes.

Two videos of the choir can be seen here:
Video 1
Video 2

We did have a lovely dinner at Viana Barcelona, with fresh seafood, and once more, local wine and beer, but after all the rest of the activities of the day, it's probably enough to leave it at we were happy tourists.

Antwerp Day 1

So if you're determined to get the most out of just 2 days that you have in Belgium, it's key that you use literally every hour of the 48 you get.
Through lots of complication and logistics, we opted to leave at the unconscionable hour of 1 AM to start our drive to Antwerp.  Long story short, we were making a long projection on how we could arrive in Antwerp for 9 am.
Since Kris has been doing all of the driving (actually all of it) since we arrived, because of insurance on her company car, I haven't actually driven a car in more than 2 months.  What better way to get back on the horse as they say, than to undertake a midnight drive across 3 countries.
It made more sense for me to drive this one, so I rented a car (VW Polo - das auto) and we started off from Loughborough around 1:30 AM.
Lots of coffee and a couple of great podcasts later, we found ourselves at the Folkestone terminal of the Eurostar Rail Ferry to Europe, more commonly known as 'The Chunnel".  We even managed to be there 5 minutes before the final call for our train (whew!).  I swear I didn't drive 10 miles over the speedlimit the whole way.

We'll post a video after we return from Barcelona and Athens.

It was a really interesting, albeit a bit underwhelming, experience.  I didn't realize until just a few days before that the Chunnel Tunnel is actually a train ferry, on which cars, vans, RVs, Busses and Trucks all drive onto, they close the doors, and off the train goes, travelling at 160 KPH under the English Tunnel.  35 minutes later, you emerge, in France, with an hour time change and driving on the other side of the road.... (so now I've gone from the wrong side of the car and the wrong side of the road, to the wrong side of the car and the right side of the road.... huh).

The system at both ends is remarkably efficient.  Within 2 quick turns, you're on the highway and on your way.
The rest of the drive to Antwerp was pretty unremarkable, aside from the 'security check' we went through, where they pulled everyone off the highway, made them go around a roundabout, past the Belgian police, and back on the highway you go.  This is almost certainly due to the recent attacks in Paris.  It was the most visible security presence that we noticed on the trip.

We arrived in Antwerp pretty much right on time around 9 am.  We drove ourselves to the city centre) and began exploring.  Antwerp has it's own cathedral right in the centre of town, Our Lady of Antwerp.  It's a mere 500 year old church (well 800 from when construction started).  As Kris and I joked, practically a baby compared to some others we've seen.  Still, quite a remarkable building.  Inside they were doing an exhibition to Rubens, the most famous painter in Antwerp, so many of his paintings lined every corner of the church.

It was really interesting because during the reformation, there were no paintings allowed unless they were about Jesus.  In order to show their support for the local church, each of the various professional guilds (bakers, blacksmiths, tailors, etc) would commission an alterpiece that reflected their own guild, so the bakers' and fishermen's guild would  join together to paint a scene of Jesus feeding 5000 with 2 loaves of bread and 5 fish.  It made for a bit of fun trying to look at the painting and guess which guild was responsible for commissioning it.

We then took a walk across Antwerp, stopping for a lunch of savoury stuffed Belgian waffles.  This, I must say is a great idea.  Mine was stuffed with Ham, Gouda and Emmantal cheese, while Kris had arugala and brie.

Fuelled up, we continued making our trek towards the MAS - the Museum Aan de Stroom, a reasonably new addition to the Antwerp skyline, and the home of it's historical collection from the last 100 years or so.  It shows a lot of what the city tried to do to cope through WWII, as well as the cultural changes that have taken place over the last 200 years.

A real perk to visiting the MAS is the view from the top of the museum.  There are remarkably few high-rise buildings, so at 8 storeys high, MAS provides a very good vantage point.  There are also some very talented marketers at the stores nearby.  See if you can spot it.

After quickly finding a geocache outside, we made off to the Museum Plantin-Moretus, one of the oldest printers in Belgium.  We toured the family home, which includes all of the old print rooms, the presses, and examples of the... well really masterpieces that they put together.  My favourite was an original printing of Mercator's map of the world.  It was great to see so much history so well preserved, and made me think often as we walked through the museum about my Opa, who was a typesetter and a printer as his career.

This is where Loughborough is... well where it was believed to be around 1600

We spent much of the evening out on the street, walking around Antwerp and taking in the sights, sounds and smells of the Christmas Market that started today.  Needless to say, the mood in the crowd was jovial and happy.  We just missed seeing the lighting of the tree because we were a bit late for a dinner reservation, but this is what the streets looked like.

Our dinner was in a really cool converted industrial space, so we had a birds-eye-view to people watch.  Dinner was great.  Kristin had a venison stew, while I went for a delicious steak.  Add in a glass of wine for Kris and a local beer for me, and we were, needless to say, happy travellers.

We opted to find dessert in the street at one of the market vendors, so headed off to take in the sights and sounds.  They have constructed a decent sized outdoor skating rink in the middle of the town (although the skating surface would be categorized as fair at best by the Rideau Canal Skateway).

While there were lots of shops selling all kinds of things, this was perhaps our favourite... I didn't know that Canada was a net exporter of socks.  Also, since they are using the Government of Canada logo, does this count as part of the Conservative Governments' Economic Action Plan?

Many more photos from various parts of the Christmas Market, including several of the Cathedral, Our Lady of Antwerp, lit up as part of the celebration.

This is the local government house (above), more or less right at the centre of the market, and all the goings on.  In order to make your photos look a little more christmassy, they have this frame below, so by taking your photo through it, you can appear as though it's a true, Canadian Winter Wonderland.... There was a line so we opted to pass on this opportunity.  We'll keep trying for some real snow at some point this year, and take honest photos when we see it.

So it was Saint Nicholaus back at home for the Philippi Family.  I was feeling kinda bummed that I wasn't going to be there (an obvious consequence of this year abroad), but being just a hundred kms or so from Holland, I figured I should be able to find some Sinterklaus traditions I can take in.  I was not disappointed, as we quickly found oliebollen being sold at several of the market stalls.

It wasn't quite the same as at home, for one, they are mechanically added to the oil, so hardly any exciting shapes, but it was a nice taste from home.

nom nom nom

At this point, we had been awake for about 22 hrs, and decided we should call it a night.  We walked our way home (Antwerp is great for being a very walkable city), and found our way to a comfortable bed at our Air BNB.  More photos of the apartment, and Antwerp Day 2 still to come.