Our last morning on the Ramblas

Kelly and I are back home now after about a week and a half of vacation. Fantastic city, Barçelona – an experience I’ll never forget. We got in late last night to SDF where our wonderful friends (and cat-sitters) Matt and Sara picked up we weary travelers. The fountain coke and hot dog(s) at the airport were welcome indeed. We had a wedding to attend this AM, and surprisingly the jetlag wasn’t bad at all. Still a little tired today, but getting better. Watched the premier of The Office this morning.

More new photos in the 2007.09 Barcelona gallery! I’ll be working on the full, annotated travelogue in the coming days.

Yes, we were that close!

Update: more photos posted in the Barcelona gallery! Boqueria market, L’Aquarium, silly tshirt messages and Camp Nou!

That… was… awesome!!! We made it to the game and back and it was totally awesome. An amazing experience, the whole thing. 70,000 raving mad fans totally into every minute of the game – unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Our seats were much better than I thought they’d be! We were 3 rows behind the right hand side of the goal box. FC Barçelona rolled over Zaragosa 4-1 and it was great fun. The train ride back was interesting – so packed with people, and then we had just missed the Red Line train that would have connected us back near our hotel, so we had to hoof it 10 blocks or so. A nice walk, though – moonlit night with dinner patrons rollling home.

Photos are slowly upping now. Went to L’Aquarium Barçelona this AM – a fantastic “shark tunnel” with a slow moving sidewalk. Kinda like Newport – but with more and bigger sharks. Also a good penguin exhibit and a ray tank. Good stuff! Rays are fun.

Tomorrow: we’ll finish up our gift shopping and generally roam around the city, getting our last sights, sounds and flavors before heading home on Friday. Did I mention we’ve been keeping copious notes on our comings and goings, and will be publishing them online after we get back? Yeah, I’ll be doing that. There are a lot of things I would have liked to have known before I got here – my gift will be unto the Internets. Enjoy!

This just in! We scored FC Barcelona tickets for tomorrow night versus Zaragosa from a couple of old gents scalping outside of Camp Nou. A lot of finger pointing, gestures and calculators… Checking the FCB website, I think we did pretty well. Excited to see our second-ever football match and our first-ever European one. Spent most of the day today at the National Art Museum (we did the full run of it today) – the bike tour was a wash, only one other couple was there, so we decided to skip it. Aquarium tomorrow before the 10PM game. YAAAAY.

A little more on the National Art Museum – spent a lot of time today in the Romanic collection of early Christian art. A fantastic collection of 11th, 12th, 13th century art from early churches. Many partial walls restored to their original positions (“in situ” as it’s known) to give you an idea of the size and scale of the places that housed them. A wonderful way to step into the shoes of someone 1000 years ago…

Dinner at a vegetarian falafel joint called Maoz. Great, cheap stuff right on the Ramblas. Excellent pitas with a “buffet lliure” (open buffet) with delicious things like beets, pickled carrots, olives, tabbouleh, sauces, etc. A crazy local stuck his head in the bar and started hawking “MARIJUANA!!”. Hilarious. Dub music played, backpackers strolled by, etc.

Handy review of a Brit visiting Camp Nou

Busy day again today – the Barcelona modern art museum (MACBA) and the National Art Museum (MNAC) as well as the nearby Olympic Stadium. The National Art Museum is up on Montjuic, a mountain to the south of town with an amazing view of the city – but again, LOTS of stairs and hills! Kelly and I are just about beat. Tomorrow – breakfast at the market and a bike tour! We didn’t make it to Camp Nou today, but tomorrow!

Taverna Basca Irati for dinner – a great tapas bar in the Barrio Gotic where you eat your tapas and save your toothpicks. Each piece is the same price and the bill is tallied by counting the toothpicks! Easy and delicious.

More photos have been posted in the Barcelona Gallery!

Kelly and I ran the Cursa de la Merce this morning – a great race. Real big! Lots of fun. Then, despite our being totally wasted by the race, we decided to go up to Parc Güell, the Gaudi-designed park northwest of town. My god, it was so hilly! Insane, but wonderfully wild and beautiful. Delicious dinner tonight at Ciutat Comtal, topped off with some xocolat at Valor!

Correfoc video up on YouTube!

More photos on the way. Tomorrow – I don’t know! Coffee and the Boqueria again, I’m sure. I’d also like to go out to FC Barcelona’s stadium, Camp Nou! Maybe get tickets for Wednesday’s match?!

Update: Parc Güell photos and more up in the Barcelona gallery!

Correfoc team giving one last big blast at their end of the street!

Update 6:44PM EST – Correfoc (fire run) photos uploaded in the Barcelona gallery! I also took a bunch of video I’ll have to edit later. That was totally insane! Team after team of fire-hurling devils and drum corps just going nuts! Dancing, fire, drumming… wow. Kelly and I have our run in the AM so we’re turning in!

Hola! Kelly and I have had a long couple of days here in Barcelona – jet lag an issue upon arrival, but that’s all behind us now. We’ve embarked on a couple of rambling, unguided walking tours in the last few days that have left us very tired but filled with the sights and sounds (and tastes!) of Barcelona.

We’ve visited the Sagrada Familia, strolled Las Ramblas on numerous occassions, bought our breakfast at La Boqueria market, dipped our feet in the Mediterranean and wound our way through the narrow streets of Barcelona’s old town.

The “fire run” I spoke of (el correfoc) is tonight and our run (La Cursa de la Merce) is tomorrow morning! More info on the correfoc and the Festival de la Merce here: Barcelona La Merce Festival @ Barcelona Tourist Guide.

The first batch of photos (from today) are up in the Barcelona Gallery!

Kelly and I are off to Barcelona, Spain today! SDF->ATL->BCN. We’ll arrive 11AM local time tomorrow. Barcelona is the cultural capital of Spain – imagine the Montreal of Spain – as the predominant language of Barcelona isn’t Spanish, it’s Catalan. It’s a fairly old city with a Barri Gotic (Gothic Neighborhood) that dates back to the Roman era. Winding streets and open-air markets galore.

Gaudi’s magnum opus, The Sagrada Familia

Barcelona at it’s center is an old town with great ancient architecture, and (as seen above) great modern architecture. It’s a cultural wonderland with plenty of delicious food and sights to see. We will also be present for the Festival of the Mercè – Barcelona’s annual fall kick-off. Kelly has also arranged that we will run the Cursa de la Mercè, a 10k (6 mile) road race through the center of town. Other runs of note include the correfoc (fire run) which appears during the Festival de la Mercè and is a parade of incendiary insanity. Devils and dragons parade through the streets shoot fire over the parade participants. Yeah – that’s awesome.

Tapas at Cal Pep

Did I mention the food??? Tapas are a big draw in Barcelona, and Cal Pep is the place to go (see above). Also, there are a number of delicious chocolate bars and being right next to the Mediterranean, the seafood is ridiculously fresh.

We’ll be walking quite a bit, likely biking and maybe taking a train or two! So, expect photos and daily travelogues – Wifi is pretty all-round there in the city center of Barca. We’ve been putting together a Google Spreadsheet of Things to Do Around Barca. Plenty of links and such in there if you want to dive in.

Listening to National Public Radio during my drive this morning (as I normally do) I heard the last installment of a series running on the Morning Edition program – the audio diary of a young dentist in Iraq detailing his daily struggle to live in Iraq.

The previous 4 installments ranged from the jubilation of Iraq’s win in the Asian Cup Football tournament to his feeling over his parent’s insistence that he leave Iraq – and them – for a country where being a doctor will not get you killed.

The final chapter was aired this morning – Iraqi Dentist Learns of Torture, Death of Friend. A good friend of his is abducted and ransomed. $70,000 is the fee, which is negotiated down to $20,000. Not a paltry sum by any means, and one that must be scrounged from neighbors and family members. The ransom is paid – an unthinkable action if it were to happen in the United States – and after a week or more of waiting to hear from the kidnappers… his friend is dumped in a local market, beheaded, tortured and broken.

Just imagine for a moment living in such a world. A world where doctors live in fear and grown men are snatched from the streets by gangs of men. NPR reported that 650 Iraqis in August alone were killed in Baghdad in this manner.

In the end, the dentist attempts to leave Iraq for Jordan, but upon landing in Amman, he is denied asylum and is put on a plane back to Iraq, where he is forced into hiding, where he remains today.

All of this serves to remind me that despite my own personal struggles – I am blessed in comparison – and it strikes me like a hammer every time I think of it.

Keeping with the previous two posts about quiet flight, I bring you the OpenSky Aircraft Project – the best anime-inspired jet-powered personal sailplane project I could find on the Internet.

You can find a couple of test-flight videos on the YouTube:

June 2006

September 2006

But I think the most compelling video is this one: How to Make OpenAircraft M01, a compilation of hundreds of photos of the design, prototyping and testing. It’s a QuickTime file, so you can load it and hit pause and use your arrow keys to flip between the frames. Awesome stuff!

OpenSky @ Wikipedia

From the article Solar plane en route to everlasting flight:

For the first time a solar-powered plane has flown through two consecutive nights, UK defence research company QinetiQ claims. In a secretive weekend mission, their craft Zephyr took off from a US military base in New Mexico and landed 54 hours later.

Check the handlaunch!

Simpler, lighter, more efficient. Exciting stuff. Soon I think we’ll see one of these things fly ’round the world, following the sun, perhaps… but then again, maybe not!