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.

I’ll be leaving for the Polecat Challenge (a handlaunch soaring contest) bright’n'early tomorrow morning. It’s one of the two biggest handlaunch soaring contests in the United States, pulling in 60+ pilots! And I’ve had the pleasure of helping Denny (the purveyor of Polecat Aeroplane Works) put the contest together with the help of the Internets, and I even designed the Polecat Challenge T-Shirt – so I’m really excited to get there and do that.

Also, this will be a trial-run of my soaring journalism skills, in that I’ll be doing LIVE updates from the contest with photos, scores, maybe video and reports through the 4 days we’ll be there. The updates will come down here: 2007 Polecat Challenge Live Feed!

Hey all! Just thought I’d give you a postcard from the road! Kelly and I let out of Louisville on Thursday night. We made good time (even stopping by an outlet mall where Kelly exercised amazing discipline both in purchase and in efficiency) and got to the Academy of Model Aeronautics site with enough time to set up the tent in the light. We were, however, surprised, to find a troop of Boy Scouts in the camping area when we arrived. No problems, though — it actually made me reminiscent of my scouting days.

Friday was Handlaunch day at the NATS, and the weather was crap – which means it was great for a contest! Windy and overcast, it had rained the first night a bit, and it threatened to do so the whole day. Thermal activity was boiling in the morning, but it quickly dissapated into what I think was some sort of low-level temperature inversion (think of it as a “cap” on the field) and thermalling was rough. Ed Franz, the contest director, loves to punish the handlaunch competitors, and the tasks were *real* long. One wrong move or one missed thermal and *pow* you were out of there! I flew pretty well during the middle of the day, but I really fell apart at the end of the day, and ended up in 9th out of 19. My buddy Bruce Davidson flew to 2nd place and fellow LASS-mate Ken Marks ended up in 15th. I’ll do better in Unlimited on Wednesday/Thursday and then in RES on Friday, right?

Friday night was rain, rain, rain and our tent has some leakage issues, so we were a little damp. Despite that, Saturday was beautiful and I hung around with “Team Polecat” as they bucked the trends and flew a 60″ ship in an event that usually calls for planes that are 160″ in wingspan. Kelly and I split around 2PM for Detroit, making a stop in Fort Wayne at their H&M store.

Today we went to a Detroit Tigers game, and had a blast! The weather has been very mild (low 80′s ) and a nice breeze was occassionally around. Kelly got to see her beloved “Pudge” Rodriguez, and we both enjoyed a day at the ballpark.

This evening, we headed out to another H&M store in Ann Arbor, and then drove north up State street to the University of Michigan area. What a cool little town up there! We walked around for a few hours and ate sushi and ice cream.

Tomorrow, the Henry Ford! Right now, there are photos here: 2006.07.23 – Detroit. Soaring related photos are here: 2006.07.21 – NATS Handlaunch and 2006.07.22 – NATS Cross-country.

This Thursday, Kelly and I are headed for vacation, bookended by me competing at the Academy of Model Aeronautics Soaring Nationals in Muncie, Indian, better known by it’s competitors as just the NATS. You may remember that last year I went to my first NATS and I managed to do pretty well. Hopefully, I can repeat that performance this year, but in all reality I’m just there to have fun.

The Soaring NATS is actually a number of different events packed into a week-long span. This year, I’m flying handlaunch, Unlimited and RES. Handlaunch being planes under 60″ launched by hand, Unlimited being winch-launched planes of any size, and RES being rudder/elevator/spoiler only planes. Handlaunch competition is on Friday, July 21st, and my next event, Unlimited, doesn’t start until the 26th, so Kelly and I have plans to go up to Detroit and kick around there for a little while. We are going to hit a Detroit Tigers game and go to the Henry Ford Museum as well. Not to mention that Kelly is most excited about going to H&M, the “hip Target”.

Photo courtesy of Charles Frey. That is a RES plane I’m throwing there, by the way. Handlaunch planes are under 60″ in wingspan.