Christmas in Barcelona

Gaudi must have had a crooked pusher who sold him bad acid.  I hate to sound like a Philistine, but his stuff leaves me cold.  We stayed in a nice hotel three blocks from the Sagrada Familia Metro station and surfaced  to this view every time we went home.  There was a massive queue at all but the latest hours, one which would have dissuaded me from paying an exorbitant fee to see the interior.  

Matt, Kim and the girls did take the tour and he came away from it with some beautiful pictures of the interior lit by stained glass.  They said that it was well worth the price and the queue.  

Nick and Susan arrived on the 24th, a day after we did; their visit cut short by the threatened and later, cancelled Iberia strike.  We enjoyed two evenings with them all doing our different forays during the day.  Nick cooked a delicious paella with several varieties of chorizo for Christmas dinner.  Matt and Kim laid in a vast selection of wines and we contributed garlic peanuts, vodka, wine and detergent.  That's a long story...

Camilla and Collette entertained us with a couple of plays, dressing in their finery and new flamenco fans and hair-thingies.  On Christmas day, they led their parents/grandparents on a tour of the Gaudi-designed Guell Park.  We declined, having seen it in June and experiencing magnificent underwhelment.  It seemed to me to be a Disneyland for LSD fans.  OK, so I'm biased.

There were no crime-related incidents this trip, and Is actually managed to relax and enjoy it.  Perhaps the fact that we learned from our first trip and appeared to be hardened targets, prevented us from attracting muggers, buggers and thieves.  ("...love that dirty water...")  We found and tried a Filipino restaurant; enjoying crispy pata to the hilt.  One lunch was at an unimposing but good Indian restaurant just off La Rambla, and one afternoon I discovered a delicious tapa, Bunuelos de Bacalla.  They are a sort of puff pastry with salt cod bits mixed into the dough with unidentified herbs and spices, then deep-fried to a crisp exterior.  

The train trip up and back was shared, coincidentally with new friends, Susanne and Johannes whom we met at the American Thanksgiving lunch.  A very pleasant time, fine weather and a good reunion with family.

Happy New Year to you-all.

Paris with Dylan

On 15 Nov, I flew to Paris to join Dylan who was near the tail end of the conference he organized for Dell users.  We had a fine time, traipsing through the neighbourhoods he frequented back in his college days, dropping into bistros to sample the offerings and wandering the Rive Gauche till 0330 one morning.  I think we both felt that we were a little old for that sort of thing, but had a ball, nevertheless.

While he was working, I managed to hit the Musee D'Orsay and the Musee De Arte Moderne, both of which were well worth the trip.  I wandered the Champs Elysee, explored by Metro and foot and generally wore myself out, stopping now and then to partake of refreshment (at an exorbitant price).  
The weather was wet and foggy most of the time and that prevented me from renting one of the Velib bicycles and trying my hand at navigating Paris traffic.  Probably a good thing, though as the pandemonium I observed convinced me that cycling in Paris is not for the faint-at-heart.  I'll take L.A. or Boston traffic any day.


Four days were just not enough for "the city of light", but my feet and wallet were relieved once we boarded the jet for Alicante.  Many images were recorded both mentally and digitally, in hope of turning them into paintings at a later date.

Now I can cross Paris off the Bucket List, even though I never put it there. Thanks, Dylan for convincing me that it is a "must".

Skinny tires vs. wet clay

This is what happens when you follow the Newest Sadist into the field roads and campos of Alicante, after a heavy rain.  Richard and I decided to explore the canal roads, and eventually strayed into the field roads which, in dry weather are fine, packed clay.  On this occasion, they were a very sticky mass of goo over which he sailed merrily with his fat, knobby tires.  I, on the other hand, had skinny cyclo-cross tires which cut through, causing the mud to jam up into my brake calipers; bringing me to a complete stop.  I narrowly escaped flopping sideways and becoming a mud-puppy.  Anyway, I had to spend about ten minutes every puddle or so, cleaning the brakes off, and when I finally cleaned off the clay (which had turned into concrete), it took me three hours.  

I think I will reserve my off-road escapades to dry days.