Life’s an ocean with too much commotion

We decided to celebrate New Year’s Eve somewhere, so we went looking for a cottage near the Ardennes. It was a real burden to do so as we found out all cottages in and near the Ardennes were fully booked. We looked further and eventually found something in Klotten, near Cochem in Germany. It’s called Ferienhaus Börsch. It’s a great cottage, room for six people and everything in place to cook wonderfully. We’ve made the Peter Goossens Event Menu, it turned out to be a lot of work but everything worked out pretty well, it was delicious.

I like the idea of spending New Year’s Eve on a different location. It allows us to get away from all stress stuff, and nobody needs to sacrifice his home and get all the load for preparing the food and serving dinner.
Here are some pictures shot in Klotten at the Mosel river.

I decided it might be a good idea to log our trip to the USA while it’s still more or less fresh in memory. Our trip exists of various different kind of places, states and attractions.

First we took the plane from Brussels to Seattle, via Atlanta. We booked our flight with Delta Airlines in the end of January via Joker. We departed at 10.30AM (local time) and landed in Atlanta at 2.20PM (EST). From there on, we had a connection to Seattle departing at 4.50PM and arriving at 7.20PM (PST). Ine and kris,

two friends of ours, live in Vancouver and our initial motivation for going to the USA, was to visit them, as they lived for a year there and we miss them of course . We arranged they’d pick us up in Seattle and drive us to Vancouver, where we would spend the weekend. Afterward I realized we should make this visit a little bit longer, as we had to recover from  the Jet Lag. The weekend was over before we realized it. Sunday evening they dropped us off across the USA border in a small town called Bellingham.

From there on, we’ve rent a car and drove to the airport in Seattle (SEATAC). Our flight brings us to Salt Lake City.

What I remember of this first experience with Canada – and Vancouver BC more in particular, is how the lifestyle is very European. You’re not looked after when walking through the city, you can eat/buy most of the things available here, so adapting to it is not that hard as I thought in my opinion. It’s a very nice city, I realize now why Ine and Kris love this city and live here now.

The picture on the left show Tanja, Kris and Grizzly. I normally don’t have any affection with animals, but this one I liked immediatelly!

It was a very nice start of our vacation in the West and we’ll meet Ine and Kris again later .

On our trip to Presqu’île de Rhuys, in May this year, we noticed that we were only on a 100km trip from Nantes (South side of Bretagne). That period, Nantes was something fresh in our mind because of Beirut’s song.
So we jumped in our car and drove to Nantes! Once there, the city overwhelmed us with festivities, warmth, beautiful sights and cool-dressed people (cfr. picture).

The picture with the brass band above really represents what the atmosphere in this city was. It was really like walking through the video clip of Beirut.

After a long sleep from the visit yesterday, I went to Tibidabo, in the north of Barcelona.

The trip on itself is a real adventure. First I had to take the metro to Placa Catalunya. At the station, I went on the train (FGC, Line 7) to Avinguda Tibidabo. There I took a 100 year old tram that goes halfway up the mountain. Once there, you have to take the cremallera (a rack railway) that goes straight to the cathedral and the city fair.

This picture has been taken halfway up the mountain, at the tram station. There’s a little pub that has a very nice overview of Barcelona, through it’s open window. I ordered a beer there and sit there for an hour or so. It’s the ideal height for seeing a lot of details of Barcelona and still having a nice overview of the city.

Once on the top, you have the city fair with some retro attractions. You also have some restaurants, the communications tower and the cathedral. The communications tower is open for entrance (not free), but as going more up didn’t give me better pictures or a better view, I haven’t done it.

At 5PM I went back to the center to pick up Tanja. We walked around a bit and went to Les Quinze Nits again. This time I ordered some meat (as I ate fish during the whole week).

Tibidabo on itself is nothing special. Going your way up on the mountain is pretty cool as you gradually see more and more of Barcelona, so it was a good day spent

After four days of walking a lot, my feet and legs were really tired. Nevertheless, this was the only day I could visit the Monestir of Montserrat. My girlfriend would go lunching with her colleagues so I had the whole day for myself (okay, this sounds like she really gives the shots, maybe it’s a partially true ).
First I went to the bakery and ate some breakfast, then I headed for Placa Espanya. Train R5 (FGC train to Manresa) heads in the direction of Montserrat.

If you want to take the Cremallera de Montserrat – a rack railway train – up to Montserrat, you should get off at Monestir station. Otherwise, using the cable car you should get off at Aeri de Montserrat station.
For both transport ways, you can buy a combination ticket at Placa Espanya. I don’t know what the combination ticket for line R5 + cable car costs. A combination retour ticket using the cremallera costs 14,90 euros. The trip to Montserrat itself takes about 70 minutes.

You shouldn’t plan a day trip to Montserrat if you’re not very religious or hoping on some healing miracle. The only thing you can visit there is the Black Madonna, the cathedral and maybe the museum. I stood for one hour in a queue for touching the Black Madonna, took some pictures in the cathedral and bought two candles. Some trails are starting at Montserrat that go across the mountains, which gives you hours and hours of real walking pleasure. I didn’t have the time because I needed to get back to Barcelona.

In the evening we went to a Tapas bar, Taller de Tapas (Plaza Sant Joseph Oriol 9, near Plaza del Pi). For about 30 euros you can chose five different kinds of tapas (calamares, croquettes, mussels, …). It was delicious and more than enough for two people!

This day I didn’t feel like doing museums, or things inside. It was a little bit cloudy outside, but I function much better in these kind of weather conditions.
In the north of Barcelona, near Tibidabo, you have Parc del Laberint d’Horta. Choosing to go there is one thing, finding the park another!
You have a metro station called Horta, but the labyrinth park is nowhere near the Horta metro station, so don’t go there. Instead you should take the metro station Mundet, on the green line. Once arrived at Mundet, the park lays behind the sport station. I’ve read that the park is only open (and free entrance) on Wednesday and Sunday. As I went Wednesday, I was lucky.
Once there, you’ll receive a card that you’re supposed to give back when you’re leaving the park. The reason is that there are only a limited amount of people allowed in the park at once, and I guess they want to know how many people are lost when the park closes .

The park itself exists of, of course, the labyrinth and a well-maintained romantic garden. I don’t know exactly what’s romantic about it, but the signs at each spot keep telling me it should be romantic.

At noon I went back to the center of Barcelona, to meet my girlfriend for lunch. She brought some colleagues with her, and we ate wok at the Wok2Walk. After that we bought a coffee at Starbucks and I dropped her off again at the university.

At 5PM we went to Barcelona’s most central park, Parc de la Ciutadella. The park includes a zoo, a lake, a large fountain and several museums. The Catalan Parliament is seated at a building in the center of the park. You can walk your way to this park, passing the Arc de Triomph. It looks like the one in Paris. Once arrived at the park, we saw lots of people there, they were playing, sitting in the grass, drinking beers, having fun… We sat down for an hour in the sun, watched the little boats on the lake. Unfortunately the large fountain wasn’t on. I think we’re here in the wrong month, because the fountain at Plaça Catalunya wasn’t on also. We skipped the zoo as I don’t think these animals are any different than the ones in a Belgian zoo.

We decided to have dinner at a restaurant near the beach. Near Parc de la Ciutadella you have Port Olimpic, and full of restaurants serving fish and paella. Hint, if you want to stay on the beach for an afternoon, go to the beach in the South of Port Olimpic. You also have a (bigger) beach in the North, but it’s more crowdy and the sand is more dirty than the one in the South.

The picture above showed our restaurant, on the bridge beneath the Gold Fish. We ate paella and it was delicious! After dinner, I took some night shots of the Port Olimpic and the Gold fish.

As this is my second time I visit Barcelona, I can now make time for visiting the non – you didn’t visit Barcelona if you haven’t seen these – places.
I took the metro and headed for Palau Reial. Actually, there are two Palau Reials. One at the right upper corner of Barcelona, and one in the center.
The things I wanted to visit were located at the one in the center, but I was heading for the other one (Palau Reial de Pedralbes).
The latter one has a park with a fountain designed by Gaudi (which has only been discovered in 1984). It also had a cool little fountain, as displayed on the picture below.

The Palau itself had three different museums, of which I visited two:

• Museu de les arts decoratives: I’ll quote the description from a folder I received there: “A journey back through history using the arts of the object, mainly of a domestic nature, from Medieval times through to more contemporary expressions of industrial design. Chests, fans, chairs and other items serve to illustrate the trip”. As it’s located in the Palau itself, I could also see the official throne of the president and his bedroom (actually you weren’t allowed to go in there but some guy was renovating the place and left the door open, lucky me). The museum was also nice, you could see things on which we place the tag ‘retro’. Stuff from the ‘60 and ‘70 up to the ‘90. The picture displayed above has been taken in the Palau while visiting this museum.
• Museu de ceramica: I don’t care much about ceramic sculptures, one room was pretty nice where there was a lot of originality and creativity put in a sculpture, but the other things where just ceramic tiles.

You also have the Museu Textil i d’Indumentaria which showed art and techniques of fabric and clothing in western European culture. There was no time left for that museum because I needed to go back to the centre to have lunch with my girlfriend, plus I wanted to visit Camp Nou, which was about 500 meters from Palau Reial de Pedralbes.
The entrance fee for the two musea was 4.20 euros, which is totally worth the price.

I only passed Camp Nou and there were a lot of people waiting and running to a car when it came up from the underground parking lot. Apparantly a practive football match just ended and some guy from FC Barcelona was leaving. I don’t care about football so I went on with my trip

Even if you pay attention not buying food in some very commercial place, you still pay 15 euros for lunch for two persons, for two sandwiches and a pint. Spain is just not the place anymore where you can eat and drink a lot for not much money.

At 5PM I picked up my girlfriend and we went to Parc Guell. You can take the metro and stop on two different stations: Lesseps and Vallcarca. Google Maps (which also has the pedestrian feature now, not only route calculation for cars) showed that using Vallcarca is shorter and a nicer way to walk than Lesseps. It still approx. 1km but it’s the closest one near Parc Guell. Another reason for using this station is that the way up (there is a lot of climbing to do for visiting Parc Guell) has been made easy by placing automatic stairways, which comes in handy when it’s 30 degrees.
Entrance to Parc Guell is free, for the museum at Parc Guell you pay four euros. We didn’t go into the museum because the park closes at 7.45PM, so we only had two hours for walking in the park.
It’s chaos! I think half of the people in Barcelona was in that park. They all wanted to have a picture at the famous lizard of Gaudi (covered with trencadis-mosaic), instead of taking a picture of my girlfriend there, I took one of the crowd (below). Right of the lizard you’ll see a guy who was constantly whistling when a tourist was touching the sculpture too much.

In the evening, we went to the ‘Kanelen Creme’. It’s a small restaurant, advised by a collegue of my girlfriend, which serves delicious food. As some things need to stay in mistery, it’s up to you to find the real title of the restaurant here and look up the location of it If you do find the restaurant, I can surely advise you to eat there. It’s totally not expensive, and the food has been carefully prepared and served.

To end this day, we went to Placa Catalunya to see the fountain and the lights in the evening. Unfortunately, the fontains weren’t on. Oh well, still 4 days left…

Have I already said the hotel was excellent? We had free cable internet, air conditioning, a big room and a good bed. Suddenly, In the middle of the night around 4PM, the fire alarm went off. I didn’t take any risk, woke up my girlfriend, put on some clothes, grabbed some money and my passport (normally you should leave everything behind but what can you do in a foreign city without money and identification?) and we ran to the ground floor. Apparently we were almost the first ones downstairs. What could be the end of our vacation was just a false alarm. The fire alarm went off due to someone smoking in his hotel room.

In the morning I went with my girlfriend to drop her off at the university at La Rambla. From there, I took the metro to Passeig de Gracia to visit three famous houses.

• Casa Batllo: Near La Mansana de la Discordia. In this period (modernism) it seemed very typical that rich people wanted to come forward with eccentric design of their houses. Gaudi designed this house. The roof is the back of a dragon and the balconies are shaped as skulls of the dragon’s victims. You can also enter this house and view the museum inside, but I found it a little too expensive (16,95 euros). Instead of entering, I took a picture of it and included it here.
• Casa Amatller: Designed by another famous modernist, Puig i Cadafalch. The ground floor is public and you can find beautiful ceramic sculptures.
• Fundacio Tapies: Designed by, yes, another famous modernist, Domenech i Montaner. Entrance is forbidden so I don’t any details about it.

I was thirsty and crossed a Starbucks shop. I ordered a large American Coffee (this is the only one that tastes a bit like the coffee we ‘normally’ drink). I just sat down on a terrace and started reading in a book: Dinsdagland of Dimitri Verhulst.
After an hour or so, I resumed my journey and headed for the numerous small little streets between Portal de l’Angel and La Rambla. If you don’t want to spend too much money on clothes, this is the place to be. Although it was very hot, the sun didn’t ripple through these little streets, it was comfortably cool.
At noon we also ate at a small restaurant in these little streets, and stole a knife so I could make my sandwiches for breakfast next day (sshht!)

At 5PM, I picked up my girlfriend and we headed to La Sagrada Familia. Four years ago, the entrance was about 7-8 euros, and 2 euros for the elevator. Now it’s 10 euros entrance and 2,5 euros for the elevator.

Inside La Sagrada Familia, you can’t see much. They’re still working and it’s blocking the view. There was a very long queue for the elevator (about 45 minutes waiting), but once you’re at the top, the view is amazing! You have an overview of Barcelona, from the see to Tibidabo and Montjuic. Too bad you have to pay that much for entering La Sagrada, instead of just paying for the elevator. If you don’t care about the view at the top, I advise you not to go inside, it’s not worth it (yet). Maybe in 2030, when the construction should be completed.
After visiting La Sagrada Familia, we went to La Pedrera, another house designed by Gaudi. It’s famous for it’s ceiling and roofs. It’s closed at 6PM, we were a little bit too late to visit it. Maybe we’ll do it another day.
We took the metro back to Liceu (at La Rambla) and went to Les Quinze Nits. It’s a restaurant at Plaça Reial where you usually have to stand in a queue for eating. We queued for 15 minutes and had the best place we could imagine! You should order a bottle of Casa Cava (Cava of the house, approx. 6 euros). The food was very good and not pricey at all!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a message on my blog I know, but it’s been an extremely busy period for me. This week (and next week, but I’m only here for a week), my girlfriend is participating a summer school in Barcelona. Every occasion for visiting Barcelona is fine for me, so this one comes in handy, especially after this hectic period.

We arrived at noon. Of course we were very tired, took a taxi to our hotel and fell down in our bed. After a short sleep we left the hotel and headed for La Rambla. La Rambla on itself is nothing special. You’ll see some special acts (the game with the ball hiding beneath a cup, some living statues, etc…), terraces and restaurants but it’s pretty fake. It’s the perfect place for being robbed if you’re not careful. My opinion is only to go to La Ramble for crossing it, not walk on it. In this case, we went to La Rambla because the linguistic department of the university is located there.

Our hotel, Silken Hotel, is located on the Avinguda Del Paral-lel. Between this road and La Rambla you have El Raval. It’s a region where poor people and lots of immigrants used to live. The government cleaned it out some times, but at night it’s still a place to avoid. We walked there to find a shortcut between the Parallel and La Rambla and crossed some people injecting heroine on the street. At day, it’s a place where you can find shops of second hand stuff (vinyls, clothing, …). Close to La Rambla, still in El Raval, you have Palau Guell.

In the evening, we went to Port Vell to examine the fish restaurants. We wanted to eat some fish or paella. I went to Barcelona four years ago for the first time. Then, the budget for eating a meal was about 10, max 15 euros. Now these restaurants start at 20-25 euros for a fish meal. Still worth the price, the fish is fresh and service is well. If you want to eat Paella, 7 Portes is a nice restaurant (located in Passeig Isabel II, near Port Vell). People usually have dinner around 9PM. Before 9PM most of the restaurants are empty. Starting from 9PM, it’s common that you’re queued and have to wait before going to dinner. We ate at El Caf9. It was rather expensive but the tapas are great.

We also visited the Mare Magnum that day, a shopping center with restaurants, pubs, places to go out, etc.. It’s entirely built on a platform on the water. Starting from there, you can walk to Port Vell, go to the beach and head for Port Olympic. This picture has been taken between the beach and Port Olimpic, and holds a partially reflection of the Gold Fish by Frank O. Ghery.

In a local shop we bought a bottle of Torres (we paid 3.89 euros here in a local shop, you pay double in Belgium!) and went back to our hotel.

In the beginning of may, we went on a trip to Morbihan, located in the south of Bretagne. We’ve booked a
chambre d’hôtes on Presqu’île de Rhuys, a peninsula in Morbihan. Of course I took a lot of pictures on the trip Actually, this HDR picture of Mont Saint-Michel was taken on our way back to Belgium.

Except for the abbey, which you really can’t miss, there’s nothing to see there. The city/village Avranches is full of tourists, so our visit was very short

There’s a small road heading for the abbey and at the end of that road, there’s a huge parking lot. As a reference, this picture has been taken at the right side of the abbey. I tried to avoid the touristic flood, took my car and try to see the left side of the abbey. It’s hard to get there because there are no roads heading that direction. Of course this was no challenge for me and I got there anyway. On a certain spot at the left side, their was a farmer who was organizing guided tours of a panoramic view around the abbey. He told me that, in ten years, there will be no water around the abbey anymore, due to the sand that is constantly being put off on the small road. To avoid that, they will break up the road and build a viaduct, so that the water, in the rising tide, can flow beneath the viaduct. They will also build a dam, which they can open so that a massive flood of water will wipe all the sand away again. Originally, when the abbey was built, the environment was full of trees, not water. Some natural reaction caused the area to be flood by water. That’s all I could remember of our little conversation

The HDR picture was merged by three pictures of different exposures. I used qtfpsgui to merge them and do some tone mapping.