Barcelona Trip, 16-20 May - Part II

... in which we leave Gaudí and go for dinner. And then we go back to Gaudí.

Being in awe makes you hungry. So we checked out our Lonely Planet (the Barcelona only version from 2006) to see if they could recommend somewhere nice on our way home from Park Güell, which was a good half hour or more from our hostel. And they could. We wanted tapas! We quickly put together choices involving a lot of meat and heavy stuff (tortilla, albondigas, croquette etc), and so we wanted something green to balance things out. And for the record, it wasn't only Mona who wanted that....

Anyway, the menu had something called 'ensaladilla rusa', which it said was vegetable salad. Sounds good, let's get that! The first thing the waiter (very nice guy, I think I scored some points doing my best to speak Spanish with him) brought us was this mayo-smothered dish with a single wee bread stick poking up in the middle.

At first we thought that maybe it was a complimentary dish or something. Then we asked the waiter. 'That's your ensaladilla rusa, girls'. Oh! He must have gotten such a good laugh at the looks on our faces at that moment. We certainly laughed ourselves silly. So, no greens for us! But lovely lovely tapas with lovely beer :)

Next day, Thursday, we got up around 8ish, and got ready to go find some breakfast. I ended up having a waffle smothered in chocolate, which turned out not to be near as sickeningly sweet and heavy as the first bite had led me to believe. Yumyum! After that, we set the course for La Sagrada Familia. What can I say? It's a bustling building site - you can totally see why Gaudí himself said it would take 200 years to build! Nothing comes off a conveyor belt! The sheer monumental attention to detail, the craftsmanship and the knowledge that went into planning everything is just astonishing. You could spend a day here, checking out all the meanings of every statue or inscription, even though there's so little of it finished. Mona and I have already decided that we're coming back once it's completed in 2020-something.

Here's a picture of the cathedral from the Passion facade. There are going to be 3 facades, dealing with the birth, the death and the resurrection of Christ. The first two are done - the Nativity and the Passion of Christ. The Passion facade looms like a massive cave out of the belly of the building. Fro some reason it reminded me of mammoths as well - probably the trunk-like columns.

The inside is mostly a mass of scaffolding, but you can get an idea of how huge the space is going to be. They are building the central and side naves at the moment. I just want to take a moment to apologise in advance if I get some of this church part terminology wrong. I have no real idea what I'm talking about, hehe. So there. Anyway, here's a picture from the inside.

You can go up into the bell towers on either finished facade - we went up on the Passion facade side. I don't have a problem with heights usually, but this journey I'm pretty sure I will only make once, even if it was very worthwhile, and I'd recommend it to anyone who doesn't have actual acrophobia (ha! I had to look that up :D) You take a lift up to a certain point app. 60 m above the ground (the tallest tower in a pair is 100 m tall). You can then walk upstairs a bit in the other tower, and back down either all the way on your own two feet or you can get back in the lift. We chose the stairs.

Now the towers, being bell towers, are hollow inside, and the outer wall is full of holes (purely intentional ones at that). Everything is solid stone, including the stair, so it's not so much that it doesn't feel safe. It's just that it's very narrow and you keep getting wind gusts in the face, which meant I went very slowly, even if I knew I couldn't actually fall out of the tower, unless I made a real determined effort to do so. The views were fantastic, and we absolutely loved it, but I also really liked it when we came back down. Here is a picture of one of the lovely fruit mosaic clusters on the side nave:

There was a cleaning guy who overtook us and vice versa several times. The last time he was having a wee break in an alcove and he saw me fumbling my way down clutching the rail and asked me why I was afraid, and I didn't know the words to explain. Once we were down we went out on the Nativity facade side, which is chock full of little details, where the Passion facade is more stark and sparsely decorated, but no less majestic:

Stay tuned for Part III, in which we go looking at pictures at an exhibition.....

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum! Jack Sparrow is back!

I interrupt the ongoing Barcelona report for a special interlude in honour of the release of Pirates Of The Caribbean At World's End.

On the web on Monday I got 2 free tickets to the premiere yesterday, in the Cineworld cinema in Dublin city centre. Steph went with me. I got a last-minute idea to dress up as a pirate. You know, seeing as I already have a sword and all that. And thankfully, I wasn't the only one! Three guys were there, who had real costumes, with frock coats, tricorne hats and stuff. My sword was way cooler than theirs though, haha. Judge for yourselves.....

I won't say anything about the movie other than that I loved it.... *sigh*

Barcelona Trip, 16-20 May - Part I

Yolanda was getting married in the vicinity of Barcelona, and so I had decided to take a couple of days extra to check out Gaudí's creations as I'd never been to Spain before. As a really great bonus, my sister then decided that she was gonna join me! She got there on Monday, and I arrived Wednesday. She would leave Friday, when I was to go meet the wedding party.

Anyway, the approach to Barcelona held a lot of promise which turned out to be fulfilled completely. We were flying parallel to the city, over the water, so I had a good view of the city, but was straining to find La Sagrada Familia. Anyway, what a lovely way to start the trip! I found city centre and Mona without any problems, and after a good lunch we set off to go see Casa Míla, also known as La Pedrera (The Quarry). Our hostel was just around the corner from Casa Batlló, another Gaudí must-see, and Casa Míla was a few blocks away. We decided to start with La Pedrera and continue on to Park Güell later in the day.

Here's a picture of the street-facing facade of the building:

I cannot get over the imagination that Gaudí had, and this goes for everything of his we saw. Simply and utterly amazing. One thing I will say, though, is that you can only take in so much Gaudí in one day. We had split our four places (Casas Míla & Battló, La Sagrada Familia and Park Güell) over 3 days, which was perfect. You just get to a point where you cannot process any more awesomeness, and so you would not appreciate anything properly you saw after that. I think we had a really good distribution, and it never got too overwhelming.

Anyway, back to La Pedrera. :) Here's a picture of the really cool ventilation shafts, which looked like helmeted heads. I absolutely loved the sinuous lines and the mosaics, which are Gaudí trademarks if anything. I have wanted to see Park Güell since reading a description of it in a William Gibson novel (Mona Lisa Overdrive). It did not
disappoint - check out this photo with the famous undulating bench that runs around the top of the Sala Hipóstila, the forest of
columns with lovely mosaics in the ceiling.

You could happily spend a day here, just chilling out, if it's not hot enough to go to the beach. Here's a picture of one of the many fantabulous stone colonnades dotted around the park. As it frequently does with Gaudí, the stone looks like you've taken a mixer to it and just left it like that. I've said it before and I'm gonna say it again - amazing....

Anyway, that's it for Part I, stay tuned for Part II, where we go for tapas......

Concert report - Sinéad O'Connor in Dublin Castle

The weather forecast had said 'rain', but thankfully that only turned out to apply to the early afternoon, and not much at that (at least not in Dun Laoghaire, where I was until I went to town for the gig), so by the time the Delorentos took the stage around 6.30 pm, the sky was clearing to reveal a lovely blue hue.

The venue was Dublin Castle, more specifically the big courtyard - very nice. The space was divided by a small stripe of 'no-man's-land', similar to the lay-out U2 had in Croke Park, although on a much smaller scale. I went into the front section and stood with my back to the barrier. That way, I still had a good view, but didn't get the crush from behind that you would invariably get even a bit of, if you were standing at the very front. Also, it meant there was plenty of room to dance. :)

The Delorentos are an up-and-coming Dublin band. I thought the music was good, and they definitely have passion, which is always great, but I'm afraid I didn't find their stuff all that original. I already have records by Coldplay, The Killers, Snow Patrol and Editors, so I won't be adding Delorentos to the collection, if you get my drift.

Next up were Kíla, an Irish band playing jigs and reels and songs as Gaeilge, plus a lot more. Very infectious! One guy in the audience, near me, had a couple of good Riverdance moves :) The band were obviously enjoying themselves immensely, and played up a really great storm. At one point a band member asked us to scream at front man and bodhrán player Rónán Ó Snodaigh, because it was his birthday. We did our best, hehe.

Then, finally, at 9 pm - Sinéad. I am going to try and reconstruct the set list, as far as I remember, but I'm warning you now that the sequence may not be correct (I've given the album and year in brackets though, because I know that much for sure)

'The Emperor's New Clothes' (I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got 1990)
'I Am Stretched On Your Grave' (I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got 1990)
'You Made Me The Thief Of Your Heart' (In The Name Of The Father soundtrack 1994)
'My Lagan Love' (Sean-Nós Nua 2002)
'Jump In The River' (I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got 1990)
Two songs from her new album 'Theology' - can't remember the titles. I think one of them was 'Something Beautiful'
'Nothing Compares 2 U' (I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got 1990)
'Never Get Old' (The Lion & The Cobra 1987)
'The Lamb's Book Of Life' (Faith & Courage 2000)
'This Is The Last Day Of Our Acquaintance' (I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got 1990)
'Mandinka' (The Lion & The Cobra 1987)
'Thank You For Hearing Me' (Universal Mother 1994)
'Fire On Babylon' (Universal Mother 1994)
'In This Heart' (Universal Mother 1994)

For the encore, she played 2 new songs from 'Theology' (including an adapted version of 'Rivers Of Babylon'). One was called 'If You Had A Vineyard'.

She was in great form throughout the gig, and was getting a bit of a kick out of the massive response to 'Nothing Compares 2 U', I think. She played a lot of my favorite songs, like 'You Made Me The Thief...', 'I Am Stretched...' and 'In This Heart'. The last song is an a capella song on the album, where she starts out singing the first verse alone, and then harmonies are gradually added in subsequent verses. Nothing about that changes on the live version, only who provides the harmonies. It's absolutely gorgeous. Hearing that, on a clear evening, in May, in Dublin, with the crowd being completely silent (for once) was just fantastic. Her voice has lost nothing of its force after all these years of singing - amazing both to watch and to listen to.

Concert was over app. half past 10, so plenty of time to catch a bus home. All in all, an evening very well spent....

I'm gonna get a guitar, learn three chords, and see about some truth....

Yep. I'm gonna join the ranks of guitar players.

I still have to buy the guitar though. Should be fun. I have a lot of U2 and Tori songs on the list of must-learns. We'll see how it goes.

The last time I played an instrument was no success. (that one time in high school where I played bass, doesn't really count, because I didn't have to learn anything. My teacher wrote down the junctions I had to put my fingers on to get the notes. I got blisters on my finger from the strumming. Argh.)

I was around 10, and the choice for some unfathomable reason fell on the accordion. Which I then proceeded to dislike playing. I think I stuck with it for two or three months, before I packed it in. I remember having to learn 'Jingle Bells' (it was coming up to Christmas time), but I can't remember whether I made it or not. Most likely not, haha.

Anyway, back to the guitar. I've had a wee browse on eBay, but I have no idea which brands are good and which are not, so I think I'll go into a music store in town and ask for some advice. I haven't decided whether I will take lessons, or try teaching myself yet - I could try the latter first and see how I go......