I really did have a lovely time, and posts of all the wonderfulness will come, but I just have to get this off my chest

I normally keep the blog pretty clean, you know, family oriented.  So, I'm just giving you a heads up that the next section of the blog is going to include swearing, just letting you know so you can skip away to another page now if this might offend.

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• To the 200,000 gilipolles I had the misfortune to wade through today in Paris, trying to disguise your homophobia as concern for children - but who do fuck all for the child, yes, 5 year old-ish child and her parents I saw sleeping in the shadow of the Louvre last night:
  
  Homophobia, it's not a phobia. A phobia is when you are afraid. You are not afraid.
  
  You are giant fucking assholes.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Oh, and France, while I'm at it....I haven't seen families sleeping on the street, sharing a single blanket since I was in India. Your economy is a little stronger than that. Oh, and France, Spain's economy is a shit-load worse than yours too, and you don't see it here either.
  
  What. are. you. thinking?

Palau Güell

Honestly, it was ugly.  Better on the outside, front and roof.

Interesting, but overdone, baroque and unbalanced.

The bones were good, especially in the basement.....I was surprised.

Let's see what you think.

This is the roof of the entryway, lovely and well done, though Youngest felt like they might fall out on you.  Quite dark.  The Man described it as dark like a tomb.  Not too far off.

An interesting detail, that seemed like it would cause problems later.

See, this is kinda what I don't like.  Checked floor, striped ceiling, rectangular windows with slats and then covering all that heavy think, care I say clunky in the setting dark grey facade over it with pillars.

Meh

The chapel at the centre of the house.  amazing, but BUSY

I like the biday, I like the tiles, the square tiles on the floor are fine, but all together?

Ahhhh, room to breathe, the basement that served as the garage, horses and carts down here.

The ramp up, see what I mean about the beauty of the bones?

For tying off the horses, a unicorn (with a horn kinda like a goat's)

and two dogs.

Looked a little like Chuck in fact.

Again, you can see Gaudí's characteristic parabolic arches, here looking LOVELY!

Newly installed, brick flooring made of wood.  Who'd a thought!

Don't know what in earth this could be for as it was in the window seat on the main floor and has two drains, but I quite like its simplicity.

Stained glass (pebbled meh) Catan flag colours, surrounded by marble and different marble and wood and a busy carpet.

Detail of the door.  I am not saying that these individual elements are not amazing and lovely, just an awful lot of them all together.

This view I like, simpler, the wrought iron entrance gates with marble columns, works.

For me, this doesn't.  Stained glass in many tiny picky little bits, within square frames, covered by a freestanding facade of heavy clunky dark grey marble.  TOO MUCH!

Detail of the woodwork.  Amazing and beautiful, but it was EVERYWHERE!  Overwhelming.

This again, fussy square stained glass, etched glass drawing in the centre, freestanding heavy marble pillars, tons of carved wood, different floors and windows.

Can you say Baroque?  If you click, each of those seperate points has cut glass in them so they glisten. *shudder*  That's a ceiling by the way.

A little better here, looking along the passageway between the pillars and the windows along the front of the house.

Ahhhh, the attics, which were not in the original style with many small bedrooms for the staff and laundry facilities.  Clean beautiful lines.

Undulating like a dragon's wing.

Out on the roof, Gaudi's characteristic chimney tops, with trencadis work to keep them interesting!

The door in the servant's stairway, that's an effective way to keep people from opening the gate from the outside, even if they have the key!  There must have been concern about people coming in from the street and sneaking up!

A shadow cast by some wrought iron work supporting a banister.

Overall?  Pricey, not attractive, sort of like a catalogue all laid out together, 'I'll have one of everything' style, but interesting nonetheless.

Wouldn't go back again though.

Maritime Museum, Barcelona and Darwin!

One day last weekend, we all went into BCN, and we went to the (slowly) reopening Maritime Museum.  There was this boat still on display....

And these enormous scales:

I've never seen a skull that seemed cute before, but this guy managed it!  No?

Some of the medieval wall of Barcelona visible out the windows

Medieval stone work, beautiful isn't it.

The roof was just put on new.

Welcome to Europe, this is a Roman tomb I think, though it frankly looks more like the foundations for a house.  Skipping through the centuries we are here.

The Darwin exhibit was OK, one of the cool bits was looking at all the different skeletons of arms, human on the left, gorilla I think in the right, bird just visible further over

Then there's whale....still basically the same though.

After the exhibit we walked around BCN a bit, below is the Tapies museum, the building was designed by Domènec i Muntaner, whose house we visited in Canet a couple of posts ago!

And a cross section of houses in BCN, part of the beauty of the place is the effort that's been put into so many of the buildings.

Lovely, no?

Canet de Mar to St Pol via Montnegre

I spent the day today working out a route to walk from Canet de Mar to St Pol (3.7 km on the beach) via Montnegre.  It ended up being 32K.

A wee bit longer, also we had an accumulated climb and descent of 2400 meters (that'll be about triple that in feet, so lets say 7200 feet.

We also had a bit of everything on the weather front, as you can see to start with, sunshine, clear skies and just warm enough to work up a bit of a sweat on the climbs. 

Below, we've already come up a fair way, and we're looking out over Canet de Mar, we then have to drop down quite a bit before climbing again! This time even higher.

A fair way up the next climb we came across this house..

One of the things I was doing was taking photos at the various junctions of the two people I was with going the way we needed to go.  Worked well as a reminder of the route.  Now I have to match it up with what the gps told me and what I see on the map...then do it again.

As you can see, we got rain above, then while we were having lunch, thunder and lightning.  When I took this picture, hail as well.

And fog.

Rained a wee bit.

Later, I figured out that I could stick my hand in the picture to help indicate the route, pretty clear, no?

Looking back to Montnegre, hidden in the clouds, where we'd come from.

OH LOOK!  Barcelona!  That wedge shaped mountain is Monjüic.

Two attractive houses in St Pol to round it all out!

Long day...wait, where did those last photos go...hold on....

Finished off the day with a double rainbow.  That doesn't happen all that often, now does it!