Viva Barcelona

The weekend before last, Suze and I went to Barcelona to visit her cousin, Nicky. Since it cost us about the same to fly to Barcelona as it would to take a train to Edinburgh or London, we figured this was a good deal. So, we booked ourselves an EasyJet flight direct from Liverpool to Barcelona and Nicky gave us the details on how to get to her place from the airport. Oddly, it was the first time we'd ever been to the Liverpool airport, but it's pretty easy to take a bus from our place to the airport. Once in Barcelona, we were to take what we like to call "a train disguised as a bus" (or a train-bus) from the airport to Estacion de França. So, Susan asked a helpful airport staff member where to get the train and we wandered around until we found the bus stop. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the bus was free, even though it was a good 30 minute ride to its destination. We got to the station and eventually found Nicky there and she explained that the train line was under repair for so long that people were upset about it, so they made the train free. There's nothing like being in the right place at the right time -- lucky us!

So, we followed Nicky back to her flat after a stop at the nearby grocery for some breakfast food. She lives only a couple minutes walk from the train station and her flat is literally across the street from the Santa Maria del Mar, a gothic church built sometime in the 14th century, I believe. She lives in the heart of El Born, which is apparently a hip tourist attraction -- so we were right in the middle of it all! Her flat is up several floors, with a spiral staircase and a very low ceiling (which poor Susan kept bonking her head on). It's a small 2-bedroom flat with the quintessential tile floor that one would expect to find in a Spanish flat.

After we got ourselves settled in and then we went out for dinner at a place called Origen 99'9%, which is a restaurant that serves traditional Catalan food. There was a waiting list, which we put our names on and then we went to a wine bar for a drink. We went back and were seated and found that the menu is really more like a magazine, with articles, recipes, full color photos, and full descriptions of the food in Catalan, Spanish and English. I went to their website and found that you can read the menu online in PDF format if you like (the bad English translation is quite amusing!). It was quite comprehensive reading! So, we picked out about six dishes and some different glasses of wines to try. The food was very unusual to my palate, quite good but very rich, so not something I'd want to eat on a regular basis because of its richness. We had Cannelloni, stuffed squid, rabbit and sweet potatoes (my favorite, tho it was the first time I'd tried rabbit!), a bean dish, a lamb stew and some courgette (zucchini) dish. After a long and late (it is Spain, after all!) dinner, we headed back to Nicky's flat for the evening.



On Saturday, we decided to go see some Gaudi architecture and I wanted to go to the Sagrada Familia, which is the cathedral designed by Gaudi, which has been under construction since 1882. It's quite an impressive thing, not least of which is the fact that they've been working on it so long! Nicky advised us to look long and hard at the outside and then decide if we want to pay the money to go inside. Well, the tourist in me won out and we paid the 8 Euros each to go inside. Unfortunately, there was a wedding under way, so most of the cathedral was blocked off and the rest was, well, unfinished. For an extra 2 Euros each we could go on the lift to the top of one of the towers, but the line was super long and we decided it really wasn't worth the extra money. It was quite amazing to see the pillars and ceiling that Gaudi designed to look like trees, with the holes in the ceiling allowing the light to come in just like a canopy of trees would. Beneath the church is a museum, which used to be Gaudi's workshop, where they had some interesting displays and original Gaudi plaster molds of the church facades and the like. That was worth seeing, I think, but soon we got a text from Nicky and we met up with her to go to lunch at a cafe.


Later that day, Nicky took us to Park Guell, which is a park that Gaudi designed near where he lived. The house he lived in is now a museum, which we did not go into, but there was plenty to see in the park! There were all sorts of musicians playing music in different parts of the park -- a very entertaining sort of gypsy brass band in the plaza area, a saxophone player in the cavern-like archways, acoustic guitarists, and jewelry and visual artists selling their wares. The park is quite amazing, with columns built like palm trees, archways shaped like waves, and a two tiered plaza area with lovely tiled benches all around, supported underneath by amazing columns with tiled decorations on the ceiling. That Gaudi guy was quite ingenious and the park obviously continues to inspire local artists.

Saturday night, we went out with Nicky, her friend Ana and her friend who was visiting from Norway. We went to a tapas restaurant and had a lovely assortment of "pinchos", salads, calamari and other stuff. Later we went out to a couple of bars to get our drinks on. At the first bar we had to fend off an older fellow who wanted to befriend us -- luckily, after some rather blatant discouragements, he left us alone. We went to a second bar and had a good time and before I knew it, it was 2:30 AM and we were headed off for one last drink with some of Nicky & Ana's friends at another bar. On our way to the last bar, unfortunately, Ana had her purse snatched and soon we were running and screaming down the narrow tiled streets of Barcelona after the purse snatcher. Nicky pursued him the longest, but was still unable to find him. So, that put a rather dour mood on the evening. I found it a bit ironic that Ana was the only Spanish native in the group and hers was the purse that was taken. So, Nicky called the credit card company and whatnot to cancel Ana's cards and then we went and met up with the others, now at closing time at the last bar and Ana and her friend decided to join the others at an after hours bar, while Nicky, Susan and I decided to call it a night.


After our late night of drinking, we had a slow start to our Sunday. Susan and I decided to go tour the Casa Batllo, another architectural wonder by Gaudi. This one was a private mansion and again displayed Gaudi's incorporation of light, air and designs taken from nature. It was well worth the hefty entrance fee (I think it was 16 Euros each?) and was quite beautiful. Afterwards, we joined Nicky for lunch and then we borrowed her neighbor's bike and utilized one of the ample city-provided bikes (which can be used by residents with a rental card) to ride around the city and along the coast. Still feeling a bit hungover, we spent a quiet evening at Nicky's flat and watched a few episodes of "Bro'Town", a popular cartoon about Islander and Mauri kids in Auckland, NZ (somewhat like the Cosby Kids) that Nicky had on DVD and then we packed and got ready to leave for Liverpool in the morning.

Here are the rest of our photos from the weekend in Barcelona:
http://picasaweb.google.com/barckhoff/Barcelona2007

Photos from the Lake District - Part 2

Now for some "real" photos from the Lake District. From the weekend on which we actually went hiking. The fall leaves were just coming into full color and we even had one sunny day! Saturday was a bit moist and we got quite wet by the end, so mountains and hills were in the clouds, but Sunday was lovely.

Thankfully, we did NOT get locked out of our youth hostel, although we nearly did. On Saturday night, we decided to go to a late movie (we saw "Control" about Ian Curtis, singer of Joy Division) in the nearby town and didn't realize there was a CURFEW at which time they LOCKED the doors of the hostel. We pounded and screamed at the door, to no avail. Luckily, I had the Youth Hostel phone number programmed into my cell phone and someone actually answered the phone at around midnight when we called! They contacted the person with the key to let us in (who was just next door, looked half asleep and not very happy, unfortunately). We were quite grateful because it was very wet, cold and windy that night...

Anyway, we had a couple of nice day hikes amongst the Herdwick sheep and saw some fantastic views on Sunday from the hilltops. Here are here are the photos we took of our hikes around the Langdale region.

http://picasaweb.google.com/barckhoff/HikingInLakeDistrict

Southport, Ainsdale & Hilbre Island

A few weeks ago, we took a day-trip to Southport and Ainsdale. We weren't terribly excited by Southport, as it was a place more for family entertainment than beach enjoyment, so we moved on to nearby Ainsdale, which had a nice hiking trail through the sand dunes. The thing that's very characteristic of the beaches here (and also very odd to me) is that they are very long, wide and flat. When the tide is out, the sand just goes on and on and on and there are hardly any waves from the ocean because it's such a flat shelf of beach. Subsequently, there seems to be a lot of enthusiasm for kite karting, which is the sport of rolling around in a three-wheeled cart, powered by the wind using a kite. We saw a lot of kite karters on the beach in Ainsdale for some racing event that day.

Taking in the view on Hilbre Island

We also took a day trip to West Kirby, which we heard was quite nice. Luckily, our landlady warned us that we need to be apprised of the tides in West Kirby because the thing to do is to go to Hilbre Island. So, we found out what time we needed to be there and joined the hundreds of people walking across the sand at low tide to check out the views from Hilbre Island on a beautifully sunny day. Turns out that it's a couple mile walk around/over Middle Eye (or middle island) to Hilbre Island. I felt like I was on some pilgrimage across the desert (except it was beach sand, not desert sand). Anyway, it turned out to be well-worth it, as Hilbre Island is quite a charming little island with a few houses and an old abandoned lifeboat station (in use ca. 1840's - 1930's), with views of a distant seal colony and the mouth of the River Dee where it meets the ocean. The only thing that was missing was our packed lunch, which we didn't know in advance to bring. So, we trekked back to West Kirby and found a charming little cafe in which to refuel before we hopped on a train to head back to Liverpool.

Here are some photos I took that weekend: http://picasaweb.google.com/barckhoff/SouthportHilbreIsland

Yes, I'm still here!

Yikes, it's been nearly a month since I last posted anything here. Well, I do have a valid excuse -- we've been without internet access at the house for over three weeks and I've spent my precious hours online checking email or doing work, so haven't had time to post anything. Sorry folks.

So, what have the Kiwi and I been up to? Well, I've applied for school in Brisbane and have been accepted to two of the three schools I've applied to. I heard from the one I wanted to go to most within two weeks, which I thought was pretty amazing, considering I'm in the UK, my "permanent" address is in the US and the school is in Australia. I'll be going for a Masters in Information Technology at Central Queensland University. So, I'm pretty psyched about that.

I also started some volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity and have met some interesting folks there. I've especially enjoyed meeting an Iranian refugee woman who volunteers with Habitat. It's been interesting hearing about her experiences and views of the world. Today, I learned that she watched the "Six Million Dollar Man" on TV as a child in Iran. Who knew? I also learned about how they bury people to their shoulders and then stone them to death for converting to Christianity in Iran. So, as you can imagine, she's quite happy to be living in the UK and hopes to get a permanent visa in the next few months. I hope it goes well for her.

Our recent weekend excursions include: going to West Kirby and walking out to Hilbre Island, which was quite lovely. We also went back to the Lake District with Jo to go hiking. In the Lake District, we spent the night at a Youth Hostel in Langdale (which we nearly got locked out of for being out past the curfew which we knew nothing of) and two days of quite nice hikes. We also tried some famous gingerbread in Grasmere, which is somehow a crumbly, somewhat chewy concoction that looks a bit like graham crackers, but is much yummier. Last weekend, we went to visit Susan's relatives in West Mersea, not far from Colchester and then I spent a day in London by myself before returning on a convoluted series of trains (really, the train system here is quite maddening and expensive!) due to my discount ticket.

I'll post some photos a bit later, once I get caught up...