Barcelona

Because of our airline tickets, we opted to spend a week in Barcelona before flying back to the US. We lost a day to the track vandalism, but still had time to enjoy the city. We know people who love Barcelona. We know people who hate it: primarily those who have been pickpocketed here.

For me, it’s hard to see Barcelona clearly. They are in month forty of severe drought. So it’s dusty, and unclean in general. Where guys take a piss in a corner is always gross, but where it would otherwise be washed away by rain it has now become utterly foul. Dog shit just desiccates into the atmosphere. The gardens are beautiful, but the trees are so stressed and dying and of course the fountains are empty. It feels like a grim, sad place. The contrast to Paris and their regular power washing of the sidewalks and general sprucing up for the Olympics is stark.

But on the flip side, every meal has been delicious. Cava sangria is wonderful. It's so confusing. We're definitely not seeing the city at its best.

We did the usual touristic things: an architecture tour featuring Gaudi, the Sagrada Familia tour including a trip up a tower, and a hike through Montjuic and over to the cemetery on the other side. The fonts in the cemetery were wonderfully creative. 

My burning question: with the Catholic church working to beatify Gaudi, will he be known as St Gaudi, or St Antoni? Anyone out there a canon law scholar?  

Fancy Gaudi

Up in the (very) dry hills above the City.

Sagradia Familia from a lower tower.

The "warm side" stained glass. 

Church, construction site.

Truly fancy fonts in the Cemetiri Montjuic

Even more so.

~Lucy

Paris in the Snow

...is ridiculous. Parisians are very odd about snow. They lock up all the parks and the cemeteries. For all of 4cm, which was called “a dump”. It definitely creates limitations on adventuring. Brian posits that they are spending so much of their energies on traffic incidents that they don’t want to divert any effort to pull slip and fall victims out of parks. I have my suspicions about overhead tree branches falling. But either way, the closures seem excessive.

Pere Lachaise - Closed in the Snow

Brian, Rachel, & Lucy - Disappointed by the Vicissitudes

Rachel & Lucy Avec Neige

Rachel & Lucy, with the sun coming to melt it all

~Lucy

Cemeterie Passy

We spent our New Year’s Day walk in the fascinating Cemeterie Passy. Pere Lachaise gets all the press, and Monparnasse is a lovely stroll, but Passy is fascinating in its own right. Located in the 16^th, just northwest of the Trocadero in a fairly ritzy neighborhood, it is small and dense. It also happens to have a great view of the Eiffel Tour, which the hordes at the Trocadero were busily capturing. 
 
I’ve probably written here before about the European habit of “renting” a burial site. All over Spain graves and columbaria walls were plastered with notices that rent was due, and if not paid the residents would be ousted. Passy’s residents seem to be sufficiently well-heeled that the majority of the tombs were purchased “in perpetuity”. No looming eviction for these folks! But that does not guarantee upkeep, and many of the crypts were in poor shape.
 
Passy’s residents are a fascinating blend. Many Comtes, Princes, Barons and the like, even an Emperor. Also many members of various Legions of Honor, Institutes, and Academies. One grave marker had the fascinating notation that the family underneath were members of the Sons of the American Revolution. One imagines an ancestor who tagged along with Lafayette to the Colonies. Many nationalities are represented including Russians, Poles, Americans, Brits, Italians, Spaniards, Persians, Armenians, Vietnamese, and many more. We found recognizable names including Debussy, Guerlain, Givenchy, and so on. It appears that many of France’s aviation pioneers are buried here, with one headstone showing global flight paths and another celebrating the first Paris to New York flight.
 
The architecture and art of cemeteries always draws me in. There were some lovely pieces of stained glass and tile mosaics. One marble crypt with the name Talleyrand was a simple spiral staircase. A far larger crypt included two staircases, a mourning room with velvet-covered chairs, and seemed to sink a full two stories below the ground surface. Handy that this cemetery is located on an old hill, and is now behind massive retaining walls. 
 
The cemetery is home to living chestnut trees. After having walked past roasted chestnut sellers every day for weeks, it was amusing to find them in their natural form scattered about.

~Lucy

Mosaic Headstone

Allons Aviators!

Cemetery with a View

Rabat

We took our first train in Morocco to travel from Fes to Rabat. We booked first class, but this isn’t the TGV (that runs Tangier to Casablanca) it is a much older style of train. On this train instead of an open car it has compartments shared by either 6 passengers (first class, reserved seat) or 8 (2nd class, first come first serve). The price difference was negligible, around 100 Dirham or $10 USD. The train runs once an hour and looked to be mostly full. The ride was fine, but poor Brian did not fit well in the seats (Made for people under 5'9").

 

Rabat after Fes is a breath of fresh air. Literally. Morocco definitely has air pollution issues. But Rabat is on the coast and the breeze from the Atlantic was refreshing. The weather also warmed up and strolling around the boulevards and beaches with temps in the 60s is nice.

 

Rabat is a very different kind of place. It has the same souks and medinas and squares. But the walkways are wider, it is cleaner, and the mood is calmer. It’s the Administrative capital (only since 1912) and houses all the embassies. Which has the downstream effect of more internationalism, more schools, more development, etc. 

 

We opted to only spend 2 days in Rabat, mostly to break up the very long train journey to Marrakech, but it’s a good spot. Glad we did.

 

Sunny Morning View

 

Lighthouse and Salt Pans

Medina Byway

Passenger Ferries Across the River

Enormous Cemetery by the Sea

In the Oudiais Gardens

 ~Lucy

 

 

Cementerio de Granada

Yes, everyone comes to Granada for the Alhambra. But if you go uphill east of the Alhambra, past the ticket sellers, car parks, up up up….you get to a really, really great cemetery. It has it all. Water features. Statuary and cool engravings. Orange, olive, cypress, topiary, and some other unidentified tree with an amazing scent. View points that look out to the snowy Sierra Nevada Mountains. An elevator – the first I have ever seen in a cemetery. Collective burial sites for members of religious orders. Memorials to those killed by Franco. History remembered. 

I'm a sucker for topiary.

The elevator in the cemetery - we opted to take it up, not down.

Franco's Victims - Remembered

Yes, I'm a little pink. Did I mention this is up a big hill?

And smack in the middle – a 13th century archaeological site. I swear, if they had tucked a library into a corner I would still be there. All my favorite things. 

 

Archaeological site, cypresses, and a view of the snowy Sierras.

Plus Brian and an olive tree.

Of course, it is also full of people (dead ones). The cemetery dates to the mid-to-late 1800s (long before Vatican II), so the majority of the gravesites are wall niches. Newer areas include columbaria for those who chose cremation. Since we visited just after Christmas there were flowers everywhere. Except for those spots slapped with the threatening sticker: rent due. 

Walls of niches, well decorated.

 

"You must pay the rent, I can't pay the rent!"

If you aren’t familiar with that situation, many European grave sites are rentals only. None of this “in perpetuity” nonsense. If your family and friends opt to not renew your lease, out you go. There are real concerns in the US funeral industry that with the Boomer generation nearing its expiration date, there are not nearly enough burial sites available. Expenses are already high and will get worse. The shift to cremation has lessened the pressure, but not nearly enough. Keep your eyes on that industry to see some real innovations in the coming years. 

In the meantime, this is a pretty sweet place to be planted.

A little more topiary to round it out.

 ~Lucy

More Madrid

We spent a day wandering the La Almudena Cemetery. It’s absolutely enormous, rather young in age (1884), and quite a mix of well-maintained graves and crumbling to nothing edifices. Plus, of course, it has cats.

 

The Familia Gamboa Crypt (hi Michelle!)

 

Work being done. Question is, where did they move the inhabitants?

 

 

Not in the ground yet!

 

 

We enjoyed a day in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum (one of the Big Three. Museo Reina Sofia is still on the hit list). B probably spoke heresy when he said he liked it better than the Prado. But really, it makes sense. It’s organized chronologically so it’s a bit like your art history textbook. (Full disclosure, I never took Art History, Brian did.) It’s got a flow to it that makes the changes in themes and materials very clear. It’s eclectic, since it comes from a private collection and reflects the tastes of about three people (and their purchasing advisors?). But since the collection was begun so recently, it solidly nails a Who’s Who of artists. Several of my favorites were represented: Memling, Pissarro, Magritte.

 

Navidad is in full swing here and we went out on Black Friday to see all the lights. The major Plazas and Squares are filled up with trees (fake), ice rinks, carousels, creches, and so many lights. It was fun to wander up and down the car-free streets and marvel at the choices each neighborhood and Via makes with their décor. I do not know what ring-railed lemmings have to do with Christmas, but I am here for it. I also appreciated that with all the crowds the non-profits were out: the bloodmobile was recruiting off of the Plaza Mayor, and two separate dog adoption events were plunked down under holiday lights.  

 

Toward the Teatro Real

 

Plaza Santo Domingo (maybe? We were pretty lost at this point)

 

Navidad Lights. Somewhere in Madrid.

 Lemuridae Holidays to You All

 

 

We’ve spent time marveling at architecture, and managed to find the ugliest holiday sweater, all within blocks of our lodgings.

 

Just the Neighborhood....Something.

Really. What is happening here?

Bemusedly,

~Lucy

 

 

Philadelphia, Phamily, Phriends and the Phillies.

So Boston down...Thanks Joaquin and Eleanor, Matt and Sunny, and the fog, so much fog...

So when driving from Boston to Philadelphia one naturally thinks of Allentown, no? Well that is where one of my aunts lives, and that is where we headed from Massachusetts. After a relatively uneventful 6 hour drive we were able to spend time with my aunt Sherry and cousin Josh in Allentown. We experienced part of the Philadelphia sportsgasm there. What is that you may ask? Apparently when multiple sports teams are having success in a single city it is called a sportsgasm (or a sportspocalypse). I'm not sure who made that up but we are rolling with it. After a couple of days we drove south to Philadelphia proper for an extended stay with our friends Brad and Christie and their new puppy Jackson. Jackson is a Cardigan Welsh Corgi who is roughly 4 months old. OMG is he cute...

Here sleeping next to Brad and myself, notice the blerp of his tongue.

Those ears!!

Lucy and I may be a little addicted to this guy. So much personality, so damn cute. It's going to be hard to leave him behind.

We managed to visit with all of my aunts (2) and uncles (2) and many of my cousins (too many to count) while also watching much sportsballs (World Series, football, basketball and soccer) in between gatherings.

Thanks Bob, Brad looking like his puppy. 

 

Let's make funny faces!

Sound on.

Now do a time-lapse on the roof deck.

We also made it to another cemetery so that Lucy could get her fix.

Still great fall colors going on at Laurel Hill

Lucy found the Jeni's Ice cream shop.

Now we're off to New York City for a few days to see a show Some Like It Hot and get some culture.

 

~ Brian