My Spanish Vacation Part III: Barcelona

Well at around 1 or 2pm on the Monday after Halloween 2009 I flew into Barcelona. The metro is attached to the airport (Girona airport I think) so that was pretty easy. In Barcelona everyone speaks effectively three languages: Spanish, English, and Catalan, or Català. From what I've heard its a hybrid mixture of Spanish and French. Wherever I went I at least tried to speak the local language, but there was no way I was going to attempt Catalan. I tried a little bit of Spanish and I used English when I needed to. Also in Barcelona everyone speaks Spanish with a lisp making their "c" sounds a "th" sound. Literally I heard "Grathias por tu visita a Barthelona" on the speakers in the dolphin show below. That and a lot of "Como ethstas"? I think its a little funny because it sounds like their speaking Spanish incorrectly from how it is in Cali, but then again any language spoken with a Cali accent is funny to other people around the world.

So I get out of the metro station in Barcelona. It was the Par.al.lel metro stop but the word Parellel has some periods in it for sure, but I just don't remember where. Weird. This is located in the South-East part of the city near my hostel. I see my friend and we go to an ATM. Then I check into my hostel HelloBCN Hostel (my favorite hostel that I stayed in) and we soon go out and exploring in Barcelona. I get a map of Barcelona from my hostel and see that its huge. Since its a tourist map I see a lot of monuments and the word Gaudí appears on the map frequently. Since I didn't really research beforehand anywhere that I went to (try not to do that) I had no idea what anything was. I even thought I was on the west coast of Spain for a second because I'm always on the west coast everywhere I am, which was a little sad. While we're walking I'm getting an impromptu lesson on the streets of Barcelona and the good stuff to see, as well as a the best sandwhich shop in all of Barcelona (which I visited multiple times later on). It turned out we went to an elevated park in the south-east of Barcelona near the hostel. It also has a historic castle in the park and of course good views. From the research I just did I apparently first went to Montjuïc Park and of course saw the Montjuïc Castle as well. The walk up to this is where the pictures start...

After climbing up some stairs and walking up some roads, we got to a flat walkway. This is what we saw... This is view of the harbor and main street running along the ocean. You can also see what I think are cruise ships or just really large ships parked in the harbor.

Here is a picture of the same scene above but on maximum zoom. It's a statue that I will elaborate on later. If you look at the road lined by trees and look at its first intersection you can see this statue. Since we're in Spain maybe you can guess who it is...

Across from the picture above is the Miramar Hotel, which has an incredible view. Miramar of course means "see the sea" and from what I saw it was a pretty expensive hotel. It was completely closed off and I couldn't really find a way to the lobby.

Here's another views from in line with the Miramar. You can see the seats to this restaurant on the left, which had a pretty amazing view.

Here is another view but more to the left. The ocean is of course east but its hard to see in this picture.

Here is another similar picture but more zoomed out. You can make out the cruise ship from behind the palm tree and the ocean and harbor water are more visible in this picture.

And this is a view of the shipyards south of the cruise ships...

And here is Montjuïc Castle itself. The inside of the castle was closed off and the only interesting things were the cannons that you could go and play around with up close. That and the views.

This is an endless waterfountain they had in the lower park area near the Miramar Hotel.

This is the stupidest picture ever that I somehow allowed to be taken. When I was abroad I didn't really get a haircut so my hair is kinda long and since I was on vacation I didn't have hair gel (I only had a carry-on and my clothes on my back for everything and obviously gel can't go on a plane) and I wasn't going to buy one just for a week. I always come out badly in picture and this is another example. While going through the Madrid/Barcelona pictures I saw this and I still don't remember really allowing this to be taken with my camera but whatever. If you like the shirt and jeans I bought those for myself at the Roma flea market because I didn't bring enough clothes to Rome. And those shoes were the only sneakers I brought for 4 months. Quite loyal to me. And the reason it looks like I have two watches on is that my hostel gave us a watch-like "key" that we scanned to get in our room.

And finally here is a view from the castle itself. You can see what was the moat and of course Barcelona itself.

Well here is the statue I showed you earlier. It is a statue of Cristopher Colombus pointing towards the ocean. However the irony is that he is pointing east when the New World is of course west. He was the ultimately man because he never asked for directions and got lost on his terms and dealt with the consequences. Those consequences were landing on the Caribbean Islands and discovering the New World, although the Indians would say something different.

Barcelona is defined by one man: Gaudí. He is of course the famous early twentieth century architect that designed unique buildings all around Barcelona. His works were very unique and different and prominently featured parabolic shapes and heavy use of natural daylight, among other things. The first monument I went to was his unfinished church as it is called in the Gothic section of Barcelona right in the middle of the city. After walking down Cristopher Colombus Road (more or less the translation; I just remember it was named after him and its the one that runs along the ocean) I went to the sandwich place I had heard wonders about (it was amazing; I went back multiple times). Then I went to the middle of the city in the tourist-y areas and looked around. Since I had five days I didn't really plan out my days and did what I wanted after I split off from my friends. The freedom of doing what you want in a beautiful city like Barcelona is the best, and at night my hostel would get us free admission and a free drink at a club each night so I had my nights set already. That and the abundance of sangria made Barcelona awesome.

So anyways I went to the Unfinished Church (the translation more or less) and here it is...

But what does it look like inside? Well I was curious as well until I found out that you have to buy a ticket to go in. Hmm... do I buy a ticket for a church when they are all free everywhere else? Well contrary to what I normally believe in I spent the 5 euro (it might have been a little bit more, I don't remember) and in I went. I saw this...

But there's a lot of intricate detail. I immediately noticed major differences from Roman churches, like the walls without frescos and not that much marble or travertine. That and the Gothic design and flying buttresses as they say. And of course the use of gold in a lot of the church, like this...

This post is running too long. That means I will continue on another post. ¡Adios, hasta luego!

Travels Around Roma Part V: Foro Traiano and V.E. II Monument

These are some of my random travels around the Foro Traiano, or Trajan's Forum, and the Vittorio Emanuele II National Monument on the Capitoline Hill. Vittorio Emanuele II was of course the first King of Italy after it unified in 1870 and he is Italy's George Washington, more or less. He even has a famous road named after him, Corso Vittorio Emanuele, which runs from the Tiber River near Castel Sant'Angelo and goes although through Rome to his own monument. My school is also located there off the street, and it is the main traffic school because all the other roads around it are from the Medieval times and are too narrow for modern car traffic.

Right after I was done with seeing Santa Maria Maggiore I'm pretty sure we all went to the Foro Traiano which is right outside. This link has a model of what it looked like back in ancient Rome, and today the few remaining columns don't do it justice. It also says that people entered the Forum through the fornix, or singular passageway under the triumphal arch. This is where the term fornication comes from because certain things happened under each fornix. Ancient Roman emporers had their own massive columns that were stiarcases with a good view at the top, and Trajan's column is in his forum. Each column is carved spirally throughout the whole column, usually with war scenes depicting victory, and how this was done during ancient times is beyond me. Same with how they built the Pantheon, which I will show later. Trajan's market is located across the street from the Roman Forum ruins as well. Trajan got around.

Here is Trajan's Column, erected in 113 A.D., and since I took a bad picture you can't really see how tall it is (125 feet)or that it has windows on top and a large statue of Trajan himself. Medieval pilgrims were charged to go up the columns, but today sadly it is not a tourist attraction like that anymore. I would have paid.

Here is the same picture but more of the Forum remains in the background. For a better picture go here. Ancient Roman ruins are dispersed throughout Rome, and are always my favorite.

This is the view of the Vittorio Emanuele II National Monument. It was completed in 1935. It combines different aspects of Roman architecture all in one and is highly symbolic as well. It has a tomb of an unknown soldier and each column is for each region in Italy. There is a statue of King Vittorio on a horse, and the winged chariots above were added by Mussolini later on. There are also many reliefs or war scenes and the Risorgimento, or Re-Unification Museum is in there too. All the other buildings around it were demolished and the monument is surrounded by Piazza Venezia, the biggest piazza in Rome.


Here is a closer view. A little of the detail is more apparent. Also, there are stairs to climb to the higher stories and there is an elevator to go to the roof. I went there later on and look out for that in a later post.

This is still another view, but this time with the national flag streaming in the wind. You're are not allowed to talk loudly when you climb the stairs and you are expected to dress appropriately. There were signs in english telling me this which were directed towards American tourists obviously. But everyone who is there is a tourist and is taking pictures, so its a little bit of a lost cause. There are nice views of the Colosseum and Forum ruins from the monument as well.

What's this around the monument???

But there is something I haven't shown yet. With any national monument, you're always going to have... protests. While we were visiting the monument a protest was taking place so we decided to go check it out.

Here is their main protest sign. They would also follow chants from people on a loudspeaker and the crowd backed up pretty quickly to form the circle seen above. There were also media and people filming and taking pictures. This was the only protest I really took pictures of, but any popular piazza or open space always has them. My Italian isn't that good to translate this or even understand what it means, but using a dictionary is says... " The truths are out! Out goes the red agenda. We are with Antonio Ingroia (whoever he is?), Sergio Lari, everyone of the honest judges, Salvatore Borsellino and Gioacchino Genchi." Apparently its a protest against corrupt judges, because I don't remember what it was about when I was there.

Here is the protest in full force. It was pretty loud but fun to be a part of, and by that I mean yelling their chants for a while, taking pictures, observing them, and then leaving.

Here is another similar picture. The sign says "Open the eyes, observe... don't close the ears... listen... only so (I can't see the rest of the line)... The fresh perfume of liberty.

After that I went near the Spanish Steps area on my way back home. Someone made the life mistake of getting married, and here is his Rolls Royce parked outside of some fancy hotel waiting for him. I also saw people getting married in Orvieto and in front of the Capitoline Museum.

My Spanish Vacation Part II: Madrid

Some more picture from Madrid first. This blogging actually takes a long time to do with the picture loading and the thinking up of description on the spot. And I'm not exactly the most creative writer in the world. So you might notice some shorty and choppy text which is when I reach the point that I really don't care for the time being. Oh well.

I went to the Prado Museum and Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid. The Reina Sofia had Salvador Dalí, who after seeing his art is my favorite artist. A self-proclaimed mad man, he painted surrealist art like no others. The images of the melting clocks is him, among others. Here are some of my favorite paintings that I saw. All of these are pictures I took myself zooming in just enough to get rid of the picture frame. They're not perfect pictures but they're good enough. Enjoy and everybody should go to the Reina Sofia Museum...

Besides Dalí, The Reina Sofia has some guy named Picasso (who is not technically a surrealist) and it has other prominent surrealist artists as well, some of which we will see. 


First off is the "other" non-surrealish art in the Reina Sofia. Its supposed tor be modern art but I have trouble seeing the artistic value in a lot of stuff because its just cheap stuff you can buy at Big Lots but its displayed with proper lighting and called art. That and just text or newspapers cut out. Art requires skill, and anything that involves newspaper clippings or that retarded paint dripping (like this, the most expensive painting in the world at $140 million) isn't true art. Anybody can do it. But since I know nothing about something as subjective as art I'm probably wrong. You can see Number 5 by Jackson Pollock below. Its expensive because of who painted it (Jackson Pollock was the first to do this art dripping painting stuff like the little kids do) more than the actual painting anyways. But $140 million? Seriously?

Now anyways back to what I actually saw and of my pictures. I saw this "art" of words that start with S shaped in the letter of an S and it was instantly one of my favorites. For me the letter S will always be art so this one is okay in my book.

Yeah I don't really know what these are. The fork on the left has one of its prongs bent oddly and thats it. The other things I have no idea what they mean or their artistic significance.

This one was metal spheres hanging on colored strings creating a pretty cool visual effect.

When I used the color filter on my camera I got this picture. Another cool visual. It would be nice to have this in a room in my future house for no real reason.

I actually don't know what this is called or what it really is but I liked this because of its wavy flow and the use of the color blue which is always a plus. The "waves" of the picture are quite relaxing and the lack of identity in the picture leaves it to the imagination of the viewer.

This is De Este Paraiso by Manuel Millares completed in 1969. The 3-D structure of this work impressed me and I actually liked it even though I have no idea what it is. Can you tell?

Now on to the actual surrealist paintings. This is called A World by Angeles Santos Torroella completed in 1929. In reality its pretty large and taller than me. Its also hard to take in with one glance. I looked at it for a long time and I still had trouble seeing everything that was going on at once. But this is one of my favorites for its creativity and imagination alone.

And an alternate view with the original rotated to the left.

And an alternate view rotated to the left.

This is called Bull's Head with Studies for Eyes by Picasso, completed in 1937. He actually had a lot of sketches and pencil drawings like this, which was surprising to me because I thought he only did full paintings.

This is called Monument to the Spainiards who Died for France by Picasso, completed in 1946-1947. I find Picasso difficult to comprehend because he uses a cubist style, but I'm sure he wanted people to feel that way to judge art by all angles at once.

This is called The Witch by Andre Masson, completed in 1942-1943. Apparently the French can paint good surrealist works too. Who knew?

This is one of Picasso' most famous works. You might of seen it. It is pretty big. Security and museum workers were everywhere and lots of people (including me for a little bit) were crowding trying to get pictures. I am of course talking about his work Guernica in 1937. It's too big to fit in one picture in a straight angle from that room so I had to take multiple pictures. The first pic is my best attempt to get the whole thing in one shot even with the weird camera angle. The last two are panorama pics with slight overlaps. Enjoy...

This is El Enigma de Hitler, or The Enigma of Hitler, by Salvador Dalí in 1939. All of Dalí's works are full of personal symbolism. With the help of my internet source, I will actually explain them all. I really liked the Reina Sofia and Dalí particularly. The surrealist art is much more interesting to me than portraits of royal families like in the Louvre or marble statues even because there are so many of those they are like a dime a dozen. As you know, Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 to officially start WWII. Also important to know is that Dalí was a self-described mad man. He was crazy and he knew it. He had visions and lucid dreams and gave everyday objects important symbolic values; all of these are directly in his works.

The only thing I want to say about this is that this is the reason the Surrealist movement kicked out Dalí because he was patronizing the wrong people. And I agree. He truly was a madman.

This work is called El Enigma Sin Fin, or The Endless Enigma completed in 1938. But what does it mean? Well believe it or not, there are six different figures in this painting. They are, in order, "A reclining philosopher; a greyhound lying down; a mythological beast; the face of the great Cyclopean, Cretin; a mandolin; a compotier of fruits and figs on a table; and finally a woman seen from the back mending a sail". And what that means is up to you because I certainly don't know (and the internet doesn't really elaborate). However with Dalí there is no right interpretation of what you see in the real because what you see is truly surreal.

This is The Invisible Man by Dalí, started in 1929 and completed in 1932. This painting is the onset of when Dalí used double images. "The yellow clouds become the man's hair; his lace and upper torso are formed by ruined architecture that is scattered in the landscape and a waterfall creates the vague outline of his legs. As with almost all Dali's work in 1929, this painting deals with his fear of sex. The recurring image of the "jug woman" appears on the left of the picture. To the right of her is an object with a womb shape, part of which delineates the right arm of the man. The dark shape outlining the fingers and legs of the man suggests the female form. Beneath the man a wild beast is prowling - another of Dali's recurring sexual symbols."

Gala, Dalí's wife, lived with him in 1929 and they eventually married in 1934. She was the model and inspiration for many of his paintings, including this 1929 work The Memory of the Woman Child. This one I leave up to you to decide what it means...

This is one of the more famous works by Dalí. It is of course The Face of the Great Masturbator completed in 1929. This painting deals with Dalí's fear of sex, and it is actually a self portrait. The main figure in the painting is Dalí's head, but of course painted in a surrealist and sometimes unrecognizable fashion. Since Dalí had a childhood fear of grasshoppers, the grasshopper under the "body" exemplifies this fear. A woman appears from Dalí's head but the man's legs are cut and bleeding, meaning that he basically a no go. The distant figure in the background is Dalí's father, who from an early age fostered Dalí's sexual fears and frustrations with his graphic book on venereal diseases.

If you can tell that his picture looks slightly different from the other Dalí pictures then you are right. This is Cosmic Composition by Oscar Dominguez, completed in 1938. Oscar Dominguez was labeled a Surrealist before even meeting the group because his style mirrored Dalí. This painting is from his cosmic period phase in 1938-1939, where he painted volcanic structures and bizarre vegetation in barren atmospheres and landscapes.

This painting is Sterile Efforts by Dalí in 1928. This one is left to interpretation as well.  Plus I can't really find info about this one online so I'll just let it be.

Near the museums of the Prado and the Reina Sofia is the Royal Gardens. So of course I paid it a visit (it's free) and this is the view from the outside. Well at least one of the views.

Of course I had to take a picture of a cat. This one was kind of scared and ran away easily so I was lucky to get this picture.

This is the typical gardeny scene in the Royal Gardens. There were supposed to be roses in the fields in the background according to the map but they were all wilted and kind of dead due to the winter time. It was mostly just trees, but they had one of each kind of exotic tree from some tree native to Japan to a California Sequoyah tree all next to each other.

Here is a cool picture I took of some tree with some red fruit. I wish I could be more descriptive but I really don't know and because its from the Royal Gardens it could be from anywhere.

Here is a closeup of some tree. The tree itself is actually pretty small though. The after a while I got tired of looking at trees and plants and I got tired. The story continues...

Here is a cool fountain in the park.  There are not too many of these but you see some every once in a while.  I don't know what creature this is, but maybe you know what it is. I think its someone holding a duck or something like that.

Eventually I got tired and wandered to a park bench and fell asleep. This was my view. Not too shabby. The Royal Gardens are good for a stroll to get away from the city feel of Madrid.

Well that about does it for Madrid. I went out and had sangria on Halloween with some friends on Halloween though, which was pretty fun. They don't really celebrate Halloween in Madrid although I did see some people dressing up in Plaza del Sol. I almost got to go to a Real Madrid game but my hostel couldn't get the tickets for me when they said they would. I also walked all along the streets, including Grand Via which runs horizontally across the city with its center at Plaza del Sol and its western end being Plaza de España. And the western end is where I saw the outdoor restaurant in the plaza (not piazza like in Italy) in the picture above. After spending the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of Halloween 2009 weekend in Madrid I had an early flight to Barcelona on Monday. I had to check out of my hostel at something like 6am and hop on the metro to go north to the airport. The airport is located outside of the city center so it took a while, but I eventually got there. Nothing crazy with the flight situation (like in London) so eventually I got to Barcelona. Honestly my memory only remembers right when I came from the metro stop in Barcelona at around 1pm that day because my roommate from Rome was waiting for me at our hostel. To be continued...