Barcelona / Tourism

Palau Güell – Our First Brush With Gaudí

  During our Halloween-weekend visit to Barcelona, the modernist architecture of Antoni Gaudí captured our hearts and imaginations. But we didn’t get our fill. Visiting the famous Catalan architecht’s works should not be a rushed affair; that, combined with sold-out tickets at Park Güell and a ridiculously long line at Casa Batlló definitely guarantees we will make a second trip to Barcelona (and hopefully many more – it’s an amazing city). Not to mention we didn’t get anywhere close to his magnum opus, la Sagrada Família. We saw it from a distance on several occasions, but never passed the threshold. Our first

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Barcelona / Tourism

Funiculì, funiculà!

My obsession with funicular railways probably started with a birthday at the Olive Garden (probably also their TV commercials). And maybe other “Italian” restaurants in my youth as well. Like most Americans, I didn’t really realize this at the time. But that melody you most closely associate with Italy indeed commemorates the opening of the first funicular on Mount Vesuvius. Have a listen; everyone knows this one. Bet’cha didn’t know what it was about, though. As an engineer, the idea of building a safe machine on the side of a steep incline, composed of two balanced, cable-pulled cars of opposing weight really fascinates

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Travel Stories

Don’t be a basic beach.

Yesterday, I nicknamed Dreamer “the Gopher” because of the way she was constantly popping up on our train ride to check out the Mediterranean. It was a very scenic train ride back from Barcelona to Castellón, but out of the corner of my eye – as I was trying to get work done on my laptop – this was quite annoying. Dreamer had picked us seats on the dark side of the train… and I do mean “dark.” Some graffito had completely obscured all the windows on our side of the train and the view was all on the other

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Strolling / Tourism / Valencia

Sagunto: O’er the Ramparts We Walked

Each time Doer and I make the one-hour train journey between Burriana and Valencia, we peek out the window at the Sagunto stop midway through our route to catch a glimpse of the breathtaking Roman Iberian castle overlooking the city from a hilltop. A couple of weekends ago, we decided it was time to explore the ancient citadel. After disembarking, it didn’t take us long to decide to take a taxi for the very steep climb up to the castle. It’s very possible that our cab driver spends the better part of his shifts ferrying tourists to and from the castle

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Tourism / Valencia

City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia

A few weeks ago, we went to the Santiago Calatrava-designed City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia. We’ve passed it on our commuter train journey into the city so many times, we thought it was high time we actually get out and look what was there. Besides crazy architecture and nice park space, there is water (fountains! waterfalls!) surrounding all the buildings: A science museum (which we went to this time) A performance space An oceanographic museum (which we will definitely be hitting soon) The world’s fanciest car parking garage It’s a pretty neat space, especially considering this is a

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Burriana

Giant people, aaaah!

We are very proud of our little town’s ability to throw a good parade. We’ve seen two or three so far and there seem to be many more to come. They accomplish in 15-20 minutes what apparently takes four hours in Valencia. As opposed to the Nou d’Octubre celebration there, ours was arguably much cooler and over in just a fraction of the time, while still giving the gist of the occasion. The dancing figures were particularly cool. Thar Be real, normal-sized people under there. You can see them lined up above and in the videos below. We are told

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