Here is a classic painting form the Art museum at Montserrat. It is of course an old man suckling on his younger friend in a most unusual way and probably not that suitable for a painting, though curious to say the least. He certainly looks thirsty or something along those lines - the woman looks like she may be thinking about the finer points of early quantam mechanics, dark matter etc.
We went for a day trip on the train to Montserrat in the mountains. We caught a rack railway up to the Benedictine monastery. The scenery was excellent with lots of large rounded boulders everywhere. The monastery is beautiful inside and we lit a candle for our families in the grotto which is dedicated to the Virgin of Montserrat who people come on pilgrimages to pray for. There is a room dedicated to thank-you tokens from people who the Virgin helped. We also rode a funicular to the summit and went on a walk- there are lots of small chapels built around the mountains for the pilgrims to travel to.
The Benedictine Abbey of Montserrat outside of Barcelona originally built in 1025 but rebuilt again in 1939 after the destruction of the Napoleonic invasions earlier.
A Spanish Benedictine Cousin of Bob - El Gato
The Basilica
Walking towards the Chapel of Saint Joan, very cool, high mountains, made of sandstone/sea creature, fantastic views.
Here are a few inadequate pics of our time in Barcelona. It is a really cool city with a great vibe, lots of bars, eateries, tapes and cool leather, clothing and knife shops. we spent three nights there, checked out the old town and sagrada familia, and second day went to Montserrat. We should have taken some pics of Los Ramblas, the main street with all the pedestrians, pet shops and drunks/hookers and also the markets where they sold so much cool seafood and meat and salad i could have died just thinking about cooking or eating it.
The Geese in the Cathedral
The Sagrada Familia, temple of the sacred familly, designed by Gaudi - a crazy man and as yet very unfinished. due to be finished some time after 2025, a very complex and expensive thing to build.
The famous Penis building of Barcelona
Tio the Christmas Log. A spanish Catalan tradion, as he sits under the tree and is fed with presents before christmas. On Christmas day he then poos them out - very strange but very common in Barcelona. To make him poop out presents the children either burn his butt or hit him with a stick whilst singing happy Christmas songs like
Pooping log,
poop nougat,
hazelnuts and cheese,
if you don’t poop well,
I’ll hit you with a stick.
Pooping log!
Strange but true.
Here are some more pics of paris. We went to the palace of versailles today, very cold.
The Hall of Mirrors in the palace
An angry pup with Deer in distress
Looking out over the gardens
Brrrrrr
Apollo’s Chariot
The Eiffel at Dusk
Cold Ben and Corinne at Dusk in front of the Place de la Concorde in the Jardin de Tuileries - Cold
Some Pics of Paris, all the sights and sounds and foods - all wonderful.
Tonight for dinner I had frogs legs, scallops and prawns on a skewer as well as some other unidentifiable things - yum.
The Conciergerie - A jail and where a lot of people got topped during the french revolution
.
The Notredam Cathedral - Big and built in the 13th century
A stained glass window in the Saint Chapelle
Tour Eiffel at night
A slow Hare and friends
Some slow geese and friends
The Basilica of the Sacre coeur - Montmatre - one of the best sites in paris I think
The Arc
Here is a video of Paris at night from the Place De La Concorde, looking towards
the Champs Elysees and the Eiffel Tower
Here is a video of the Bells playing in the Belfry of Brugge, an 88 metre medieval tower with a 47 metre carillon. It is quite impressive and the bells are actually played by a man playing a type of piano.
Here is Ben feeding some sparrows in the park next to the Eiffel tower. It is about 2:30 pm and about zero degrees, very cold, but a beautiful sunny day. We had just finished having a lunch of washed rind cheese, fresh baguette, lettuce. tomato and olives. The pigeons and sparrows were virtually prostrating themselves before us for some scraps so we gave them some older bread. Boy did they get excited. The poor pigeons were so cold they reacted a good few seconds after the sparrows and got none, until they decided to sit on my hand.
Here are some photos from Brugge, a small town in Belgium known for its beautiful architecture, lace and chocolates. It was quite cold here but the weather was great.
Here are some pics from the start of our European Holiday in Amsterdam. We walked all around the city, went on a few Canal boat rides, visited the red light district, etc. The whole place smells of pot which is pretty funny.
Today we celebrated our early Christmas celebration. we wanted to have a tree and pressies and christmas dinner, which may be hard while travelling around spain, so we thought we would make it today, 1st december.
We started with our pressies, then a baked camembert with garlic, rosemary and thyme, crusty bread and then we have turkey crown with stuffing, roast veggies and finish off with plum pudding and ice cream. We will probably also have 1 or 2 beverages tonight. We also went and picked some wild mushrooms today called wood ears which grow on dead trees, particularly elms. They are easier to identify than a lot of the other nasties.
