Suttons Go To London

After only getting very slightly lost, we found our way to John and Joanne’s hotel. By the way, it wasn’t our fault we got very slightly lost, as apparently in Spain, you can make a complete 90 degree turn and still be going “straight” on the same road. Luckily Michael was there to figure it out because I would probably still be puzzing on the corner!

It was really good to see John and Joanne, and of course, Joanne wanted to go to Starbucks to catch up!!! Oh Joanne and her Starbucks!

We spent about an hour chatting and then headed down la Rambla; the main street in Barcelona. We saw the Cathedral, which was cool, and then headed back to do the one thing I had been dying to do… see La Boqueria, and I got my wish.  It is this incredible market with tons of fruit, veg, eggs, meats and fish, etc. But the best part was the drinks!!! They had ever kind of fruit juice you can imagine… coconut, blackberry, coconut mixed with strawberry, watermelon, orange… EVERY KIND!!! It was a pretty good deal for 2 Euros apiece… you got a lot of juice for your dollar!

It started to rain pretty heavily while we were in the market, so we ducked into a restaurant for eating and more chatting. The rain never really let up, so we tried to go to the Picasso museum, but after a harrowing cross town adventure, which involved dodging mud people and purchasing umbrellas, we discovered it was closed every Monday.

John’s face when he learned the museum was closed.

We closed out the afternoon with another 2 hour cafe session, and then headed back to our respective hotels for a little nap. Michael and I spent the evening wandering around the neighborhoods of Barcelona.

For your enjoyment…

Okay so obviously, Michael has been kicking my butt in the excellent postings category (as well as putting all the photos of Barcelona on Flickr), so I will complete the boring old itinerary of the trip posting. Sigh…

Sunday morning we got up early (at least vacation early) and had the second B in B&B.  Then we headed out to see the city. It was a perfect day and we took the subway to the National Art Museum of Catalonia, which is situated on the Montijuic hill. There was a MASS of people outside the subway station and we eventually figured out that they were just finishing a marathon.It was sweaty and smelly, so we made our way through as quickly as possible!

Michael at the bottom of the staircase waterfall in front of the museum getting electrocuted.

The Museum was nice, but if I have to see one more piece of Baroque / Renaissance / etc art I am going to punch someone. I definitely appreciate that style of art, but it just doesn’t do it for me. We’ve seen a half dozen museums dedicated to 500 year old portraits of somebody’s cousin and the Glorious Madonna, and I think I’ve seen enough. Having said this, there are always one or two surprises at each museum, where despite the fact that they too are 500 year old portraits of somebody’s cousin and the Glorious Madonna, they are somehow different and exciting, so we’ll probably keep going to them!

After the museum, we headed over to the ‘92 Olympic Stadium. Michael going for the gold in lounging around:

We had a nice walk around the park and ended up at the Miro Museum. Miro is one of my favorite artists. THIS was a museum I can get behind!!! They had tons of Miro (obviously) but also quite a few Calder sculptures, including an amazing fountain that used mercury instead of water. You can see pictures of it here. They also had an exhibit put on by other artists who wanted to pay homage to Miro using art as their medium. It was really cool.

Michael was more interested in the Lego that the art.

After this we continued on to the Parc Guell. Meh… for all the hype around it, it wasn’t that great. I feel like we must have missed something because everyone says it is just the greatest… Gaudi actually designed the park, and for all his cool architecture, the park was peaceful and pretty but nothing spectacular.

After the park, Michael started staggering around saying how tired he was. Since he hadn’t slept in about 36 hours, I decided to let him have a little siesta back at the B&B. I MIGHT have had a small siesta myself… can’t really remember. When he/we got up we headed back over to Montjuic park to see the Magic Fountain, which is a spectacular display of colour, light, motion, music and water acrobatics. It took only 1 year (and 3000 workers) to build this project for the 1929 Great Universal Exhibition. Definitely worth watching.

After the water show, we were starving. I had very carefully written down directions from our hotel to a vegetarian restaurant we wanted to try. I even double checked how to get there because of my infamy with getting lost. We still go lost. But it wasn’t my fault!!! I think they changed the streets around… Michael saved the day and found a city map by the metro station and we had a lovely dinner.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday installments still to come!!!

Someone (Kristin(Jenni’s sister)), pointed out that Jennifer likes to eat a lot as witnessed by many photos that seem to be taken with her happy or smiling while eating. In lieu of that knowledge, I decided to follow her around for a few hours and photograph what she consumed. Below is what I came up with.

Jenni likes tree berries.

Jenni likes bark.

Jenni likes bush berries.

Jenni likes paper.

Jenni likes burritos.

So we set out today to go see The Cans Festival in The Tunnel on Leake Street. Basically it is a free zone for graffiti artists where they were had artists from all over the UK and Europe and even an Aussie and an American come in and do pieces in the tunnel. It was pretty cool to see some of the art and even some of the artists in action.

Whoever says Graffiti isn’t art needs to rethink that…

Then it was around the river banks and into the parks walking around. The weather here today was absolutely perfect: sunny and warm. We made sure to enjoy as much of it as we could because we keep hearing how the sun will soon be leaving us for months.

So after Jen raved and raved about the Whole Foods on Kennsington High Street we had to go check it out. Let me say this. It was as advertised. Not only did it have a huge marketplace upstairs with all sorts of food, but it had two additional floors full of groceries and a selection that could be described as spectacular and/or wow. It is the largest Whole Foods in the world. I can’t run through every last thing about it that was awesome, but I will say for example, that I really like a certain brand of fruit spread. St. Dalfour which is pretty easy to find, but most stores have a selection of 8 or so standard flavors. Well Whole Foods for the win with all 18 flavors. There were flavors I didn’t even know they made. Yes I know, but it is the simple things in life…

As the US economy spirals through free fall into chaos, and our stock portfolios waste away. (WaMu we hardly knew ye) allow me to sidebar you with an artistic tangent. Antoni Gaudí is one of those architects who you just know was scoffed at when he was initially designing. His architectural style is such a radical departure from most anything else, that his early ridicule is expected. (Much like my own pastel experiment on Cannon Dr.)

All throughout Barcelona you can find the architecture of Gaudi, but two places seem to stand above the rest. The Passeig de Gracia has a few buildings among the old mansions that are impressive and distinctly Gaudi. The curves and organic forms really stand apart from even the most showy of the other buildings (and no, the word gaudy is not a derivative of Gaudi, just happenstance folks).

Sagrada Familia is Gaudi’s unfinished masterpiece. It is the original mashup. The various styles and materials used throughout seem like they would never make sense all in one piece, but some how they do. In what is mostly a stark marble colored structure you find unexpected elements of color and texture. For instance, the tops of the spires are capped with organic color representing nature.

Inside you see Gaudi, who was a devout Catholic, has a deep reverence for nature as he models not only the columns after trees, but the leaves of palms interlocking above to create support. In addition, you will begin to notice details like the stacking of support column blocks in a manner similar to the way leaves grow on certain plants.

What really set this place apart for me though was the work of Josep Maria Subirachs. His work alone deserves its own post, but it was an amazing rendition of the Passion and quite a departure from Gaudi’s original plan. There has been a lot of debate about whether this building should be completed and open to the interpretations of other artists, but Gaudi himself wanted it that way and it is a good thing in my humble opinion. Seeing this style did make me wonder if Bruce Timm, an artist from Batman:The Animated Series didn’t incorporate this into his work…

Barcelona!!! What a beautiful city. Michael and I decided we could live there, except we don’t speak the crazy language. I can (barely) get by in Spanish, and while they do speak some Spanish there, the primary language is Catalan, which is a Latin derivative, but only bears a slight resemblance to Spanish. At first, I thought my language skills had just completely declined, but I felt a little smarter when I realized what was going on. I always knew the language was a little different, but I thought it was a Spanish dialect, and it is actually a completely different language. It was also interesting to note that unlike a lot of other European cities, there were not as many English speakers as usual.

We arrived on Saturday night around 8pm and headed toward the bed and breakfast. Having never stayed in a B&B before I was curious to see how the whole thing would go. At the end of the trip I decided it was OK, but I hate not having my own bathroom… there were 5-6 bedrooms and we shared 2 bathrooms. Usually it wasn’t a problem, and I am sure it is more environmentally friendly than having 800 bedrooms and 800 bathrooms, but it just seems kind of awkward to walk out of the bathroom with just your towel wrapped around you to come face to face with some poor couple trying to eat their breakfast. On the plus side though, I did get to see a potbellied, 75 year old Canadian guy in the nude. So that was awesome.

Back to Saturday night… we were both pretty tired upon arrival so we decided to head to bed. Speaking of beds… in Europe, as a general rule, the beds just plain suck. Springy, wiry, lumpy… all the negative words you can associate with a bed… they all apply. And this place was the king of bad beds… we had 2 beds pushed together to form one big bed and it was the bumpiest lumpiest of them all! On the plus side, the room came with free breakfast, which was really good! Lots of fruit and this really good sweet bread. We also got the chance to meet several couples, of which we were the youngest by a good 30 years.

I am off to bed now, so you will all have to wait for the next chapter tomorrow!

Michael, arrived early on Saturday morning. Of course I wanted to meet him at the airport, so I got up at 4am and started the long trek to Heathrow. Normally, leaving the flat at 5am would have given me ample time to get to the airport by 6:20, which was when the flight landed, but I had a few misadventures along the way. About 3 blocks from the flat, the police had a big square of crossroads cordoned off for no apparent reason, so I had to walk a little bit out of my way. Not a big deal except I was trying to catch a specific train. I finally got to the station only to learn it is closed for the whole weekend due to planned improvements! At this point, it was closing in on 5:30, but I was still thinking I had time, since the flight landed at 6:20, and Michael would need to go through passport control after the plane taxied for 20 minutes or so. I decided to walk to the next station over, but of course, being me, I got lost and somehow ended up by my work?!?!? By the way my work is about 1.5 miles from the flat, so I am not really sure how I wandered over there. I finally made it to the airport and arrived at 6:35. What I didn’t know is that Michael’s plane had landed at 6:05 and he had been trying to call me for close to 1/2 hour, and was literally just about to leave. His last call to me made it through to me and I saw him at the doorway! We had a lovely reunion and headed back to the flat for a nice long nap before heading off to Barcelona!

So the landlord finally came over to cut the lock to the French doors overlooking the street. As you may recall from previous photos, the windows are floor to ceiling and have filmy curtains for privacy. So when Mr Landlord came over, he decided to cut the lock with a sort of spinning cutting device which threw out sparks in every direction, including right toward the filmy curtains. This didn’t detract Mr Landlord from his duty… no he carried on, sans eye protection and without moving the curtains for a full 5 minutes, while I cowered in fear in the corner. I literally cannot believe the curtains didn’t catch on fire. And to top it all off, as soon as the lock finally came free, and fell on the floor, the landlord picked it up with his bare hands and then screamed in pain as he gave himself a 3rd degree burn.
Unbelievable.

We’ve been a little remiss about posting here. The last month has been awkward and busy so there just hasn’t been the time to post. Either way, all excuses.

So on to the news:

I (Michael) have been working remotely for a company in the states while in London. The best way to sum it up is that it was denying me the full culture experience of living in London, so as I type this in Phoenix, AZ; I am in the midst of my last two weeks of American employ. I will be back in London the 20th, and ready to begin my search for employment in a “down market.” Should be interesting.

Either way, for any loyal readers still wondering if this site is alive, the answer is yes and now you know. Thanks for reading and now, back to adventures!