Tag Archives: palaeontology

21st July 2024: From the Sea to the Butterfly (Madrid, Spain)

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When planning for the day, the one thing I did not count on was the heat wave. I did take into account problems with trains, but apparently a half-hour delay is a non-issue by now and not worth mentioning. I reached Madrid around 12:30, and I had a reservation at 13:00 for a themed restaurant which had caught my eye when I saw it online. It was honestly a big disappointment, though I refused to let it ruin my day.

The restaurant is called Bestial, and it is ocean-themed. The pictures were awesome, it looked super cool, and I was pretty excited to go there. However, the experience was mediocre at best – I guess solo travellers are not their target audience, and it showed. As I was mainly ignored, I could watch how the restaurant worked. The waiters got the tables mixed up a few times, and they allowed others to take pictures with cocktails that were not theirs – that was weird, and I am pretty sure that against health code. I ordered a lemonade – the best thing – a tuna tartar and a crab bao without coriander, after checking that the coriander could be taken out. The tuna was tasteless, and the bao did have taste… coriander. All in all, I was not impressed by the food, even less by the service. Between the two dishes there were about 35 minutes waiting, and after an hour I just gave up and asked for the check, which was brought in a little book… and dropped halfway, then picked up from the floor… I just paid – the meal was not cheap – and left without dessert. A pity, really, but I really did not care any more.

Restaurante Bestial by Rosi La Loca

It was ridiculously early for my 16:00 visit, but I wanted to try my luck. I had chosen that day because CaixaForum Madrid was running two exhibitions that I wanted to see – Patagonian dinosaurs (which had just opened) and The Science of Pixar (which would end soon). The exhibition centre was booked out, so I could not sneak in before my time slot, but I managed to get my most burning question answered – how on earth were they going to fit a Patagotitan inside CaixaForum? Answer: they did not. They placed it outside, which was a fun surprise!

Patagotitan skeleton in front of CaixaForum Madrid

Since I had about an hour and a half, I decided to trot over to the painting museum Museo del Prado, part of the national network of museums, which I can access with my one-year card. I thought I might be luckier and the queue to enter without a reservation would work better. Indeed, I did not have to wait indeed, and I could have a look at a few of the masterpieces the collection holds (though not take photographs) – Francisco de Goya, Joaquín Sorolla, Diego Velázquez, Esteban Murillo, Fra Angelico, Hieronymus Bosch… Of course, not all the masters, because El Prado is enormous. It is also air-conditioned, and surprisingly, not as full as I half-expected. There was a queue when I came out, so I guess it worked out well!

I walked back to CaixaForum Madrid to see the two exhibitions I had booked. It was a bit before 16:00, but this time I did not ask, and just walked into the first exhibition – “Patagonian Dinosaurs”: Dinosaurios de la Patagonia, which had very little new information, and even fewer actual fossils, but a lot of dinosaur reconstructions. Those were cool. Aside from the Patagotitan mayorum placed outside, there were full skeleton replicas of Herrerasaurus ischigualastensis, Eoabelisaurus mefi, Leonerasaurus taquetrensis, Eoraptor lunensis, Condorraptor currumili, Brachytrachelopan mesai, Amargasaurus cazaui, Tyrannotitan chubutensis, Neuquensaurus australis, Carnotaurus sastrei, Gasparinisaura cincosaltensis and Manidens condorensis. There was also a Giganotosaurus carolinii skull. As for the real thing, a femur, a shoulder plate and a forelimb of Patagotitan, some teeth and vertebrae and a few invertebrates and leaves. It was really cool, and not extremely crowded for a dinosaur exhibit in summer. It was only the third day of the exhibit, so maybe it was not that well publicised yet? Out of the new species I discovered, Amargasaurus was my favourite – with the neck spikes it looked exactly like I would have imagined a dragon.

Patagonian Dinosaurs

Patagotitan front and back legs, along with a huge shoulderblade

The other exhibition that ran at the time was “The Science of Pixar”: La Ciencia de Pixar. It felt like a nerdy companion to Mundo Pixar, focusing on the maths and the process to create a Pixar film. Unfortunately, it was bustling with kids who – understandably – just wanted to smash buttons and make things light up. The exhibition had a lot of cool machines which simulate the different steps of creating a computer-animated film – rigging, modelling, lighting, rendering… The most interesting was an analysis called “What colour is this pixel?” taking into account movement, lights, shadows… It must be amazing to be able to visit the exhibit alone and be able to play with all the computers. I did find one where you get to simulate crowds using shoals of fish (from Finding Nemo) and I played with that for a while. There were also a few life-sized models from several films, miniatures and 3D mini-sculptures.

La Ciencia de Pixar

I left the venue after browsing the shop, and I walked down towards the theatre. It was still early, and I wanted to hit a couple of shops. Actually, I wanted to go to what is commonly known as the Primark flagship shop. The building Edificio Gran Vía 32 was originally erected in the 1920s to host the first department store in Madrid, Almacenes Madrid-París. It was designed by architect Teodoro de Anasagasti and used the most modern technology and materials at the time – reinforced concrete in the avant-garde style. The whole interior is built around an octagonal lightwell with a central staircase, and today the lowest four floors have been turned into the Primark shop, which has fitted screens and lightings while keeping the previous structures and railings. The modernisation project was undertaken by architectural studio RCCyP and it took three years until the shop opened in 2015.

Interior of Edificio Gran Vía 32

I continued off towards the theatre Teatro Real. I had a bit of time and some unspent calorie budget, so I decided to splurge at Starbucks with a whipped-cream Frappe for my pre-show snack. For the same price I had awesome third floor for Carmina Burana, I had a fifth-floor-in-the-back paradise ticket now. However, it was a lone seat with a great view, so I am not going to complain. I was going to watch the opera Madama Butterfly by Italian composer Giacomo Puccini – and sometimes I think that the better the singers are, the worse time I have with this show.

Madama Butterfly Promo

The main character is Cio-cio, a name that when pronounced in Italian sounds similar to 蝶々, [Choucho], butterfly in Japanese. When she is 15 years old, in 1904, Cio-cio marries an American navy man, Pinkerton, who intends to leave her and find a ‘decent’ American wife. Cio-cio is repudiated by her whole family when she converts to Christianity for her marriage. Three years later, she is alone, almost bankrupt, the mother of Pinkerton’s child, and a marriage broker is trying to sell her off to another prospective husband. Pinkerton returns to Japan with his American wife, who agrees to raise the child, but he cannot face Cio-cio because he is a coward. She (spoiler alert) prepares their son to go with him, then commits seppuku.

And even a bigger spoiler alert, I hate Pinkerton. Viscerally. My parents tried to start me into opera way too young to understand plots, I feel, and I did not want to do anything to do with it for a long time. However, at one point I wanted to see Madama Butterfly due to it taking place in Japan – being older helps, and I slowly learnt to appreciate the musical genre. Basically, by hating on Pinkerton.

Apparently, Teatro Real is known for its alternative settings and takes on classical operas. In this case, they let go of the old Japanese cottage in order to use… a modern-ish undisclosed Asian country. There was an overpass with Chinese signage, a billboard with McDonald’s and Bailey’s spoofs in Japanese (that did not make any sense), and the traditional cottage was exchanged for a greenhouse of sorts. There is a scene in the traditional opera in which the characters fill the house with flowers. In this case, they coloured the glass panes with hand paint. It was a great show.

Cast:

  • Cio-Cio-san: Ailyn Pérez
  • Suzuki: Nino Surguladze
  • F.B. Pinkerton: Charles Castronovo
  • Sharpless: Lucas Meachem
  • Goro: Moisés Marín

Artistic team:

  • Musical conductor: Nicola Luisotti
  • Stage direction: Damiano Michieletto
  • Set design: Paolo Fantin

Madama Butterfly Teatro Real

The show finished around 22:20. I walked up Arenal Street towards Sol. While I missed my first train because some people love to take up space while walking slowly, I made it for a good connection at Atocha, and I was actually home before midnight.

17th June 2024: Horniman Museum and Gardens {London, England, June 2024}

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I woke up early-ish and got ready to leave. I stopped by the local supermarket to grab a coffee and got on my way towards the closest Overground station – this being London, it was not far. This was an easy commute since there were no changes, and I could just relax on the train. I got off on Forest Hill and walked up the… well, the aforementioned hill, until I reached the Horniman Museum and Gardens, in the Borough of Lewisham around 9:00 – passing a Costa Coffee on the way. I filed this information for later reference.

Normally, I would not have gone to a museum which had a Natural History Gallery closed for renovations, but they were running a dinosaur exhibit that created the perfect excuse to go there, even if it was a bit out of the way. Frederick Horniman was the heir to his family’s tea emporium in the 19th century. He started travelling the world around 1860, collecting artefacts from his travels, and developed the museum to exhibit them. The original museum opened in 1890, and the gardens in 1895.

The gardens are almost 6.5 hectares (16 acres), divided in different areas, including a bee garden, a sound garden where you can make music with metal tubes, a grassland garden, a prehistoric garden, a grassland garden… I wandered around a little and was surprised to catch a glimpse of City of London by the 1903 bandstand. I knew the gardens were a bit far out, but I had not realised how much.

Horniman Gardens with the City in the background

I explored for about an hour, then I headed towards the Victorian Conservatory, built in 1894 in Horniman’s private residence. A century later, it was transported to the gardens and restored by British Heritage. It is a quaint little greenhouse in white iron and glass, with pressed tiles on the floor. Next to it stands a little café that I would have stayed at if I had not wanted to see some of the themed flowerbeds.

The Horniman Conservatory

At 10:00, when the museum opened, I entered to see the exhibition Dinosaur rEvolution, which looked at the evolution of Dinosauria into birds. The travelling exhibition has five animatronics, a couple dozen cast fossils, several plushies and beautiful palaeoart. The T-Rex animatronic had some feathers, and the information notice asked the reader if they would find the Jurassic Park tyrannosaur less scary with them. I honestly would find a feathered Rexy even more terrifying. The exhibition was all right, with plenty of information, but there was nothing real, which was a bit of a bummer. But since it is a travelling exhibition, it makes sense they would not be moving around the real thing. However, given the ticket price, I expected something a bit larger.

Dinosaur revolution

After I was done, I decided to check out the rest of the museum. First, I saw the anthropological galleries, which had the most bizarre array of artefacts – from an Egyptian mummy to a Spanish inquisition chair, along Inuit costumes, European masks, African religious items, Indian masks, Easter eggs, prehistoric items from all around the UK… There was a wish tree, where you can write something on a colourful paper and hang it from the branches.

Horniman athropology museum

In the basement of the museum there is a small aquarium, which was full of schoolchildren on a day trip. I could have got the tickets online for that. However, I did not know how big the dinosaur exhibition would be, and I did not want to rush over. When I seemed to have the time, I decided to go down to the aquarium. It had a handful of tanks – jellyfish, coral reefs, Amazon rainforests, a lot of clownfish and a handful of poisonous frogs, mostly colourful stuff to grab attention. I managed not to get run over by the kids, which was a good thing.

Horniman Aquarium

After I had seen the aquarium, I considered checking out the Butterfly House, because those are always beautiful. However, since I knew I’d want to go back to the museum and gardens in a couple of years, when the natural history gallery reopens, I decided to head towards the train station. I would see the butterflies another time. That way I could be on my way to the airport with some buffer time without rushing my way through and stressed over connection. Instead, I checked the museum’s tea gallery, which summarised the history of tea and how it ties with colonialism, not pulling any punches towards the Horniman tea emporium itself. Funnily enough, the tea brand still exists in some Mediterranean and South American countries, but not in the UK.

On my way back to the station, I stopped at the Costa Coffee I had seen before for a drink and a snack. Unfortunately, the nice barista forgot to put the vanilla syrup into my vanilla latte – oh, the drama. Since the coffee was hot, I did not really notice until I was already on the Overground, and turning around was not worth it.

I had to change at Whitechapel into Hammersmith & City, but since I had the extra time, I decided to walk a little and go down into the Elizabeth Line, which, believe it or not, I had never used before. The commute time was the same anyway. The platforms felt so new and clean, lacking the grit that other stations have – not that they are dirty, really. They’re just… not that new or aseptic.

Even with the little detour, I reached Liverpool Street with time to take an earlier train than I had originally given myself as ideal – which is a couple of trains earlier than the one I would need to be right on time, but since that time the train just did not reach the airport, I’ve lost some faith in the Stansted Express. I went to the end of the platform, and sat down in the first carriage of the train. I was the only person there, even after the conductor announced that “the first carriage was almost empty, please move forward for comfort so the rear of the train is less crowded.” Happy to be an “almost”, I guess – and good that the carriage did not become anything close to full during the trip.

There were no issues reaching the airport, but security was crazy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many queues, and so long ever. When my backpack was flagged for secondary inspection I understood why – the person in front of me was told he was carrying “too many contact lenses”, and my tiny handcuffs key chain was apparently extremely threatening. Then they needed to check aaaall the electronics, and my boots. However, the security guard said that he was sorry and that I should not have been pulled over because of the key chain. I’ve never had a security officer apologise to me for pulling me over for secondary inspection – and honestly, that was the key chain I bought for my first apartment… in 2001? I’ve flown with it before countless of times… Hilarious…

I put on my boots, and headed off to buy some sushi at the Stansted Itsu. Sadly, the quiet area has stopped being so – they have closed the upstairs toilets and now they send everyone downstairs, so it was packed with holidaymakers and people hyping up toddlers, which I find a horrid mistake to make just before jumping on a plane. Thus, I drank my miso soup, ate my sushi, and buggered off to wander the airport – better than the cacophony of kiddos running, squealing and acting up. The airport was full, and while I am usually better at dealing with other travellers, I had been looking forward to the “quiet area”. Either that or I was a bit tired and everyone was rubbing me off the wrong way, I guess.

When it was time to board, queue went extremely slowly. The airline line personnel were being extremely picky with the luggage, measuring every backpack and trolley. Eventually, the slow process made departure late, so the end of the queue was rushed. They barely eyed my backpack, though I was asked to turn around to show it to the check-in agent.

The plane was full and way too many people were not aware of “boarding from the rear door” when their seat number was high, causing a bit of a jam. I found my seat, huddled in, and shut off for a while. I woke up with 40 minutes to land. When we did, we took a bus which conveniently left us right in front of passport control. The only problem on arrival? It was 31 ºC and sunny, and I was wearing clothes chosen for the 13 ºC and rain in London. I guess the order of digits is… important when you’re wearing longs sleeves, layers, and knee-high boots – which by the way I think have seen their last concert trip. RIP. You will be missed, cool concert boots.

7th May 2024: “Dragon Hunters” in Alcalá de Henares (Spain)

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The Archaeology and Palaeontology museum in Alcalá de Henares is running a temporary exhibition on the history of digging dinosaur bones, called “Dragon Hunters”. I was drawn to it because well… dinosaurs. Driving in the city centre is a nightmare, so I left the car in an easy-to-park area a bit away, and walked downtown.

I had been trying to see the cathedral of the Magistral Cathedral of Saint Justus and Saint Pastor Santa e Insigne Catedral-Magistral de los Santos Justo y Pastor, but it was always either locked, booked for events, or “closed to visitors”. This time around, I was able to finally see it – and it was honestly a bit underwhelming. Though I generally enjoy Gothic buildings, I guess I was so hyped after trying so many times, that reality did not live up to expectations. Furthermore, I dislike when places do not advertise that part of the visit is closed / unavailable, so I guess I’m still pretty out of luck with this one cathedral. I missed the chance to climb up the tower and see the views of the town due to construction, but oh well.

Legend has it that catholic Saints Justus and Pastor were martyrized in the year 304, near the Roman city of Complutum. In the year 414, a chapel was built to keep their remains in the place where the martyrdom happened. The current building was erected by architects Antón Egas and Enrique Egas in late Gothic and Renaissance styles around 1446. The tower, by Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón and Rodrigo Argüello, is Herrerian. The interior has three naves with pointed arches, and to one side stands the cloister, with access to the museum, and – when it is open – the tower. It was a bit of a bummer not to even be able to step into the open part of the cloister. Underneath the altar there is a crypt with a gold-and-silver urn with the remains of the Saints, and the stone where they were killed.

Afterwards, I continued on towards my real destination, the local Archaeology and Palaeontology museum Museo Arqueológico y Paleontológico de la Comunidad de Madrid, MARPA. They are currently running the exhibition Cazadores de Dragones (Dragon Hunters). The exhibit summarises the historical hits of palaeontology, starting with prehistoric and classical references and theories about them, such as a the phoenix having been inspired by Protoceratops skeletons, or the bones of giants being actually dinosaur fossils. This area has a few replicas and small statuettes – running from the originally-made ones to the newest reconstructions.

Exhibit entrance, protoceratops, corridor

The exhibit name-drops a few of the big figures in dinosaur-digging history such as William Buckland, the man who described Megalosaurus as an antediluvian creature; Gideon Mantell, who tried to reconstruct an Iguanodon from a tooth (now in the Natural History Museum in London); Georges Cuvier, who proposed the idea of extinction, and named animals such as Megatherium, Pterodactyl or Mosasaurus; and Richard Owen, who “invented” the word “dinosaur”, meaning “terrible lizard” – though today we know that a lot of dinosaurs had more in common with birds than with reptiles, down to protofeathers and even feathers.

Archaeopteryx, titanosaur

The following section follows the “Bone Wars” – Charles Marsh and Edward Cope were two palaeontologists who raced through the Morrison Formation (Montana, USA) to discover up to 30 species of dinosaurs – they were not always honest in their competition, and it did not help that Cope messed up a reconstruction of an Elasmosaurus, placing the skull at the end of the tail. The Morrison formation was (is) in the middle of nowhere, and digging during the 19th century had its risks. This concept ties with the idea of “the adventurer” à la Indiana Jones, mentioning Roy Chapman Andrews and Barnum Brown, the man who excavated the first Tyrannosaurus. And then you turn a corner and are greeted by a replica of a T-Rex. Of course, I stayed a while here – trying to take pictures without the security guard in them.

Tyrannosaurus rex replica

After World War II, palaeontology hits moved from the USA to Mongolia and the Gobi desert, with new species being discovered every so often. Later, in the last years of the 20th century, the idea of “the avian dinosaur” arrived, and there is a replica of a Deinonychus, with screens showing recreations of the creature looking “like a lizard” and looking “like a bird”, feathered and all.

Titanosaur, therizinosaurus, eggs, deinonychus

Finally, there are the local dinosaurs: a tail and part of a foot from Qunkasaura pintiquiniestra, a nest from the Poyos Site (Guadalajara), and the star of the show – the original fossil holotype of Concavenator (Concavenator corcovatus), a theropod found in Cuenca. The fun part? The museum which holds the holotype, Museo de Paleontología de Castilla-La Mancha, bans pictures – so I took my sweet time with this. There is also a life-size reproduction, with colours tuned down to more realistic than the originally proposed blue and red.

Concavenator fossil and reproduction

Afterwards, I wandered around MARPA, mostly to go to the palaeontology room, as I have explored the museum extensively before. The palaeontology ward is relatively new, and it has quite a few nice reproductions and… even if I have explored that one too. I also dropped by the shop to get the exhibition book. Finally, I went back to run through the Dinosaur exhibit again, just because I could, before I headed home. I had thought I’d look for a nice restaurant for lunch, but nothing drew my attention.

9th March 2024: Minerals, fossils & trains (Madrid, Spain)

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I might not be the most people-person ever, but if there is something that makes conventions extra fun, it is seeing attendees unapologetically geek out about what they love – in the case of Expominerales, that would be… rocks. Of course, this is an over-simplification. Expominerales is held yearly in the mine and energy engineering school Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Minas y Energía (ETSIME) in Madrid. The year 2024 marks the 43rd edition of the event, which is considered one of the most important fairs in Spain in the topic of Earth Sciences – minerals, fossils, gems, and meteorites are widely available to the public. Aside from the small historical museum Museo Histórico-Minero Don Felipe de Borbón y Grecia, there were dozens of exhibitors with all kinds of items for sale, ranging from a few euro to several thousands. These year there were a few lectures, too, and coincidentally, the two of them I was most interested in happened on Saturday, one after the other.

I arrived at the ETSIME around 11:00, and I walked around the stands a couple of times. I have to say that I wanted everything, but I set a budget and I was able to stay around it, after shopping and lunch. At noon, I settled to listen to the lectures – one about the rehabilitation of an ancient gypsum mine in a hamlet called Hornillos de Cerrato, in the area of León. The other one versed about the uses of an already-rehabilitated one in the south of Spain, home to a huge geode. Both of them were pretty interesting, though the conference room was freezing. Someone had forgotten to turn on the heater there, it seemed…

Expominerales 2024 at ETSIME

After the two conferences, I had a last round to buy a last thing, so in the end I bought an iron-meteorite pendant, a fossilised shark tooth pendant, a plesiosaur tooth, and a soil sample of the K–T boundary. A plesiosaur was a marine reptile with flippers, a short tail and a long neck. The K–T boundary (now named the Cretaceous–Palaeogene (K–Pg) boundary) is the theoretical layer of iridium-rich black sand that was formed by the meteorite that caused the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs – and basically most life at the time, in one of the great world-wide extinctions in the history of Earth.

Shopping from Expominerales

At 14:30, I had a reservation for lunch at a Japanese franchise called Ramen Shifu. While I had originally been looking forward to trying the ramen (and I got my hopes pumped up when I read that they were Hakata ramen style), the noodles were rather disappointing. Fortunately, the okonomiyaki – Japanese pizza of sorts, made with a base of cabbage and topped with sauce and bonito flakes, was all right. On top of everything, paying was stupidly difficult because they did not have change.

Shifu Ramen ponzano - okonomiyaki and ramen

When I came out of the restaurant though, it was raining like crazy. I pulled out my umbrella and hopped towards the closest underground station, as my next destination was inside the metro system – one of the Underground’s museum network Museos de Metro de Madrid the collection of classic trains Estación de Chamartín: Exposición trenes históricos, inside the Chamartín stop. The exhibition displays four historical trains, restored from among the first ones that ran under the city, and some memorabilia. It was a bit underwhelming – more like false advertisement. I hoped I would be able to snoop inside the trains, since that was the photograph that opened the webpage, but unfortunately they were cordoned off. There was however a map with the works by Antonio Palacios in Madrid, which will become handy eventually.

Classical Train Exhibition Madrid

Afterwards, I just headed off towards the train station and got back home.

16th December 2023: A day out of ExpoGema (Madrid, Spain)

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Since the mineral expo ExpoMinerales back in February was all cool and fun, I decided to attend its shinier (and unbeknownst to me, way more unaffordable) sibling, the gem expo ExpoGema, and make a day out of it. Thus, I headed out for Madrid on the 9:00 train with temperatures below zero – I was not made for winter. It was not much better when I arrived, but for once the train ride was uneventful, I actually made my connection, and it seems that after a chaotic year, the underground train tunnels are finally open. Everything going smoothly gave me some unexpected 45 minutes to wander around as the square Puerta del Sol slowly became fuller and fuller with people.

I had booked a guided visit through the company Madrid en Ruta, who has the exclusive concession to show the business centre Casa Comercial Palazuelo. Located in downtown Madrid, it was designed by architect Antonio Palacios. The promoter, Demetrio Palazuelo, bought the lot left behind by a fire, and commissioned the building with the goal of renting it out to shops and professionals – it was thus the first office building in Spain conceived as such, and not repurposed from a manor or an apartment building. Palacios drew inspiration from the Chicago School commercial architecture and used iron to stabilise the building, which allowed him for bright interiors using lots of glass. The office building was erected between 1919 and 1921, and the offices are still rented out today, with the only caveat that the beautiful interior translucent-glass doors have been painted white – to either protect privacy or hide the fact that today the house seems to be almost empty – at least according to the building’s own directory.

The exterior façade could be considered eclectic – the main frame tends to neoclassicism with huge glass windows framed in black iron. The interior tends towards Art Deco and modernism. The offices are distributed around a central indoor patio, with curved balconies that overlook it and lots of lights mainly due to the skylight. There are two classical lifts which are the original ones, in peartree wood. When we went up, I took the stairs, which have white treads, and the riser is made out dark green ceramics. I have seen these in other works by Antonio Palacios.. The interior, with the iron balustrades and its curvy design, was really cool, but I think it is really a pity they painted over the glass.

Interior of Casa Palazuelo

The visit started at 11:00. We spent the first fifteen minutes outside getting context, roughly half an hour inside, and the last twenty minutes on the roof of the building, waiting for the clock of the Puerta del Sol to strike 12:00, then we were ushered out. I really wish we could have wandered the house a little bit, even if we could not go into the offices. The ten euro we paid surely did not feel like we were paying customers, but more like we were sneaking around like unwanted guests – which we probably were anyway.

Puerta del Sol from the roof of Casa Palazuelo

I grabbed a quick snack then and headed off towards the engineering school Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Minas y Energía (ETSIME) for the sixth edition of the gem fair ExpoGema. The fair itself was neat, but most everything was way above my budget range. I was there at the typical Spanish lunchtime, there were few people, and most were at the stands. Thus, I had the museum Museo Histórico-Minero Don Felipe de Borbón y Grecia almost completely to myself. I really like old-style museums, and this one has a huge amount of specimens, most of them are minerals, but there are also fossils and a collection of cave bear skulls and bones. I had decided not to book any guided visit or activity as none happened within the couple of hours of lunch downtime.

Geology Museum at Etsime

I bought an ammonite pendant, a small pyrite with almost perfect right angles, and another pendant made with a small meteorite from Campo del Cielo, along with a tiny extra piece. Campo del Cielo is an area in Argentina where four or five thousand years ago an iron meteorite fell. The meteorite shattered upon entering the atmosphere and, when it impacted the surface, the different created up to 26 craters. About 100 short tonnes of a fragmented iron meteorite have been recovered to date, and I now own around four grammes of it – yay me. I did not buy any precious stone though since the pretty shiny rocks were way out of my budget.

Expogema 2023

I left the ETSIME and I walked towards the square Plaza Pablo Ruiz Picasso, where there is a temporary art installation called El Regalo (The present) by Amigo&Amigo, a studio specialising in art installations. The artwork comprises a few arches that end in pads that can be stepped on – when they are, music sounds. The day was still bright, so the artwork was not shining, but a bunch of kids jumped on the pads to keep the music playing.

El Regalo artwork

Afterwards, I took a train and headed off towards central Madrid again. I had a reservation for an afternoon tea at NuBel, an “avant-garde gastronomy space” in the modern art museum Museo Reina Sofía. I had been drawn to the place due to the “freshly-baked scones” they advertised.

The experience was beyond disappointing. First, I had to wait to get seated, but then the person who checked me in forgot to notify that I was there – this is what I assume happened, I was literally told that “the kitchen had forgotten about me”. The set menu took 40 minutes to come out, and the scone was cold anyway, so not even freshly-made. I had got a decaf latte that was also cold when the food came.

The menu, 16€ as I don’t drink alcohol, consisted of: two mini-sandwiches – the two of them had been made from the same bread slice, so you can imagine the size, with some kind of mayonnaise filling which was not bad but rather unidentifiable; one shot-sized glass of (pre-made) gazpacho; one scone; a piece of red velvet cake; a piece of carrot cake; one chocolate brownie; a side of cheese cream, butter and jam; and in my case the already-stone cold decaf latte.

Nubel afternoon Tea

The scone was cold – so much for freshly-made, the only thing that had kept me waiting. Furthermore, the cheese cream, albeit nice, did not fit it like at all, so I had to use butter on it. I laughed to myself thinking about “the horror!” while I clutched my metaphorical pearls. The red velvet was probably the best, but in general the cakes were too sweet – good thing the menu included free tap water. Afterwards, I was comped another free decaf as an “apology for the delay”. However, when I tried to pay, more drama ensued. First the card-reading machine was not working, then they could not take cash because they were balancing the register, then they could bring the machine to the table. All in all, I spent almost hour and a half there – about five minutes waiting to be seated, forty minutes waiting for the tea set, and twenty minutes trying to pay. I’m sorry to say I did not tip, nor do I plan to ever come back.

I missed my train due to the paying delay, and I had to wait almost half an hour for another one. I hung out the Christmas market for a bit, and looked at the lights around Puerta de Atocha station. As it was cold, I walked in and went to check out the original train station, now turned botanical garden. I had never stopped to look at the iron ceiling, just at the plants – and the tortoises people used to dump there – but there had been an old photograph during the Casa Palazuelo visit that made me want to look at the building itself, and I recognised that old station in today’s building, with its wrung iron columns. Funny, how you can look at the same old things and recognise them.

7th November 2023: A Jurassic amount of Lego (Madrid, Spain)

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The fact that I like dinosaurs would come to no one’s surprise by now. To be honest, the older I turn, the more I think of them in the mind frame of the xkcd comic “Grownups”. Dinosaurs are silly fun, and it’s not like I’ve got a few million dollars lying around to buy a whole T-Rex skeleton anyway. What I do have is a silly knack to find things to do that are related to them – selective perception, if you wish. On this occasion, I heard that Madrid would be hosting the European Premiere of Jurassic World Exhibition by Brickman.

It is widely known that Jurassic Park and Jurassic World are part of a widely successful franchise. However, what or who is Brickman? In order to answer that question, we need to find out what a LEGO Certified Professional is: a person whose business model is working with LEGO blocks, making stuff for publicity, for example, and they are so good at it that they actually become LEGO-affiliates. The Brickman is a team of people who are led by Australian LPC Ryan ‘The Brickman’ McNaught – basically, they get paid to play with LEGO all day, and are commissioned things to build (which I think is awesome, in case you had any doubt). The Brickman Team have under their collective belt six exhibitions touring the world, and some of the largest and more detailed LEGO models ever built.

I came across the Jurassic World LEGO exhibition by pure chance, but once I knew about it, I worked on timing. The exhibition kicked off on the 30th of September and it will be there until the 14th of January – and it turned out that Tuesdays are cheaper. I bought a ticket for the opening timeslot at 11:00, and planned my day. I had to go to Madrid’s IFEMA Espacio 5.1, where I had already seen The Dino World Expo. It took 25 minutes to drive there and 35 to find a parking spot at the end of the world, then walk to the venue. Only when I was right by IFEMA, I saw that the paid parking lot was open – it is usually not when I am at IFEMA. Since it was a schoolday, I hoped to see the exhibition without many people – and kids – around so I could have fun with pictures.

As the name hints, the whole exhibition is based around LEGO-built Jurassic World items and scenes. Most of the rooms have brick buckets for you to put together whatever you want, freely or with instructions / missions. I did not build anything, but I had a lot of fun, once I managed to get in. When I arrived at 11:05, the ticket reader was not working, but the person at the door let people in anyway. He even offered to take your picture with the doors to Isla Nublar, which are already made from LEGO and actually really open. They recreate the gates shown in the first Jurassic Park films, but they read “Jurassic World” instead. Once inside, I asked a staff member if they had any stamps for the LEGO passport, and she had absolutely no clue what I was talking about – I think she thought I was weird, but oh well. The first room has “smaller” exhibits in comparison with others. There is a working monorail, a few aircraft and a life-sized 3D map of the island. It was weird to hear the Spanish dub from the films when a lot of the screens were still in English.

Jurassic World by Brickman entrance

The second room has a DNA strand and an amber collection site, and a shelf with lots of “hybrid” creatures. Some of them were cool, others just made me giggle – you were encouraged to build your own hybrid. The third room was “baby dinosaurs” under a huge brachiosaurus (171,150 bricks; apparently is one of the largest models in the world). There were some hatching eggs, too. In this room there were bigger LEGO bricks for the youngest kids to play and build stuff with.

Jurassic World by Brickman - LEGO baby dinosaurs

Then came a sort of control room – where visitors can track the escaped dinosaurs while some flying reptiles lurk from the ceiling, somehow recreating the alert in the first Jurassic World instalment. After that, there is a set up of the JW velociraptors, Blue and Delta having escaped and Echo and Charlie still in their pens. I had seen a LEGO Blue before, for the Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom promotion in the Natural History Museum in London, but this one was much cooler, and scaled 1:1 to the film – 58,227 bricks.

Jurassic World by Brickman - LEGO Velociraptors

Despite all the promotion and toys she gets, Blue is probably not the fan-favourite dinosaur from the films. She is not mine for sure – that would be Rexy, the T-Rex. And after a mural of the mosasaur (number two on my list) hunting down a great white shark, Rexy finally comes into view, in one of her most glorious scenes from the original Jurassic Park: chasing the Jeep after Dr Sattler and Muldoon have just rescued Ian Malcolm. The Jeep was built using 227,098 bricks (which makes it even more complex than the brachiosaurus), and Rexy 128,763. One thing I noticed was that they had changed the jeep’s number, from 10 to 18, I’m guessing there is some inside joke there. They even recreated her reflection on the rear-view mirrors, which was pretty neat.

Jurassic World by Brickman - LEGO jeep being chased by the T-rex

The exhibit was fun for the discounted price, but the shop was crazy expensive. When I finished, I walked back to the parking spot. I had to walk through part of the park Parque Juan Carlos I. In the middle of the so-called Southern Pond Estanque Sur there is a hideous sculpture made of wrought iron, which is called “Walk between two trees” Paseo entre dos árboles by sculptor Jorge Castillo . As I was staring at it trying to figure out what it meant (and even after reading up on the symbolism, I don’t get it), I approached the edge of the water. A flock of mallard ducks swam over to see if I had any food, and I noticed something that was neither a duck nor a goose – a great cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo). I had never seen cormorants in Madrid before. Seagulls, yes, but not cormorants, and I actually saw three of them.

Juan Carlos I Park, Southern Pond

I headed off for lunch at La Vaguada, a shopping centre not far away from IFEMA, though the Sat-Nav went weird and I took forever. I actually had a couple of things to do in that area, not least of all drop by the LEGO Store La Vaguada to actually get a small stamp – or three – for the rally. I mean, I had already been to the exhibition, I was going to be there, I had taken the LEGO passport just in case…

La Vaguada LEGO shop

Serious things taken care of, I looked for the restaurant Running Sushi In Market, a call-back to a kaizensushi – small-plates of sushi on a conveyor belt – in an all-you-can-eat business model part of a franchise. It is more of an “Asian” place than a sushi restaurant and you have a range of recipes, from actual sushi to baos, skewers, noodles, dumplings, sausages… You are given a table for one hour to eat as much as you want, and pay a fixed rate plus drinks. It was not bad at all, though for the cheap price, tuna was too much to ask for. The decoration is extremely kitsch, but they had absolutely no problem giving me a five-people table for myself, and I stayed about 25 minutes, plus some pictures. But I forgot to sign up for the loyalty program…

Running Sushi In Market restaurant

The shopping centre has a ticketless parking lot that you can use for free for two hours, and when you are going to pay you just have to type your licence plate. I was there for 1 hour and 58 minutes in the end, so I did not have to pay anything, which was great. Then, unfortunately, I ran into a huge traffic jam, as it was get-out-of-work time, and there had been an accident on the motorway. Even though, I made it home before tea-time. However, I did not eat anything else that day. I might have overdone it with the last small dish of lichee fruit…

11th & 12th September 2023: 23h 45min in London (England) for Yoshiki’s “Under the Sky”

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Considering that Japanese musician Yoshiki recently got his hand- and footprints enshrined at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, I guess he’s not one of my obscure artists any more. Yoshiki is a Japanese drummer and classically-trained pianist who, alongside vocalist ToshI, founded the band X Japan in 1982. They started as a heavy metal band, and eventually shifted over towards progressive rock. Their flashy looks probably gave way to what is now called Visual Kei (V-kei) [V系], though they had dropped them in the mid 1990s, before they disbanded when vocalist ToshI left the band basically to join a cult. In 2007, X Japan reunited.

Yoshiki, born Hayashi Yoshiki [林 佳樹], is considered one of the most influential Japanese artists of all times. Aside from a musician, he is also a songwriter, composer, producer, and fashion designer. He collaborated with Stan Lee for a special four-issue comic collection called Blood Red Dragon, and with international musicians and bands such as Bono (U2), Roger Taylor and Brian May (Queen), KISS, and Sarah Brightman. He composed the theme of the 2013 Golden Globe Awards, worked on the soundtrack of Saw IV, and has composed music for anime such as Saint Seiya and Attack on Titan. Within Japan, aside from tons of collaborations and solo works, he became “mainstream” when he played a concert to honour former Emperor Akihito upon the tenth anniversary of his enthronement in 1999. He also has a Hello Kitty line named and modelled after him, Yoshikitty. And I’ve been using one of his songs as my alarm clock since roughly 2010 (since 2015 it is Born to be free).

Back in 2017, Yoshiki hosted a Q&A in several cities throughout the world, including Vienna (Austria) for special showings of his documentary film on X Japan. The documentary should have premiered in the scheduled March 2016 concert, but when that was postponed, the film went on to be shown at different events festival. When I went to Vienna, I had already travelled to see it in X Japan concert in London and the Beefeater In-Edit festival in Barcelona (and owned the blu-ray).

In 2020, as the Covid-pandemic lockdowns eased up, Yoshiki organised an online concert on a bunch of rooftops, connecting with different artists and having others over, to celebrate his birthday on the 20th of November . Now, he has made a documentary out of the event, called Yoshiki: Under the Sky, which has “premiered” four times, the third of them in London on 11th September 2023. As the London announcement only came mid-August, it was a challenge to get everything running, but I managed to find doable flights and a hotel near the venue. I was able to buy a second-row seat for the cinema, which was pretty good too.

On the 11th of September, trying not to reflect too much on the date, I left the house around 5:00, and right as I merged into the motorway, it started pouring. There was more traffic than usual because the plane was an hour later, but I managed to make it to the airport a bit before the time I had booked to enter the parking lot – yay accuracy. I went through security and passport control without issues, and had to walk to the end of the terminal for my flight, which was also uneventful. Upon landing at London Stansted Airport, we had to wait for a bus because the escalators were broken or something, but I was outside around 9:30. I bought breakfast at Costa Coffee, and settled to wait for a friend I had met in Vienna, A****d. Her flight was due half an hour after mine, so we had decided to hang out for the day. She agreed to tag along to the Natural History Museum – I wanted to go back to the the Jurassic Park 30th Anniversary #NHMxJURASSIC store before it closes down at the end of the month. I really really wanted the rubber ducky cosplaying as a velociraptor, but I feared that if I got that one, I would end wanting to collect rubber duckies… I bought get a limited-edition “opening weekend ticket”, which had been out of my budget on my previous visit, and a titanosaur coin that I had not seen when I visited the exhibit.

A****d had never been to the museum, so we took a tour of the highlights – dinosaurs (of course) and other fossils, the “journey inside the earth” (escalator that goes into the inner core of the planet), the historical building, and Cadogan gallery… Unfortunately, the hall of mammals had recently closed for renovations, so we could not visit that one.

Natural History Museum London

Afterwards, we took the underground and got off at Leicester Square to have a late lunch in Chinatown. We found a little place for lunch. I ordered some rice and duck, which was nice but the duck had a lot of shattered bones. We looked for a place she had known that sold ice cream taiyaki, but sadly we did not find it.

London Chinatown

We located the cinema where the film was showing, Odeon London Covent Garden, but there was nothing going on yet, there was not even a poster announcing the film. After taking pictures, we continued down the block to snoop around the Forbidden Planet London Megastore, one of the biggest comic, manga and related merchandise shops in the world. Luckily, they had few things I wanted badly, and the ones they did were stupidly expensive, so I was able to get away with all my money, yay me!

A****d had decided that she would go back to the airport after the film, but I had taken a hotel a few minutes away from the cinema, right in front of the university and a few minutes away from the British Museum. I dropped by to check in, then we backtracked to Leicester Square as the museum was already closing for the day at 17:00. As we walked by the cinema, they were setting a poster for Under the Sky outside.

We decided to do something a bit silly and headed off to the The LEGO Store Leicester Square, two stories dedicated to selling LEGOs, either in sets, or just blocks. There are also different decorations – for photo-ops – made with oversized blocks, which include Shakespeare in the park, a Bobby, a Buckingham palace guard, a whole Aston-Martin with a Bond sculpture – you can actually go into the car – and lots and lots of Harry Potter. It was a bit disconcerting that they were already displaying Christmas sets!

Lego Shop London

Then, we crossed the street for the M&M’S Store London, which has four floors. The ground one has a recreation of the Beatles crossing Abbey Road, with M&M’S. There was a logo asking “which M&M’S colour are you?” which I thought was a little silly, until I found the orange M&M’S section, whose motto seems to be “I’m scared of what might happen if I relax”. I connected immediately. Next time over I should totally buy a mug or something. Also, there was no Christmas decoration yet, as they were preparing for Halloween. Oh, and they were looking for staff, offering “London liveable wages”.

M&Ms Shop London

We came out and it was 18:00, the Swiss glockenspiel at Leicester Square was chiming. The glockenspiel is a Swiss-themed clock which was built in the 1960s as part of the Swiss Centre, a ploy to drag rich British tourists to the country. The centre failed, and the clock was taken away, but it was eventually restored to the area in 2011. I could have sworn it was playing Poncelli’s Dance of the Hours?

Swiss Clock Leicester Square

Leicester Square is built around a sculpture of Willian Shakespeare, and the gardens around him hold a number of statues dedicated to cinema, Scenes in the Square. We spotted Mary Poppins, Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly’s character in Singin’ in the Rain), Charles Chaplin, Paddington Bear, Harry Potter, and an Indiana Jones which is supposed to be temporary. Apparently, there are a few more I should be checking out for, but that’s okay because I’ll be coming back to Chinatown eventually, and it’s just a few blocks away.

Statues of cinema figures in Leicester Square + Willian Shakespeare

We headed back towards the Odeon London Covent Garden cinema, and we reached there around 18:20. Another poster had been put up, and some fans were already waiting. We met another friend of hers, M**, who told us she had found a sitting area inside, so we sat and chatted away for about an hour. The staff was extremely friendly and did not peep a word of complain, even if we did not buy anything.

Yoshiki Under The Sky at Odeon Covent Garden London

Finally, we were allowed into Screen 2 and found our seats. I lost count of how many people tried to get away with ignoring the seating numbers. Nobody did. I had a second-row seat, pretty centred. The film was introduced by some film producer who explained what we were going to see as if we had just accidentally wandered into the cinema.

There was supposed to be a trailer for Yoshiki’s upcoming concert in October, which was not shown. We had a few in-house adverts before the documentary started. Through the film, Yoshiki talked a little about the power of music, and how he had come together with all these great musicians to create a world-class event, very Covid-compliant. All the songs featured were either composed by Yoshiki himself, or had been arranged by him in some way. Perched on an LA rooftop, he mostly played piano, but occasionally he donned the drums.

The narrating thread of the whole film is life. Yoshiki was a sickly child, and his father committed suicide when he was ten years old, so he grew up with the idea of death deeply ingrained in his brain. As the film goes on, he speaks about how music can bring people together, and how it is important to find the strength to go on. Halfway through the film, he talks about recently losing his mother and how he cried for days. At some point a voice is introduced. It is a regular John Doe who once reached out to Yoshiki on Twitter as his dying wife had just entered palliative care. The man asked for some encouragement for her, and he got it, from Yoshiki and a lot of the fans, until she passed away. There was a heart-wrenching Zoom call with the man, who spoke about how overwhelmed he was by all the support he received. Unfortunately, she passed away.

The documentary runs for an hour and a half, and it’s a mixture of the Yoshiki’s thoughts, the performances alongside different artists, each in their corner (or rooftop) of the world, and a bit of conversation with them, or a making-of. I was familiar with most of the featured musicians, but not all.

Sarah Brightman: Miracle. Sarah Brightman has had an extremely long career and is an excellent soprano – my first memory of her dates back to the 1992 Olympics. She collaborated with Yoshiki on Miracle in 2018. I was really sorry I was not able to go to any of her performances back then.

Jane Zhang: Hero. The original version of Hero was sung by Katie Fitzgerald for the soundtrack of Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary. Though Saint Seiya was my favourite anime as a kid, I had wandered away from it. The song featured in the film actually made me want to go to see it, and eventually dragged me back into the world. Zhang did a good job, but I personally prefer Fitzgerald’s version.

SixTONES: Imitation Rain. As a music producer, Yoshiki must have realised a bit ago that the Japanese boy-band panorama was dire. For long years, the boy-idol company Johnny’s Entertaining (JE) had dominated the business, with bands as SMAP or Arashi. However, an extremely protectionist policy and the open secret that the director had sexually abused some of the boys, lead to the company losing power. I have no doubt that this is why Yoshiki decided to create and produce a boy-band, and thus looked for the six young men that comprise SixTONES. Having followed some of JE’s bands back in the day, I can see how they would tap into the niche (serious flashbacks to KAT-TUN circa 2005, to be honest).

Scorpions: Wind Of Change. Formed in 1965, Scorpions paved the way for a great deal of the big names in 1980s hard rock such as Guns N’Roses, Mötley Crüe, Helloween, Megadeth… And Yoshiki is a little fanboy of theirs, of course.

Sugizo: La Venus. Sugizo is one of X Japan’s members, who took over guitar duties after they reunited. While the band was separated, original guitarist Hide died in “mysterious circumstances” – either accidentally or by suicide. For a long time, Yoshiki claimed that Hide’s death was an accident, and on this film he for the first time acknowledges otherwise. Thus, Hide was the second person in Yoshiki’s circle to take his own life. Sugizo, who also plays violin and is a member of an insane number of bands, including LunaSea, is credited by Yoshiki as the reason X Japan could come back together, which made him very embarrassed. They played a rendition of La Venus without lyrics, with Sugizo on violin.

Hyde: Red Swan. Hyde is without a doubt one of the best rock vocalists in Japan. He was originally the voice of L’Arc~en~Ciel, when they were still a thing. He worked alone for a few years, then he and KAZ founded VAMPS, and finally he went solo again. Red Swan was a collaboration between Yoshiki and Hyde for the anime Attack on Titan!, released as “Yoshiki feat. Hyde”. Yoshiki explained how the red swan represents rising even covered in blood. After this collaboration, there was a second single, released as “Hyde feat. Yoshiki” with the song Zipang, in English and Japanese, which I personally find even more powerful. The significance of Red Swan in Under the Sky comes from how many versions there are on YouTube, especially as anime songs tend to be translated. Thus, it ties in with the concept of coming together through music.

St. Vincent: New York. St. Vincent is known for her clear voice and her complex arrangements, with lots of instruments playing a part. She is considered one of the best guitarist in the 21st century. Yoshiki arranged her song New York for piano and vocals, which made it extremely powerful. All LA artists were invited to sing on Yoshiki’s rooftop, as it would have reduced the logistics involved.

Nicole Scherzinger: I’ll be your love. Scherzinger was the lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls between 2003 and 2009, but before that she had already performed with Yoshiki with this very same song.

The Chainsmokers: Closer. They are an American electronic DJ pair: Alex Pall and Drew Taggart, whom I honestly know nothing about other than they do electronic remixes. They have some supporting musicians.

Lindsey Stirling: Forever Love. She is a violinist who performs and dances at the same time. I had never heard of her either, but she did feel the music. Regarding her, Yoshiki said that she made him realise that not all songs need lyrics and vocals. She did a great job.

Yoshiki and fans: Endless Rain. In a way, Endless Rain is the emotional ballad that keeps showing up in anything X Japan related – and breaking people’s hearts. A while back, there was a request on social media for fans to send recordings of themselves singing the song, which were used for the film. Hearing a Ukrainian girl singing “endless rain lets me forget all of the pain, all of the sadness” was soul-wrenching. Once more Yoshiki circled back to the idea of music bringing music together, along with living, just keep living.

Yoshiki Q&A in London, 11th September 2023

The Q&A afterwards was awkward. The guy who carried it out – Toby Amies – had done his homework but it was not a Q&A, it was an interview by someone who had just learnt about Yoshiki, and was curious, so he had a ton of questions, most of them absolutely unoriginal, such as hey, I’ve just discovered V-kei, explain that to me! Or “do you prefer piano or drums?” which we hear every time – I could swear that Yoshiki was a bit annoyed at that one. The only input that the audience had, before Yoshiki was even in, was “are the Last Rockstars coming to Europe?” (we know the answer to that: never) and “When is the next X Japan album coming out?” (we know the answer to that, too: also never), but when the interviewer got around to ask those, he messed them up! At some point Yoshiki explained the meaning of the title “Under the Sky” – basically, we’re not in Heaven yet, we are underneath. As he was leaving, he was kind enough to sign autographs and take pictures with fans.

After the film, we took a bunch of selfies with other fans in front of the poster(s), then moved on. I went back to my hotel for a shower and a few hours’ rest. The bathroom was tiny but hot water did its job, and I could not find the cereal bar I had packed for dinner. The bed was extremely soft, and the carpet smelt strongly as England is in the middle of yet another heatwave, and my nose clogged – I need to remember to start packing my allergy pills. I did not sleep much if at all, and I ended up leaving the hotel before 5:00. I had to decide between breakfast at London Liverpool station or catching the Stansted Express at 5:25. I decided to go for the train and have breakfast at the Stansted Costa, so I boarded, found a seat, and settled down for a travel nap.

Ten minutes away from the airport, as we left Harlow Town, the second-to-last stop, there was an announcement. We were informed that the train would terminate at Bishop’s Stortford, the last stop before Stansted Airport. There were technical issues at the terminus platform, and the train could not reach it. Passengers should vacate the train at at Bishop’s Stortford and ask the platform staff for instructions. The instructions were that we had to fend for ourselves to reach the airport as there was no alternative transportation provided. It was chaos for a second, with everybody scrambling for buses, taxies and so. I was near a young woman who was going to Uber and had some extra seats. She asked if anyone wanted to tag along and I said yes. She said it would be free because her company would reimburse her, so I was lucky on that account, and I arrived at the airport a bit after 6:30. I waved my Uber-companions good-bye and headed to Costa Coffee for breakfast, feeling relieved that I had decided against waiting for the 5:40 train in London Liverpool.

After a sandwich and a vanilla latte, I passed security, where I had to go through secondary screening because… no idea. There was like no metal on me whatsoever. Then the scanner complained about me having something in my pocket – my damn handkerchief! Seriously, now. This has happened a few times. Where do people keep their hankies / tissues if not a pocket??

A****d had not yet departed when I was through, so we could hang out for a little longer – it’s fun that we had only met in person for a few hours in 2017 and we hit off so well. We even had gates in the same area of the airport, so it was cool. This is the first time that I have done the “going to the airport early in the morning” in London, but to be honest there was a 100 € difference between that flight and the next up, since the whole thing was announced and happened so fast. I asked for a refund from the Stansted Express, and now I’m wondering whether to cancel the train for my next trip to London as they’re threatening with strikes on those days… (ETA: I received a full refund, and there was no major incident during the following trip).

The trip back was uneventful except the road was stupidly full when I drove off the parking lot. I napped most of the plane ride, and I had a Coke before 9:00. Talk about living wildly, especially considering how all this happened in 32 hours, and I was in London for less than 24! My only regret was not taking the camera, but I was trying to pack extra-light this time around.

9th September 2023: DinoExpo XXL (Guadalajara, Spain)

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When I heard that this was going to happen nearby, in Guadalajara, I was mildly excited. I mean, I did not expect a Jurassic World Exhibition level event, more similar to Dino World Expo. Not even.

In any case, I decided to attend DinoExpo XXL to have a look. There, I had the pleasure to see a bunch of dinosaur models cramped in an obviously-too-small area, a few fake skeletons and bones, and some “Ice Age” representation. Some of the dinosaurs swayed their tails and necks, and there were roaring sounds. It is obvious that someone agreed to place the exhibit there without thinking it through. The models were extremely close to each other, to the point that a lot of their tails were basically in another one’s snout.

The kids were thrilled though, except the ones who wanted to actually ride the available dinosaurs and their parents told them that it was too expensive – on top of the ticket – for a photo-op. A bigger area would have been more enjoyable, but the way it was crammed in the auxiliary tent took of a lot of its lustre. Not sure about the legality of the Jurassic Park logo either… The models were a bit on the old side – some of them a bit damaged, and others inaccurate, such as a Spinosaur with the old tail, and Nanotyrannus has been deemed a juvenile T-rex for a while now.

Two dinosaurs on jeeps that remind of Jurassic park

DinoExpo XXL general view

A hunt scene and a family scene - with dinosaurs

A model of smallish T-rex and a fossil cast.

I stayed for about forty minutes, then left when the area started crowding up. I really did not feel like doing anything else, so I just drove home.

27th May 2023: Mammoths and Knights in Madrid (Spain)

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I headed off to Madrid to watch the Knights of the Zodiac film, the Hollywood remake of the 80s anime Saint Seiya – I’m not making any excuses (I mean, I still went to the Symphonic Adventure after it got cancelled trice), I just wanted to see it, even if I did not have much faith in it. I wanted to combine it with another activity, and I thought I lucked out when I found that Caixa Forum Madrid was running an exhibition on mammoths – Mamut, el Gigante de la Edad del Hielo (Mammoth, the Ice-Age Giant). I allocated about an hour and a half for the exhibition, which hosted an almost-complete fossilised skeleton and a hyperrealist sculpture “among other pieces”. Truth be told, there was not much else to see.

The exhibit has some molars from different species, some fur, a tusk and a few pieces of prehistoric art. There was also an evolutionary timeline and little models comparing the sizes of different mammoth species to the average human size. The pièce de résistance is indeed the complete mammoth skeleton that was the literal centre of the exhibit – hugely-tusked specimen of wholly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius). It was a truly magnificent piece, but I was a little disappointed by how few pieces were actually on display. It’s not like there is not any material around – there used to be a Mammoth Museum in Barcelona that had actual tusks for sale. I had also seen another one in Muséum des sciences naturelles de Belgique in Belgium a couple of months back, which diminished the awe factor a little.

Mammoth - The Ice Age Giant exhibit featuring the giant skeleton with huge curved tusks, the smaller sculpture, a lone tusk, some hair and a piece of Paleolithic art engraved on the ivory of a tusk.

I was done in a bit over 30 minutes, so I had time to walk to the cinema – there was another exhibition in the same floor, but I had already seen it in Barcelona, and the Museum shop did not have anything interesting. I had planned to walk to the cinema, as public transit was only slightly shorter. The weather was not so nice, and there was a small storm. I did duck into a couple of shops but to be honest I ended up at the cinema 40 minutes before the session started while it poured outside. I found myself a seat to wait – I had got my ticket online the day the release was announced. This was my first time in a cinema since Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom in 2018, and it was a weird feeling, being so close to strangers again. It was also extremely cold, and the previews were felt eternal.

The reason I sometimes choose Yelmo Cines Ideal is that some of their films are shown in their original language, and I tend to enjoy subs more than the dubbed versions. The Knights of the Zodiac film was… a choice, I guess. It is based on the newest remake – which I have not seen because I’m not a streaming-service person – and it changed a lot of the lore. Except for the main character (Seiya in the original material), all the names had been changed, but I noticed that the subs stuck to the original ones.

Knights of The Zodiac movie poster

It was not a bad film, all things considered. Entertaining, wannabe Marvel-like, tapping a little into mixing the cosmic magic and newer technology that was unimaginable in the 80s when the manga was made. It lacked on the music department though – considering how powerful the anime music is, that was disappointing, though here and there there are a few chords of the original song Pegasus Fantasy. That was cool.

But then again, I was half-expecting a disaster, so anything was an improvement, and the film made itself watchable. Sean Bean’s character died, but considering that in the original material his character is already dead at the end, I guess it could be considered some kind of record…

22nd and 23rd April 2023: A date with a dinosaur (London, England, Great Britain)

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Since I cannot keep my mouth shut, I offered to organise a trip to London with some people from work. Despite prices skyrocketing everywhere and my ridiculously hectic schedule, I managed to secure a weekend when flying would not be stupidly expensive, and an activity I would really be looking forward to – the Natural History Museum was running couple of things I was very interested in. One was an exhibition on a gigantic dinosaur: Titanosaur: Life as the biggest dinosaur. Well, twist my arm – NHM is much closer than the actual Titanosaur home in Argentina. Furthermore, there was a collaboration with Jurassic Park (‘an adventure 63,000,030 years in the making’ is the motto), and coming back to the museum would give me the chance to purchase the rock I wanted the last time I was over and did not get because I was heading out to Stonehenge on the same day.

In the end, only one person took up the offer, and I figured out that well, London is pretty much always a good idea for a weekend – so I figured I’d arrange myself a date with a dinosaur. Unfortunately, it turned that London Marathon was held that weekend. Hotel prices were bloated for the night and we ended up at Earl’s Court because I wanted to stay close to South Kensington and the other person wanted the cheapest place possible. We left on a red-eye flight to London Stansted which took a long time to land – we spent about an hour circling the airport, and eventually the head cabin attendant said that there was bad visibility at the airport, and that the pilot required all electronic devices to be turned off so he could use the autolanding system. I did not like that one bit – after I visited Santiago de Compostela in 2022, I felt that I had got over the bad-visitiblity near-miss when I was a teen. Apparently not, the feeling of uneasiness is still there. We landed over an hour late, but we were on our way on the first Stansted Express a few minutes after getting on it. After reaching Liverpool Street Station at around 9:30, I asked my companion to take us to Guildhall as part of the incentive of the trip was introducing them to international travel. It was not a good idea. Their phone trolled us and tried to take us to Guildhall… in Stratford upon Avon. The Costa at the station was closed, but at least I had got myself a sandwich and a latte before we started walking.

After backtracking, we were in known territory around 10:15. As it turns out, my companion was only interested in “walking the city” and shot down any activities I had proposed – thus, some things I just imposed in order not to feel that I had wasted the whole day away. By 11:00, I had confirmed that our travelling styles were not compatible. After some time at the docks next to the Tower of London, I wanted to enter the Anglican church All Hallows by the Tower. All Hallows is the oldest church in the City of London – founded in 675 CE, it predates the nearby Tower of London. The parish used to take care of a lot of the prisoners executed there. The building withstood the Great Fire of London (1666), but it was severely damaged through The Blitz – the German WWII bombing campaign against the UK throughout 1940 and 1941. The church was rebuilt and reconsecrated in 1975. Its windows are decorated with symbols from the different London guilds and some families.

Collage of a church. The outer building is brick and it has a tower crowned with a greenish metal spire. The inside has huge windows decorated with guild symbols. The small crypt inside is covered in white stone.

Underneath, there are a few chapels and a small Crypt. Most of the crypt is a museum which chiefly holds artefacts from the Roman period – including remains of an old road. There are other historical items from the Saxon and Medieval times, and the 20th century Crow’s Nest of the vessel Quest, in which Sir Ernest Shackleton sailed for Antarctica for the third time, and where he died.

When we were done, we went to Saint Dunstan in the East Church Garden. I was hoping to use this as a relaxing point for a few minutes, but there was work being done on the parterres. We continued towards the River Thames for some views of Tower Bridge, the museum HMS Belfast and The Shard skyscraper.

We walked by the Monument to the Fire of London on our way to the Sky Garden. The Great Fire burnt inside the Roman city wall for four days after breaking out a bakery after midnight on the 2nd of September, 1666. Though the number of victims is (theoretically) small, the fire destroyed over 13,000 houses (15% of the city’s housing), almost a hundred parish churches, governmental buildings, St Paul’s cathedral, and even some of the city gates.

Afterwards, we walked over to Leadenhall Market, a covered shopping street which can be traced back to a 1321 food market, and marks the centre of Roman Londinium (ruins from the Forum and Basilica are buried underneath). It was given to the city in the 15th century, and in the 19th century, the City Architect Sir Horace Jones designed an iron-and-glass arcade. Today, it holds restaurants, wine bars, varied shops and even beauty parlours.

A covered shopping gallery or street, in dark red and beige tones.

Around the market stands a mixture of modern buildings and traditional buildings, mostly small churches. Among the former:

  • The Lloyd’s Building (25 Gresham Street), sometimes called the “Inside-Out building”. It was finished in 1986 and it is consider a great example of Bowellism – an architectural style that maximises inside space by building ducts, lifts, and other structural necessities on the outside. It was designed by Richard Rogers & Partners, and it still maintains the original entrance of the building that stood in its place in 1928 – the East India House.
  • The Leadenhall Building (122 Leadenhall Street), designed by the Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners. It opened in 2014.
  • The Willis Towers Watson (WTW), designed by Norman Foster, it was finished in 2008.
  • The Scalpel (52-54 Lime Street), which yields to cool reflections along with the WTW, and has a strange sculpture at the entrance – it made me think of several ship wheels fused together. The building was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox and only completed in 2018.
  • And of course The Gherkin (30 St Mary Axe). It was designed by Foster + Partners and it is the first ecological building ever built in London. It opened in 2004.

The historical buildings we encountered (having survived both the Great Fire of London and the Blitz) include:

  • Saint Andrew Undershaft Church. It dates back from 1147, although it has been rebuilt several times. The current building was erected in 1532.
  • Saint Helen’s Bishopsgate Church, where Shakespeare himself used to worship in the 1590s. The building can be traced back to the mid 12th century, and it was restored during the Victorian period and later during the 20th century.

Skyscrapers reflected on the glass that covers yet another huge skyscraper

A small church built in Stone in the background with a huge modern high-rise building behind it

Afterwards, we headed towards Embankment on the Tube. There, I was happy to find a Costa Coffee and get my vanilla latte fix. In the area, we saw the Victoria Embankment Gardens and I wanted to visit Cleopatra’s Needle – half of a pair of obelisks (the other one is in New York), originally made and carved in Heliopolis, what is Cairo today. It has inscriptions from the 18th and 19th Egyptian dynasties (around 1450 BCE). It was presented to the United Kingdom by Sultan Muhammad Ali in 1819, and later transported to London in 1877. Two sphinxes and other decorations were added when the Needle was erected, and the plinth under one of the sphinxes was damaged during London Bombings – it was never restored as a tribute to memory.

An Egyptian obelisk standing against a cloudy background

We walked over to the Westminster area to see the Palace of Westminster and Elizabeth Tower. There was an environmental protest there, which made it packed, but at the same time diverted traffic, allowing for new views from the middle of the street. On the way, I encountered an adorable pit bull mix I got permission to pet – coffee and dog pets made everything better.

A view of the palace of Westminster, with the Elizabeth tower on the left

We continued off to Saint James’s Park, home to squirrels, geese, swans, pigeons, mallard ducks, robins… all of them extremely used to people and tourists, and rather unconcerned by dogs being walked. We ditched the marathon fencing and reached Buckingham Palace, but by then my companion was beat. Thus, we had to go to the hotel so they could get some rest. The hotel was better than expected for a London 2*. It was nice and warm, although the bathroom was tiny – it was difficult to stand inside and close the door.

Buckingham Palace and some of the animals at Saint James' parks

A couple of hours later, we were off into the evening to see Piccadilly Circus, the entrance to Chinatown, and Leicester Square. Companion was beaten, so they were not sure they would be up for anything the following day – we arranged to touch base at 9:00 for them to evaluate. Once in my room, I had a shower and booked a free time slot for the British Museum the following day, just to avoid the queues. I thought, even if we did not make it, at least we had assured entry if we did, and I could always cancel and release the ticket.

Central London at night - Picadilly Circus' Eros and entrance to Chinatown

The next morning, I left on my own around 8:00 to look for a nearby Costa Coffee for a large vanilla latte breakfast, and I came across Brompton Cemetery. This had not been on my radar, but since I had time, I decided to explore it a little. Brompton Cemetery, formerly West of London and Westminster Cemetery, opened in 1840, and it has belonged to the British Crown since 1852. It is on of the oldest garden cemeteries in Britain and comprises around 35,000 monuments. I wandered for about half an hour before I had to head back.

Brompton cemetery, a 19th century graveyard and garden

We managed to get to to the Natural History Museum on time for my date with a dinosaur just after opening. I had my Titanosaur ticket at 10:15, and left off my companion to wander on their own after agreeing to check with each other around noon. The exhibition Titanosaur: Life as the Biggest Dinosaur brings a cast of Patagotitan mayorum to Europe for the first time, along with a few real fossil bones, of a front leg, some teeth, and an egg.

Patagotitan mayorum is one of the largest known animals to have ever lived. It was a sauropod dinosaur – a tetrapod with extremely long neck and tail. It lived in forest regions during the Late Cretaceous (102 to 95 million years ago) grazing on ferns and tree leaves. The species was discovered in Argentina in 2010, and it’s calculated that it could have been up to 31 metres long and weigh over 50 tonnes. It is widely considered the most complete of the South American dinosaurs. The cast that the Natural History museum brought is considered the holotype, and it was reconstructed from the partial skeletons of six specimens.

Titanosaur skeleton. People walking around don't even reach its knees.

The best thing about the exhibit was being able to actually touch the cast, so I kinda hugged my date, I guess. As far as I know, there are only three casts of titanosaur – the one in Argentina (Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio in Trelew), one in the US (Field Museum, Chicago), named Máximo, and this one.

After I had pranced around the exhibition to my heart’s content, and as it filled up with kids, I moved on to reason number two of this visit having to happen asap in 2023. To celebrate 30 (thirty!) years of the 1993 release of Jurassic Park, the Natural History Museum was running a limited-time-only collaboration pop-up shop – the Jurassic Park 30th Anniversary #NHMxJURASSIC store in which I did not even spend that much! I bought a replica badge and a commemorative coin, both limited, numbered editions. The shop had both Jurassic Park and Jurassic World merchandise, especially toys and T-shirts, and a few props, including a life-size sculpture of Blue the velociraptor.

Jurassic Park pop-up shop, with Blue the velociraptor just hanging out

I then headed to the official museum shop to get myself the rock I had wanted – a piece of aura silicon carbide, a shiny mostly-artificial mineral. I also bought a souvenir guide, just because. They did not have anything from the Titanosaur exhibit there, so I backtracked to the exhibition shop to buy a pin.

Whenever I got to the Natural History Museum, I end up in the dinosaur gallery (well, there was that one time I walked through the whole thing throughout a winter day). This time, however, I decided to wander the upper area of the historical building. I was drawn to the Treasures in the Cadogan gallery. I had not been there since it opened in 2013, and my mind was blown. The collection includes a first edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, and some of the pigeon specimens that he used to develop the theory of evolution. I also got to see the first-ever-found iguanodon teeth (not the replicas), the first fossil ever found of the Archaeopteryx (the link between dinosaurs and birds), and a skeleton and egg of the great auk, the first confirmed victim of anthropogenic extinction (due to human activity). I was very impressed, these were all treasures indeed – no overselling.

Treasures at the Natural History Museum - ancient bird fossil, extinct penguin-like bird, a book, dinosaur teeth. Whale skeleton.

After wandering the second floor for a bit, I ran into my companion and at noon we left towards the British Museum, where I had booked entry for 12:40. I left them to their own devices again and headed off to the Japanese galleries, which had been closed the last couple of times I was in the museum. I was… a bit on the disappointed side, I remembered them being way more impressive from my early 2000s visits.

Japanese Galleries at the British Museum: Samurai Armour, lion dogs pair, articulated metal animals, a standing Buddha.

I visited the Moai, the Elgin Marbles, the Babylonian bulls and the Rosetta Stone, and I headed off to the shop to get myself a treat – retail therapy is a thing. Eventually, we left the museum and managed to get to Liverpool Street to take the Stansted Express to the airport. Security was smooth, not as crammed as other times, and then, as tradition calls, I got myself some sushi at Itsu.

When we boarded the plane, I had been assigned an emergency exit seat. In order to sit there, you need to be able to take responsibility about opening the exit if something happens. I flagged a flight attendant to inform them that I would be physically unable to do so. I had a new seat in 4.5 seconds, and it turned out to be a window seat. We took off a few minutes late, and landed with a delay of almost a quarter of an hour. Nevertheless, after passport control and all, I managed to reached the parking lot payment machines with a few seconds to spare the overstaying fee – all good!

Balance – The marathon barely interfered with the weekend. I had a date with a dinosaur and hugged them. That was awesome. I got limited edition Jurassic Park and Jurassic World merchandise. I found some Kettle Sea Salt and Balsamic Vinegar of Modena crisps at one of the supermarkets. I got two new books, commemorative coins and a shiny rock. I also discovered new places to explore in the future, and had Costa – twice. Unfortunately, we ran out of time for extra visits on Sunday – so I could not fit in either the HMS Belfast or the Jack the Ripper Museum. Furthermore, the Grant Museum of Zoology is closed for renovation, and the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology does not open on Sundays, so in the end I was not really able to scratch much off my list. Whoops!

Souvenirs from London: books, crisps, commemorative coins and Jurassic Park merch

24th March 2023: Brussels {Belgium, March 2023}

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I woke up stupidly early to catch a short red-eye flight that was in the end delayed by the French air controller’s strike. Crossing security at the airport was a bit of an issue – I got stuck behind a class of teens going somewhere, and kudos to the teacher for not losing it when about 50% of the kids were sent back because they had not taken out their tablets / liquids / bottles of water and so on. Once inside, I had to head towards the Schengen area transit lounges, which were considerably fuller than beyond passport control in the early morning.

I landed in Brussels [Bruxelles (French) | Brussel (Dutch)], Belgium [Belgique | België] around 9:00. At the airport arrival lounge, I was welcomed by a rocket taken out from The Adventures of Tintin, and some fake flowering trees. I found the station – I had booked all my tickets online beforehand – and after a short train ride I reached the centre of Brussels. From the train I caught a glimpse of the famous atom-like building, the Atomium. I found my way to the hotel throughout a chaos of construction, and dropped off my luggage. Then, I set off to explore the city, which is called the comic capital of Europe: up to 50 comic character murals are painted on walls around the city, to the point that there is even a route dedicated to seeing them all – the Brussels’ Comic Book Route. I had not walked 200 m from the hotel when I saw my first mural, Le Scorpion.

I headed towards the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula Cathédrale des Saints Michel et Gudule | Kathedraal van Sint-Michiel en Sint-Goedele. The current building was erected in the 13th century in Brabantine Gothic, which is a deviation from the French Gothic style that developed in the Low Countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg). It features the use of sandstone or limestone in light colours (unfortunately, these materials are very susceptible to erosion), pointed arches, round columns with decorated “cabbage” capitals, and a very clear cruciform floor plan on churches. Unlike the Spanish cathedrals, there is no choir built in-between, so the perspective of the churches built in this style is fantastic.

The cathedral has two symmetrical front towers with tolling bells. It is accessed from the monumental staircase (built in the 18th century) on the western façade, by one of the gates under the bell towers. It does not feature a round or wheel window, but an ogival one. The nave is wide and lit from all the colourful side windows representing biblical scenes. The pulpit on the side is Baroque, carved in dark wood by the sculptor Hendrik Frans Verbrugge. A lot of the sculptures inside the cathedral are also Baroque, as the originals were destroyed by iconoclast movements (Beeldenstorm) in 1566 – this is a feature along most of the monuments I visited. Along with the Chapel Church and Our Lady of the Sablon, the cathedral is considered one of the three traditionally listed gothic churches in the city of Brussels. The organist was rehearsing, along with a cellist and a female singer, which was cool to hear as I explored. Underneath the cathedral, the archaeological site can be accessed to explore the Romanesque origins of the chapel of St. Michael.

The cathedral of Brussels

After the cathedral, my path took me through the park Parc de Bruxelles | Warandepark, featuring a pretty kiosk in metalwork and a bunch of trees striving to blossom. Along one of the axes of the park, 22 sculptures have been erected for a temporary exhibition “Le Chat déambule” Expo (9th March – 30th June 2023). They feature Le Chat, an anthropomorphic obese cat from a comic strip created by Belgian artist Philippe Geluck. Le Chat ran from 1983 to 2013, comically tackling everyday situations or presenting absurd conclusions.

An obese, anthropomorfic cat on a tutu raising a leg while a mouse uses a jack to keep the cat's leg up.

I continued walking for a bit of a long walk that led me past the Royal Palace of Brussels Palais royal de Bruxelles | Koninklijk Paleis van Brussel and the Monument to Leopold II. I went on until I reached something I felt that I could not have missed – the Museum of Natural Sciences of Belgium Muséum des sciences naturelles de Belgique | Museum voor Natuurwetenschappen van België, part of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. This was on my to-visit map long before this little trip came into plan. The museum’s Dinosaur Gallery is the largest room dedicated to dinosaurs in Europe. It holds a replica of Stan the T-rex (the original one was auctioned a while back and bought into private hands for 32 million USD), a piece of the Mont-Dieu meteorite, similar to the one which might have caused the extinction of dinosaurs, along with a bit of the boundary K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) or K-Pg (Cretaceous-Palaeogene) – this is a sedimentary layer of black rock with a lot of iridium that separates the “age of reptiles” and the “age of mammals” in the fossil registry.

There is also a room completely dedicated to mosasaur findings, and a lone Allosaurus fossil called Arkhane, which is considered the only discovered specimen of its species. Allosaurus was a Jurassic carnivore and this skeleton, clocking at almost 9 metres long, comes from Wyoming (US) and is 70% complete. However, this was tucked away in a completely different area of the museum. I also saw a Dunkleosteus head. This one was behind glass and I did not find the information to read if it was a cast, so maybe I found an original one?

Fossils at the Belgian Museum of Natural History: dinosaurs, mosasaurs, the Allosaurus Arkhane, and a massive fish head

The most important feature of the Dinosaur Gallery though is the collection of iguanodon fossils – the Bernissart iguanodons. Iguanodon (meaning “iguana tooth”) was the second dinosaur to receive a name. This herbivore lived from the late Jurassic to the early Cretaceous, and it is thought to have been able to on either two or four legs. In 1878, as many as 38 iguanodon fossils were found in the Bernissart coal mine. Nine are displayed in “wrong” standing positions – what was believed at the time to be correct, called the “kangaroo standing” – and nineteen can be seen partly covered in plaster just as they were found in the mine. The standing skeletons are too fragile to be dismantled now – though early palaeopathologists did the best they could, the skeletons contain a lot of pyrite, which disintegrates in contact with air, so they are extremely brittle. Thus, they are exhibited in a protective chamber as historical testimony. These fossils were the most abundant and complete ever found of the species. They unseated the previous English hegemony on iguanodon knowledge at the time, and one of them became the Iguanodon bernissartensis holotype. Today, one of the skeletons stands outside the case, posed in the modern interpretation of how iguanodon would have moved.

Collage: The iguanodons. The upper picture shows a modern interpretation of the iguanodon on four legs standing in front of the older "kangroo posed" reconstructions. On the bottom, the iguanodons as they were found in the mine.

Other exhibits in the museum include a gallery of evolution (which I saw backwards as it was full of high school kids), a mineral collection, a gallery on humans and human evolution, and a biodiversity collection. They have the preserved body of the last captive Tasmanian tiger that lived, and a small ward about the history of the museum and urban flora and fauna.

Collage. The centre is the mascot of the museum. Around it, a tasmanian tiger, a mammoth skeleton, some rocks and taxidermed animals.

I had lunch halfway through the museum visit, and then set off to the centre of the town, undoing my previous way. By now I had got a hold of the construction detours, and I reached the city centre more easily. I walked past Mont des Arts | Kunstberg next to Central Station, with a very fun clock, and eventually reached the central square Grand-Place | Grote Markt. This central square, declared Unesco Heritage site in 1998, is surrounded by monumental buildings dating from the 15th to the 19th century, forming a particularly recognisable unit: the Town Hall Hôtel de Ville | Stadhuis, a Brabantine gothic building with a spire or tower; the Maison du Roi | Broodhuis in Neogothic style; and the so-called guildhalls and private houses, traditionally built buildings, either crammed together and cutely thin, or almost palatial – including the house where Victor Hugo, the writer, used to live in the city.

Grand Place. The buildings are light coloured or grey with a lot of gold decoration

I went down one of the side streets, debating a typical Belgian waffle, but I was not brave enough to try and eat one on my own. I saw the Adventures of Tintin mural (by Belgian cartoonist Hergé) painted on a wall (art by Oreopoulos and Vandegeerde). About five minutes away from the square, one of the corners hosts the fountain known as Manneken Pis, which depicts a naked little boy urinating into the basin. The current fountain features a replica of the boy, the original (sculpted by Jérôme Duquesnoy the Elder) is in the Brussels City Museum. The one on the fountain is often dressed up, and this time round, it was characterised as a construction worker – I can understand why. One of the many legends about the design tells of a young boy who put out an explosive charge fuse by peeing on it.

Collage. Tintin and Captain Haddock climb down some stairs. Manekken Pis fountain boy dressed in yellow reflective clothing.

I walked on to find another comic mural I was extremely interested in – actually two, but the Astérix mural (by Goscinny and Uderzo) was covered by construction. After a quarter of an hour I found the Lucky Luke mural (by Belgian cartoonist Morris, painted by Oreopoulos and Vandegeerde). When I was a child, I absolutely loved the Lucky Luke animated series, and especially his white horse Jolly Jumper and dog Rantanplan, so this was a bit of a tribute visit, rather than tackling the whole comic route.

Lucky Luke mural. The Daltons have robbed a bank and Luke prepares to arrest them (again)

On my way back towards the city centre, I stopped by a number of points of interest – the Baroque church and convent Église Notre Dame aux Riches-Claires; a mural by artist Mr.Doodle called Mr. Doodle Artwork; the late 19th century market Halles Saint-Géry; the 12th century church Église Saint-Nicolas; a “parody” of the Manneken Pis depicting a dog doing the same Zinneke Pis; and the Brussels Stock Exchange Bourse de Bruxelles (under renovation).

Collage showing different buildings in Brussels, and a bronze medium-sized dog peeing on a bollard

As I was making my way back towards the Grand-Place, the weather, which had been behaving most of the day – there had been some rain while I was inside the museum – took a turn for the worse, and there was a bit of a shower. The problem was not the rain itself, but the wind that made it come sideways. I had packed my umbrella, though it was not too helpful. When rain subsided down, I continued walking, and I got to see a rainbow over the Grand-Place. Great timing!

Rainbow peering through buildings at the end of the street in Brussels

It was only round 18:00 but I decided to go back to the hotel, check in, and get some food and rest. En route, I crossed through the classy shopping gallery Galeries Royales Saint Hubert. At first I had considered grabbing a bite here, but prices made me decide on a supermarket dinner, which was all right. I ate a sandwich and lots of berries.

After checking in, and warning the hotel staff that my companion would arrive late during the night, I got some rest, warmed the room, and when it was dark, I went out to see the illumination on the cathedral Cathédrale des Saints Michel et Gudule | Kathedraal van Sint-Michiel en Sint-Goedele, the square Grand-Place | Grote Markt, the fountain Manneken Pis and the shopping centre Galeries Royales Saint Hubert.

Cathedral and Grand Place at night, illuminated in warm light

I finally returned to the hotel and fumbled a bit with the shower until I found the nice massage mode.

11th March 2023: Rocks from the land and fish from the sea (Madrid, Spain)

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Back in 2018, when going to Madrid’s Geomineral Museum (Museo Geominero), I stumbled upon an event in the Mining Engineering University – something called Expominerales. At the time, I did not have time to explore it, and only later did I realise what I had missed – an international fair for the trade of minerals, rocks and fossils. I made a mental note to check the event out the following year, but something came up and I completely forgot about the whole thing. In 2020 the pandemic struck, and finally in 2023, almost five years to the day, I went back to this event held in Madrid.

Expominerales is held yearly at the working engineering school Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Minas y Energía (ETSIME), which offers the bachelor’s degree in Mining Engineering, and the one in Energy Engineering (whatever this last one is). The first weekend of every month, the school organises a “mineral-world flea market”, and the second weekend of March, it hosts an international mineral, gem and fossil fair, with shopping stands and different workshops and activities. After a few cancellations due to Covid, it returned in 2022 and it’s back to its former glory in 2023 – Expominerales XLII, the 42th edition of the fair.

The ETSIME in Madrid. Pink-and-white building from the 19th century, accessible through stairs, with flags hanging over the door

Mining Engineering became a formal education path in Spain in 1777, originally in the town of Almadén, a mercury hub. The school was moved to Madrid in 1835 and a two-building campus was ordered. The historical building in the ETSIME (M1) was designed by architect Ricardo Velázquez Bosco, and decorated by ceramist Daniel Zuloaga between 1884 and 1893. The second building (M2) was damaged during the Civil War, and has suffered several modifications to accommodate classrooms and laboratories. The premises also include a reproduction of a mine, Mina Museo Marcelo Jorissen, however this one is closed for renovation – a lot of that seems to be going on around the university, since part of the decorations of the buildings are also covered.

The M1 historical building has a central cloister with an ironwork colonnade. The building is rectangular, and on the short sides there are two symmetrical wards. One holds the historical mining museum, the other one the historical library. The central cloister is the main area where Expominerales is held, on the ground and first floor. On Saturday, the exhibit opened at 10:00, and we were there a bit later in order to sign up for the first guided visit at 11:00 (3€) – we wanted to take it so we had access to several rooms that would otherwise be closed to us. The idea was being there before families with kids started arriving and the activities became overcrowded – it turned out in the end that most the activities were indeed organised for children, so it did not really make a difference. Furthermore, the visit we feared full only had 6 attendees.

We had one hour before the guided visit that we spent looking at the stands on the ground floor on the M1 building. The guide was a student who might have been partying the previous night, because he sounded a little out of it – forgetting info and words, even things related to his own degree.

First, we went to see the mineral collection, the origin of the historical museum in the M1 building, Museo Histórico-Minero Don Felipe de Borbón y Grecia. The mineral collection was started in 1831, and throughout the years it was increased with new minerals donated by different institutions. It was later expanded to cover palaeontology and historical artefacts related to mining and other earth sciences. Though a lot of the displays are scattered throughout he building, the original museum dates from the 19th century, and it has four sections: the mineral collection, the fossil collection, the cave bear collection and the mining archaeology section, totalling over 10,000 items.

The historical mining museum at ETSIME Madrid. It is a large ward with cedar wood shelves from floor to ceiling, filled with rocks and fossils. The picture also shows some close-ups of rocks, two cave bear skulls, and a cluster of fossilised snail-like animals

Today, the museum is named after King Felipe VI, who visited the museum in the late 1980s after the university reached out to him to propose the name. The then prince came to visit then, and the name “the king’s stairs” was given to the set of side stairs he used – Escaleras del Rey.

We also visited the small hall where candidates read their theses, a little hall with spectacular ceramic tiles by Zuloaga, and finally the historical library, with obsolete but cool volumes. The library also dates back from the 19th century, with the walls covered in wooden shelves, with a small metal staircase to access the upper balcony. Unfortunately both this one and the one in the museum were cordoned off.

Library in ETSIME. It is a large room with cedar wood shelves from floor to ceiling, and a spiral staircase.

The visit ended at the lecture hall on building M2, one of the few remaining areas of the original design. It is a marble room with wooden benches and decorated windows that represent the original subjects taught to Mining Engineers. After we were left off, we sat down at the cafeteria for a drink.

Lecture hall in ETSIME (Madrid). It's a marble room, rather dark, with smoked windows representing different subjects of the Mining Engineering Degree

We recharged batteries, and then we had a look at the stands on the first floor of the M1 building, alongside the collection of apparatus that they had. Afterwards, we decided to separate in order to do shopping. Expominerales hosted over 30 stands, national and international.

Expominerales. A view of the ETSIME cloister from the second floor, showing different stands and lots of people peering curiously

I, being the nerd that I am, got myself a tiny slice of iron meteorite (from Geoterra Minerals), a mosasaur fossilised tooth (from Carlos Hammann, who also had amazing megalodon teeth that I will never be able to afford), a decent-sized of recrystallised bismuth (from Rossell Minerals), and a small piece of black tourmaline (from The MineralShop) – all for 51€.

Collage: a fossilised tooth, a bit of mineral in metallic colours, a slice of meteorite with silver orthogonal markings, and a bit of shiny black rock

When we met again, it was a bit past 13:30. There were too many people by then – families had started arriving, so we decided to leave. We had booked at a nearby restaurant for lunch, and they did not mind accommodating us a little earlier. The restaurant, called DeAtún Ponzano specialises in tuna dishes – particularly Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus), sustainably caught in the Straight of Gibraltar.

Before overfishing was even a thing, Phoenicians settled in the south-west of Spain somewhere between the 9th and 7th centuries BCE – the city of Cádiz, credited as being the longest-standing city in Europe, may have been the first port. The Phoenicians observed that the bluefin tuna migrated from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean every year around the same dates, and later they came back to the ocean. These guys came up with a very simple technique – that was later developed further by the Romans and perfected in the Islamic period: the almadraba.

An almadraba is a portable but complex net which is lowered for the migration period. The bigger fish are funnelled into a box-like construction, and the smaller ones swim right through it. Once the almadraba is full, a number of fishing boats lift it in a process called levantada (raising). Expert fishermen walk onto the nets, discard any small specimen that might have been trapped, and choose the tuna that will be sold, generally individuals heavier than 200 kg.

Since the fish are selected on a case by case basis, the amount of both the catch and by-catch is small in comparison to other fishing methods. Both the seasonality and craftsmanship of the whole process make it much more sustainable than others – of course, this also causes fewer pieces in the market, which in turn increases the price. Furthermore, all the fish are wild, hand-picked, and only bled out when they are loaded onto the ship. Thus, the quality is extremely high. Another factor that makes almadraba-caught tuna more expensive is the fact that walking onto the levantada is dangerous. Fishermen have been seriously hurt by struggling tuna, as some of the fish might weigh up to 500 kg.

Working almost exclusively high-quality tuna means that DeAtún is not a restaurant on the cheap side of things. I’ve actually traced down their tuna provider and the prices are rather cost-adjusted for almadraba-caught tuna. There’s another thing to consider, too, which is that the Spanish law forces restaurants to freeze fish that is going to be served either raw or quasi-raw, at least for 24 hours at a temperature under -20 ºC – this is done to destroy a fish parasite called Anisakis, which can cause stomach distress and serious allergic reactions. Apparently, the perfect temperature to keep the tuna properties is -60 ºC. So yay Anisakis-safe almadraba-caught tuna all year round (though it’s true that the freezing law makes it impossible to eat fresh tuna raw).

We got a welcome tapa of boiled potatoes with olive oil and herbs (“papas aliñás”), a favourite from southwestern of Spain, the same area where the almadraba tuna are caught. We shared some European anchovies (Engraulis encrasicolus) “anchoas del Cantábrico” with tomato and toasted bread. These anchovies are salted for at least six months, cleaned, and stored in olive oil. They have a strong flavour, and are not everyone’s cup of tea, but I adore them. We also shared a portion of “ortiguillas” (Mediterranean snakelocks sea anemone Anemonia sulcata, battered and fried), also typical of the south-west – I’ve never been much of a fan though.

Lunch at DeAtún. Collage with a potato salad, anchovies and battered seafood balls

Finally, as my tuna preference is raw, I was wondering whether I wanted sashimi or tartar. In the end, I decided to try a combo (“trio DeAtún”): tuna sashimi (slices), tuna tartar (dice) and tuna tataki (heat-sealed slices), with a side taste of different sauce emulsions – wasabi, kimchi and curry. The tuna cuts used for these preparations (descargamento and tarantelo) would be the otoro or toro Japanese cuts, which are appropriate for raw preparations – technically the best ones, fatty or very fatty meat. I don’t love tataki, thus my original reticence to try this combo, but it was good. My favourite bit was the sashimi though, the tartar was missing a bit of spice.

I was offered chopsticks to eat the dish, and I accepted – easier to handle the fish. That apparently made the maître think that I had been the one choosing the restaurant, because in his words I “seemed to be an expert, chopsticks and all”. That was hilarious – I mean, why offer chopsticks if you don’t expect them to be accepted? For the record, although I booked the table, I did not choose the restaurant – it would have been a little on the “too fancy” side for me. The truth is, there were a bunch of very-elaborated dishes that we decided to give a miss, and we went for the raw tuna.

Lunch at DeAtún. A plate with three tuna cuts. The centre is round, and rose-like, and the sides are extended on a line. The fish is uncooked and it looks dark red. There's a similar dish in the background, with more cuts

Desserts were okay, but not the reason we had chosen this place. The point was eating tuna – raw tuna in my case – and the restaurant delivered. I was however amused by tables around us refusing the raw options even when the chef himself came out to greet them and recommend the dishes (someone over there must have been an acquittance, I don’t really know). Finally, we set back home to compare treasures and plot going back to Expominerales in its 2024 edition – at a time where we can snatch some discounted rocks.

3rd & 4th February 2023: Final Fantasy Distant Worlds 35th Anniversary – Coral – in Barcelona (Spain)

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3rd February 2023: Mummies, fish, and music

Though I would not have minded to become a gamer back in the day, my joint issues discouraged this. Thus, my relation with the Final Fantasy saga is tangential. However, my sibling is a big fan of one of the instalments, and last year I accompanied them to Final Fantasy VII Remake Orchestra World Tour in Barcelona in 2021. Having had more time to prepare for this one, we got VIP tickets, and I planned a two-day outing.

Our arrival in Barcelona happened right on schedule, and we walked from the station to Caixa Forum Barcelona to see the exhibit Momias de Egipto. Redescubriendo seis vidas – Egyptian mummies; Rediscovering six lives, in collaboration with the British Museum. I am not sure whether the items are part of the actual collection over there or are in the archives, because I don’t really remember seeing any of the mummies. The Barcelona exhibits focus around six mummies and how they lives could have been before their deaths. Aside from the actual mummies and their sarcophagi or coffins, there are objects that they may have used in life, and images of what the bodies look like inside the wrappings.

It was at the very same time interesting and creepy, everything we can get to know through technology about these poor souls who passed away millennia ago. There was information about their age, illnesses, and objects they had been buried with – god statuettes, jewellery, funerary miniatures… One of the mummies in display was that of a small child with his face painted on the wrapping, that was more than a bit creepy, to be honest.

A collage showing a a mummy and a turquoise wrapping; a sarcophagus; four canope jars; three statuettes: Horus, an ibis, Thoth; close-up of a sarcophagus, with bright colours; a mummy and a plain wooden casket.

We took the underground towards the waterfront to visit L’Aquàrium de Barcelona, located in the harbour. With more than 11,000 animals and 450 species, it is the largest aquarium dedicated to the Mediterranean Sea. It was inaugurated in 1995 and it holds 35 aquariums, including an oceanarium with capacity for almost four million litres of water (36 metres diameter, five metres high) with two tunnels at the bottom. Species-wise, the aquarium does not have anything out of the ordinary, but the size of the tiger sand sharks is impressive. There are a few sharks, some tropical fish, axolotls, frogs… and a very fun sperm-whale room to keep the jellyfish in darkness.

A collage of the aquarium. Seahorse; swimming sharks; anaemone; baby dogfish shark; tiny crustacean similar to a prawn; sand tiger shark; octopus trying to eat the viewers; penguin showing off; fabulous tiny jellyfish

We grabbed an expensive-but-convenient bite to eat at the aquarium itself during some of the feeding events to make sure the cafeteria was empty. AFter we had finished viewing all the exhibits, we went on towards the hotel, which was well-placed between the auditorium and the shopping centre. Since check in had been so bad when we went to the previous Final Fantasy concert, this time we had booked different accommodation, and it was a total 180 – everyone in the hotel was super friendly, and we had zero issues. We procured some sandwiches for dinner, then got ready for the concert.

The Final Fantasy Distant Worlds 35th Anniversary – Coral – directed by Arnie Roth is a compilation of the background pieces from all the Final Fantasy games, from the first (1987) to the latest to date not counting the remakes (Final Fantasy XV, 2016). The concert was held at the CCIB – Centre de Convencions Internacional de Barcelona. We had no idea what time doors would open, but I calculated that an hour should be good for queuing for merch and then get to our seats.

By the time we got to the queue, the concert booklet had already been sold out. When we reached the front, my favourite plush toys were also gone. I decided to get the previous year’s CD in order to get it signed later at the meet & greet event that was included in the ticket we had bought. Looking back, maybe I should have asked for the autographs on the tote bag we got for the spending.

The concert had two halves and an encore, and was… strangely not very coral, for something called so. The choir was placed over to one side, and only did three or four songs – they actually did not show up for the whole first half. The set list was accompanied by projected images on the screen and it was super-impessive to see the first 8-bit games at first compared to what the technology of the latest Advent Children (movie from Final Fantasy VII) managed to create.

    First half

  1. Final Fantasy I~III: Medley 2002
  2. Final Fantasy III: Eternal Wind
  3. Final Fantasy IV: The Red Wings ~ Kingdom of Baron
  4. Final Fantasy IV: Main Theme of Final Fantasy IV
  5. Final Fantasy V: Home, Sweet Home ~ Music Box
  6. Final Fantasy V: A New World
  7. Final Fantasy VI: Phantom Forest ~ Phantom Train ~ The Veldt
  8. Final Fantasy VI: Kids Run Through the City
  9. Final Fantasy I~VI: Battle Medley 2022

    Second half

  10. Final Fantasy VIII: Liberi Fatali
  11. Final Fantasy XI: Ragnarok
  12. Final Fantasy XII: Flash of Steel
  13. Final Fantasy VII: Aerith’s Theme
  14. Final Fantasy XIV: Torn from the Heavens
  15. Final Fantasy XV: Apocalypsis Noctis
  16. Final Fantasy IX: Not Alone
  17. Final Fantasy X: 素敵だね [Suteki da ne] (Isn’t it wonderful?)
  18. Final Fantasy Main Theme with Choir ~ The Definitive Orchestral Arrangement ~

    Encore

  19. Final Fantasy X: Zanarkand
  20. Final Fantasy VII: One-Winged Angel

The concert was all right. I did not feel the general chill I had through the previous one. I really liked Liberi Fatali and One-Winged Angel, but I guess I don’t have enough of an emotional connection with most of the games. Aside from the conductor Arnie Roth, we had composer Yoko Shimomura present, and vocalist RIKKI, who is the original singer of 素敵だね in Japanese, and did the live version.

Collage. Three pictures show a classical orchestra with different things projected on the screen behind them - the logo of Distant worlds, several 8-bit screenshots of games, a very realistic depiction of a blond man with a very unrealistic sword. The last picture shows singer RIKKI, composer Yoko Shimomura and conductor Arnie Roth

The M&G was fun, and I got to tell Roth that when I grow up I want to have as much fun as he does at work. They signed autographs and took pictures with people – it was much less stiff than the usual, too. We headed off afterwards for a sandwich, a shower and a good night’s sleep. In general though, not much value for money considering how much more expensive the VIP tickets were, even though the seats were good. Also, the fact that most merchandising sold out showed poor planning.

Collage. The ticket reading the name of the concert, the autographs of the three main artists, and a plush of a Final Fantasy imaginary being, it looks like a white teddy bear with a huge pink nose, a red ball on top of it and cute wings

4th February 2023: Ramen with Friends

We had bed and breakfast at the hotel, and the latter was fantastic. The buffet had both a juice bar and a milk bar – both of which I sampled, of course. I overdid it with the fried egg, I fear, but they were just cooked and it looked just too appetizing not to fall for one. After breakfast, we packed up, vacated the room, and asked the hotel to keep our bags for a couple of hours. We went to the science museum Museu de Ciències Naturals NAT, where we spent a couple of hours. This is the only place where they refused to speak Spanish to us.

The museum is divided in several areas. The first one is “history of the Earth”, where you can see a few interactive exhibits, fossils and reproductions. The second one is the collection of living animals, most of the stuffed, some of them just skeletons. There was another one about fungi – with the edible ones exhibited in tins. Then there was one on plants, and finally rocks and minerals. Not a bad place to spend a couple of hours, but it is just one of those places that takes itself much more seriously than it should, to the point that it felt pretentious. Some items were exhibited over and over again, as if they just wanted to use up the room – I counted at least eight elbaite specimens in different locations, and there were a bunch of reproductions taking up important spaces, you would believe they were originals if not paying lots of attention to the writing, and the blue light made for horrid photographs.

Collage. Four pictures show prehistoric animals in blue light, stuffed animals, a tin of mushrooms along real specimens, a red algae and some shiny rocks.

We transited to Sants train station to drop off my sibling’s bag at the cloakroom there and went on to meet my Barcelona friends E**** and P***o who had offered to take us to eat really-real Japanese ramen. Since I had a feeling that the restaurant would be on the small-ish side, and my sibling’s luggage was a bit oversized since they had cosplayed for the concert, I decided on the Sants detour for convenience.

The restaurant is called KOBUTA ramen i més (Kobuta Ramen and More) and I was amused when all of us made the same choice – tonkotsu miso ramen with an extra of half an egg, and water; then we shared some gyoza (dumplings) and karaage (fried chicken). The restaurant is not cheap, but the food makes up for that, it is very authentic Japanese food.

Collage. A dish of breaded fried chicken, some dumplings, and a bowl of ramen, with the ingredients floating - algae, half an egg, noodles, pork meat and spring onion

Though P***o had to leave early, the rest of us headed off towards the bullfighting-ring-turned shopping centre Arenas de Barcelona. There, we climbed up the terrace for views, then sat down for drinks and a long chat. We also popped into the local comic store, since it was convenient, and eventually we headed off to the station.

Collage. Shopping centre las Arenas, a round building that used to be a bullfighting ring, there are two pictures, one by daylight and another one at night, lit up. There's a picture of the views- two clock towers leading to a palace; finally three glasses together showing brightly coloured drinks - yellow, orange and dark pink

The train ride home was surreal. People playing music on their phones, yelling, talking loudly and making the footrests squeak – apparently there had been some kind of sporting event for kids and a lot of families were coming back home. All in all, not a bad couple of days, lots of laughs, I got to see dear friends and eat nice food, and listen to cool music – in the CCIB, not on the train.

24th September 2022: Manzanares el Real & Alcalá de Henares (Spain)

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My friend, whom I had not seen since January 2020 as the pandemic kept us apart, dropped by for a visit as she was in the area. Since the weather forecasting had not been promising, I had not booked anything, but given her a bunch of options to do. She was particularly taken by the castle in Manzanares El Real, a town in the Madrid area, so we drove there.

The palace-castle Castillo Nuevo de Manzanares El Real was built in the late 15th century as a replacement of the previous one by the House of Mendoza. The noble family was given control over the area the previous century, and after a hundred years living in the older castle, the new one was commissioned to Juan Guas, who designed the building in a on a Romanesque-Mudejar style. It was built in granite stone, with Isabelline Gothic decoration, mixing defensive / military, palatial and religious architecture. It was inhabited for about a century before it was abandoned. The castle was declared a Cultural Monument in 1931, and it has undergone several restorations. In 1961, it was used as shooting location for Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren’s “El Cid” film.

Considered one of the best-preserved castles in the Madrid area, the building it has four towers, six floors, and a central patio. It holds a collection of tapestries, and most of it can be walked. Unfortunately, the towers cannot be climbed, but you can walk around the walls, both in the terraced gallery and outside. It was a bit overpriced, but well-worth the visit.

Collage showing the castle. It is reddish with hard corners and rounded towers. The decoration is white and ornate.

We made a pause for lunch and tried the best wild asparagus (Asparagus acutifolius) that I have had in ages – just grilled with salt and lemon. We had some croquettes too.

Plate of perfectly-round croquettes and some crisps in the middle + plate of roasted green wild asparagus

As we had walked into the village for lunch, we only had to walk a little further to find the ruins of the original castle Castillo Viejo de Manzanares el Real. At the moment, only the foundations can be seen, though it is similar to the new one. The archaeological excavation started in the year 2022, but nothing much is known of it, except this one was an actual military fortress that predates the new castle. From there, the views of the new castle and the local church make a nice skyline of sorts.

Foundations of the old castle. Not much is seen, there is a sign reading "Old Castle Archaeological Excavation"

View of Manzanares el Real, showing modern roofs, the church tower, and the castle in the furthest background

It was still early in the afternoon, so I suggested stopping by Alcalá de Henares. I wanted to make a stop at a shop to check for something, but after a quick visit to the shopping centre, we moved on to what is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting buildings in town – the small palace house Palacete Laredo. Built in the Neo-Mudejar style, it is a bizarre combination of mosaics, moorish-like decorations, and vibrantly-coloured windows that somehow work, somehow. Though only about half of the building can be visited, I just find it bizarrely alluring. My friend loved it. Furthermore, the building has a few Complutensian Polyglot Bibles in display – the first polyglot edition of the Christian Holy book, published in the 16th century under the patronage of the Cardinal Cisneros, a key figure in local history.

Palacete Laredo: exterior and interior decorations + close up of the open bible, in Latin and Hebrew

We continued on, and walked round the city. We saw two back-to-back weddings at the cathedral Santa e Insigne Catedral-Magistral de los Santos Justo y Pastor – that meant we could not snoop into the cathedral, but we did see one of the brides arrive in a Rolls Royce.

Finally, we dropped by the archaeological museum Museo Arqueológico Regional, which has opened a very interesting new palaeontology ward – holding reproductions and real fossils of animals that used to live in the Madrid area, with a few coming from the palaeontological site of Cerro de los Batallones – most interestingly a Tetralophodon longirostris and a Machairodus aphanistus sabretooth cat.

Skeletons and skulls: mastodon, giant prehistoric giraffe that looks similar to a humongous goat, and sabretooth cat

We did a little more shopping afterwards, and eventually we drove off into the sunset… and the traffic. We ended up walking for 12.47 km (19078 steps), and driving for a good three hours, though M40 was so busy it actually felt like much much longer.

12th August 2022: Stones, the reason for the trip. Lots of Stones {England, August 2022}

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I was convinced I’d sleep like the dead and set a couple of alarms. Unfortunately, laundry and house service got going at 6:30, and woke me up. At least, the room had a kettle and some instant coffee which, along with one of the sandwiches I had procured the previous day, got me going. I made sure that the camera was charged, put everything I needed into the backpack and strolled off. My hotel was close to Earl’s Court, and I was walking to South Kensington to check out sandwich and coffee shop. And – to my eternal surprise – to queue for a museum! I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people waiting for a museum to open in my life.

I’m referring to the Natural History Museum, one of my favourite ones. This time, it was a must, so I booked free entry with the special exhibition – “Dippy is Back”. Dippy is the diplodocus cast replica that used to stand in the middle of the museum, the Hintze Hall (where now the whale skeleton hangs). Dippy was the first of its kind to go on display in the world. The original skeleton was discovered in 1898 by railroad workers in an area called Sheep Creek, in Wyoming, USA. At the time, Andrew Carnegie had made a fortune in the American steel industry, and become one of the most important philanthropists in the US and the British Empire. He paid for casts of the bones to be made (some sources also say that he bought the actual skeleton, some that he had sponsored the dig) and sent to museums in Europe and South American. For the first time the public got to see a whole dinosaur skeleton, which was actually named Diplodocus carnegii after Carnegie. Dippy was gifted to the National History Museum in 1905, and was exhibited there until it went “on tour” around the United Kingdom in 2017.

Here is a little trip down memory lane: back in the mid-nineties I was a teenager in London with my English class. We had free time and they wanted to go to Harrods, so… instead I got myself into the Tube to go to the Natural History Museum just to see this dinosaur (I also ditched the group in the British Museum, but that’s another tale). The point was that I was around 14 or 15, bouncing through London by myself, on my way to see this very cool dinosaur! And I did not have to listen to people being rowdy, nor try to keep the peace in group – I was alone (scared out of my skin, true), but I was free by myself. And for me, that was very important, even if I would not come to realise that until recently.

The fossilised skeleton of a diplodocus, seen from the front. Lots of people are trying to take pictures with it

I saw Dippy again in 2011 when I went to London, but I was surprised when he was not there in 2018, shipped around the country in a travelling exhibition. For some reason, knowing that it was there made me really, really want to see it again. Since the pandemic, you need to reserve at ticket at the Natural History Museum, even if it’s free, so I booked mine for 10:00, to be there first thing as they opened – thus the queuing-before-opening.

Originally a gallery of the British Museum, the Natural History Museum was first designed by civil engineer Captain Francis Fowke, and then it was revised by Alfred Waterhouse, who redesigned the façades in a Romanesque-like style, with architectural terracotta tiles to withstand the British weather. These tiles have flora and fauna decoration and reliefs. The building was finished in 1880, and all the material had been moved by 1883. In the 20th century, the museum rebranded itself as a separate entity from the British Museum, and in recent years different areas and expansions have been opened.

Anyhow. The gates opened a little before 10:00 (If I lived in London I would totally be a member and stroll the museum before opening hours), and the queue started moving. There were lines for ticket holders and non-ticket holders, but my ticket was not even checked. Thus, I just moved towards the area where Dippy was and spent a while there. I felt a little emotional, thinking that, in a way, I owe that dinosaur one.

After seeing Dippy, I wandered around the dinosaur gallery for some time, then I went to buy a sandwich and have a coffee and a painkiller, because I had a long day ahead of me and my head was buzzing a little – I needed to get that under control beforehand. At 11:40 I took a coach with a company called Anderson Tours for an organised day trip: Stonehenge Special Access – Evening. Even though I am not too keen on guided tours, I will admit that they can be handy at some particular circumstances. They will never become my preferred choice of travel, in this case, choosing a tour was the best option.

Regarding Stonehenge, if you want to get up close and personal with the stones, you need a VIP ticket, which means you have to be there before they open to the general public, or after they close, and for that you need transportation – either a taxi, or renting a car, and a hotel as close as possible. The Stonehenge VIP ticket is around £50, and I booked my tour for £135, a full-day tour, including coach, Stonehenge at sunset, and two other destinations, with pick up and drop-off near my London hotel. In the end, that was cheaper than a taxi or a rental plus a hotel near the site (I did a lot of maths before deciding to book this). Anderson Tours offers different combinations of “Stonehenge and…”, with places like Bath or Bristol. However, those are easily reachable by train, and I can explore them on my own. Nevertheless, there was a particular trip that interested me – it went along two or three spots that are a bit off the beaten track, and related to the theme – a Neolithic tomb and another stone circle. This particular tour happens only on certain specific Fridays, thus why my “weekend” away was not such a weekend, as I had to make sure I was in London on the 12th.

The first stop of the day was West Kennet Long Barrow. A long barrow is an elongated prehistoric (3800 – 3500 BCE) stone monument that has been linked to the worship of the dead and the ancestors. Sometimes, human remains have been found in them. If one imagines what Great Britain was at that time, the south-east area would be the one with less tree coverage, and therefore the best option for primitive people who had started to settle and use agriculture. The counties of Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Somerset and Dorset have a lot of chalk-rich soil (the Salisbury Plain), which makes it difficult for tress to root and grow. Thus, it would have been easy for the primitive humans to settle and build their villages and monuments. Today, the whole area is known as Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site, listed by Unesco in 1986, and it includes over 700 prehistoric monuments from the Neolithic and Bronze Age.

Collage: elongated mound of dirt on top. On the borrom, the gate. On the left the protective slabs, standing upright, and on the right, the entrance. It is a construction of vertical walls made from grey slabs and another slab on top. The interior is dark.

West Kennet Long Barrow is situated in the middle of a farm. There is a tiny parking lot to the side of the road, and a fifteen-minute walk to the barrow itself. It is one of the largest built in Britain, and around 50 sets of remains have been identified, along with pottery, beads and other personal items. Around 2000 BCE, it was closed down and barricaded, then discovered in the 19th century and scientifically excavated and restored in 1956. It is private property under the care of British Heritage. Apparently, all these sites have become a point of pilgrimage for neo-pagans, and on this day, there was a bunch of them chanting inside the barrow…

On the opposite side of the road from the barrow stands Silbury Hill, a mound or artificial mountain. It stands 30 metres high, with 160 metres in diameter wide, and it is estimated that half a million tonnes of material (mostly local chalk) were used to build it throughout several generations of humans. It cannot be climbed, due to a collapse a while back, that would have been neat!

View of a small hill and dry grass.

After that, we headed off to the village of Avebury, which hosts the largest Neolithic stone circle, with smaller circles inside. It originally had over 100 stones, and it might have built between 2850 and 2200 BCE. Today there is a village in the area, with a few shops and museums in the centre, and a lot of sheep grazing the area. Around three quarters of the circle is still standing, along the henge (long ditch that used to be built with the stones in Neolithic circles).

We had two and a half hours in Avebury – a bit too much, I would say – to explore the Avebury Stone Circle and Henge and its sheep. The guide told us about ley lines and trees that were supposed to have inspired Tolkien’s Ents from “The Lord of the Rings”, and I needed to ask about the geology of the stones – here I learnt that they are made out of sarsen, like the Stonehenge ones. Sarsen refers to silicified sandstone blocks, common in the area, and it has been proven that the ones used in the megaliths come from Marlborough Downs, some 25 km away (35 km from Stonehenge). Once we were dismissed for our “free time”, I walked along the three fourths of stone circle remaining.

A collage showing different megaliths from the Avebury stone circle. Small pillars mark the spots where the stones have been lost. There are some sheep grazing on dry grass.

There are other places to visit in town, such as a Medieval manor with a dovecote. The stables of the manor are the site of the archaeological museum is hosted, and here I made a mistake. I should have got in, but I wanted to visit the church, and by the time I was done, the museum was closing down. Live and learn. There is also a tiny chapel, and a lot of souvenir and “crystal” shops.

The Church of Saint James dates back to the 1000s, though later centuries saw the addition of many items, such as the aisles and the 15th-century wooden roof. The nave and the chancel are separated by a one-of-a-kind wooden rood / screen with an original 13th century base. There are Saxon windows and a Norman font. It is a fantastic little church.

Gothic church, from the outside. The inside shows a wooden Normand altar, the standard altar, and a carved stone baptismal font

Finally, the time came. At 17:30 we met up on the way to the coach, and then we started off towards the highlight of the day – Stonehenge. Stonehenge was erected between 3000 and 2000 BCE – the primitive human somehow got the sarsen stones into Salisbury plain and planted them so they stood in a circle. They measure up to four metres long, and some of them are arranged in the shape of trilithons – two large vertical stones (posts) support a third one (lintel) which is set horizontally on top of them, with carved studs so the structure fits like a snap. There is a tear-shaped monolith standing a few metres away called “Heel stone”, which marks the entrance.

Some of them are indeed collapsed now and some are covered in lichen – there is a special type of lichen that only grows in three places in the world, and that is one of them. For thousand of years, these stones have remained standing, and the first historical study of them dates from 1666, carried out by an English antiquary, natural philosopher and writer John Aubrey, and has been restored a several times, especially during the 20th century, when they were roped off and a fee charged for entry.

Currently, the stone circle belongs to the Queen of England, and according to the British Ancient Monuments Bill, it cannot be touched or altered in any way that is not to preserve its current status. In 2020, a core taken from the stones during the 1958 restoration was returned. This allowed researchers to analyse the composition and prove that the megaliths are indeed sarsen from the Malborough area.

The rules when you are allowed into the stone are “simple”: do not touch the stones, do not step on the stones, do not hug the stones, do not lick the stones, do not get naked among the stones. Judging by the tone in the guide’s voice, all that has happened before. Apparently, there are a lot of ley-line believers, neopagans and neodruids wanting to “connect” with the earth energy there (there is even a “yoga at sunset group”). In a kind of compromise, they allow you to take off your shoes and socks – which I did not do.

According to archaeologists, Stonehenge was designed in alignment the Winter Solstice sunset. The site was probably a celebration of the end of the worst of the winter before days started getting longer again. Other theories propose that it was originally a burial site that became a place to worship the ancestors.

The great thing about the after-hours tour is that you get to see the sunset around the site. Our timing was 18:45 – 19:45. The guide was nice too, and gave us “permission” to wander around and did not expect to listen to him all the time – don’t tell me twice. I explored and wandered to my heart’s content. We stayed there for about an hour, and it was really cool. I mean, not magical or “I feel the magic of the earth” or anything, but the circle is a fantastic piece of engineering, especially considering it was built five thousand years ago, before writing was even invented. Sometimes, humans are neat.

Stonehenge collage. Two shots of the megaliths standing on dry grass, from the outside; the sun shines between the darkened stones. One shot from the inside of the circle, showing the megaliths circling inwards.

It was over sooner than I would have liked, but about an hour later we were back on the bus after hitting the souvenir shop – where I got a guidebook – and we arrived in London around 22:00. When I got off the bus I just walked to the hotel, had my sandwich. Good thing I had left the window open, too, as it made the temperature slightly more tolerable – I own up though, I slept with the fan on, but… like a rock. Or a stone.

Walking distance: 11.96 km / 18742 steps
Coach distance: 317 km

11th August 2022: 21 hours straight of ups and downs in London {England, August 2022}

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The first thing I had to do was waking up for a 6:30 flight – though considering I did not sleep very much that night due to the heat, I’m not sure if that it counts as waking up. The previous day, the airline had sent warning emails about arriving at the airport early – three hours before the flight would have meant being there at 3:30, so… not really. I arrived at the airport around 5:10, and I was at the gate by… 5:20, I’m not even kidding. While I normally do not queue to enter planes – the advantages of backpacks, I just kick them under the seat – I had been assigned seat 1A, which meant I had to put my luggage into the overhead compartment. I had decided to take a small backpack too, because I would be carrying it around for a while, and it would get searched in a couple of places.

Surprisingly, despite Brexit, the Ryanair strikes, airport chaos, and the fact that apparently the automatic passport reader cannot cope with my new look, I made it into the United Kingdom first and straight to London without a glitch. Not only that, I managed to get my Oyster recharged without any problems, and as soon as I had bought some food, I was on my way to the first stop of the day: Crystal Palace Park, for which I got to ride the shiny new underground line, the Elizabeth Line, then the Overground. Even though there are another couple of landmarks (that might warrant a visit when / if the restoration project finally goes through), what interested me in Crystal Palace was a collection of Victorian sculptures – the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs.

Though Ancient Greek already knew about fossils before the current era, it was in the 19th century when it hatched as a “science”, according to some spurred by Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”. Fossil hunters ran amok, excavating and spoiling the North American badlands. In England itself, Mary Anning kept discovering cool things. There was a sort of a “Dinosaur fever” – the Victorians became fascinated with all things prehistoric. In 1852, a number of extinct animal reconstructions were commissioned to be erected in the gardens of the Crystal Palace, after the World Exhibition. Using the knowledge available at the time, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkings, a natural history illustrator and sculptor, who did his best according to scientific knowledge at the time.

Not all the animals represented are real dinosaurs, but the nickname stuck. From today’s standards, most of the reproductions are extremely inaccurate, with some exceptions, such as the ichthyosaur (discovered by Mary Anning around 1811), and the plesiosaur (of which Mary Anning also found a skeleton in 1823, and then another in 1830 – I love that woman). Today, the park is organised in several “islands” where you can see the sculptures, though the water was a bit down due to the heatwaves:

  • Amphibians and therapsids: Dicynodon and Labyrinthodon
  • Marine reptiles: Ichthyosaur, Mosasaurus, Plesiosaur and Teleosaurus
  • Dinosaurs and pterosaurs: Hylaeosaurus, Iguanodon, Megalosaurus and Pterosaur
  • Mammals: Palaeotherium, Anoplotherium, Megaloceros and Megatherium

I have been aware of these sculptures for a long time – since I was a child and started liking dinosaurs. However, only recently did I find out that they really existed, and where they were. I arrived at Crystal Palace station a little after ten (making whole travel from the airport about two hours). I walked by a small farm with typical fauna such as… an alpaca, then I ate my sandwich overseeing the first island.

A collage showing differet statues of prehistoric creatures. Some try to be dinosaurs, and they look almost comically wrong, like giant iguanas or chameleons. There is one plesiosaurus looking rather acurate - it has a long neck and flipers. Finally, some mammals: a deer with huge antlers and a tiny horse-looking creature

I walked around for about an hour and then I set on my way back. Though I had planned to have a relaxed day at first, I had to adjust due to cancellations and train strikes. It was around that time that I calculated that I could actually cram my original Thursday and Saturday plans onto Thursday, plus the alternative plans I had made if I tweaked the time a little. So I back-rode for another hour towards the city.

Near Tower Hill stands the Sky Garden, on the 35th floor of the 20 Fenchurch Street building, designed by Rafael Viñoly. Sky Garden is considered the highest garden in London, and a fantastic viewpoint of the city. I almost accidentally came across the option to book a free access ticket for this – while I had not wanted to pay for any morning / early afternoon activities in case my plane was delayed, I figured out that I could book this for free, especially as they go stupidly fast! I made my 12:30 timeslot with a few minutes to spare, but I was let in after a queue, ID check, X rays and metal detection.

The Sky Garden features two terraces full of plants (landscaped by Gillespies), a couple of restaurants and bars, and an “open” gallery which has glass above your head so the feeling of opening dissipates – the glass is stained and scratched. It was one of the “must-do’s” in London I had never visited before, so I thought it would be a good opportunity. Fortunately, they have relaxed the rules on no bottles because of the unusual high temperatures.

After wandering around for a bit, I continued onto Saint Dunstan in the East Church Garden, the ruins of an old Wren church destroyed by The Great Fire of London and destroyed again during the Blitz (World War II bombings). Dating back to the 1100s, it was opened as a public park in 1970. Aside from being a very cute building park I wanted to see for a while, a music video by the band VAMPS was filmed there.

Ruins of a gothic church turned garden, with hanging ivy and bushes overgrowing the walls and windows

As it was lunchtime, the park was bustling with people, so I just had to move on rather quickly, and went back to the underground to get to the area of Westminster. I had originally booked tickets for Saturday (back in May) but then they were cancelled due to “repair work” going on that day (I do wonder if it was a security measure related to the strikes though).

But of course, first I feasted my eyes on the very new Elizabeth Tower clock tower aka Big Ben – though Big Ben is one of the bells in the tower, but nobody really cares about that any more.

Elizabeth Tower, shining gold with the restoration. It almost looks fake. The clock marks Quarter to two.

The Palace of Westminster or Houses of Parliament is the centre of the United Kingdom’s turbulent political life. The current palace was built after the previous one was destroyed by a fire in 1834. The new palace was erected in the Neo-Gothic style, and it was mostly finished by 1860, although it did open to be used in 1835. There was a competition regarding the design, which was won by sir Charles Barry. The Palace of Westminster holds the two chambers where the British government meets – the House of Lords and the House of Commons – alongside the Norman Porch, St. Stephen’s chapel, and the different corridors where the MPs vote or discuss state matters. I’ll forever be amused that “for security reasons, photography is not permitted in these chambers with dozens of cameras for TV broadcasting and Internet streaming”, but alas. The woodwork on the Norman Porch ceiling is fantastic, and some of the decoration choices, such as Churchill’s sculpture are… interesting. It is noteworthy that it is part of the Unesco Heritage Site “Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey and St Margaret’s Church”.

Collage: a view of the houses of parliament (London), with the Elizabeth Tower on the left. Two shots of the Norman Hall, a huge ward with an intrincate design of wooden ceiling. A gothic corridor with a wooden door and some coloured glass panels

Afterwards, I just found my way to the hotel – though I had to wander a little to find the nearby supermarket, bugger those never-ending attached-house neighbourhoods, rested for a little and then went to the station to go to the theatre – I wanted some extra time to check out where my airport coach would leave, so I gave myself 45 minutes for a 22-minute trip. It turns out there was train trouble and I was barely on time, taking an alternative route instead of the direct one.

When I realised my flight timing would give a free evening in London, I booked tickets for the Apollo Victoria Theatre to watch the “Wicked”. This musical tells the story of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” from the point of view of the witches, and somehow gives the “Wicked Witch from the West”, Elphaba, an amazing personality and backstory that resonates a lot with me. For the same price as the ticket I was eyeing back in the day, I found a VIP upgrade just one seat over, so I was entitled to a drink and “snacks”, an early entry, along with access to the “Ambassador Lounge”, a tiny reception hall with access to a private restroom.

“Wicked” was great. The actress who plays the main character, Elphaba (Lucie Jones) came out a little yelly though in her solos. The duets with the other female singer (Glinda, Helen Woolf) were fantastic, and the male love interest’s (Fiyero, Ryan Reid) song was absolutely great, even though he is a character I have never cared for.

Apollo Victoria Theatre: the inner theatre, showing a dragon and a closed curtain showing a map of Oz. The outer theatre: there is a sign reading Apollo Victoria Wicked, and everything is lit green. The VIP lounge, with a glass of soda, and some chairs. The cast at the end of the show, taking their goodbye bows.

By the time I was out, the trains were running again, and one-to-three-minute delay on a line that runs every five minutes or so, and I was at the hotel by 23:00, absolutely beat. The room was extremely hot, because London is absolutely not ready for heat, so I had a snack in front of the fan, took a shower and then got some sleep – 21 hours on the go were over. Funnily enough, by the time I went to bed, I had that wobbly-world jet-lag feeling I have after my first day in Japan. It must have been the barely sleeping the night before. I fell asleep very fast.

Walking distance: 30.52 km / 46192 steps

21st August 2021: Fossil tracks and Roman ruins {Spain, summer 2021}

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Enciso is a couple of hours away from Sos del Rey Católico, but to be honest it is barely even on the map. It is a tiny little village in the area of La Rioja that I had not even heard of a year ago. But at some point during this year I became aware of it – and its palaeontological importance as it is the reference point for a dozen or so sites where ichnites have been found. Ichnites or fossil tracks are marks left by dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals on the mud that eventually become fossilised. In this little village in the middle of nowhere there are around 1,400 dinosaur foot tracks. When we were in Albarracín, we saw a bunch of fossils from the time Spain was submerged under the ocean. During the Mesozoic, the area of La Rioja, and the neighbouring Soria (Castilla y León), were somewhat swampy, which lead to a lot of mud. When dinosaurs and other animals moved through the mud, they left trails that sometimes became fossilised.

Our first stop in the village was the palaeontological museum Centro Paleontológico de Enciso . This one we could have skipped – it has next to no original pieces, and it basically just has a few infographics and reproductions of different types of dinosaur legs, but we had to start somewhere.

We visited two fossil track sites. The first one was a long strip of rock called Yacimiento de Valdecevillo . In this site, there are tracks of theropods (carnivores with three fingers, usually bipeds that left clawy marks), ornithopods (herbivores with three fingers, also bipeds, that left somewhat more rounded tracks), and sauropods (four-legged dinosaurs with less-defined fingers). Some of the tracks are very easy to identify (especially the ones fenced off), others are chalked on, and sometimes they even cross each other.

Next to the rock formation, a few reproductions have been built, in order to illustrate what dinosaurs roamed the area. A family of iguanodon has been clearly identified. The sauropod looks like a generic brachiosaurus, but it could have been a turiasaurus, even. I have to say though that the carnivore theropod needs a bit of an update – but it looked adorably like those that they drew when I was a kid back in the 80s. Oh, and we also saw a real-life present-day minisaurus (aka lizard, maaaaaaaybe Spanish psammodromus Psammodromus hispanicus).

It was too hot to walk around the trail, so we hopped onto the car and drove off to the other site, Yacimiento de la Virgen del Campo.
In this formation you can “feel” the mud – the rock has ripples (water marks), and here is even a small mud collapse from an earthquake. Here we saw foot tracks again, marks of skin, and even tail trails left by ancient crocodiles. In this site there are indications of a carnivore attacking a herbivore, represented by 1:1 sculptures (maybe a ceratosaurus and an iguanodon).

Around 13:00 we got back on the car and drove off to the town of Garray for lunch and a rest near the river…s. Río Tera, a smaller current, joins one of the most important rivers in Spain, Río Duero (Douro River) under the unnamed stone bridge.

We managed to have lunch in one of the few restaurants in town, in front of the municipal fountain and the church of Saint John the Baptist Iglesia San Juan Bautista. After lunch we stayed at the river bank for a while before we moved towards our next stop.

The archaeological site of Numantia Yacimiento arqueológico de Numancia holds the remains of a Roman town, built upon an earlier Celtiberian settlement. The Celtiberian town was the centre of a number of hostilities against the Romans in the second century BCE – the Numantine War, the third of the Celtiberian Wars broke out in 143 BCE. After a decade, the Romans sent one of the heroes of the Third Punic war to suffocate the rebellion. The general cut down all the trees in the area and built a barrier around the settlement, in what has been called the Siege of Numantia, in 133 BCE. The town was completely cut off the rest of the world and after eight months of siege, the inhabitants set the town on fire. Most of them committed suicide in order to avoid being taken as slaves.

After the Roman conquerors levelled the ruins, a new town emerged, and a Roman settlement existed in the area between the first and fourth centuries CE. The last remains date back from the sixth century before the town vanished from existence and memory until it was located in the late 19th century.

Today, the site holds remains and patterns for several houses, and it has a reconstructed Roman house, an Iberian house and two pieces of the wall. The most visual building is a Roman house of the later period which still keeps a couple of columns. Unfortunately, this was 16:30 and the guided visit was long and full of useless and dull information – guess who got a sunburnt, even under an umbrella?

When we were done with Numantia, we decided to skip the complementary exhibition in Garray and drove off towards Soria, where we would be staying the night.

The Parador de Soria, our hotel, is the first modern Parador I’ve stayed in, though it stands on the mountain where the castle used to be, and the views were astonishing (I also almost forgot my stamp!!). We had dinner in the parador, which included some freshly-fried torreznos de Soria. Torreznos are a pork-based snack especially typical in the area. The pork belly is marinated with salt and paprika, cured or smoked, and finally fried – delicious but for sure a “sometimes food”. After dinner, we went to our rooms to compare the day-view with the night-view and admire the moon.

Total driven distance: 196 km. Total walking distance: 6.57 km.

19th June 2021: Dino World Expo in Madrid (Spain)

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Upon finding that the exhibit Dino World Expo was opening in Madrid on the 18th, I decided to book myself a ticket for the first pass on Saturday morning, 10 AM. I guessed that it would not be too full since it was the first weekend, early, and before school was out for the summer and all the reviews popped up so everyone found about it and brought their kids.

The exhibit was held in Madrid’s fair grounds, IFEMA Espacio 5.1, a short drive away, and aside a small mishap with setting the Sat-Nav. When I arrived, about 15 minutes later there were about ten families with little kids. I walked around for a little and came back when the doors opened. There were several types of tickets, the basic one was 13.50€. The exhibit included an extra “Virtual Reality experience for 3€” (it was 4€ if you bought it during the exhibit itself), so I decided to get the “premium entry ticket” which for 23.50€ included entry, a printed picture (10€ otherwise), the VR experience, a lanyard and a poster – both of which have been distributed around kids who might have want them.

When my ticket was scanned, the system roared and I was given my “VIP lanyard”, and told that I just had to show it around. Then again, let me tell you that I almost called this post “normalise people doing stuff alone” but that would go into the ranting territory and I did not want to do that – it is enough to say that from the beginning to the end of this exhibit, every staff member gaped at me for being in a dinosaur exhibition alone / without kids.

Upon entrance I got my picture taken, then had to wait a little with a couple of families before me until the first room cleared. We got an explanation about the audio-guide app and the exhibit rules. The exhibition itself was composed mostly of animatronics that moved and roared – when they had remembered to turn them on, some of them were still asleep. Aside from the life-sized animatronics, there was a CGI film and at the end of it, the VR experience which… was okay I guess. I learnt that I am not a VR person, as I got more than a bit queasy from the “flying” with the pterodactyl, swimming with a few anachronic species, and then following the T-Rex hunting.

From the shop I got my picture and the promised poster, although I had to show my ticket, not only the pass, in order to do so. All in all it was a cute little experience, but not really worth a detour if you are not in the area – one day I’ll learn that “for all the family” means “kid-oriented”, but that day was not today. On the way back the Sat-Nav got me confused and I took the wrong exit (“stay left on exit 9A” is not the same as “take exit 9A and then 9B to the left” in my books), but I was home by noon, and of course I took a lot of pictures.

Approach

Entrance

dinosaur animatronics: diplodocus

dinosaur animatronics: carnotasaurus and brontosaurus

dinosaur animatronics: pteranodoon

dinosaur animatronics: iguanodoon and Eustreptospondylus

dinosaur animatronics: feathered dinos

dinosaur animatronics: T-rex and triceratops

23rd & 24th April 2021: Mental Reset Half-weekend: Cuenca (Spain)

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With everything going on, travelling is almost impossible, but the stars aligned for a tiinny bit longer than day trip – from Friday to early Sunday morning, with every precaution possible, of course. We ran away to Cuenca for a day and a fifth. As days are becoming a bit longer, when we arrived there were still a couple of hours of light left. We checked in and dropped off the car at the Parador de Cuenca. The Parador hotel chain might be more expensive than standard accommodation, but truth be told, it is upholding the strictest hygiene protocols, even though their hand disinfectants give me allergies. Truth be told, it was spectacular.

The Parador stands in a repurposed monastery, the old convent of Saint Paul, just at the edge of the historical centre of Cuenca. The hotel has a covered cloister and a newer building, and the adjoint church has been turned into an art centre.

Parador

Room

Gorge

The core of the town stands between two rivers, River Júcar and River Huécar. As the area is rich in karst – calcite rocks, which dissolve in water – the rivers have dug parallel gorges around the historical dwellings. The walled city has been declared a Unesco World Heritage Site and one of the keymost point is the hanging houses, Casas Colgadas (now home to the Museum of Abstract Art). While the houses are now rather unique, they used to be the norm in the 15th century. In order to cross the Huécar gorge Hoz del Huécar, there is a(n also) hanging bridge. The bridge of Saint Paul, Puente de San Pablo, was built at the beginning of the 20th century in the typical cast-iron architecture of the time.

Puente de San Pablo

Looking back to the other side of the bridge, you see deceivingly high hill, Cerro del Socorro, carved out of karst. I say deceiving because when you actually look at it, you’re half-way up, and you can look down to the bottom of the gorge. At the top of the hill stands a religious pillar to the Catholic Sacred Heart, Monumento al Sagrado Corazón.

Cerro del Socorro

Monumento al Sagrado Corazón

Casas Colgadas

We went on walking towards Main Square and the Cathedral of Our Lady of Grace and Saint Julian – Catedral de Santa María y San Julián de Cuenca. The cathedral is one of the earliest Gothic buildings in Spain (although the main façade has been rebuilt in style). However, it is not the typical Spanish Gothic style, but it is more similar to the Norman buildings in the north of Europe. It was unfortunately not open for visiting though (it’s the third time I’ve been to Cuenca and I’ve never been able to walk in (≧▽≦) ).

Catedral de Cuenca

There also stands the Ayuntamiento de Cuenca or town hall, a three-arched Baroque building erected around 1760 after the designs of the architect Jaime Bort. The building closes off the square and is the gateway to a maze of chaotic traffic of one-way streets and directing traffic lights.

Ayuntamiento de Cuenca

We turned towards the gorge, Hoz del Júcar on the other side of the town for a view of the sunset, but the clouds seemed to be hiding it.

Hoz del Jucar

As we continued on, we stopped by a nun convent Convento de las Esclavas. This Catholic nun congregation leads a contemplative life and they are perpetually praying to the Eucharist – at least some of them, as apparently they bake and sell confectionery to sustain themselves. You can see a nun praying in the church, and to be honest for a second I did not realise she was there, it felt like there was a ghost all of a sudden. The building was erected between the 15th and 16th centuries.

Convento de las Esclavas

Convento de las Esclavas

We found the monument to a medieval king Monumento a Alfonso VIII. During the Christian and Muslim wars, the king was the one to conquer Cuenca for the Christians, and assimilated it into the Castilla crown.

Monumento a Alfonso VIII

Another sculpture we found was, conversely, erected to honour the traditional shepherd from one of the old streets in town, a bronze statue named Monumento al pastor de las Huesas del Vasallo and located next to the bridge.

Monumento al Pastor

We also got treated to some nice views as the sun came out the second we turned out backs on it.

Sunset

After dinner – a really good club sandwich in my case, I walked out to take some pictures of the bridge and the hanging houses after dark, expecting them to be lit up… Which they were. I mean, I was really not expecting the green colours.

Night

Casas Colgadas

In the morning we had breakfast at the old dining room of the convent, the refrectorium, which still keeps its old allure.

Refrectorium

Later, we headed out to the local palaeontological museum Museo de Paleontología de Castilla-La Mancha. The museum was inaugurated in 2005, recycling, so to speak, a previous building that overlooks the city of Cuenca. The museum has an inner area with some reproductions and pieces from the different palaeontological sites around the area, and several models of the animals, organised in eras.

MUPA

MUPA

The outer part also holds replicas, and it gives a very Jurassic World feeling for a second, when you take the view with the dinosaurs. We had booked first thing in the morning, so we were leaving when the kid-crowd started to arrive, in order to see both the extinct and the extant dinosaurs (a.m., we found a mallard minding his own business at one of the ponds).

MUPA

We drove back, and unfortunately the Sat-Nav got us lost. However, we dropped the car safely off a the hotel and decided to take the plunge and walk into the museum of Spanish abstract art Museo de arte abstracto Español, home to a number of… works… by Spanish artists from the 1950s and 60s in the Hanging Houses / Casas Colgadas. I… have to admit I am not the biggest fan of abstract art, so I was not terribly impressed – I mean I had been there before and it had not imprinted on me, like at all (≧▽≦).

Museo arte abstracto

After the museum we headed back to the Parador for lunch and some rest – and I have to say that the curd I had tried the last time was nowhere to be found any more. Sad.

cuajada

But not to be deterred, we soon moved to the city museum Museo de Cuenca, which highlights the Roman origins of the city. There are displays from Prehistory to the Middle Ages, but there is either a surprising lack of Muslim artefacts, or they were in the closed-off rooms.

Museo de Cuenca

After this, we wanted to check out one of the churches, and on the way we passed by a viewpoint towards the gorge Hoz del Huécar.

Hoz del Huécar

We also came across the “Christ in the Alleyway” or Cristo del Pasadizo, which is related to the legend of two lovers – he went to war, she stayed behind and moved on, and then everything ended in tears because how dare a woman in Christian Middle-Ages Spain try to be happy. Anyway, here’s the alleyway and the Christ figure.

Cristo del Pasadizo

After that we ended up at another museum of contemporary art, Fundación Antonio Pérez, located in another former convent built in the 17th century. Honestly? It was slightly interesting but mostly claustrophobic. The majority of rooms do not have windows whatsoever and the fact that there is a one-way itinerary due to Covid, and how dry the air was, made it stressing to an almost ridiculous level.

Arte contemporáneo

It was early evening when we came out, and the second we put a foot outside it started pouring, so we headed back – it also made for a few spectacular pictures.

Rain

Rain

Some cool ones were also taken on Sunday morning just before we drove off early because there was stuff to be done throughout the day.

Casas Colgadas + Puente de San Pablo

7th – 10th February 2020: Paris (France) for DIR EN GREY & BABYMETAL

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I organised a weekend in Paris because two concerts conveniently aligned on Saturday and Sunday, and I had Friday free, as well as Monday morning. It was a great mental break that I needed badly. ETA: There were rumours about a flu from China, and some of the airport workers were wearing masks. We had no idea what was about to hit us…

7th February 2020: Through the Strikes

I had found quite a convenient flight that left at 9:00 on Friday for 35 €, which was a great deal. At first, I did not understand why it was so cheap. It turned out, the plane came from South America and it was on a Madrid stopover – so it was pretty much full already. It was a huge aircraft with on-board entertainment. That came in handy when the pilot informed us that we were going to have to wait something between one and two hours to be able to take off due to the air controllers’ strikes in France. But at least we were flying and I had films to watch.

We took off at about 10:00 and our big plane made the jump in just one hour, as opposed to the 2h10 minutes of estimated travel, which meant we were almost on time! Of course, this did not sit well with the strikers, who had us wait first for the parking spot, and then for the stairs to deplane. I finally managed to leave the airport and get onto the train so I reached downtown Paris around 13:00. I wanted to inspect the damage caused to the cathedral Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris by the 2019 fire. My first impression, looking at the main façade and towers, was optimistic, but as I walked round the building, I could see the real damage and reconstruction efforts. Furthermore, it still reeked of burnt wood, probably because they were still pulling out debris. My optimism did not linger long, I’m afraid.

Collage of Notre Dame showing the cranes and scaffoldings in the repairs

As it was sunny, I decided to walk to the Sainte-Chapelle (Holy Chapel) and see its windows in good weather. The Sainte-Chapelle is a small two-level chapel inside the Justice Palace Palais de Justice de Paris in the Île de la Cité, smack in the middle of Paris and not far from Notre Dame – actually, both of them belong to the same Unesco World Heritage Site, Paris, Banks of the Seine. The chapel has a lower early Gothic level, and an upper level with impressive stained-glass windows which I love. As the sun was shining outside, the views were stunning.

Collage. Sainte-Chapelle: outside showing the spire, inside with some colourful windows and pointed arches

Collage of the upper floor of the Sainte-Chapelle. It shows different angles of the long gothic windows, covered in colourful glass

The weather was great – especially considering February in Paris, which is always more to the north than I mentally place it. Unfortunately, the forecast for the following day was quite miserable, and thus I decided to just walk along from the Île de la Cité towards the Arc de Triomphe (some 5 km away). On my way, I walked by the Louvre, Les Tulleries, the Grand Palais, the Petit Palais, the Alexander III Bridge, and into the Avenue des Champs-Élysées – the Banks of the Seine that the Unesco declared World Heritage.

Collage with different landmarks of Paris - the river, neoclassic palaces, Luxor obelisk, Champs-Élysées.

Finally I reached the Arc de Triomphe, which honours the fallen in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. It was commissioned by Emperor Napoleon in 1806, and completed in 1836, and you can actually climb it, which I might do some day. From there, I took a train towards Montmartre, where I had booked my hotel. I dropped off my luggage and walked up Square Louise Michel, a sort of urban park which leads up to the church Basilique du Sacré-Cœur (222 steps). There was a pretty carousel Carrousel de Saint-Pierre, and from the square, I could watch the Eiffel Tower Tour Eiffel against the sunset from the lookout Vue de Paris.

A view of the Sacre Coeur with a classical carousel in front of it

A profile of the Eiffel Tower in a blurry sunset in orange tones

I went back to the hotel for a while during twilight. On the way, I bought a snack in a nearby supermarket for dinner as I waited for the evening to get dark and the lights to come up. When it did, I took my last adventure for the day, and walked off to see the Moulin Rouge while I listened to KAMIJO’s song of the same name. It was a few minutes’ walk away from my hotel, and Moulin Rouge [ムーランルージュ] is one of my favourite songs of his. Since the man is obsessed with France, he has a few songs that fit my weekend. Truth be told, I did consider dinner and a show there, it is after all the most famous cabaret in the world. However, it was a bit expensive and I had read quite a few reviews about bad seats if you are alone. I did not want to waste money, and I did not know how tired I would be that evening in the end – and to be brutally honest,I really had not felt like packing fancy clothes for the evening.

The Moulin Rouge cabaret, all lit up in bright red for the night

8th February 2020: Louvre and DIR EN GREY

The weather forecast was accurate, and despite the lovely weather on Friday, Saturday dawned stormy and dark. I decided to go to the Louvre Museum Musée du Louvre, even if I had been there before. It is after all one of the greatest museums in the world.

The Louvre holds so many pieces (over 600,000) that it would be impossible to describe them all, but for me, its core is the Winged Victory of Samothrace, a Greek sculpture from the Hellenistic period, around the 2nd century BCE, and my favourite piece of art. The Louvre is a national art museum, which opened in the post-revolutionary France in 1793. It exhibits around 35,000 items – Egyptian antiquities, Sumer and Assyrian pieces, Greek, Etruscan and Roman items, Islamic art, neoclassical and Baroque sculptures, a collection of objets d’art (Decorative arts), paintings, prints, drawings… It is located in the former French Royal Palace of the same name.

A collage with several Louvre pieces of art - Winged Victory, sitting scribe, the three graces, Diane washing her hair, Hermaphroditus sleeping, Psyche and Eros kissing, Liberty guiding the people, Venus de Milo

I wandered there for a few hours and I might have lost my way in the galleries a few times. In the end, I managed to (re)visit all the artefacts and artworks that I wanted. Because there are hundreds of thousands of items, but I must always see the Sitting Scribe, the Borghese Hermaphroditus, Canovas’ Eros and Psyche, and the remains of the Gates of Istar. I had a bit of a headache, so I eventually went back to the hotel to get some rest and prepare for the DIR EN GREY concert and VIP experience in the Élysée Montmartre live house. DIR EN GREY or “Diru” is a Japanese heavy metal band known for its dark themes and scenography that I thought I needed to check at least once (the final verdict was that I don’t need to repeat the experience, but it made for a nice mental break). The band has remained stable since its formation in 1997, and it is composed by Kyo [京] (lead vocals), Kaoru [薫] (rhythm guitar, backing vocals), Die (lead guitar, backing vocals), Shinya (drums) and Toshiya (bass, backing vocals).

A dark stage with a drum set. Letters projected on the screen behind the stage read Dir en Grey Tour 20 This Way to Self-Destruction

Setlist:

    1. 絶縁体 [Zetsuentai]
    2. 人間を被る [Ningen wo Kaburu]
    3. Rubbish Heap
    4. Devote My Life
    5. 軽蔑と始まり [Keibetsu to Hajimari]
    6. Celebrate Empty Howls
    7. 赫 [Aka]
    8. Merciless Cult
    9. Downfall
    10. Values of Madness
    11. 谿壑の欲 [Keigaku no Yoku]
    12. Ranunculus
    13. The World of Mercy
First encore:
    14. Followers
    15. THE DEEPER VILENESS
    16. 詩踏み [Utafumi]
Second encore:
    17. Sustain the untruth

Listing of all the concerts in the Dir en Grey 2020 tour

The concert was the final of DIRU’s 2020 European Tour TOUR20: This way to Self-Destruction. When I walked by the venue on Friday evening, around 18:00, there was a small number of people queueing already. I did not care enough to queue all day, and I had a VIP ticket with early entry, so I just headed to the line about 15:00. When the queues were separated and organised, around 16:30, I was VIP number 42. The weather was miserable, and I could have totally skipped the downpour while waiting, but I was lucky enough to be against the live house and not in the middle of the boulevard, where the General Admittance queue was. Doors opened at 19:30 for GA, and the VIP experience was held beforehand. The VIP queue started getting in around 17:30. As present we got a VIP pass and an “exclusive VIP only merchandise item” which turned out to be a scarf – very appropriate with the weather. The experience itself was a group photo with the band. There were five cushioned chairs for the fans, and the band stood behind. They did not say a word, nor interacted with fans in any way, not even acknowledging a hello or a thank you.

Afterwards, I headed for the hall, and I found an almost-barrier spot in the left area, on the second row. The people in front of me let me grab the barrier between them so I had something to hold on while I waited. The special guest was a DJ, who was more focused on getting recorded by his buddy on the phone than mixing music. The main show started a little after 20:30.

DIR EN GREY’s music is quite powerful, with a heavy focus on strings and drums. They also have a huge flare for theatricality and they enjoy the shock factor as part of the aesthetics. The singer, Kyo, donned a Joker-like make-up appearance, with a fake-suicidal attitude on stage, using the microphone to mimic stabbing his chest, or the wires to hang himself. It became a bit disturbing because it was repeated more than once. The act also felt rather distanced, there was very little interaction with the fans. At some point, a pick flew in my direction and the person behind me actually felt me up to try and find it in the folds of the coat I had tied around my waist. That was probably even creepier than the act.

The guitars and bass were tremendously powerful, and the drumming was amazing. The crowd was extremely loud, and the singer, Kyo, later confessed that he had been pretty exhausted and burnt out from the tour, which maybe explained why the concert felt so distanced. The encores were the probably best part of the concert, the part that felt more real and relaxed. After the concert was over, I headed off to the hotel to catch some sleep. Since I remembered that the area had felt a bit rough when I was there in 2014, this time over I wanted close accommodation so I could get back quickly without needing to use the underground.

9th February 2020: Destroy the Bastille!

Sunday morning was around 2 ºC, and it was windy. I lingered in bed for a while to recover from the previous evening, and then I headed out – I should have brought the merchandise-scarf with me! I saw the Place de la Bastille, where the revolutionary prison used to stand. In the middle of the square stands the “July column” Colonne de Juillet, which commemorates the Revolution of 1830 (which is not the “famous” French Revolution, which happened between 1789 and 1799). A few minutes away, in the Square Henri-Galli, I came across the base of the tower Tour de la Liberté (Freedom Tower), which was unearthed while building the first metro line. There are only a few stones remaining from the foundations, but I’ll take my fun wherever I can – so I stopped and used my music player to find another KAMIJO song, Bastille, just because I could.

Monument to the French Revolution

A few brick stones forming a circle, considered the last remains of the Bastille

It was too cold to wander, but I had a great plan. I headed off to the science museum Galerie de Paléontologie et d’Anatomie comparée (Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy Gallery), which was a short walk away. I had read about it and was curious. To be honest, I’m still trying to decide whether it was amazing, or the materials nightmares are made of.

The museum was founded in the 19th century, and it keeps the atmosphere – and the charm – of the old exhibitions. There are stands and wooden cases, and the smell of dust and old paper. The first floor holds a “Cavalcade of Skeletons” – the whole floor is occupied by preserved skeletons of mammals and birds. In the glass cases along the walls, there are taxidermy specimens, preserved animals and dissected specimens. In the far corner, there is “gallery of monsters” with natural oddities. It was enchanting, but at the same time deeply disturbing – especially the male human figure displaying muscles and blood vessels, with a vine leaf on his groin.

The second floor hosts the dinosaurs and other fossils, including a very cool toothed whale, giant crocodiles, a Bernissart iguanodon, a diplodocus, shark teeth… Most of the fossils are either casts or reconstructions – I swear I’ve seen that Irish elk at least three times before. Also, the T-Rex skull was adorably flawed, as it was imagined to be in the 19th century.

The third floor is… ammonite-land. There were cases upon cases of ammonites in different shapes, colours, rocks and materials.

Shots of the museum. Skeletons of animals - fish, oxen, crocodiles, elephants, whale. Fossils: Dinosaurs, fish, toothed whale, shark teeth, snails

After I was done with the museum, I decided it was too cold to wander the neighbouring Botanical Garden. Instead, I headed off to yet another one, the Musée national des arts asiatiques Guimet – the National Museum of Eastern Arts or Museum Guimet, which holds pieces of art from Cambodia, India, China, Japan, Korea and so on. There was a gorgeous dancing Shiva sculpture, collections of religious artefacts, calligraphy, samurai armours, even modern art and clothes inspired by the Far East. It was a really cool museum I had recently found about and was happy to visit.

Different pieces in the museum: Dancing Shiva, sitting Buddha, Calligraphy in the shape of a dragon, elaborate kimono, samurai armour, Indian goddess

After leaving the museum, I walked towards Trocadero to take the underground. I made a small detour to have a look at the Eiffel Tower Tour Eiffel, and saw a bunch of peddlers playing shell games with tourists. Someone lost about 400 €, I really hope they were in on the game.

The Eiffel Tower in front of a cloudy sky

Since it was too cold to continue walking around to find something to eat, I decided to get take-out, and I headed back to the hotel to get ready for the BABYMETAL concert. I had never listened to them before, but they are a sensation, the basic ticket was not expensive, and two concerts in as many days seemed convenient. They actually played in the same venue as DIR EN GREY on Saturday, so I found out by sheer coincidence on the live house’s website. At that time, I thought “why the hell not?”. Afterwards, they added Madrid to their Europe tour, so if I had known that beforehand, I might have acted differently. BABYMETAL is one of those insanely-profitable Japanese marketing stunts involving cute girls that had never really been in my radar more than in passing.

Notice with the date of Babymetal's concert

BABYMETAL is a product of the “Japanese idol factory”. It was created artificially to fill a market gap. Three girls were chosen to form an act that would mix the idealised cute idea of girl idols with the heavy metal genre. When they debuted in 2010, the term “Kawaii Metal” was coined. One of the girls left in 2018, so there are two main members and and support dancer on rotation. The members are Nakamoto Suzuka, “Su-metal”, the main vocalist, and Kikuchi Moa aka “Moametal” on back-up vocals and screams. The supporting musicians are called the “Kami Band”.

BABYMETAL’s long-awaited European tour is officially called Metal Galaxy World Tour. The VIP tickets sold for around 170€, and did not even entail a M&G, so even if I had had the chance, I would have not even considered them. Despite that, they sold out, along with the show itself.

When I left the hotel at 9:00, the queue had started organising, and the tour buses were already there. I had no intention to queue or try for a barrier. I had decided to sit back and relax, so I reached the venue around 18:45 for the 19:30 concert. There were tons of people waiting to buy merchandise, but I was good. Thus, I just headed to the floor, and found a spot in the back. Since the venue has sort a bit of an arena and some upper stands, there was a wall I could lean against and it was not the end of the room.

The crowd was quite different from DIRU’s, ranging from good ol’ metalheads to families with little girls between five and ten years old with a bizarre range of in-between: people with fox masks, goth and loli dresses, explicit heavy-metal t-shirts (a bunch of those T-shirts were much less kid-friendly than the show… everything you could imagine. I… don’t think most parents knew what they were getting into, and a few of the kids ended up crying.

At 19:30 sharp, the support act started – a German band called SKYND. Their sound was really good, but their lyrics are based on true crime, which makes them a bit on the disturbing side (and very much not kid-friendly). The name of the songs are all serial killers or similar criminals.

Setlist:

    1. Richard Ramirez
    2. Elisa Lam
    3. Katherine Knight
    4. Jim Jones
    5. Tyler Hadley
    6. Gary Heidnik

At 20:30, the BABYMETAL show kicked off with the projection of the Future Metal video as an introduction of sorts. The musical act relied heavily on the Kami Band, and Su-metal carried the weight of the vocals. She spent the whole one-hour concert jumping and dancing while singing, and her voice did not break even once. If she is not lip-synching, she has the most impressive lungs ever. Both she and Moametal encouraged the crowd, making a lot of eye-contact. Su-metal addressed the audience a lot, even – I think – trying French. The concert was non-stop, and it ended up feeling a bit short, but much better than I had expected. The one annoying thing were the daddies putting their babes up on their shoulders in the middle of the floor, when the kids gave clear signs of not caring or were distressed. But it was fun. Not sure I would repeat unless I made it a thing with friends or something, but I enjoyed the act, and had a good time.

Setlist:

    1. DA DA DANCE
    2. Gimme Chocolate!!
    3. Shanti Shanti Shanti
    4. BxMxC
    5. Kagerou
    6. Oh! MAJINAI
    7. メギツネ [Megitsune]
    8. PA PA YA!!
    9. Distortion
    10. KARATE
    11. Headbangeeeeerrrrr!!!!!
    12. Road of Resistance

A group of girls dressed in black dancing in front of a logo that reads Babymetal

I was back at the hotel before 22:00. Thus, I got a good night’s sleep before I left, once again happy that I had taken nearby accommodation.

10th February 2020: No bells of Notre Dame

My plane boarded at 10:00 so I had to leave early for the airport. The weather was rainy again, so I took the underground to Gare du Nord, and then the train to Orly. As I was riding the train, I had a nice view of the Paris at dawn, but the bells of Notre Dame were not tolling, and my inner child was sad about that. Despite issues with the airport security staff, the stupidly-expensive food, and the general unpleasantness of early-morning public transportation, I made it to my plane without actual problems. As it was a big plane again, I settled down to watch Jurassic World during the flight, because I’m a nerd. Going straight into work from the airport was not fun, but it a small price to pay

I only had three days, but this trip was a very welcome getaway, and even if the weather did not help, I got to do a lot of stuff. I had to discard a few plans and improvise due to the weather. However, there is that film quote, “We’ll always have Paris”. After all, I’ll be coming back for the Saint Seiya Symphonic Adventure. ETA: Or so I thought, at the time of writing the article…