Tag Archives: palaeontology

7th August 2019: Dragons & kappa {Japan, summer 2019}

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It is by now a tradition to go Ueno [上野] and the National Museum of Nature and Science, Kokuritsu Kagaku Hakubutsukan [国立科学博物館] to see the summer exhibition this time it was about kyouryuu [恐竜博], “fear dragons” aka dinosaurs – this year the exhibition was called 恐竜博 2019 THE DINOSAUR EXPO 2019. So it was a must-go for me (^o^)/

And then of course I wandered a little around the evolutionary wards of the museum, because of course I did.

I came out and I turned right instead of left, so I walked right into Kaisan-do (Ryo-daishi) [開山堂 (両大師)] (which on google maps appears as Rinnoji. Note to self: explore the area beyond next time over.

Then I crossed above all the railways leading in and out Ueno station.

I continued on until I got to Sogenji [曹源寺] also known as the temple of the kappa, Kappa-dera [かっぱ寺]. There is a legend related to a raincoat maker who was helped by a kappa when he wanted to build a drainage system in the area. There are a lot of kappa in the temple.

They also populate the nearby area, Kappabashihon [かっぱ橋本].

After that, I backtracked back to Ueno and from there I took a train to Ikebukuro [池袋] to do some window shopping. Then I looked at Tokyo Tower [東京タワー] from Roppongi [六本木] before D****e and I had dinner and called it a day.

Walked distance: 13384 steps / 9.57 km

2nd January 2019: Jurassic and 19th Century Madrid (Spain)

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I was in the middle of winter holidays and a couple of family members asked me if I had plans – I said I was getting tickets for a dinosaur exhibit in Madrid, and they jumped in. We made arrangements to head over there on the 2nd of January and spend the day in Madrid. I don’t think they really realised what it meant to be around me and the “terrible lizards” (≧▽≦). But off we went.

General entry ticket for 2nd January 2019

The Jurassic World: Exhibition was held in Madrid. The whole thing is organised in-verse, as if you actually visited the island.

Jurassic World the Exhibition logo and title

After you walk in, there is first a small introduction on the “boat” as you travel towards Isla Nublar. There you are given the instructions (mainly, keep your hands to yourself), the boat makes dock and you are let into the Park. Keeping in touch with the spirit of the films (not the book though *giggles*) there’s a Brachiosaurus there to greet you, just like the first animal you see in Isla Nublar (and later the last).

Pretencious gate with two columns on the side, reading Jurassic World. A brontosaurus head peers down at you

You also catch a glimpse of a Parasaurolophus.

The head of an herbivore dinosaur (parasaurolophus) peering through the bushes

Then you get to the “stables” where you get to see a Triceratops mama with her baby.

Mom and baby Triceratops behind a fence that reads Gentle giants petting zoo

Afterwards, there is a small room that represents the laboratory where the dinosaurs are made – I could have made it out with a critter but there were only baby Iguanodon.

Fake amber pieces and DNA extactor along with an incubator with eggs and baby dinosaurs

Next, you walk into a tiny museum with some fossil reproductions and actual scientific information…

Reproduction of carnivore dinosaurs skull and bones, along with the drawing of a huge T-rex fooot print drawn on the ground to compare it to a human one

… right before everything goes to hell and back when you’re shown a hologram of Owen Grady talking to his velociraptor Blue and you get a… guy in a velociraptor costume prancing around (≧▽≦).

Person disguised as a verlociraptor

The next room shows the Tyrannosaurus rex cage (by the way #TeamTRex here, in case you did not know) behind her cage, menacing and staring.

T-rex animatronic, showing the huge head behind a fence

The final room is another garden in which you get to see a Stegosaurus being stalked by the made-up Indominus rex.

Stegosaurus

Head of the Indominus rex, looking like it's stalking prey

And at the end of the exhibition, after the shop even, you find the velociraptors, which have apparently escaped and are ready to attack!

Jurassic world velociraptors on a wrecked crate

All in all, being the dinosaur geek I am, I had a blast. I’m not sure that my poor family members that had wanted to tag along with me knew what they were bargaining for (≧▽≦).

However, they were still willing to put up with my for a little longer, and together we drove off to the centre of Madrid, and somehow ended up at the Museo Cerralbo. They asked if there was something I wanted to see, and the Cerralbo Museum was running a couple of Japan-related specials I was curious about. The museum stands in the Palace of the same name, and it holds the collection of the late Marquis Cerralbo.

The museum is… crammed and chaotic, but interesting in its own way. It holds thousands of pieces, from worthless-looking mementos to priceless paintings by masters such as El Greco. Art experts say that the Cerralbo collection was the most valuable of its time.

Collage of cerralbo museum. A room with two samurai armous. A centrepiece made with swords. A long table, set, with chairs along and an ellaborate lamp hanging from the ceiling. The hall of the museum, with a staircase with an ellaborate balaustrade and a glass lamp hanging from the ceiling.

The museum was holding a designated route focused on the Japanese pieces it has, including samurai armours.

Collage of Asian and Japanese pieces of the museum: hars, a samurai armour, and an hexagonal carey box

Furthermore, there was an origami exhibition on the lower floor.

Origami pieces: a phoenix, a snake, an orca, corals, and a life-sized hippo

After the museum we sat down for lunch at a fusion Asian-Japanese restaurant, because the family members “wanted to try” – although they were rather scared of the food. Eventually they managed to enjoy it too, and even have seconds – however I needed to make a run to get my tablet serviced.

Lunch. Sushi, chicken skewers, rice dish and noodles dish

Once it was up and running, and family had come to find me, we walked towards the shopping centre in Principe Pío for dessert – yoghurt ice cream with berries and smarties. A great way to end the day!

An old station from iron architecture epoch repurposed into shopping centre

Frozen yoghurt with berries sauce and smarties

23rd & 24th June 2018: London Express (England, Great Britain)

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I took some family members over to London for the weekend, and they asked me to organise something so they could see a lot of things. We took the red-eye flight so we were downtown London something around 8:30. Our first visit had tickets for 10:00, so first spot was a Costa Coffee for breakfast! (≧▽≦)

Afterwards we saw the Tower Bridge over the Thames.

Then, at the right time, we walked into the Tower of London, where we wandered around visiting all the areas, including the White Tower, the dungeons, the Crown Jewels vault and the raven nests.

Once we were done, we took the underground to the British Museum for a quick visit through the most important collections, along with a few of the less known but interesting things – in the end we saw the Babylonian, Grecian, Egyptian collections, and had a glimpse at a few of the Chinese artefacts and the Hoa Hakananai’a from Easter Island.

We had lunch in-between and then went to the hotel to drop our things off. After that, we took off again and, via underground, we reached Trafalgar Square. We walked towards Piccadilly and on the way we stopped at Legoland and M&Ms shop. Then had dinner in an Angus steakhouse in Leicester square, and to end the day, we had a look at the lit Piccadilly Circus.

We got back to the hotel, and honestly, I had not realised how close to the centre we actually were until I looked out of the window.

The next morning we woke up early and headed off to have breakfast on the go – actually the weather was super nice so we got ourselves some Nero coffee and sandwiches and ate them in front of Westminster’s Abby. As it was Sunday we could not visit the Abby, but we saw the scaffolded Big-Ben, and walked around the Houses of Parliament.

We went to visit the Monument to Emmeline Pankhurst because the youngest person in the group needed to be told about a period in history in which she would not have been as free as she is today.

After that, we crossed over the Thames, then moved on to the London Eye. Half of the group wanting to go up, the other half being not fans of heights, we divided and conquered – two of us went to the London Aquarium while the other three enjoyed their VIP ride in the London Eye. I know you are not surprised I picked the side with the sharks instead of going up.

This guy judged us, very hard:

After our riverbank separation, we regrouped and headed off towards the Natural History Museum where we first saw the Butterfly carp that was installed outside it – they were extremely pretty and beyond friendly, because we were landed on quite often.

When we had finished the walk, we stepped into the Natural History Museum itself to wander through the dinosaur area for a bit, and then around the animal collection.

We decided to head out to the restaurant to have a bite to eat, and as we were walking through the marine invertebrate area (the room with all the crabs and so on), there was a nice lady showing items. And that’s how I ended up holding a megalodon tooth and fanbying like there was no tomorrow. Don’t judge me. Or do so, I don’t care ☆⌒(ゝ。∂)

As they walked into the insect / general creepy-crawler gallery, I walked around the gallery that held “less impressive” fossils, including the ones discovered by Anne Manning. We had lunch in the NHM, then moved on.

A short underground ride later, we were at St James’s Park, where we took a bit of a walk towards Buckingham Palace. As the weather was nice, we got to see a lot of the local fauna, even the local swans.

We hung around for a while as we saw Buckingham Palace, then headed off back towards the airport. Although we had a couple-of-hours delay, we made it home without further complication.

9th & 10th June 2018: Wicked London (England, Great Britain)

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This will be the last work-trip, at least for a while. I might change my mind later, but for now I’m done with them (although there’s an upcoming family trip rather soon…). Again, we flew in early Saturday morning, and we went to walk around the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge.

Then we went to the British Museum. I left them for a couple of hours there and I went to visit some of the lesser-seen galleries.

We had booked tickets for the musical “Wicked” in the Apollo Victoria Theatre at 14:30, so we headed over there. Wicked is a parallel story to “The Wizard of Oz”, focusing on the story of the Wicked Witch of the West, who becomes a social outcast due to her tendency to speak her mind and the strength of her magic. I had really wanted to watch this for a long time, so I used this chance and convinced the group to get there. I absolutely loved it ♥.

After the show, we dropped our things at the hotel. The group wanted to get some rest, so we stayed there for a while, then got out again. We took the underground towards London central and we were in Trafalgar Square for a while.

Then, we went to Chinatown for dinner.

Later, we walked around Piccadilly Circus, checking out some shops and so. We even stopped for cake.

On Sunday morning we went to Saint James’s Park, where we got to meet the local fauna, especially a very adventurous squirrel.

Then we dropped by Buckingham Palace. Although we did not watch the Guard Change, we did see one of the relief marches.

We walked from there to Westminster, saw the Houses of Parliament and the Big Ben, along the outside of Westminster Abby.

We visited the Monument to Emmeline Pankhurst and stayed for a while in the Victoria Tower Gardens.

As a final visit, we went to the Natural History Museum.

Finally, we headed off to the airport, and the icing of the cake was that we got caught in a controllers’ strike, so we had like a three-hour delay on our flight and it took forever to get home (;¬_¬). All in all, this was a very… strange trip, and without a doubt the highlight was going to see Wicked, which is something I had wanted to do for a long time, and gave me a couple of hours of enjoyment to myself.

27th March 2018: Turiasaurus riodevensis {Dinosaurs in Teruel, 2018}

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In the morning we walked back to the Torre del Salvador because we had learnt that you could climb it up.

Inner structure of the tower + views of the city

Then we dropped by the Museo de Arte Sacro de Teruel (Christian Art Museum).

Former cloister with a glass roof

After having lunch we drove off to Riodeva to visit the Dinópolis mini-museum, called Titania. Riodeva is a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, but in the palaeontological site there scientists discovered the biggest European sauropod, the Turiasaurus riodevensis. It is believed that the Turiasaurus, which lived in the Jurassic period, could be almost 40 metres long and just under 50 tonnes.

The guide here was nice, but horribly misinformed, claiming unscientific facts – such as scientists believing that Megalodon still prowls the ocean, and I might have got into a small discussion with her. Don’t get me wrong, aside from being #TeamTRex, I love megs from the bottom of my heart, but there should be a limit on how many urban legends you can claim as true in an educational facility, and that limit is zero.

Turiasaurus fossil pieces + head reproduction; crocodile head; megalodon tooth

Finally we drove back to Teruel and the next day (28th) we were off home first thing in the morning as I had a medical appointment that had come up after the trip was booked.

26th March 2018: Dinosaur bones and Lover mummies {Dinosaurs in Teruel, 2018}

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We got to Dinópolis so we could be there when they opened in hopes to ditch the families-with-kids crowds, but to our confusion, we were told that even if the park was open, the palaeontology museum would not be for another hour. Furthermore, the only option to see the museum was with a guided tour. We did not care much about the 3D cinema, but there was literally nothing else we could do until they opened the museum part. We spent the morning in the park. We had to watch the first film, and somehow ended up doing two rides (Viaje en el tiempo & Último Minuto) and a show (the T-rex one), but the big things we cared about were the museum and the so called “Tierra Magna”, where the 1:1 reproduction stand.

The museum has a direct view to the lab, and while it has very few original and unique exhibits, is really good and informative. The big problem was, in my opinion, that it was only guided-access and those stress me out. Why can’t I just roam to my heart’s content and have to listen to a poorly-trained guide? We somehow managed to ditch the tour when the second and third groups came in and a bunch of people mingled around.

A collage showing different fossils and replicas from Dinopolis

It was cold outside, so we only had a quick stroll around “Tierra Magna”. We had lunch and decided we were done. If I had to rate this, I’d say it is a decent palaeontology museum with a lot of kid-friendly stuff around it – the latter is completely skippable, too, but I guess it brings money.

Life-size reproductions of dinosaurs outside Dinópolis Teruel

In the afternoon we headed off to see the cathedral, Cathedral of Santa María de Mediavilla, but I did not manage to sneak a picture of the famous wooden ceilings.

Outside view of the Cathedral

Later, we had a reservation to see the Complex of the Lovers of Teruel, which included the Iglesia de San Pedro (Church of St. Peter), its cloister, and the gardens.

Nave in Saint Peter church

Cloister in Saint Peter Church

Finally we got to the Mausoleum, el Mausoleo de los Amantes. The story tells that she was a rich heiress and he was a poor man, so he left to gain riches. While he was away, she was given off to another man and married, and when he came back she could not be with him because she was loyal to her husband. He died of a broken heart after she refused him a kiss, and she died after kissing his dead body. The bodies of the lovers were buried together afterwards. The two mummified bodies were found in the church of St. Peter, and they were thought to be the lovers, so the tombs were sculpted – if you crouch, which by the way I didn’t, you can see the mummies through the marble. The tombs were designed so that the lovers’ hands are very close, but they don’t really touch, albeit their shadows superimpose, as if they did.

Mausoleum of the lovers - they lie next to each other, hands reaching for the other one, but only the shadows touch

After this, we walked around town for a while and found the third tower, the Torre del Salvador.

Salvador Tower

We finished the tourist day at the monumental Escalinata de Teruel (the Grand Staircase).

Monumental Staircase

As we walked back to the hotel, we saw a beautiful sunset.

Golden sunset

25th March 2018: Main roads that feel like secondary {Dinosaurs in Teruel, 2018}

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We arrived in the Albarracín area after driving for about three hours. Some of the roads were horrid and I was secretly glad my offer to drive had been rejected. We arrived in Albarracín around 11:00 and our first stop was the first Dinópolis mini museum, called the Mar Nummus (Nummus Sea).

As this mountain range used to be sea bead (like 150 million years ago), a bunch of marine fossils can be found in the area. Dozens of ammonites fill up the museum, along with the skull of a Liopleurodon, a marine reptile of the order of the family Pliosauridae, quite obviously a carnivorous one judging by the teeth. As a matter of fact, it was the apex predator of the Middle and Late Jurassic oceans.

Mar Nummus building, featuring a life-size liopleurodon + the skull of the liopleurodon + a lot of ammonite fossils

The visit did not take long, and then we moved on to drive to the Mirador de la Escombrera (Slagheap Viewpoint, don’t ask me) to watch the pineforest Pinares de Rodeno. We decided against walking through the forest because the shortest route was a couple of hours already.

Sandstone cliffs + pine trees

Instead, we drove back to Albarracín and walked throughout the historical centre, a medieval nucleus of streets and houses dedicated to shops and restaurants catering to tourists.

Albarracín, a Medieval city in reddish tones. It is surrounded by a wall

We had lunch, then drove the short 40 minutes to Teruel, where we found our hotel. After dropping our things off, we walked to the centre of the town – which was barely a ten-minute stroll away. Carlos Castel Square is widely known as the “little bull square”, Plaza del Torico.

Teruel is known, aside from dinosaurs, from its Mudéjar style buildings, such as the Towers or the Cathedral. Mudéjar style was used by Iberian Christians between the 13th and 15th Century. It incorporates motifs, decorative elements and construction techniques that were common in Muslim Al-Andalus (such as archways, porcelains, bricks, and so on…). On the first day we saw two of the Towers: Torre de San Pedro (left) and Torre de San Martín (right).

Mudéjar Towers

The second architectural characteristic of Teruel are the Modernist houses, built in the 1910s, such as the ones in the Plaza del Torico – Casa La Madrileña (left) and Casa del Torico (right).

Plaza del Torico: a little bull standing on top of a column. Behind it stand two Modernist Houses at dusk

After this we had dinner and we headed back to the hotel.

11th March 2018: An old-fashioned museum and a strike in Madrid (Spain)

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I was looking at a work-related trip and wanted to use up Sunday morning to visit “a couple” of museums, then meet some relatives for lunch. Unfortunately, I was caught in the middle of a public transportation strike, so in the end I had to walk for a long while instead of doing what I wanted! Anyway, what I managed to do was getting to the Museo Geominero Nacional, the “Geomineral Museum” in Madrid. It is located in the headquarters of the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain, in a classical-looking building finished in 1925. It was designed by Franciso Javier de Luue. It is a classical-looking museum with wooden cases and an impressive stained glass ceiling, comprised by a central room and three surrounding balconies.

The access is through a marble staircase and the first corridor is already packed with display cases, even before you get to the main area. These cases show small and not-so-small fossils and replicas, displaying the first taste of the evolution of life on earth.

Once in the main room, most of the floor is taken up by the standing cases holding minerals, fossils and meteorites.

In the centre of the room lie the remains of a mastodon, located in the area of Ciudad Real in the 20th century, one of the crown jewels of the museum.

Of course I have been able to locate the collection of megalodon and shark teeth that are on display on the balcony.

Other displays on the upper floors include Spanish mountain goats, cave bears, and a human-evolution collection. Unfortunately, those did not photograph well due to the sun reflection.

And finally, my favourite piece of the collection is the Tyrannosaurus rex skull replica that presides the museum for the second floor.

When I came out, public transport was not running any more, so I had to walk through the Madrid backstreets until I got to the area where we had arranged to meet, and we went to a restaurant called El Escarpín, where I had an awesome pan of… wait for it… gratin meatballs with molten cheese on a bed of potatoes (Albóndigas gratinadas con queso de tetilla sobre cama de patatas). Amazing! Either that, or I was really ravenous after my hour and a half walking. Serves me right for not keeping up with the news! I learnt my lesson!

14th – 16th October 2017: Vienna, Austria

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14th October 2017: Arrival and the Inner ring: Butterflies and Dinosaurs

Between flight and transfer to the city on Saturday morning, I arrived in the city of Vienna at 1pm. As my hotel was between the station and the city centre, I took my chances for an early check in and I was lucky – it was. After dropping my luggage I headed off to walk around Vienna’s Inner Ring, the Ringstrasse, which is a big boulevard that runs around all the old city of Vienna (Unesco World Heritage Site). A bunch of things were on my way and it seemed easy enough to find one’s way around. My hotel was located in a building close to a park, and had three floors, on the 11th, 12th and 13th floors of a building, which gave me some views of the city.

On Saturday the plan was wandering around, but as I am who I am I ended up improvising. My first stop was the outer Vienna State Opera, the Wiener Staatsoper, where a young man dressed as Mozart tried to sell me tickets for a show.

Vienna opera house, a baroque building in light colours with huge windows and an arched entrance

I continued on my walk and I saw the Albertina, a modern art museum, but I was actually heading to the Imperial Palace greenhouse, which is the home of a café and the Schmetterlinghaus, or Imperial Butterfly House. This is an area of the greenhouse where a bunch of butterflies are free to fly around and feed on a bunch of flowers, plants and pieces of apple. I was lucky enough to catch a few good shoots and I was very happy to have decided to go in (albeit I have to say that I was really keen on going there since I had seen that it existed). I really had a blast and enjoyed this, so it was a must that I don’t regret having missed, especially since the 6.50€ for the ticket. I spent around forty minutes in there chasing butterflies.

Vienna Butterfly house: a former greenhouse, and a few close-ups of different butterflies on bushes.

Then I saw the Austrian National Library, the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.

Severe-looking stone building with columns and windows.

After that I back I walked through the Hofburg Palace, Hofburg Wien, and the Michaelerplatz or Saint Michael Square.

Collage of the former Imperial palace. It is a stone building with columns and windows, and arches

After that I crossed the palace in the opposite direction and ended up at the Heldenplatz, which gave way to Naturhistorisches Museum, the Natural History Museum to see dinosaurs, because there were dinosaurs, which is the home of the Venus von Willendorf, a tiny statue of stone dated back 29,500 years. The museum also holds a collection of minerals, meteorites, preserved animals, dinosaurs, an animatronics dinosaur and a multitude of artefacts from Prehistory to the Middle Ages. I also saw the same dunkleosteus that they have in the Tokyo Kokuritsu Kagaku Hakubutsukan. Have I mentioned dinosaur animatronics?

Collage of the Natural Museum: the building, with a dome, a whale skeleton, an Albertosaurus skeleton, the head of a Dunkleosteous fish, a huge salt stone and the Venus von Willendorf, a small naked woman statuette in golden stone

Following the museum I continued down the Ring Boulevard and it did not take me long to stumble up the Pallas Athene Brunnen (Monument to Palas Athena) and the Austrian Parliament Building, Parlamentsgebäude. The latter was under reconstruction.

Vienna parliament house, under renovation. There is a Palas Athena in white marble with a gold helmet standing in front of it.

I continued my walk until I found the Vienna Town hall, called the Rathaus, where there was a kind of Videogame trade fair or something going on.

Vienna town hall - neogothic building with a lot of towers and spikes.

Then I went on walking towards the university and the church of Votivkirche, a neo-gothic building next to the university.

Gothic church under renovation

Afterwards I went down to the hotel because this is not summer vacations after all, just a weekend escapade and I seriously did not have that much energy. On my way I walked past the stables of the Spanische Hofreitschule (Spanish Riding School) stables and I saw some pretty horses.

Two white horses from the Vienna riding school

And even from the hotel (literally from bed), as my room had views, I could take some pictures of the sunset and the lit buildings. And then I went to sleep at a horribly early hour because I was beat and for some reason I managed over 8 hours of sleep.

Sunset over the skyline of vienna. The buildings are dark and the sky is orange

15th October 2017: Palaces, churches and the Cinema

Because my hotel was **** for a change (I have to say that when I think about the whole weekend the word “decadent” is what comes to mind), I had a kettle and instant coffee ready for me – this was my breakfast. After that I did the online for my flight the following day and of course running into technical difficulties, and I left the hotel at around 9:30, which was a bit later than I had intended.

I was coming up to the Belvedere Palace, and on my way there I took a diversion to see the Karlskirche or Karlskirche (St. Charles’ Church), which I could see from my hotel and illuminated at night. This is a baroque church that sometimes holds classical music concerts.

The church of St. Charles; a Baroque church. It has a dome, and two twisted columns in front.

After taking a wrong turn once or twice this I headed out to my original target, the Schloss Belvedere (Upper Belvedere Palace). This is a Baroque Palace (seriously, Vienna is full of Baroque) that has been turned into a painting gallery. The most famous author in this gallery is Klint, but if I have to be honest, I’m not too appreciative of him – must be my likings for the realists. In the end, I liked the palace itself better than the painting collection, specially the reception room and the staircase.

The Upper Belvedere Palace, a Neoclassical building in white stone.

As I had bought a three-combo ticket including Upper and Lower Belvedere and the Winter Palace, I walked down the Belvedere Gardens to the Unteres Belvedere (Lower Belvedere), which holds the “Medieval Treasure” and temporal exhibitions. The best thing was the gold and mirror room and the marble gallery.

A huge garden with a palace in the background. The garden is artificial in a way, with perfectly-trimmed grass, fountains, and bushes.

The Baroque entrance to the lower Belvedere palace, a stone gate with sculptures on top. It looks like it wants to stare you down. The palace peers through the three open doors in the background

Then I headed off to the centre of the city to see the Winterpalais des Prinzen Eugen (Winter Palace of Prince Eugene), which was not the best thing ever but hey it came within the three-museum combo.

A Neoclassical palace with flags hanging over the door

Then I headed off to Domkirche St. Stephan (St. Stephen’s Cathedral), which is the gothic Catholic cathedral. It is not Baroque but Gothic. The entrance was free, but it also had a paid area, including the catacombs. Unfortunately I was too late for the current tour and too early for the following one, so I decided not to stick around, else I would have got the combo for the catacombs, the tower and the treasure.

A gothic cathedral. Collage showing the outside, with the tower and the ornate windows, and the inside showing the pointed arches inthe nave, and the organ.

As it was, I saw the cathedral and then headed off down different streets and saw the outer area of Katholische Kirche St. Peter (Catholic Church of St. Peter).

Façade of a Neoclassical church

And then headed out to the Michaelerplatz to check the inside of the Michaelskirche (Catholic Church of St. Michael).

Neoclassical church, showing the white and pointy bell tower. The image is tilted so the tower fits in the frame

I checked the Spanische Hofreitschule (Spanish Riding School) for tour tickets, but I was late for that and it was all sold out, so I decided to go to the station and buy some food in the supermarket for both lunch and dinner. On the way I crossed the Stadtpark to see the floral clock and the Johann Strauss monument – Johann Strauß Denkmal.

Finally, I headed off to get some rest at the hotel, and have a shower. At 18:15 I walked down to the cinema at the corner of my hotel building, the Gartenbaukino, because in the end that was the reason I was there – to attend the Austrian premiere of the X JAPAN documentary We are X as Yoshiki was going to be around for a Q&A session afterwards.

There had been a small mix-up with the ticket numbering (all of them had been printed out with the same seating number!), which was solved efficiently. We watched the documentary We are X and then there was a Q&A with Yoshiki himself. There were emotional moments as the fans thanked him for everything he had done and for his music.

Entryway to the cinema. It reads We are X Live + Q&A mit Yoshiki 20.00

Yoshiki sitting in front of a burgundy curtain. He is wearing his sunglasses and a black suit, boots and a golden blouse

After the Q&A some of us stayed talking at the cinema gate and the manager, who had solved the ticket problem, came out to close – and he told us where Yoshiki would be leaving from. And that’s… the story of how I got to talk to Yoshiki, I got his autograph and took a picture with him and I will never, ever, ever forget the rush of that.

I have to say I did not sleep much that night. All the excitement caught up with me and I kept replaying the scene in my head over and over again. in the end I think it was around 2:30 that I could turn the lights off.

16th October 2017: Airport Monday morning

After checking out of the hotel I walked back to the train station and took the CAT towards the airport. I had taken an earlier train than I had already planned and boy was I glad to do so when following arrows at the airport took me as much as 20 minutes. Something I learnt in this trip is how friendly Austrian people are, and that they have a great sense of humour, as apparently one of their star souvenirs is “no kangaroos in Austria”. The return flight was not as good as the first, but it was on time and I could arrive to work smoothly for a crazy week.

16th September 2016: Some Madrid (Spain) Museums

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I woke up one morning, a silly weekday that I did not have to work for some reason and I decided to wander off and take a day trip to Madrid to see some museums, just because I could.

My first stop was the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, the museum of natural science. The museum is divided into several buildings. The first building holds the “Biodiversity” collection. This includes preserved specimens – in better or worse shape, mostly stuffed, and some skeletons.

Then I walked over to the palaeontology and mineral museum, where at the moment most of the collection is composed of replica, sometimes it feels that you see the same diplodocus or arsinoitherium (two-horned rhino) skull everywhere. Of course, however, I hunted down every megalodon tooth on site and sight.

After this, I walked around the mineral collection and walked down Castellana Avenue until Colón Square, where I had lunch somewhere before I walked around to see the Museo Arqueológico Nacional – National Archaeological Museum. There were a few things that interested me there.

My first goal was to study the Iberian stelæ . Nobody really knows what they are or what their meaning is, but it is thought that they were funerary monuments, maybe of fallen warriors.

An interesting thing to see in this museum is the sculpture of La Dama de Elche, the Lady of Elche, the limestone bust of an Iberian lady dated back to the 4th century BC. It is supposed to be a woman who belonged to the aristocracy that was later revered as a goddess, or maybe a reinterpretation of the Goddess Tanit of Cathage. The back part has an opening, which suggests that it could have been a funerary urn. It was originally polychromated, but it has lost its colours. I really like her expression, and probably due to the Hellenistic influence. I have a thing for Greek sculpture, after all.

A second “lady”, the Dama de Baza (Lady of Baza), stands next to the first. This one still keeps some of its colours. This one is full-body, also carved out of limestone, and it traces back to the fourth century too. This lady seems to have been designed in pure Iberian style, without Hellenistic influences.

The last key pieces of Iberian sculpture in this museum are the verracos – sort-of headless boars, pigs or bulls (depending on the interpretation), but it is commonly accepted that they are symbols of protection of cattle routes. Most of them are… visibly male.

Once I had seen what I really wanted to see I wandered over the rest of the museum, stumbling upon the currency exhibition, which was strangely interesting.

I walked past the Medieval rooms and then I found the Egyptian area, which is humble, but has some interesting things like the X-rays of a mummified falcon. Finally, I checked out the classical Greek area before calling it a day and making it back home.

12th July 2016: 海のハーンター！ (Hunters of the Sea) {Japan, summer 2016} {Japan, summer 2016}

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First thing in the morning… I slept in because I was beat, but second, I went to pick up my JRPass, really hoping to compensate it since this time it is for 14 days. The JR Pass allows for unlimited travel in most JRLines. I wanted to get it and activate it, but I realised that I felt better activating it the following day to have some more margin after my long trip (more on that another day).

The JRPass lady complimented my Japanese and asked me where I studied Japanese. I think this was the first time someone made small talk with me aside from friends （＾ν＾）. It felt good to be able to do that, especially as I was not feeling too encouraged at school.

Anyway. I was in Ueno [上野] and the Kokuritsu Kagaku Hakubutsukan [国立科学博物館], Tokyo’s National Museum of Nature and Science, was running the temporal exhibition called ‘Umi no Hunters’ [海のハーンター] (Hunters of the Sea) Would you have doubted me heading there head first? No? Thought so （＾＿＾）☆

So there I went <・ )))><<, and I had a lot of fun. The first part was a small introductory video and a very cool evolution chart of different predatory species in the ocean. The second focuses on ‘predators of the past’, making mentions of the Dunkleosteous (and I was so happy that they had put the huge Dunkan head they’ve got before a light background for good pictures. Then they had a few fossils, including a very curious double-predation one (both fish killed each other in the process and were fossilised that way). I could already peer above me one of the most exciting things of the exhibition, the model of the Megalodon. And boy, it was great. The only problem was that it was hanging from the ceiling with very bad angle to be caught in pictures. I tried. Repeatedly.

Then they had the whole set of teeth, which of course would not belong to the same shark, but one can dream (^◇^;) And yeah, there were other birds and stuff, but Megalodon! And teeth!

Then the exhibition moved onto present day animals. I get the feeling that they just brought together every taxidermy they had lying around that could be related to the sea. Some were much better done than others, truth be told. They divided the stands in the different areas – deep sea, open sea, shallow area.

One of the things that surprised me the most was the size of the sea elephant. I have to own up that for a few second I did not know if it was real or just something that someone had put there to troll visitors and I had this urge to pat it to check whether that was real hair, but of course I could not do that. The young women minding the exhibition would have gotten a heart attack or twenty. So I was nice and respectful – and really if I have to get deported from Japan, I think it would not be for patting a giant seal. Nor for stealing one of the Megalodon teeth they had at the exhibition and that I really, really wanted.

The coolest thing, of course, because I am not going to hide that I am horribly biased were the sharks. I was so taken with them that at first I did not realise what was closing the the tour.

I was going to need a bigger camera.

They had a preserved Great White Shark (ホホシロサメ）which you could not see in its great splendour because someone had not thought too well about the tank and the preserving liquid but… Did I mention Great White Shark?? Apparently it was washed ashore dead in 2014 and had taken this long to get it preserved. There was a video explaining about the process (as a matter of fact, there were several videos throughout the exhibition, sorry I got shark-ried away.

After this the plan was to get ramen in Ueno station, but there was a huge line and I did not think I had the time to brave it. However I still had time so I decided to wander around and head off to Ikebukuro [池袋] where, guess what? Got the wrong exit. As always. But made it back to school with plenty of time.

20th August 2015: Still life, moving life {Japan, summer 2015}

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As predicted, the 20th dawned rainy and not too inviting, so I headed off to Ueno Park to visit one of the many museums there. I heard that the collection of the Kokuritsu Kagaku Hakubutsukan [国立科学博物館], Tokyo’s National Museum of Nature and Science had been renewed and I wanted to have a look. In the end, not much had changed, but I still had a fairly good time, because I am a geek like that. There were about three million primary school classes there, though, and a few high school ones, which was a bit annoying – and loud – but nothing too bad.

Some of the wards mix science with mythology and culture, for example the earthquake science area has an ukiyo-e of the god Suzano keeping Namazu, the giant catfish which causes earthquakes, still. As much as the bio area is cool, I think my favourite part of this museum is the fossils collection – which is scattered in different wards in what I assume has some logic but I am yet to find it. I am particularly taken by the Dunkleosteous glass panel, and of course (insert everyone who knows me going ‘duh’ here) the Megalodon teeth.

But kinda a lot of things are cool. Like dinosaur fossils. Which make you giggle when you’ve recently watched Jurassic World. There is a plesiosaur (which, by the way, is not a dinosaur). What is a dinosaur is, of course, the T-rex (#TeamTRex) – completely irrelevant information: it is a cast of Scotty, the largest T-Rex ever found.

After finishing in Ueno and getting into the wrong station – of course, that must happen at least once when I am in Japan, I headed off to Tokyo Skytree [東京スカイツリー] in Sumida [墨田] just because I could.

I did not want to climb it up, but there was something there that had been on my to-see list, Sumida Suizokukan [すみだ水族館], Sumida Aquarium. Apparently there is a tacit agreement among Japanese aquariums so each one has a super cool thing that only they’ve got. So they are like pokemon, you gotta see them all if you wanna catch all the cool things. In this case I was aiming for the giant isopods. But of course, I never say no to sharks, even with annoying kids screwing up the pictures.

And then there was sushi, and that was goooood.

… Maybe I should have titled this post “fish in every form”?

21st June 2013: Ueno and Ebisu {Japan, summer 2013}

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As last year, 2013 visiting started on Ueno Kōen [上野公園], as it is an easy-enough place to reach and has a few museums that offer indoors entertainment. It was raining cats and dogs, which should have made me cranky. Nevertheless I was paroling around with this stupid grin on my face as the general tourists bitched about weather XD

You might remember Hanazono Inari Jinja [花園稲荷神社] from last year:

Unfortunately the Sakurazukamori was nowhere to be found again – although I have to admit that the atmosphere changes quite a bit in the rain. Thus, I headed into the Kokuritsu Kagaku Hakubutsukan [国立科学博物館], Tokyo’s National Museum of Nature and Science, after being thoroughly confused by the Japanese arrow system once again.

The museum has two buildings, and an impressive collection of preserved animals, along with a very cool evolutionary tree, a collection of dinosaur fossils, an exhibition on human evolution and some repeated casts that they hope really hard nobody notices.

The animal life exhibition gave me a glimpse of how biased I can actually be, as I rather felt like “monkey, cat, human… FISHY =D”. Most of my pictures are sea-life related XD

Like ever other Science Museum there was Foucault pendulum hidden in a corner:

And the last exhibition was about methods of science, units, and had an amazing periodic table with samples. Whomever designed the exhibition deserves a lot of kudos.

Later I headed to Ebisu [恵比寿] where D****e and I were meeting with some of her Japanese friends for drink and food. All in good fun. It was raining when I checked out Ebisu Garden Place [恵比寿ガーデンプレイスタワー], so I could sympathise with MatsuJun’s mysery XD”

7th May 2013: The inner works of the Geomineral Museum in Madrid (Spain)

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Due to work reasons I ended up in the Museo Geominero, the Geomineral Museum, in Madrid. The Museo Geominero is a rather anachronical place – it displays a great mineral and fossil-replica collection in an early 20th-century building. The inner area is used for research and hides all the high tech. However, they work with really old and cool geological elements.

This was the firs time in my life I ever held a meteorite – just imagine, this thing floated around space, and I got to hold it. It was heavier than I would have ever imagined. You can see the zig-zags on the surface, those are magnetic markings because the main component of this space rock is iron.

There was a session going on about identifying fossils, and this is what I came up with:

Out of the bunch, I also got to play with the ammonite…

… counted the corals…

… and I petted the trilobite…

As you can see, I snuck quite a few pictures. It did not work so well during the museum walkthrough, so I guess I will just have to come back for the main exhibit some other time (≧▽≦).

Flashback to 28th December 2010 – 2nd January 2011: New Year’s in London

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  • Hyde Park
  • Piccadilly Circus
  • Sherlock Holmes Museum
  • London Eye
  • Houses of Parliament
  • Big Ben
  • River Thames
  • Tower Bridge
  • Tower of London
  • St Paul’s Cathedral
  • Globe Theatre
  • London Aquarium
  • British Museum
  • London Natural History Museum
  • Buckingham Palace

Note: This is a flashback post, which means it is just a collage regarding a trip I took before I started the blog in 2012. Tags may be incomplete or slightly off.