Tag Archives: science

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.

12th & 13th February 2023. The Epic Apocalypse Tour in Madrid (Spain)

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The year 2020 was going to be so amazing that I actually would have had to choose the things I wanted to do and sacrifice others. It didn’t turn out that great in the end, with lots of rescheduling and cancellations. I was eventually able to budget time and money for one of those rescheduled events – the joint concert by the metal bands Epica and Apocalyptica in their Epic Apocalypse Tour. For a while, however, there was a bit of uncertainty with dates, as they bounced between Sunday 12th and Monday 13th of February, so I needed to juggle work dates in order to make sure I’d be free on Monday. In the end, I was all clear, all the concert-related activities were set for Sunday evening, and I decided to make a two-day trip out of it – I needed to take a hotel for Sunday anyway.

I arrived in Madrid around 9:30 in the morning. I had some time before my first appointment so I walked into one of the large parks of the city Parque del Buen Retiro, which is part of the Unesco World Heritage Site Paisaje de la Luz (Light Landscape), officially called Paseo del Prado y el Buen Retiro, paisaje de las artes y las ciencias, declared in 2021.

Parque del Buen Retiro was built in the 17th century for one of Felipe IV’s palaces, and it was opened in the late 18th century as public park. The park was almost destroyed during the war against Napoleon’s troops in the early 19th century, so most of it has been rebuilt. Aside from the obvious flora, it features sculptures, fountains, buildings… It is home to a lot of birds, and unfortunately a large number of invasive and fearless monk parakeets (Myiopsitta monachus), whose culling has been controversial in recent years. I got to see common blackbirds (Turdus merula), a European green woodpecker (Picus viridis) and a European robin (Erithacus rubecula).

One of the most important features of the park is the sculpture Monumento al Ángel Caído, which represents an angel falling from grace. It was originally designed by Ricardo Bellber, who made it in plaster in 1877. It was later cast in bronze and the original plaster destroyed, and eventually the sculpture was made into a part of a fountain in 1885. Around the area, there is also an ancient water mill, and to my surprise, the almond trees (Prunus amygdalus) had started blossoming.

Retiro Park collage: a pathway with trees and bushes on both sides, ducks, and a robin.

Retiro Park collage: a water mill, blossoming almond trees, and the fallen angel fountain

At 10:15 I had a guided visit to the Real Observatorio de Madrid (ROM), commissioned around 1785 by Carlos III, as an centre to develop and study astronomy, geodesy, geophysics and cartography. The main building is the astronomical observatory, built by Juan de Villanueva in what then was the outskirts of the city. Today, ROM belongs to the National Geographical Institute (IGN), and it is home to the National Astronomical Observatory, the Central Geophysics Observatory, and the data gathering division of the National Volcanic Service, though no measurements are taken there. The main astronomy measurements are carried out in the Centro Astronómico de Yebes, in a town around 80 km north-west of Madrid. The observatory is also part of the Unesco World Heritage Site.

The visit comprises three stops. The first one is the main building, called Edificio Villanueva, which has three rooms – the main rotunda with a Foucault pendulum, the library, with the spot where gravity was first measured in Spain, and the “Time room”, where the sun used to be traced to determine the hour.

ROM collage. A small Neoclassical building, an inner room with a pendulum and telescopes, a telescope and a 19th century library.

The second stop is the Great Telescope, a replica of one that William Herschel built in the 18th century – Hershchel was one of the greatest telescope makers of the time, and is credited with discovering the planet Uranus, two of its moons, and two moons of Saturn. The telescope was destroyed during the war against the French, but later rebuilt thanks to the number of laminates that had been preserved – the original had a focal distance of 7.6 m and a 61-cm diameter mirror (which is displayed in the main building), and Herschel himself considered it the best he ever built.

Herschel grand telescope: a wooden scaffolding structure keeping a huge black tube pointing at the stas

The final stop, the little museum of “Earth and Universe Sciences” has a small collection of ancient instruments used for astronomy, navigation, and geophysics. There are also a couple of seismographs – one of them new, which is up and running – and material retrieved from the volcanic eruptions of El Hierro in 2011 and La Palma in 2021.

Collage. Ancient telescope, old tide measuring device, an old globe, and lava bombs

I had planned for a typical sandwich at an iconic bar afterwards, but I ran into a political demonstration. Thus, I scratched that idea and took the underground westwards. When I was in Egypt, one of the places I visited was Lake Nasser, created by the Aswan High dam. The lake swallowed a lot of villages and monuments, but a few of them, such as Abu Simbel and the Temple of Philae were saved by Unesco. Between 1960 and 1980, a total of 24 monuments were saved, and five out of these were presented as “grants-in-return” to five countries which had offered exceptional technical and financial assistance to the campaign – Germany, Italy, Netherlands, the United States and Spain, the latter being impressive as Spain was in the middle of the dictatorship, and pretty shunned by the international community at the time.

The monument was a small and ruined temple in the now-flooded town of Debod, to which it owns its name Templo de Debod (Temple of Debod). Dedicated to the god Amun, it was built around the location of the First Cataract of the Nile, some 15 km south of Aswan, about 2200 years ago, though the core of the building may have been older. The monument was actually affected by the original dam at the beginning of the 20th century, and it was covered in water for most of the year, which destroyed its colours and damaged the reliefs.

During the Unesco salvage mission, it was dismantled, and eventually granted and taken to Spain, and “freely” reconstructed – a lot of information had been lost, and there were missing blocks. National stone was used to fill in the gaps, and the gates (remains of the pylons) were built in the wrong order, according to some old pictures. The restorers built an air-conditioning system, a wooden roof, and the main hall was closed off with a glass door and window panes. Today, the temple is open to the public at weekends, but unprotected from the Spanish weather – rather different from the Egyptian one – and pollution, it is rapidly deteriorating.

I went inside the temple once when I was a child, and I had a clear memory of it that kept surfacing when I was in Egypt – so I wanted to go back. The entry is free, but capacity is reduced, so I had to queue for almost an hour to enter. I finally matched my memory to reality. The interior of the sanctuary has a small chapel and some carved stones had been taken to a makeshift second floor to display them as a little museum.

A collage of a small Egyptian temple - it has two floating gates that lead up to the main building, which is small with four columns. One picture shows a tiny and dark inside room with an altar.

After the temple, I got lunch on the go, then walked towards the hotel to check in and change clothes. Around 16:15, I set off to La Riviera for the concert. I had a Meet and Greet ticket and had to be there before 17:00. Personnel from the venue were extremely nice, and there was no chaos at all, even if things had been a little disorganised and some fans were lacking M&G confirmation emails. Everything was well-handed and everyone who had paid for an upgrade got through. There were about 30 people to meet and greet Epica and we were ten for Apocalyptica.

Apocalyptica is a Finnish four-man band – Eicca Toppinen, Perttu Kivilaakso, Paavo Lötjönen and Mikko Sirén – founded in 1993. They are “semi-officially” a symphonic metal band, but they’ve ventured into everything from Metallica covers (which was their origin) to pure classical works. They have a very specific style heavily using classical cellos and combining them with modern drums. They currently collaborate with American – self-identified as Cuban in the concert – singer Franky Perez for vocals.

Meeting the four of them was really fun. I got autographs and took the most epic picture I’ve ever taken with a band or artist before. As we were only ten, after it was over, I had time to buy some merchandising and still be the second person to settle on first row – despite having decided that I was going to sit back and relax.

Apocalyptica white and black poster, signed by the four members

General admission started at 18:00, and the crowd was surprisingly tame throughout the whole thing. The venue filled up and the supporting band, Wheel, came up at 18:30. Wheel is a Finnish progressive metal band that consists of James Lascelles (Vocals/Guitar), Santeri Saksala (Drums), Aki ‘Conan’ Virta (Bass) and Jussi Turunen (Lead Guitar).

Wheel Setlist

  1. Hyperion
  2. Blood drinker
  3. Movement
  4. Vultures
  5. Wheel

Wheel playing, each member at his insturment: bass, guitar, singer and drummer

The second band was Epica, which I remember having listening to back when the world was young. They are a Dutch symphonic metal band currently composed by Simone Simons (lead vocals), Mark Jansen (rhythm guitar, vocals), Coen Janssen (keyboards, synthesizer), Ariën van Weesenbeek (drums), Isaac Delahaye (lead guitar) and Rob van der Loo (bass). Simone can go insanely high with her voice, and she has an amazing presence on stage, and the whole band has an immense amount of energy – she also reminded me of a comic character. The keyboardist had a lot of personality too, and he was extremely fun.

Epica Setlist

  1. Abyss of Time – Countdown to Singularity (recording)
  2. The essence of silence
  3. Victims of contingency
  4. Unleashed
  5. The final lullaby
  6. The obsessive devotion
  7. The skeleton key
  8. Rivers
  9. Code of life
  10. Cry for the moon
  11. Beyond the Matrix
  12. Consign to oblivion

Collage of Epica playing, showing different members at their choice of insturment - singer, bassist, guitarist, and keyboardist with a portable keyboard

Finally Apocalyptica came on stage, and it was extremely fun. The things those guys do to their classical cellos would make some classical musicians cry, but the sound is super-powerful. We had Franky Perez for vocals, and a very fun moment regarding “listen to our classical music album at home, because we still feel like death metal”. They interacted a lot with the public, and it felt somehow very friendly / warm – yes, I’m talking about metal here. It was really that fantastically weird.

Apocalyptica Setlist

  1. Ashes of the Modern World
  2. Grace
  3. I’m not Jesus
  4. Not strong enough
  5. Rise
  6. En route to mayhem
  7. Shadowmaker
  8. I don’t care
  9. Nothing else matters
  10. Inquisition Symphony
  11. Seek & Destroy
  12. Farewell
  13. In the Hall of the Mountain King

Apocalyptica playing with Franky Perez. Perez is in the foreground, dressed in black. The thee cello-playing members are in the frame, playing. The drums peek behind them, but you can't spot the drummer

Apocalyptica playing at La Riviera. They have classical cellos. Two of the members stand on the sides, playing their cellos. Another one is walking swinging his as if it weighed nothing, The final one is slamming drums in the background.

We finished off just short of 23:00, I bought off some fast food for dinner, and headed back to the hotel to have a shower and get some sleep. I was woken up early in the morning due to the cleaning crew and the garbage mini-vans noises, but I did not leave bed until 9:00, then set off at 9:30. I bought some cold coffee on the way and walked into the former royal palace gardens, now public park Jardines del Campo del Moro.

Though I’d seen the gardens a few times before, this was the first time I actually walked into them. Despite the frost covering everything, I got a nice view of the palace and different fountains and buildings sprinkled throughout the green – Chalet de Corcho, is a small hut with coloured windows; and Chalecito de la Reina a wooden house that is currently closed. I was insanely amused by a little grass-cutting robot.

Jardines del Campo del Moro. Collage. It's winter and most trees are grey and bare. At the end of the walkway stands the Neoclassical Royal Palace. Two smaller buildings - one of them is white with brown beams, reminscing of German architecture; another one is a small kiosk with colourful windows - red, green...

I wandered around for an hour or so, then headed off via underground to the National library of Spain Biblioteca Nacional de España for the absolutely worst guided visit of my life. Like… it’s true that it’s free, but tickets run out within hours of coming out – on the 20th of the month, for the following month. I’d actually been trying to do this since Covid lockdowns ended… It turns out, we did not see any real books, we could not even peer into the reading area, the book and reading museum is closed and the only information we got was… that the guide did not like the Library. We did not get to see anything interesting or that we could not see on our own, and we did not get to learn anything, so this was a huge blunder. Live and learn – but it was one of the few things that was open on a Monday. The library is a huge Neoclassical building with a fantastic marble staircase inside. The doors and gates are protected by intrincate ironwork fences.

Biblioteca Nacional de España. A Neoclassical building in white and grey tones. The exterior has columns and statues of writers. The interior showcases a pair of twin staircases with the statue of one of the most important library directors between both.

I met with family for a quick lunch and then we went for a walk. We had thought about going to one of the terraces to see the cityscape, but it was closed because it was a Monday. We ended up at the Parque del Retiro park again to make some time and walk. We sat in the sun for a while, then went to see the Palacio de Velázquez there. Currently, it’s part of the modern art museum Museo de Arte Reina Sofía, and I did not really care much about the exhibits, but I like the building. Architect Ricardo Velázquez Bosco built it in brick (with ceramic tiles by Daniel Zuloaga) for the Mining Exhibit in 1883, inspired by London’s Crystal Palace, now gone. The interior is pristine white with hints of iron architecture, but the building’s official style is “neorenaissance historicism” whatever that means.

Palacio de Velazquez: A brick building with large windows and tile decoration. The inside is all white with bits of iron architecture.

Velázquez Bosco and Zuloaga also came together when they designed another building I really like, the glass-and-iron greenhouse Palacio de Cristal, which was built to home tropical flora and fauna from the Philippines in an exhibit in 1887. In front of the palace, there’s a small pond home to some cheeky ducks and geese.

Palacio de cristal. A huge greenhouse with a dome, and two wings. A white duck wanders in the foreground. Between the greenhouse and the duck there's a small pond.

Then, we went to have a snack. Trying to find something on the map before the trip, I’d come across a place called La Mejor Tarta de Chocolate del Mundo, which translates to “The best chocolate cake in the world” and that had to be tried! It was really nice, even if the place was pretty small and felt a bit cramped.

A slice of chocolate cake in front of mugs and teapots

We finally took a stroll down towards the sunset, and I took the train back without much of a hitch, then drove home

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

28th May 2022: San Cristóbal de la Laguna, Bajamar & Santa Cruz de Tenerife {Tenerife, birthday 2022}

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I had a four-day weekend that happened to overlap with my birthday, so I decided to get myself a present and I booked the four days out – I wanted to visit the Spanish island of Tenerife. I seemed to have a streak of luck finding a decent flight, a couple of good hotels and a free permission to visit the peak of Mount Teide, a non-extinct volcano that happens to be the highest peak in Spain. I also decided to rent a car for the first time so I could travel around the island and do different activities in different places.

The plane left on time at 8:15 on Saturday – and I have to say that I love my IKEA travel bag, because it has a huge capacity but the perfect size to place under the seat, therefore I do not need to queue up for boarding to make sure I can stow the carry on. We taxied at the correct time, but when we got to the runway, we stopped. It turned out that one of the sensors was giving a warning of a 400 ºC temperature on one of the wheels. It turned out to be a false alarm, but we ended up with an hour-long delay that ended up cascading.

I reached the airport and got my rental – Volkswagen Polo I had to learn how to reverse. Once I was done with that, it was surprisingly easy to get by. I drove off to San Cristobal de la Laguna and went off to visit the historic quarter, which is a Unesco World Heritage site as an example of colonial architecture – Centro Histórico de San Cristobal de la Laguna. Most of the buildings date back to the 15th century, and the design was then copied in different colonial cities in South America. The houses are painted in different colours and most of them sport amazing woodwork in their doors or balconies.

It gave me a pretty distinct “Disneyland” feeling as the pedestrian streets are plagued with cafés, brand shops and bars. It was packed with tourists like myself flocking in guided tours from the tourist office, which seemed to only open to gather groups in order to hold those tours. As the week before my trip had been work-crazy, I had not been able to plan in detail, so my plan was to hit the tourist office, gather information and move on. This did not work out, and on top of that, the cathedral Catedral de Nuestra Señora de los Remedios was already closing down when I arrived – due to the delay. Other interesting but closed buildings included the church Iglesia Matriz de la Concepción, and several palaces including Casa de los Capitanes and the reconstructed Palacio de Salazar.

Typical buildings from Canary Islands. They are colonial in style, with big doors and windows. The façades are painted with different colours.

Typical buildings from Canary Islands. They are colonial in style, with big doors and windows. The façades are painted with different colours. The streets are wide and full of people.

I’m not going to say that I was disappointed, but I was really not digging the atmosphere, so I decided to move on. Instead of following the initial rough plan, I decided to head off to the tiny village of Bajamar to see the “sea pools”. Built in the petrified lava coast, the Piscinas de Bajamar are swimming pools fed by ocean water that keep swimmers safe from the rocks and the waves. I was lucky enough to find a very good and easy parking spot.

I wandered around the promenade Paseo Marítimo de Bajamar, saw the pools, the beach, and the mini lighthouse Faro de Bajamar.

Waves coming into the volcanic beach, which does not have sand but big black blocks of rock.

I moved onto Santa Cruz de Tenerife afterwards, ditched the car and checked into the hotel, then went off to explore. I walked by the market complex La Recova, also called Mercado de Nuestra Señora de África.

A bright orange building. It has a low, wide wall, and in the centre a clock tower

The tower of the church Iglesia Matriz de la Concepción (yes, again, but another one). The church has been repeatedly rebuilt and renamed between the 15th and 18th centuries. The current building is Canarian Baroque / Tuscan style.

A church with a bell tower. The building is white clay with black rock; this style is typical in the area

My first real destination was Plaza de España where the defensive castle Castillo de San Cristóbal used to stand. Now there is a fountain / pond and you can see the foundations of the castle.

Collage. The former site of the castle, now converted into a fountain or lake. On the other side, the castle foundations, and a cannon.

Next, I found another important square, Plaza de la Candelaria, but it was unfortunately under construction.

A grey building with construction work being done on it

So I moved on to the science and anthropology museum Museo de Ciencia y Antropología de Tenerife. It was rather underwhelming at first, as most of the “exhibit” were photographs. Eventually I reached the “good” stuff, with reconstructions of ancient and extinct animals such as the Canarian giant rat and the Goliath Giant lizard – we’ll come back to those eventually. There were butterfly collections, reproductions of marine animals, rocks and meteorites. In the archaeology ward there were mummies – that was a little unnerving to be honest, I thought we had learnt a little more respect about the ancient cultures.

Before the Europeans arrived in the Canary Islands in the 15th century, there was a previous civilization in Tenerife, called the guanche. The guanche settled in the island around the 6th century. While it is not clear where they came from it is thought that they came from the north of Africa, as their language was similar to those in the Berber language group. They lived off the cattle and the land, and their economy was clearly based on the goat, which they used for everything – food (meat and dairy), clothing, bone tools, and mummification material.

Collage of the museum: a prehistoric carved rock; preserved giant rat and lizard; models of fish; a meteorite; rests of mummies (a foot and an arm)

After the museum, I walked along the harbour and saw the modern concert hall Auditorio de Tenerife, designed by the famous architect Santiago Calatrava, whose style is easily recognised – even though in recent year he has drawn criticism for going way beyond budget and his building having problems due to “over innovation”.

The auditorium. It looks like the sail of a yacht, all white.

A few steps further stands the tiny fortress Castillo de San Juan Bautista, built between 1641 and 1643, and rebuilt the following century. I would have loved to see the botanical garden, but it closed early – as most things seemed to do.

Small castle surrounded by a moat that fills up in high tide.

I took a small detour to see the former arsenal Casa de la Pólvora, built in masonry in the 18th century. Eventually, I went to the supermarket to buy some dinner and snacks for the upcoming adventures, and called it a day after 14 hours on the go.

Armourine building. It looks like a treasure chest, built in grey rock

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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7th February 2020: Through the Strikes

I had an (amazingly convenient) flight that left at 9am on Friday (and that had cost me 35€), but it turned out to be weird. When we boarded, it turned out that it was a big plane, an intercontinental plane. Which meant it was huge, and more importantly, it had on-board entertainment. Thus, as we waited for the go-ahead, I set up to watch an action film. Then, the pilot told us that we were going to have to wait something between one and two hours to be able to take off due to the strikes. But hey, at least we were flying and I had an action film to watch (the newest X Men, Phoenix one. I did not become a fan).

We took off at 10am 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. Finally, I made it to the train and was downtown Paris at about 13:00. I came out at the Notre Dame stop to inspect the damage caused to the Notre Dame Cathedral by the 2019 fire. My first impression, looking at the tower, was optimistic, but as I walked round the cathedral, I could see the real damage and reconstruction efforts. Furthermore, it still reeked of burnt wood, probably because they are still pulling out debris.

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

As it was sunny, I decided to go to the Sainte-Chapelle and see its windows in good weather. The Sainte-Chapelle is a small two-level chapel inside an administrative building in the Isle de la Cité smack in the middle of Paris and not far from Notre Dame. The chapel has a lower early Gothic level, and an upper level with impressive stained-glass windows that I love. As the sun was shining, I got really lovely views and pictures. It is a Unesco World Heritage Site.

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, and the forecast for the following day was bad, so I decided to just walk along from the Isle 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.

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

Finally I got to the Arc de triomphe, where I took a train to the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur area, where my hotel was. After dropping my stuff, I walked up the hill to have a look at the basilica and I caught a glimpse of the sunset with the Eiffel Tower in the background.

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

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

As my last adventure for the day I went to see the Moulin Rouge from the outside (because inside was too expensive to even consider) – and I listened to KAMIJO’s ムーランルージュ.

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

8th February 2020: Louvre and DIRU

The forecast was accurate and on Saturday weather went down the drain. I decided to go to the Louvre Museum, even if I had been there before. I got predictably lost and I’ not even sure how. In the end, I managed to see everything that I wanted, which began and finished with the Victory of Samothrace, my favourite piece of art ever.

I have a love-hate relationship with Louvre, mostly based on my utter lack of sense of directions and the way the palace-museum is organised, with the exhibits in different wards and floors. In the Classical Greece sector, however, I overheard something strange. I was looking at the Sleeping Hermaphroditus, and I overheard a random guy explaining to a little kid that Hermaphroditus was designed to represent the “most important sacrament of them all, marriage between a man and a woman”. I had a very WTF moment and I was too shocked to address the guy because, seriously? I’m all for Christian art representing Christian beliefs. However, pushing those onto a culture that a) had completely different values, b) was 100% all right with homosexuality, and c) whose goddess of marriage (Hera) was consistently cheated on? I mean, yes, there was a connection between Hermaphroditus and marriage in how they became intersex, but let’s face it here – the Greek mythology had too many erotic undertones to be able to push the Christian values onto it.

As you can see, I am pretty much biased…

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

I spent three to four hours in the Louvre and then went back to the hotel to get ready for the DIR EN GREY concert and VIP experience in Élysée Montmartre, which could have been a better experience if my head had not been hurting and the weather had been nicer – I could have totally skipped the downpour while waiting. Oh, and if the stupid chick from behind me had known how to behave. But hey, it was a great excuse for a much-needed mental break. DIR EN GREY or “Diru” is a Japanese heavy metal band formed characterisede for its dark themes and scenography that I thought I needed to check at least once. I don’t think I’ll need to repeat the experience, though I don’t regret attending.

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

After the concert I headed off to the hotel to catch some sleep (I had booked a very close hotel because I remembered the area being rather… unfriendly from the 2015 trip).

9th February 2020: Destroy the Bastille!

Sunday morning felt like 2ºC and it was windy. I lingered in bed for a while and then headed out to see the Bastille monument and its remains. Like, the four rocks remaining. I searched for KAMIJO’s Bastille on the mp3 and hoped that the device lasted another season.

Monument to the French Revolution

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

Then, as it was cold, I headed off to the Galerie de Paléontologie et d’Anatomie comparée (Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy Gallery) which was a short walk away. I’m still trying to decide whether it was amazing, or the materials nightmares are made of.

The first floor holds a “Cavalcade of Skeletons”, along with dissected specimens and a “gallery of monsters”. 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. It was enchanting, but at the same time deeply disturbing.

The second floor hosts the dinosaurs and other fossils, including a very cool mosasaurs. Most of the fossils are either moulds or reconstructions – I swear I’ve seen that Irish elk at least three times before. Also, the T-Rex skull was adorably flawed.

The third floor is… ammonite-land.

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 to head 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. Behold my favourite Shiva (which is not as cool as the British Museum sexy bodhisattva, but still).

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

After checking out the four floors, I left the museum and walked towards Trocadero to take the underground. I snapped a few pictures of the Eiffel Tower and saw a bunch of peddlers swinging people away from their money (up to 400 quid. Live and learn (O_O)!)

The Eiffel Tower in front of a cloudy sky

Finally, I decided it was too cold to continue walking around and headed back to the hotel to get ready for the BABYMETAL concert. Truth be told, had I known they would be adding Madrid to their tour, I would not have bought that ticket but as things went, I found that they were going to be in the same venue as DIR EN GREY just a day later, so it made sense to try to stay. It worked out. BABYMETAL is one of those insanely-profitable Japanese marketing stunts involving cute girls that had never really been in my radar until I found a cheap ticket to see them. The crew was quite different from DIRU’s, including good ol’ metalheads and families with little girls. It was entertainingenough, and it seemed very lucky timing.

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

The concert was short, so I was back at the hotel before 10pm. Thus I got a good night’s sleep before I left.

10th February 2020: No bells of Notre Dame

My plane boarded at 10am 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 to the airport, where the staff was super nasty. In the end, I made it to my plane, where I settled down to watch Jurassic World on the way back. As I was riding the train, I had a nice view of the Paris as it was dawning, but the bells of Notre Dame were not tolling, and my inner child was sad about that.

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 scratch out a few plans due to the weather (and the stupid headache, I think I might have put in the left contact wrong again), but there’ll always be April… Because yes, I’m coming back to Paris for the Saint Seiya Symphonic adventure and that’s going to be epic. And heartbreaking because I found out too late to get VIP tickets (≧▽≦).

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.