Marc's Public Blog

It's a nice city on top of a hill, separated by a bridge, with ruins, a Bull fighting ring and bull raising farm:

We had enough time for the bull fighting ring and museum, and dinner:

The next day, we went to visit the 2 halves of town:

the arab baths are all the way down, where the water is

We then thought we'd do a quick stop at Mondragon Palace, but it was a much bigger museum than planned. We ended up spending multiple hours there:

We then checked a wine "museum" which was also about selling wine:

Another small museum on the way out:

traversing the bridge back to new town

On the way out, we drove by Pileta Cave, a privately owned with caveman engravings. As usual, no pictures allowed, even without flash:

After that, we had a drive to La Línea de la Concepción. We tried to stop by Castillo del Águila on the way, which was a huge mistake. You can't really drive to it and we got stuck in an old town where driving out was "challenging"

didn't look like much

reasonable scenery

driving out, OMG!!!

finally making it to the Mediterranean coast

Granada still has city walls:

Downtown Granada is also worth walking through:

The next morning, we drove by the Monasterio de San Jerónimo for a quick visit and then did a quick visit to La Ronda:

poor thing :)

The inside was beautiful and colorful in ways that the other cathedrals we've seen, were not:

We did the tower tour, which had decent views, but it was still work in progress (top is still being built):

the stairs were truly bad ass

The museum attached to the cathedral gave lots of details on the history and the build, as well as Gaudi's life:

Gaudi used nature for many of his designs

Guudi also used a gravity upside down model

Definitely one of a kind, worth the visit.

Next was Casa Mila which also had stupid waits, even in end of September, but as good capitalists, they sell skip the line (expensive) online tickets:

one of the building's arches has a view on the unfinished Sagrada Familia

Gaudi used an interesting engineering principle of suspending structures upside down and using gravity to help see ideal building shapes

Down the street was his Casa Batllo, another expensive visit with more expensive skip the line tickets I was able to get:

Another of his buildings was Guel Palace, which we saw just before leaving Barcelona:

another nice roof

And for good measure, the city also had a Gaudi museum:

Dali definitly was an interesting artist, who actually did all kinds of art all the way to jewelry. One thing he said though "I don't need to take drugs, I am drugs" :)

Next door to the museum, was an easy to miss separate entrance that showecased his jewelry, which was super nice:

The place was definitely interesting to visit with little rooms in all directions and easily worth 2-3h. Thankfully when we went, it was not too busy, but at times it can take an hour or more to get in.

After a morning in Madrid, we took the train to Figueres for a half day, mostly to see the Dali Museum but it also had nice Castle Ruins (Castell de Sant Ferran). With the fast AVE train, it was less than 1h ride:

the train station made it clear what the main attraction was :)

Castell de Sant Ferran is better appreciated from the sky and was worth an hour visit:

The town also had a more minor toy museum that we saw quickly while waiting for our next hourly train:

And then it was time to take the train back home to Barcelona:

Back to the Aquarium, it was an average city aquarium, not amongst the best we've seen, but not terrible either :)

shark eggs

Part of the collection:

a good sample of paintings from Salvador Dali

yeah, many religious paintings, felt like too many by the end of the trip

We didn't see all of Barcelona in 3.5 days, but we saw a fair amount:

Day #1

Day #2

Day #3

Day #4

Here are the pictures:

Day #0

weird pigeons

Day #1

la rambla is mostly a tourist trap now, but it had some fun stuff :)

funicular up to Montjuïc

Once we were up by Montjuïc, we went to check out Joan Miro Museum which was part of our BCN pass (sadly a waste of money as museums were free that day due to the holiday). I'll just say that we were not big fans of Joan Miro:

any artist who thinks they can get away with this, and call it 'valuable art' is not one I'll take seriously

don't love this, but at least there is a bit of work

great art indeed

I should also take balloons, fill them with paint, throw them on a canvas, and get rich and famous

this was ok-ish I guess

the mercury fountain was likely the only cool piece for me

On the way to the art museum, we walked by the former olympic stadium complex:

And we eventually got to the Art Museum:

awesome view from up there:

the bullring turned mall

Sagrada Familia, still being built

Pictures of the Cataluna Art Museum are on their own page.

Once done with the Art Museum, which took a while, it's not small, we walked back to the Montjuïc cable car and took it up there:

good views from up there too

After seeing the castle, we went back down to the fountains, but were not able to approach them since they were getting ready for the festivities and fireworks of that night, so we walked to the bullring museum which had good views too:

while the inside looks like a round-ish regular mall

We then took another cab to go to the Aquarium, have dinner next door and find a reasonable spot to view the fireworks.
You can see the Aquarium Pictures here

Day #2

We then went to Picasso Museum:

yeah, he did pottery too, oh boy...

We finished it quickly enough that we had time to stop by a market before catching a train to Figueres (on its own page, mostly to see the Dali Museum:

Day #3

Gaudi was a one of a kind architect, definitely check out the page I made for his buildings. Got a few nice pictures from the roof:

We then walked to the cathdral:

Nice views from the top of the cathedral too:

no one was able to tell me what this was

Next door was Barcelona History Museum, with a nice tour through the roman streets that were found below ground level in the old town:

I made the call to leave the museum a bit early (we finished it the next day) and grab a cab to Barceloneta to check out the beach, and barely, so barely get a ticket to the cable car that picked up from there back to Montjuic, as they closed the ticket sales 30mn before their published closing time:

people working out on the beach

the ride from the beach starts from a high tower

Day #4

We then went back to downtown to finish up the history museum, do the gaudi museum, and the quite interesting Museu Frederic Mares on its own page.

And we finished the (partial) day with the Gaudi Museum and Guel Palace. From there, we had to head out to the airport to fly out to Granada, our next destination.

Patrick and Diane brought extra desert

That evening, the family met in a nearby japanese restaurant:

thankfully they served fries, a requirement for a dutch meal :)

The next morning, we had lunch together again:

And then it was time to go (for us flying to Barcelona). A few extra shots:

Reno Air Races had nice static displays as well as planes on display when they were not flying:

some races used very small planes, less drag, more speed

purple, nice...

looks fast

Other static displays:

Brian Shul seems to be at all those airshows

that is one big ass engine :)

one vendor had a collection of lots of engines parts broken by overwork

valve that fell into a piston and melted

There were multiple airshows, they were not bad :)

biplane with propeller plus jet

honda jet demo, it was super quiet

And of course, they had races, that's what the whole event was about afterall :)

Great 2.5 days in Reno, thanks Arnaud.

The Boeing factory is on the other side of the field, so you get to see random planes that have just been built

Great to see a reminder of how big the V2 rocket was

The earlier V1 flying bombs

I had never seen this V1 with suicide mission pilot (Rechenberg)

The 2 atomic bombs dropped on Japan

a more powerful and smaller bomb

It was great to re-visit the museum. Thanks to my friend Steve for joining me.

nice glass instruments in the middle :)

It's not huge, but definitely worth a quick visit if you are in the area.

this bike was connected to the kitchen to a blender I think, I didn't get to see it work, though

huge playing areas

The next day I went to check out the Bothell office. While it was not open to regular employees, I got a very quick tour:

The redmond office was a small office with a few logistics people, not much to visit. The next day was time to go to work in the Fremont office. Lots of buildings there:

fresh baguette, yum

Definitely very nice offices, glad that I got to see more of them than on my last trip in 2015.

my car for the day was waiting when I arrived, a nice rally prepped WRX STI

great collection of rally memorabilia

the playground

the car I got to drive

No lift brake turn here :)

The first day didn't have rain, so they made their own :)

On the first day, I learned the very basics, including trying to stop myself from the urge to countersteer when I was sideways (essential for RWD, but counter productive for AWD).

On day #2, we made a lot more progress with my new instructor for the day:

I got the car suitably dirty :)

During a bit of downtime, I got a quick tour around the grounds that are famous because they were used for the show Twin Peaks, as well as the garage where they work on cars:

They even threw in professional pictures, very nice of them:

Needless to say that I had a hell of a lot of fun. I sure didn't turn into a rally expert in 2 days, but I improved a lot from the total rookie level I was at when I started. It'll definitely be fun to go back.

Here's a video of one of my last laps on the mixed course I was running in the rain and on a mix of gravel and tarmac. It even included a hand brake turn :)

I only had time to hike up little Si during the day after driving

On the 2nd day after driving, I went to check out the small railway museum nearby:

I then drove out towards Seattle area (kirkland) and stopped by a nice botanical garden:

I then went to visit the very nice Google Kirkland Campus

The next day, I went to the Natural History Museum. It's not huge, but worth a small visit outside of its total lack of car parking which was a pain:

After the museum and with the car parked, biked around Seattle a bit with the electric bikes they had around. The University campus is very nice and worth going through:

Harry Potter like

these bikes were lifesavers

I then went to 2 different flight museums:

From there, I quickly went to check out a couple of other google offices and stopped by the microsoft campus, because why not. Know your enemy and all :)

I wish I didn't remember this. By the way it was 'plug and pray' (not play)

poor Paul Allen just died. 'Funny' story is that Bill Gates and Ballmer tried to screw him out of his stock. He refused and became a multi billionaire. Good for him

pretty but I think I'll pass

The next day, I took a few more pictures around Fremont where I was working:

Seattle is quite pleasant when the weather is nice :)