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Table of Content for monuments:

More pages: August 2026 August 2024 May 2024 April 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2021 November 2021 September 2018

2026/08/14 Guided Tour of Barcelona's Gaudi's Houses and Park Guel

π 2026-08-14 01:01 in Monuments, Spain

I had already seen some of the same houses (plus a few other ones) (clickme)

While busy building Sagrada Familia (which he did until he died), Gaudi took several other projects, including multiple houses. A nice guided tour gave a better visit of them, including entrance to busy ones:

Gaudi built models upside down and used gravity to show the best shape

Park Guel was also still very cool and another masterpiece from Gaudi:

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2026/08/13 Barcelona Sagrada Familia

π 2026-08-13 01:01 in Monuments, Spain

I had been there once before, but it's of course a don't miss while you are in Barcelona, and ironically it's still just as hard to get in (if not harder) if you factor in the elevators to the top which book out a month early at times. On the plus side, I remember doing it last time and while the few wasn't bad, it wasn't essential. It's still not fully finished, but now it's just a matter of adding more decorations no top where most people can't go or see them anyway :)

I had already been there in 2018, the outside hadn't been as completed back then but the inside looked similar, aka awesome (clickme)

It is and remains unique in the world, a masterpiece from Gaudi with skilled staff to continue his work:

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2024/08/12 Revisiting the Eiffel Tower After Many Years

π 2024-08-12 01:01 in Monuments

It had been a long time since I had been up the Eiffel tower, not quite 20 years, but close. And with the new airport security gate BS where you can't even walk under the Eiffel Tower without going through security gates, courtesy of terrorist fears (I won't write a long rant on that, but I personally think it's a BS overreaction and instead they should have skilled law enforcement patrolling and looking for suspect people at all such sites):

Anyway, thanks to a reservation at Jules Vernes, it was easy to get in and get a private elevator ride to the 2nd floor, enjoy yummy food, get lots of pictures, and then walk down to the 1st floor and back down without having to take any regular elevator or any lines, so that worked great :)
Going to the 3rd floor was not possible without very advance tickets, but honestly it's a small floor and the view is great from the 2nd floor as is.

Views from the top:

Russian orthodox church

This time around was a bit different due to the olympics as they had many blue seats/viewing platforms for the multiple locations the games happened at:

some hot air balloon in the middle of jardin des tuileries

pont de l'alma was totally closed, even to pedestrians

And on the 1st floor, there are multiple stores, as well as a VR game:

And stairs back down:

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2024/05/02 Athen's Panatheanic Stadium

π 2024-05-02 01:01 in Greece2024, Monuments, Museums

The Panatheanic Stadium was rebuilt for the 2004 greece olympics, and it does look quite good. Much better than the original site at Olympia which wasn't very stadium-like by our current standards :)

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2024/05/02 Athen's Acropolis Museum

π 2024-05-02 01:01 in Greece2024, Monuments, Museums

Day #2 in Athens was to go through museums, and of course Acropolis Museum was a major one to see. It was very well built and layed out, and looked well done. It was nowhere close in size, but it was Louvre quality.

storing black powder and ammunition there during the war

turned out to be a big mistake and responsible for most of the damage seen today

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2024/05/01 Ancient Agora of Athens

π 2024-05-01 01:01 in Greece2024, Monuments

The Roman Agora, along with Rick Steve's audio tour, was enjoyable to visit. Even if again a lot is missing, the museum had good exhibits of what was found, and the temple of Hephaestus is actually the best preserved temple I saw in Athens.