Marc's Public Blog - Trips to other locations

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:

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:

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.

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 :)