Last night I went to the Red Hot Chili Peppers gig at Cape Town Stadium, and while I was not able to take my SLR with me (and my trusty fully charged point and shoot’s battery mysteriously died), I was still able to snap this panaroma off on my phone.
Not too bad for a phone.
I don’t much care for hospitals. But if I had to spend time in a hospital, this is one that I could consider; the Fundació Hospital de Puigcerdà in the Pyrenees. The original hospital dates back to 1190, and it is still an active hospital. Unfortunately the doctors would be speaking to you in Catalan, and not in English, but you will spend time in a wonderful old building.
Torre Jaume I is the midway tower on the Barcelona Cableway. The cableway was built in 1929 and I am convinced that all the original parts are still being used. It is old, rickety and a little scary, but hugely fun in a retro kind of way.
This tower is 107 meter high, and is the midpoint of the cable car. In theory, you can climb out and stand on the observation platform, but our car went straight past. It still gives you a great view of Barcelona and the harbour area, but a one-way trip is probably sufficient.
Casa Batlló, Barcelona. This door is one of the landings in this very strange house built by Gaudi. I like the details in the wood, and the almost cartoonish feel to the picture.
Another view of the grand columns of the Santa Maria del Mar in Barcelona, a lovely basilica build in the late 1300’s.
Our apartment in Barcelona was in the Gothic Quarter, literally about 200m walk to the cathedral. We quickly got used to sleeping through the bells ringing every hour throughout the night, and to be honest I now kind of miss hearing the bells at night.
Like many churches, visits were free and you could walk in anytime for a moment of quiet contemplation, or of course to take photos. The cathedral has wonderful cloisters, with several side-chapels around the edges. It is a classic example of gothic architecture, complete with gargoyles, crypts and long dark columns. I suspect that Anne Rice’s vampires could have fun here.
The facade is also quite amazing. There is so much detail in the sharp and intricate edges of the building. You could sit outside one of the many cafe’s outside the cathedral, drink a sangria, admire the facade and listen to traditional Catalan music.
Finally, something that you have to see from inside is the stained glass windows. From the outside they are just windows, but fulled with coloured lights as the sun shines inside and lights them up.
You can view the gallery below.
Another view of the benchmark of Gothic architecture, Barcelona cathedral. This is the vaulted roof of the cloisters. The cloisters are (slightly) less busy than the main cathedral, but there is a lovely fountain flowing into a pond, in which about 10 really noise geese live. I believe that there have been geese living there for many hundreds of years.
There are also many side-chapels, but most of them are closed off so you cannot really get nice shots of them.
This will be my last pictures of the beach houses in Muizenberg. Hopefully by now some of the pictures from my trip in Spain should be starting to come through. Of all my pictures, this is my favourite, I really like the framing in it, and I think it would look great printed on canvas.
This beach cabin as as brightly painted as the beach houses on Muizenberg beach. It is used by the life-saving club as a base, and although it looks a little dilapidated, it is still being put to good use.
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