Coastal Mini-break

My first Canadian visitors arrived last week and their stay was not long enough! Dara and Sean, who have both just graduated with me from Queen’s in chem eng and civil respectively, left for Paris Saturday morning after 3 days here, acquiring a taste of Barcelona (BCN as I will start referring to it). They are close to the end of their 25 day Europe adventure, and they had lots of opinions on where I must and must not go during my stay. It was so wonderful to talk to them (it’s becoming a treat to speak quickly in full English sentences,… it’s funny the small things you begin to appreciate and look forward to).

During the day they would tour around and see the sights while I was at work; and then we would meet up in the evening. Their second night here we went to an amazing restaurant that had been recommended to me by many people at work, called La Fonda. Let me just say that anyone who comes to visit me will now be taken to this restaurant. It’s very classy, the food is amazing, and best of all it is extremely cheap relative to any other restaurant of this calibre in this city. We had a wonderful meal, great conversation, and then walked around the gothic quarter for a bit. On their last night here (Friday night) we decided to go cheap, and went for a picnic on one of the BCN beaches. Dara and I went for a swim, while Sean played in the sand (see pictures). Then we went up to Placa Espanya (a large museum area close to my building) to see the fountain. Every night, Thursday through Saturday in the summer, the fountain is lit up in multicolours and choreographed to classical music. It was beautiful, and a very relaxing way to spend the evening. I know I will be back there many times. I will miss those two friends very much, and I look forward to Dara’s return to Europe in October when she begins her Masters in chemical engineering at a university in Stuttgart, Germany. Stuttgart = home of the Mercedes-Benz: see http://www.stgt.com/stuttgart/homee.htm

Saturday morning 36 Iaeste students here in BCN, and surrounding areas, (our numbers are growing very quickly!) met at the train station and travelled up the coast (towards France) to the town of Figures. This town is known for being the birth place of Salvador Dali, and today it’s main tourist attraction is the Dali museum. This extremely eccentric man was boarder-line genius and insane, and this is very obvious after touring an entire building that he had created. I found some of his art to be very dark and morbid, but most of it incredibly interesting. Five minutes into the museum I realized any attempt to imagine what was going through his mind, or life, while he was creating his art was futile and a waste of energy; I think that he must have been very disturbed, and enjoyed the shock value of abnormal extremes. Although I find him to be very creepy, he is truly an amazing artist, and every piece of work that I saw was completely unique. Any barriers in artistic style and content which may have existed prior to Dali were undoubtedly broken over his lifetime. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Dalí The pictures below are some of his more famous pieces.

Saturday afternoon, following the museum, we travelled by bus a little further up the coast to the town of Cadaques. This small city is breathtakingly beautiful. I was one of the lucky few who were able to get accommodation at a small hotel, we wandered around the town to find dinner, and then everyone went night kayaking around 10pm. A guide took 20 of us across the harbour bay full of yachts to a small beach where we went for a swim. This night swim was really cool as I had never been in the ocean in the dark before, and whenever you moved the water, or splashed, the phosphorescent plankton would light up and make the water sparkle. I know this is nothing new, but I was still very impressed by the natural beauty of plankton at night (yes, I’ve obviously never lived by the sea). We hiked along the coast (in total darkness along a tiny path with a crazy cliff on one side,… exciting) to a lighthouse where we watched the stars and had a drink called Rom Cremat (burnt rum). This is essentially rum with cinnamon, sugar, and lemon added to it, set on fire, and burnt for about 1 hour. We returned to the city at about 2am.

Sunday morning we wandered around the town some more, and went to one of the few non-rocky beaches to sunbathe and swim. If I ever return to this city I will bring a mask and snorkel as the water is unbelievably clear, and there tons of schools of fish and other flora and fauna to watch and swim with. Late Sunday afternoon we took a bus back to BCN. A great weekend all in all.

Finally, the latest news highlight I've received from Canada (I'm sure it almost made the newspaper headlines this morning): Wils scores his first hole-in-one on the Osprey golf course! If you get a chance to ask him about it, I'm sure he'd be thrilled to relive the moment. :) Congrads Dad! I wish I could have been there. Miss you, Sarah.