Anchorage, Alaska
So, my first day in Anchorage, it was beautiful, about 50 degrees and sunny. So I decided to get out and explore. I rented a bike from a place in town, which also happens to be the official headquarters of the "Far From Fenway Fan Club." Yes, even in Alaska, there are Red Sox fans.
This is Anchorage, shot from about 4 miles away. You can see that it's a pretty dramatic setting.
This is me, from about 4 feet away, Anchorage, still 4 miles.
The route I took is a coastal path, that runs about 11 miles south from Anchorage to Kincaid Park. On this particular stretch, the path runs right past the end of the major runway for the Anchorage International Airport. This plane took off while I happened to be stopped to take the previous pictures. It wasn't the biggest to pass overhead, several 747 took off and landed right past me. Very loud...
This mountain appears to be a ski area, you can see the trails down the sides. Skiing in May.
This was a little stop on the path called earthquake park, about 3 miles south of Anchorage. Quite a view.
OK, I'm spoiling the view, but proof that I was there.
MOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE!
This is the entrance to Kincaid Park, where the bike path ends, about 11 miles from Anchorage. The dirt trails in the park are currently closed, because they are very wet. I'm trying to pretend I'm disappointed, but I'm not sure how much mountain climbing I was up for. It was a long ride.
Me and my bike outside Kincaid Park. The moose is about 200 yards to my right, just hanging out and munching, despite the little kids running around and playing in the field nearby.
Barcelona, Spain - Part 2: La Sagrada Familia
La Sagrada Familia or the Temple of the Holy Family has become a symbol of the city of Barcelona. It was and is largely the result of the vision of architect
Antonio Gaudi, whose imprint has been left all over the city (as you will see in this and the following posts).
Gaudi was not the original designer of the church, which began construction in 1882. Gaudi took over design two years later, and while Gaudi died in 1926, the church is still under construction. It is known as the world's most visited consturction site.
Conservative estimates place the date of completion at least 20 years away. That will be a construction time of approximately 140 years, for those doing the math. For someone witnessing Boston's Big Dig project, that seems like a very reasonable timeframe.
It's hard to capture the scale of this piece of work in words or these small pictures. Gaudi design three massive facades. One each representing the Nativity,
The Passion,
and the Glories. Each facade tells the entire story of these three chapters in the life of Christ. The three facades are each topped with four towering spires, for a total of twelve (one for each of the apostles. There will be four additional towers representing the Evangilists, and one massive cantral tower (over 500 feet tall) representing Jesus.
The Nativity and the Passion facades are essentially complete, and work on the facade of the Glories is essentially just beginning.
After Gaudi died, his original plans and models were destroyed by anarchists in the Spanish Civil War during the 1930s. This halted work for many years, but the plans have been reconstructed and work continues. There is no public money being spent on the construction, and the costs are now primarily paid by the tourist fees and private donations.
The interior of the church is largely incomplete as well, and at the moment it looks like something out of science fiction.
But also has some beautiful stained glass:
In order to gain access to the interior, you can pay 7 euros for a ticket. If you want to go up into the massive spires, you have two choices. You can pay an extra 2 euros for a ticket to the elevator, or you can climb the stairs. Before you say "I'm not paying to use an elevator, I suggest you review:
(with flash)
(actual light)
Just for reference, the white round thing in the bottom of the first picture is the toe of my sneaker. It gives you an idea of how narrow these steps were. No hand rail on the inside either, in case you're wondering. I've climbed the sprial stairs up the inside of the Bunker Hill monument. These are about twice as narrow the sprial is much tighter, and these towers are much taller.
Still, it's a good workout, and I saved 2 euros. Besides, if I had taken the elevator, I wouldn't have seen some of these details:
Taking a closer look at the facades, there is an amazong amount of detail in this work. Each facade is like a huge mural telling a story. Here are some detial pictures of the Nativity Facade, showing Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus, being watched over by angels:
The facade of the Passion is even more amazing:
Finally, one of my guidebooks mentioned that seeing the site lit up at night was not to be missed, so I went back after dark and snapped a few shots. It was impressive.
More to come from Barcelona...next up, more Gaudi...
Barcelona, Spain - Part 1
My next trip is to
Barcelona, Spain.
I've decided to break this one up into a few postings, because there was a lot to see, and putting it all in one post would be veeeeeeeeeeeeeery long (I took over 500 pictures, but I won't subject you to all of them).
Unlike Leiden or Amstrerdam in previous posts, Barcelona is most certainly a city. It reminds me in many ways of London. The greater metropolitan area has a population of over 4.5 million. There are some sections of the city that appear to have changed very little in centuries, while other sections resemble most cities anywhere in the world. While it is customary to greet people in Spanish, most people speak at least some English. Barcelona is also the capital of the
Catalonia region, and many residents also speak Catalan (I would not have known this in advance if it weren't for my friend Dave Neyhart, who married a woman from a Catalan family).
I was staying outside the main part of the City at the
Barcelona Hilton, to attend a conference. This is north and west of the city center.
There are a few options for getting around Barcelona. Taxis are plentiful and there is also an extensive public transportation system. I bought a multi-day pass and did most of my travelling on the subway system, the Metro. The Metro was efficient and clean for the most part, although there are a number of station undergoing maintanence work at the moment. Another option that I would recommend for touring the city would be one of the bus tour services. The one that I got information on was the
Bus Turistic, which I saw at every spot I wanted to see, and offers a pretty good deal. It's a double-decker bus that makes regular runs around the city, stopping at more than 40 sights on three separate loops. You can hop on and off at your leisure, using a 1 or 2-day ticket, and transfer between loops at various points along the way. A ticket on the Bus also provides discounts at a number of the sight in the city. In addition, the
Barcelona Tourism board offers the
Barcelona Card, which provides additional discounts in and around the city.
I used two books this time around, another book from Loneley Planet, and one from Knopf City Guides, which are great because they are basically a series of foldout maps with listings the apply to each section of the map for food, sights, and shopping.
First stop on the tour - La Sagrada Familia...
Leiden, The Netherlands
After visiting Amsterdam for the day, I spent the rest of my time in the city of
Leiden on business. Leiden is west of Amsterdam, and can be reached easily by train (about 30 minutes or less). There is a large university in Leiden, and it is also the birthplace of Rembrandt.
A word about the trains: there are different types of trains that you can take. The fastest is the Intercity train, which is like an express train. Then, there is a Snell train, which makes only a few stops between major cities. There is also a local train, which makes every stop. So, depending on your needs, you may not want to take the next available train. If a faster train comes through a bit later, it may actually arrive earlier.
So, starting from the Leiden Centraal station, I headed to my hotel, the
Golden Tulip
This was a nice hotel, which you can see from the station and walk to in under 5 minutes.
On the way to the hotel, I came across a bicycle parking lot. Did I mention that there are a LOT of bikes in the Netherlands?
This was actually pretty interesting, with the double-decker bike racks. I have a hard enough time remembering where I park my car in a parking lot, I can’t imagine trying to find my bike after a long day at work.
As part of our business meeting, we had a bit of a tour of Leiden. It was an interesting arrangement. I don’t know if it’s possible to do this if you aren’t in a group, but it was a nice idea. We started out at a small restaurant called
Mangerie De Jonge Koekop (it's in Dutch, but you can get a rough translation at
Babel Fish, where we had a champagne toast and appetizers. We also placed orders for the main course, but were almost immediately told that we were leaving (the exact itinerary for the evening was a surprise for us).
From there, we were led on a short walk to one of the main canals, where there was a canal boat waiting to pick us up.
One thing of note, the bridges over the canals are extremely low. Consequently, the boat is very low to the water. On the evening we took the tour, it was cold and raining, so the entire thing was enclosed. You'll notice that my boss in this picture is practically crawling to squeeze down the aisle.
In good weather, the top of the boat opens up, which would make for a much different experience. Under the circumstances, I could see out my window, but looking across the way, all I could really see was the riverbank.
A couple of the sights that I couldn't see because they were on the wrong side of the boat were the botanical gardens, the observatory, and the house where Rembrandt was born.
One of the things that I did see was this - the narrowest house in the city. It's there in the middle, believe it or not. It's also for sale, if you're not claustrophobic.
One of the things I noticed during the tour was that very few people have blinds or curtains in their windows. Especially as it grew dark and the lights inside came on, it was very easy to see into most of the appartments and house along the canals. Several people sat in their windows and waved as we passed by.
In any case, we travelled around the city by canal, as the afternoon turned to evening. Upon completing one lap of the city, we made stop, where one of the hostesses from the Mangerie De Jonge Koekop was waiting with a tray of sorbets for all of us. I don't know how long she had to stand in the cold and rain, but we all felt awful about enjoying our sorbets or "spoom").
The boat pulled away again and took us on another motor around the city, via a different route, as the evening turned into night. When we finished the trip, our boat driver tied up and led us to a different restaurant,
het Prentenkabinet where we had entrees (the food we'd ordered at Mangerie De Jonge Koekop) and dessert.
This was a nice way of doing a tour. We got to try a couple of different restaurants, and had a canal boat tour. Changing restaurants and piling on and off the boat also meant that the seating arrangments were shuffled several times, which meant that everyone sat near a number of different people. I gathered from a colleague that there are severl tours of this type, and they vary in how long they are and how many stops they make. The information about the tour we did is on the restaurant pages (if you translate them).
The city is very pretty at night (even in the cold and rain). There are lights along the canal that are designed to look like gas lamps, and its a nice effect.
On the last night in Leiden,, a group of us went out for dinner. Naturally, since we were in the Netherlands, we had...sushi. I think this was the place
http://www.ichiban.nl/.
I couldn't spend a week in Holland without at least one picture of a windmill, and this one was hard to miss.
I wish I'd had more time to see Leiden. II would like to have seen
Rembrandt's home, and colleagues reported that the
botanical gardens were beautiful. It would have been nice to wander around the university as well.
Until the next stop...
