It’s been a few years since we’ve done any actual touristing around Barcelona so a visit from our friend Giulia was the perfect opportunity to rectify that. She wanted to see the Sagrada Familia and to complement the Gaudí experience we also went to see La Pedrera, aka Casa Milà and Parc Güell.

We almost threw in the towel at the Sagrada Familia when we saw the line for the entrance which wrapped almost half-way around the entire church and didn’t seem to be moving fast. But then we had the glorious idea to check if they offered online ticket sales (they do) and we purchased three tickets on the iPhone right there, walked to the head of the cue and into the church. Not sure why other tourists don’t do the same. Lack of knowledge about the online option? Or to avoid roaming charges for using the internet? In any case, we made it just in time before the rain started so we felt very pleased with ourselves and just a little bit smug.

The inside of the cathedral is finished now, except for some missing stained glass windows and other colorful adornments. But definitely a big change to 9 years ago when all you saw was a sea of cement mixers and scaffolding.

In Parc Güell we were surprised by a bit of drizzle but thanks to that the park was actually quite empty, especially for a Sunday. Even the Pedrera didn’t have a line for getting in. Excellent!

At night we happened upon the dance of the giants in front of the Catredal del Mar in the Born. The “gegants” had come out for the fiesta de la Santa Eulalia which I’ve never heard of but maybe that’s because we didn’t spend much time in the Gotico when we lived here…

They also put on a fantastic light show on the ajuntamiento building downtown, reminiscent of the Sydney Christmas lights.

It’s curiously fitting that we should move back to Barcelona (albeit temporarily) exactly 4 years to the month after originally leaving. So much has happened since then, most of which we didn’t even imagine before we left: getting our advanced diving certificates, surviving a major earthquake, NOT going to Japan, learning to surf (and having that cure my motion sickness on boats!), flying first class and most of all seeing how easy it is to keep traveling!

There are still quite a few places left on our travel wish list and we don’t plan on stopping yet but it will be nice to slow down for a few months, have our own place and play house. The place we’re renting is a “tourist apartment” so it comes equipped with the basics for kitchen and furniture. To complement that, we pulled out some things from our storage like kitchen equipment. Unfortunately we couldn’t find everything we wanted because only when we opened the storage unit did we remember just how much STUFF there is and how little marking we did on the boxes. (Conor was disappointed with my un-Germanness in that regard…)

I agree with our friend Martha, next time we move/store our things, only the essentials are coming.

In any case, we shall enjoy our ‘downtime’ for the next few months and hopefully discover some new corners of the city to share with you here.

We spent the holidays with family in Caracas which was, well, the same as usual. This time around there was no sugar or flour to be had for love or good money but we made the best of things and baked cookies without flour (coconut macaroons FTW!) and using grated papelón (raw hardened sugar cane pulp) instead of sugar. Worked a treat.

And anyway, we were much too busy to worry about the missing basics because Santa brought a very special present this year: a trampoline! Ostensibly this was a present for Mila but the adults in the family enjoyed it possibly even more.

Other than that, this picture of Catire in our bed pretty much sums up the rest of the vacation. Warm and relaxing. Bring it on 2013!

Happy New Year! This is a very delayed post to wrap up some more things about London but we had such a good time that it’d be sad not to tell you about it.

Not to use an easy cop-out but it really did feel like time simply flowed through our hands in London. There was always another fun thing to do, more great restaurants to try, friends to see, parks to explore, museums to visit – just like in New York, we left with a longer list of things to do than we arrived with! But we did manage to do quite a lot of the things we had on the original list so we still unfurled the “mission accomplished” banner with a smug grin.

We spent a rainy day in Greenwich to see the Cutty Sark and visit the Maritime museum.

We visited Highgate Cemetery to continue our tour of the “magnificent seven” and took a tour of the western part of the cemetery which is usually closed to the public but the more interesting part because it’s all overgrown and wild.

The eastern part is open to the public and houses some very famous figures like Karl Marx and Douglas Adams. A great place to stroll around in piece and quiet.

For an extended stroll, more of a long walk really, we took to the south bank and visited the Brunel museum which isn’t quite worth the trip even though the project of the Thames tunnel is very interesting. But the museum is tiny and doesn’t have much to show unfortunately. The tunnel itself isn’t accessible any longer because of construction work but maybe in the future it’ll become an option again, keep your fingers crossed. (Completely unrelated: for a much better quirky museum where you can spend hours, head to the Hunterian museum at the Royal College of Surgeons. It’s not for the overly squeamish but has all kinds of fascinating human and animal specimens/parts in jars and lets you watch videos of brain surgery and other crazy things. Another gem we discovered this time around: the Coultaurd Gallery at Somerset House. Well worth a visit and free on Monday mornings!)
Anyway, walking along the south bank we eventually made it to Tower Bridge which showed itself in its best light.

To round things up, we went to jail. Not the Tower – we did that back in August with the rest of the family – but Shawshank penitentiary. Have you heard of Secret Cinema? It’s an event organized on a grand scale around a movie. When you buy your tickets you don’t know what or where the movie will be (it’s secret, d’uh) but weeks ahead of the event you start receiving cryptic messages like a fake name and occupation, some background info on your character and the possible location of the screening. We figured that it had something to do with prohibition and the old south but didn’t figure out the Shawshank Redemption link until the very end so it was well done! (Or maybe we’re just slow…) They really go all out for the organization, hiring actors to play the ushers/wardens, giving you costumes (prison garb in our case), taking you to the secret location in old-fashioned busses, selling you “library cards” for secret liquor and food purchases – they really thought of everything. Because you have to give up all your personal belongings when you ‘go to jail’ I didn’t have my phone with me during the event but managed to take a couple of quick pictures afterwards of the place (an old boarding school somewhere in East London).

Who comes to London in November? Really, who?! That’s probably what most of you are thinking right now. And it’s a valid point since the weather here is generally not well spoken of and November is probably not a pretty month anywhere in the northern hemisphere. But as usual the heavens are smiling on us and we’ve had some beautifully sunny, if crisp, days out already. Just the ticket to put you into the pre-Christmas mood!

Walking around new neighbourhoods we’ve discovered little parks like this one:

And seen quirky places like the St. Brides Library with its fully functional letterpress shop:

One afternoon we spent wandering around the muddy lanes of the Kensal Green cemetery:

Of course some of the more famous landmarks also had to be visited for old-times sake:

Nights we mostly spend at the theater (so far One Man, Two Guvnors; The 39 Steps and The Mystery of Charles Dickens which we saw the last performance of) and eating copious amounts of food. Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese…. The only cuisine missing from our list is British now. But we’ll get to the Bangers & Mash in time. (We did fry up some interesting Chicken & Spinach sausages this morning courtesy of my brother who went a little nuts at Harrods’ food halls. But those were leaning heavily towards the “curiosity” realm instead of “regular breakfast staple”.)

Since setting our paws on the road 3 years ago we haven’t managed to come home for the harvest since more exotic locales usually beckoned around that time: Mexico, South East Asia, New York City. But this year we’re finally in Italy for the big event and even though it’s as back-breaking as always, it’s also still as satisfying as usual to get your hands dirty in the fields, see the grapes come in and taste the fresh juice.

Grapes are unloaded into the centrifuge that separates them from the stems. Then they get automatically pumped into the tanks inside the cellar.

The stems are raked together and dumped back onto the land later as fertilizer.

The following two pictures are actually from the harvest 5 years ago when Emma was just a puppy but they are so perfect and cute that I wanted to include them anyway:

Blowing a raspberry “Pffflllbbb”

(She still loves getting dirty and wet like that only now we don’t let her. Evil humans that we are…)

We’re back in the southern parts of Europe but still drawing from our lovely time in England so here are a few more random images from the trip.

We spent the past week on a narrow boat cruising the Shropshire Union Canal. Seven adults, two kids and one toddler; surprisingly everyone made it out alive. (There were bets taken in the beginning who’d be chucked over the side of the boat first. Odds were heavily in favour of his mum.) Although as we found out during the introduction talk, even if someone had gone overboard, intentionally or not, the life support ring would have supported them for over an hour. If they got bored before that they could simply stand up and wade out of the canal.

On Saturday we picked up our boat, Arthur, from the Chirk marina and headed west towards Llangollen. That’s probably the most exciting part of the trip because you get to cross the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct which is absolutely spectacular.

After that it was pretty much straight cruising along leafy canals, past cow herds and grazing sheep, much like you’d expect northern Wales to look in picture book.

Really, that’s how easy it is to drive these things.

We also had to navigate a few locks which sounded very scary at first but after the second one it becomes quite routine.

If this has you thinking that you might want to take a narrowboat trip of your own, here are a few sites that we used for planning: Canal & River Trust, Crest Narrow Boats and a list of the British canals and their cruising times. The Canal Companion: Welsh Waters was very handy on the boat as well.

We’re going through visitors like a popular country hotel on a bank holiday but it’s lovely seeing friends and family and finding new parts of the island that we might not explore otherwise. For example we finally (FINALLY!) made it to Es Trenc, one of the most beautiful beaches on the island which we’ve been meaning to go to for the last 8 years. It’s only about an hour away by car but for some reason it just never happened until last week when we packed the ice chest, the beachball paddles and our friend Nena into the car and drove to the mystical shore. It was definitely worth it. Even though the beach was packed and the sun without mercy, we very much enjoyed ourselves.

Now Sam is staying with us and Conor has finally found someone to go paddle boarding with (I’ve successfully copped out claiming heat-induced laziness). But I did go to take pictures of their victorious arrival at our house from across the bay where they rented the boards.

Of course, boys will be boys. So they tried a spot of jousting.

But as usual it’s all fun and games until someone bursts an eardrum. (In this case Conor.) Not during paddling though; this happened during a badly timed dive off the rocks. Now he’s not allowed to get the ear wet for four weeks and has to take anti-biotics for a week. “Bummer” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

When Claudia (remember her?) came to visit us last week we had to come up with some more exciting things to do than sitting on our balcony and going swimming twice a day. So we packed them into our car, ignoring the cries of suffocation from the back due to the rather hot weather, and drove up to the northern tip of the island. On the highway that crosses Mallorca it’s only about an hour drive, this place really IS tiny.

Our first stop was Alcudia, the main town in the north of the island. The name comes from Arabic, like many town names around Spain’s coast, and means ‘on a hill’.

After some lunch in the old town, not worth mentioning further except that Kim got a pizza piled high with thinly-sliced mystery meat, we headed to Formentor at the tip of the island for some vertigo-inducing views of the sea.

Palma has a very pretty old town which only few tourists care to visit (still enough, considering the masses of tourists that come to the island every year).

Plaza Santa Eulalia

Inside the old Arab baths

Entry to the old Arab baths and the little park surrounding them is just 2 EUR. Well worth it for a little rest in the shade, a clean bathroom and some pretty ruins right in the middle of Palma.

Your authors, at the baños arabes

On the wall outside the cathedral

We’re in our usual summer habitat – Mallorca – enjoying the sea and the sun. Life is calm and uneventful, just like it should be. Unless of course there’s a fire.

That’s the helicopter at the far right, letting off a load of water. The helicopter does about 5 trips in the time it takes the plane to refuel since it has to go much further and takes longer to load.

A cab driver told us that during fire emergencies like this the choppers and planes can refuel pretty much where ever they want. If your pool is close by and big enough, watch out for some overhead commotion!

Don’t mind the sound on this video: a little vespa was passing by and makes it sound like the plane is powered by a 50cc engine. The effect is a bit surprising.

This is not the first time the hills behind our town have burned and the rumor is that it’s done deliberately to create more building land. Even though there’s a law that prohibits building on land that has been burned for the next 25 years. We’ll see how long it takes…

Of course we visited some sections of the former wall, at least where there was anything left since most of it is gone now.

One of the most infamous sections of wall was built on Bernauerstrasse where the wall ran practically through the houses. So one could enter the house in the east and walk out in the west. The GDR wasn’t stupid though and tried to put a stop to this quickly but not before people walked through the doors, and when those were locked and boarded up, jumped out of windows from ever higher floors. The fire brigade on the western side had usually been alerted with smuggled notes and stood ready to catch them with safety sheets.

Some of these – now famous – scenes are pictures on the walls of buildings along Bernauer Strasse now.

Jumping out of windows into the West

Conrad Schumann's leap to freedom

When our friends Micha and Sam came to visit we also biked over to the East Side Gallery, a 1.3 km piece of the wall that has been painted by artists in sections and remains as an open-air art gallery and memorial.

After all that strenuous exercise we relaxed at the Oststrand, a bar/pub on the river bank with sand and deck chairs. Along with cold beers and home-made pizza from a wood fired oven. What more could you want on such a gorgeous afternoon?

Thank you Berlin, it’s been a pleasure. I have a feeling we’ll be back.

Just about 30km outside of Berlin lies Potsdam, a small city so perfectly put together that you feel like you’re on a movie set at times. There are castles, lakes, blooming meadows and cobble stone streets lined with cute cafés and restaurants. No wonder the Prussian emperors had a soft spot for this place.

There's also a castle there in the background. But it was so sunny that it doesn't come out in the picture unfortunately. HA, I never thought I'd say that about the weather in Germany...

The famous Prussian emperor Frederick the Great (Friedrich II) built his summer seat here: Sans Souci or “without a care”.

It is really very modest for a castle, when you think about it.

Quite ingenious, the terraced steps leading up to the castle are lined with glass cabinets to grow wine. Like tiny individual greenhouses that can be opened or closed depending on the weather. When we were there it was nice and warm so the doors were open.

The guest house and the windmill.

The Chinese tea house in the park. If you stepped too close an alarm went off and a voice over admonished you for daring to get that close to the gold statues. Not embarrassing at all.

We rented bikes for the day to see as much as possible (and have some cool air flowing around us since the sun was relentless). So besides Sans Souci and its various outhouses and parks we also saw the old Dutch quarter in Potsdam proper. The houses were built for Dutch workers brought to Potsdam in the early 1700s, presumably so they’d feel more at home.

And then there are all the gorgeous lakes and canals around the city…

Glienicke bridge, formerly the border between east and west Germany. They used this to exchange spies and other high profile prisoners, just like in a John Le Carré novel.

A well earned reward.

Technically it wasn’t really her but her ‘minions’ we visited at the Reichstag, the seat of the German parliament, but it was exciting anyway. And thanks to hubby’s new connections, i.e. being a student again, we got a free tour of the whole building. Thanks Goethe Institut!

This used to be the seat of the German parliament in the early 1900s. It was opened in 1894 but then damaged badly during the infamous fire in 1933, a crime that still hasn’t been fully solved. (They got one guy for it but nobody knows if he acted alone or whether he had a bit of help from the Nazis.)
In any case, after that the German government had other things on their mind than rebuilding a house of government. A half-hearted attempt was made in the 1960s and it was used as a representation of the German government in West Berlin but never with any serious intentions. Only when unified Germany decided in the early 90s to move their government back to Berlin did the Reichstag get some action again. Foster did the now famous dome – which he didn’t want to do at all, he wanted to build something the Berliner quickly dubbed “die Tankstelle”, the petrol station – and other important architects from around the world kitted out the interior. So now it looks like this:

And extremely modern on the inside:

The did a good job preserving the old though. All through the building you will find graffiti from Russian soldiers who scribbled their names and dates (May ’45) on the walls when they took over the building during the battle of Berlin. With the rebuilding of the Reichstag they actually treated these graffitis, mainly done with coal, so that they are now perfectly preserved and cannot rub off.

Of course the main area of the Reichstag is the “Plenarbereich” or parliament. It’s in the middle of the building and like everything else it is surrounded by glass, suggesting transparency and openness.

The dome is open year-round for visitors and there are long lines everyday. But you get a wonderful view from the top and can see your government hard at work below so it really is quite special.

This weekend we headed over to Schloss Charlottenburg, the summer residence of various emperors and kings when those were still de rigeur here in good old Germany. The castle took quite a hit during the second world war but it’s been meticulously rebuilt over the decades and looks very close to what it would have been like all those hundreds of years ago. The furniture, paintings and whatever else wasn’t bolted down had been moved to a secure place before the war so those are mostly originals. (We didn’t buy a photo permit for the palace but Google has a pretty good collection.)

In the backyard (i.e. a giant park originally landscaped as a French baroque garden but over the years turned into an English garden meaning more trees, less geometry) there are several smaller structures such as the Bellevue, a little teahouse in which a family of six could comfortable live nowadays and the mausoleum where Queen Louise, her husband King William, Empress Augusta and her husband emperor William I. are interred. The sculptures placed on their graves are incredibly detailed and beautifully done:

While we were there a group of actors or possibly just friends out for a fun afternoon came in as well, all dressed in period clothes from around 1860.

Yesterday after brunch we wandered a bit through our neighbourhood and came across an art installation from the Occupy movement Berlin (remember New York City?) that’s somehow linked with the 7th Biennale currently going on here in the city. We couldn’t quite figure out how the two were related but it was an interesting space in any case.

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This makes me think you can send for an 'Occupy Set' somewhere, like one of those Irish Pub sets. How awesome would that be?

Last weekend we went to see the 360 exhibit at the Pergamon museum, museum of antiquity and Islamic art. The 360 exhibit is a giant artist’s rendition of what Pergamon might have looked like in 129 AD and when I say giant I mean humongous. The ‘painting’ measures 25 x 100 meters. It’s very impressive to see, unfortunately you’re not allowed to take pictures but there are a few up on the exhibits website.

The permanent exhibit, which includes large parts of Pergamon’s past, was great too.

This family tree of the gods was incredibly detailed and filled the walls of a whole room. Beautiful work.

And this is our friendly neighbour who stops by at least once a day to check things out, probably in the hopes that some breakfast got left behind.

Classes have started, the good weather has given way to a few showers and we’re starting to get into a routine here in Berlin. Which doesn’t mean we’re not tourists anymore. Thanks to our friends Henri and Kalle we got to go on a riverboat tour through the city which albeit smelly (from the river) was a fun way to spend an hour and see the city from a different angle.

The dome

The Reichstag building, seat of the German government. Can't wait to go up into the glass dome.

The island of museums, literally an island in the river Spree that has some of the most important museums of the city on it.

The Nikolai church, the oldest church in Berlin.

Some cars from a ralley Moscow - Berlin were parked around the church.

The world clock on Alexanderplatz.

These are Stolpersteine, literally stumbling stones, placed in front of houses and buildings where Jews had lived during the war. They show the name, date and where the person died.

Yes, he’s really taking the plunge and signed up for a German course. We chose Berlin because we both don’t know it very well and everyone who’s been here loves it, so naturally we have to find out what all the fuss is about.

We’ve only been here two days but already did plenty of walking in our neighbourhood – Scheunenviertel in Berlin Mitte – went up the Fernsehturm (the TV tower) to get a perfect 360 view of the city, walked under the Brandenburger Tor, across the Potsdamer Platz and had a lovely afternoon in the Tiergarten with a couple of beers.

Our house, from the TV tower

The subway entrance at the Postfuhramt, the old postal transport offices

Pieces of the Berlin Wall at Potsdamer Platz.

The holocaust memorial with the US Embassy, the Brandenburger Tor and the Reichstag in the back.

At the Sony center, a ginormous rotunda of glass and metal, parts of the former Grand Hotel Esplanade have been preserved.

Also at the Sony Center: a giant Lego shop!

The Siegessäule or victory column in the Tiergarten park. It's like Central Park but with more beer.

Somebody please explain these to us... They're all over the city!

Before we start talking about our new location (ooh, mystery…) I want to share some pictures from a very special dinner we had in Barcelona. Our nephew turned 12 and because he loves food we took him for a fancy Japanese dinner as a present. Sushi is one of his favorite foods but we wanted to show him that there’s more to Japanese cuisine besides raw fish that comes around in little boats on conveyer belts.

Wagakoro is a small and simple-looking restaurant in Gracia, with one waitress, one chef and one menu. Tiny and perfect.

The menu, which changes every few months, is set with six courses but diners can choose to add a seventh or eighth course as well. In our case there was a sashimi course and a wagyu beef on offer so we each chose one as an extra seventh course. (Because eight is just too much…) The food was so good and each course was exciting and new again, I forgot to take pictures of some but here are a few of the delicacies we got to try:

First course: salmon sashimi with ponzu sauce, green beans with miso sauce, duck with mustard and octopus and apargus with a tart cherry sauce.

A tofu mushroom dumpling, steamed with miso soup and sugar snap beans.

Kaku and his - very tasty - wagyu beef.

Noodle soup with an egg dropped in, dried onions and scallions to taste.

What was left of the sea urchin dish.

Chef Nakamura slicing fish for the sashimi course. This was done fresh for every new table so we saw him do this several times.

Dessert: black sesame mouse. And the one dish Kaku didn't like. (I'm pretty sure at twelve years old this would have been the ONLY dish I would have even tried on the menu...)

Missing from this impressive line-up is the sashimi plate and the tempura basket. The presentation for each was flawless, so much so that when a piece of tempura in my basket fell on its side when the waitress put it down in front of me she got quite upset and I think for a second even considered moving it back into its rightful place but stopped herself since that would have been an even worse breech of etiquette.

Even though we’re back in Barcelona now, there are a few more pictures we’d like to share from our trip to Provence last week. And since there isn’t much to say about our stay here ‘at home’ besides work, some good food and going to the movies we’ll re-live some of the lovely days we spent in the south of France fattening ourselves up and enjoying the beautiful countryside instead.