So I'm back in rainy balls-cold Zurich for New Year's. We returned from Barcelona last night, after a mighty scary landing at Zurich Airport. It was snowing pretty steadily - the silky, light kind of snow borne of low humidity - and we landed hard. As the wheels came down, though, we did not decrease velocity. At all. I was at the window and noticed that the runway was not plowed, and the pilot pumped the brakes... just like I did in my four-speed 1979 BMW 320i as a 16-year-old. We eventually slowed down and began the taxi to the terminal when the captain came on and said (in his particularly matter-of-fact Swiss fashion) "For those of you who had never done that before, we just landed into 7 milimeters of snow where the braking quality was poor to medium." He then made the announcement in a bunch of other languages. He seemed a little peevish, so we gave the man a round of applause.
Anyway, it was a great trip. Way colder in Catalonia than we had expected, but it was sunny most of the time and the city is great fun. I took some pictures:
The sisters 'n' me. We were up at 4am that morning!
This is the national palace of Barcelona which now houses the Catalonian National Museum. It was quite sunny there.
Candles at the Barcelona Cathedral.
Ceiling at Barcelona Cathedral.
This is La Sagrada Familia, the unfinished masterpiece of Antoni Gaudi, whom I have grown to love and who, as my sister observed "designed the whole flippin' city" of Barcelona. As you'll see from the pictures below, the church is very much unfinished in that it has no back wall and the main towers conceived by Gaudi have yet to be built. They charged an arm and a leg for admission and have scaffolding all over the place, but they don't seem to have made a whole lot of progress. 
From Sagrada Familia, we went to Park Guell, which was also all designed (and finished) by Gaudi (his house is there):
On our last day, we went to Casa Batilo, which was both beautiful and finished.
We also went to Barcelona's Museum of Contemporary Art, which had such exhibits as a video of a man peeing into a cup and then drinking it. I did not take a picture of that.
Some paving stones by Gaudi. Footwear by Adidas...
Oh. It isn't over yet.... I have pictures of paella and the world's best outdoor market. Stay tuned.
1 comment:
Dude, your sisters look like twins in that picture. And you look pretty similiar yourself.
That camera sounds awesome, I think I read a review of it in the Times and they said it is Mexcellent.
Come back soon, we miss you!
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