spring break
Mar. 19th, 2011 11:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lauradi7dwMy spring break was actually from 4-13 March, but the photographs were just removed from the camera today, and I didn't have any spare time to write about the vacation last week anyway. I went to Spain (had never been before) and England. Arthur was with me for part of the time each place, not for all the time. Excessive detail below the cut.
[note - after ages of carefully inserting the flickr html inside the text of the post to make the pictures show up, it doesn't seem to have worked. The pictures are in a weird layout, and some of the text disappeared. It's an hour past bedtime. I'll try to fix this sometime soon.]
Flew overnight on the Friday, met Arthur in Madrid, walked around briefly, and then took the train to Malaga, where we rented a car and headed toward Antequera. One of our longtime interests has been neolithic (or other ancient) places. There are three very near to Antequera, well preserved, with modern lighting added, and free to visit (but we were issued tickets and our place of origin carefully written down. Someone's tax dollars are at work).
That was Saturday night, which brought another first for us. We stayed in a Parador, one of a national chain (sort of) of nice hotels, and we were given the senior citizen discount because we're 55.
We also like nature. Torcal National Park is full of rocks stacked like pancakes, or so they look to me. Apparently they got that way through eons of erosion, but I don't really understand the mechanism.
On our first attempt to drive to Torcal, we took what we hoped would be a shortcut through a small town, but the streets were so narrow and close together that the GPS in Arthur's phone couldn't figure out where we were, the road signs were unclear, and in one spot it was so tight that a bus had to back into a side street in order to let us pass. We got out of there and back on the highway as fast as we could.
Arthur likes bridges, so we did the mountainous drive to and from Ronda, which has a really nice bridge over a breathtaking (and vertigo-inducing) gorge. Between the two of us, we took dozens of pictures, but I seem to have not downloaded any to a sharing site. Phooey. These are from the flickr streams of strangers
up to the well-preserved Jewish quarter, which had been one of my main reasons for choosing that area. It's amazing in a way that so much is left from the communities that were dispersed more than 500 years ago.
As far as I could tell, it was mostly constructed in the 1960s. The original was hundreds of years old, but the towers had been removed because trucks couldn't get across the bridge, then part of it had been bombed during the Spanish Civil War, and more was washed away during a flood. It was rebuilt as it currently is based on an old painting. For a small town, a lot of stuff happened in Besalu - the cloister of the former monastery exploded when Napoleon's troops came through (powder was stored there? I missed a lot of the explanations, obviously), and there were Roman remains somewhere nearby also.
A carving I liked on the church that was originally connected to the defunct cloister
There were some neat carvings inside as well - a timeline of sorts of the three magic kings (said the guide) on their way to pay homage to baby Jesus. They were first shown looking like knights on horseback, and then there was a scene of the three of them in bed together. Guys on a long journey need their rest, after all. I didn't try to photograph them in the dim light.
After that I flew from Girona airport (which seems to be exclusively for Ryanair) to England, where I spent a night with friends and then met up with Arthur on Wednesday. He was at a conference so I didn't see him much, but I did a few London things, including jogging from across parks, from Kensington to Hyde Park to Green Park to St James Park. It was nice. I also went to a Dr Who exhibition. Photos of that are at
http://www.shutterfly.com/lightbox/view.sfly?fid=823d18266dcf3a67f12f12eb75ef82b5
[note - after ages of carefully inserting the flickr html inside the text of the post to make the pictures show up, it doesn't seem to have worked. The pictures are in a weird layout, and some of the text disappeared. It's an hour past bedtime. I'll try to fix this sometime soon.]
Flew overnight on the Friday, met Arthur in Madrid, walked around briefly, and then took the train to Malaga, where we rented a car and headed toward Antequera. One of our longtime interests has been neolithic (or other ancient) places. There are three very near to Antequera, well preserved, with modern lighting added, and free to visit (but we were issued tickets and our place of origin carefully written down. Someone's tax dollars are at work).
That was Saturday night, which brought another first for us. We stayed in a Parador, one of a national chain (sort of) of nice hotels, and we were given the senior citizen discount because we're 55.
We also like nature. Torcal National Park is full of rocks stacked like pancakes, or so they look to me. Apparently they got that way through eons of erosion, but I don't really understand the mechanism.
On our first attempt to drive to Torcal, we took what we hoped would be a shortcut through a small town, but the streets were so narrow and close together that the GPS in Arthur's phone couldn't figure out where we were, the road signs were unclear, and in one spot it was so tight that a bus had to back into a side street in order to let us pass. We got out of there and back on the highway as fast as we could.
Arthur likes bridges, so we did the mountainous drive to and from Ronda, which has a really nice bridge over a breathtaking (and vertigo-inducing) gorge. Between the two of us, we took dozens of pictures, but I seem to have not downloaded any to a sharing site. Phooey. These are from the flickr streams of strangers
up to the well-preserved Jewish quarter, which had been one of my main reasons for choosing that area. It's amazing in a way that so much is left from the communities that were dispersed more than 500 years ago.
As far as I could tell, it was mostly constructed in the 1960s. The original was hundreds of years old, but the towers had been removed because trucks couldn't get across the bridge, then part of it had been bombed during the Spanish Civil War, and more was washed away during a flood. It was rebuilt as it currently is based on an old painting. For a small town, a lot of stuff happened in Besalu - the cloister of the former monastery exploded when Napoleon's troops came through (powder was stored there? I missed a lot of the explanations, obviously), and there were Roman remains somewhere nearby also.
A carving I liked on the church that was originally connected to the defunct cloister
There were some neat carvings inside as well - a timeline of sorts of the three magic kings (said the guide) on their way to pay homage to baby Jesus. They were first shown looking like knights on horseback, and then there was a scene of the three of them in bed together. Guys on a long journey need their rest, after all. I didn't try to photograph them in the dim light.
After that I flew from Girona airport (which seems to be exclusively for Ryanair) to England, where I spent a night with friends and then met up with Arthur on Wednesday. He was at a conference so I didn't see him much, but I did a few London things, including jogging from across parks, from Kensington to Hyde Park to Green Park to St James Park. It was nice. I also went to a Dr Who exhibition. Photos of that are at
http://www.shutterfly.com/lightbox/view.sfly?fid=823d18266dcf3a67f12f12eb75ef82b5
