Paddy's Day

Yesterday was St. Patrick's day and Anika and I went into town to watch the parade. We found a front row spot near the end of the route and stood there for more than two hours. It took a while for the front of the parade to reach us and by the time the participants and performers had done the two miles to the place where we were, many of them were pretty exhausted.

It wasn't that easy for us watchers either. We had to wait quite a while -- otherwise you would be behind several rows of people -- and it was also cold and, of course, we got rained on. In the morning before we left home, it was snowing! I was hoping for some interesting Dublin pictures with snow on the ground, but by midday it was all gone. RTE, Ireland's TV network, is making footage from the parade available on its web site. I think they may take it down after a while, but I'm sure it will be on youtube as well.

My pictures are as usual on picasa. The city was packed with tourists. That is usually the case around St. Patrick's day, but this year there might be a few more. Ireland has called for a gathering this year. It asked all Irish descendants and friends around the world to come visit this year. This will help the economy here and also bring people together who may not have seen each other in decades; or ever. Although the crowds were probably thinner yesterday due to the bad weather, judging from the turnout, the Gathering is working.

Anika and I walked back to the train station through the Temple Bar district. This is the main area where people congregate after the parade for a beer or two or maybe a third. It seems people had been practicing starting at least the day before. Empty beer bottles littered the streets. I had hoped to be able to take pictures here of interesting faces, but it was raining again and so Anika and I decided to go back home.

Looking at the information board above, which platform do you think the 16:03 train for Maynooth will leave from? If you guessed platform 4, you would have been correct! Despite having been here for two years now, I keep forgetting that pubic transport here doesn't work like other places. We were standing on platform 7 and, of course, the train never came. When we finally went back down to ask about it, the guy in the information booth told us that we had just missed it. When asked about the platform, he said that extra trains for events like today, always leave from platform 4. Of course! How could we not have known.

Drinking coffee in the train station, waiting for the next one on platform 7.

Cold Spain

Montserrat

Last week Lee Ann and I were in Spain. The first four days it rained and was cold. Then it was just cold. This is not the time of year to be in Spain. It is a little bit sunnier than Ireland, but just as cold. We were in a resort town about an hour south of Barcelona and almost alone. That's cool until you need to find a restaurant that is open. The apartment we rented was built for summer. It had a little electric, free-standing space heater in each room, but we were still freezing.

Montblanc

We knew it was not the right season. We visited Lee Ann's sister and her husband who was in Barcelona for a conference. Since this is a cheap time of the year to visit, and much closer than California where they usually reside, we took the opportunity to go to Barcelona and surroundings. Barcelona is a very interesting city and it would be easy to spend a week there. Since we slept quite a bit away from there and have never been in Catalonia outside Barcelona, we only spent two afternoons/evenings in the city (I was only half on vacation and working in the mornings).

Tarragona

One thing we did in Barcelona was to visit Poble Espanyol. Its sort of like the world showcase in Epcot, but dedicated to Spain and in Spain. It was created in 1929 for the world exhibition and is meant to showcase the different areas and cultural aspects of Spain. It's very nicely done and well worth a visit. We were there when the number of tourists was low and the evening light for photography just right. We had to rush a little bit because Stacy had made us reservations for a Spanish dinner and flamenco dancing.

Poble Espaniol

My new camera has the ability of filming HD-quality movies, so I tried that during the show. I'm not much of a film maker;  I can't imagine how much more time you can sink into that than just work on a few pictures at a time. Nevertheless, here are three short clips. Maybe someday I'll win an Oscar and people will look back at these video snippets and discuss my early technique of leaning against a post and trying to hold the camera still.

I liked Poble Espanyol, but it was clearly fake and I was wondering where we would have to go to see the same narrow allies and architecture in Spain. We visited Montblanc on the weekend and got to see the real thing. That was pretty cool; right down to the gate in the city wall where supposedly St. George killed that dragon.

This is where the dragon died!

There is a plaque there describing the incident. Since I don't understand Spanish, I'm not a 100% sure that's what it says, but there are a lot of indicators that this is the place. Including the paragraph in the guide book.

Proof (I think)

Near where we stayed was the town of Tarragona. There are tons of Roman artifacts, including an amphitheater overlooking Mare Nostrum and underground tunnels which gladiators, prisoners, and other performers used 2,000 years ago. As in any town that sounds like a spice, there is good food to be had. We were standing out in the poring rain until the restaurant finally opened at 9 p.m. and we were the first ones there. As it got closer to Spanish dinner time, more guests came. Choosing the food was mostly a guessing game, but it worked out excellently. We were not the first ones to leave, but when we came back the next day for lunch, the same waitress was there still/again working.

Romans walked here

On our last day in Spain we visited Montserrat. Its a serrated mountain in the Catalonian plane that can be seen from miles away and attracts visitors because of its unique shape. More than a thousand years ago it attracted some monks who started building a monastery there half way up the cliff. It's still there, although mostly rebuilt after the French destroyed the place two hundred years ago. One of the things that endured (hidden in a cave) is a statue of the virgin Mary that had turned black over the ages. Supposedly the statue is 2,000 years old and the monks who found her could not move her and therefore built the monastery around her. Carbon dating puts the creation date of the statue into the 12th century.

Pilgrim's way to the cave where the statue was hidden.

None of my pictures from this trip are outstanding. Most of the time we were rushing from one thing to the next or the weather did not cooperate. Nevertheless, as usual, my pictures are on picasa. Here are the links for Barcelona, Tarragona, Montblanc, and Montserrat. Somehow picasa turned into Google+ and some stuff is different. I hope you can still see the pictures.