I finished my work term a little before everyone else, so I did this leg of my travels solo. For this trip I flew from Geneva to Edinburgh, and then from there to Barcelona, before flying back in Basel and training it back home. The trip started off with a patented airport sleep, this time in Geneva. There's a sweet website, www.sleepinginairports.com, which give you good places to sleep and ratings. I found the 1 leather couch in the airport and got a pretty decent sleep outta it. The airport also has free internet, so I did some investigating of my stops before hand. Not bad at all.
The first stop was Edinburgh, Scotland. The weather, like usual, was rainy/gloomy for most of it, but there were a day or 2 of sun, so that was quite nice. Travelling in the UK is always expensive due to the currency, but luckily there are a bunch of free museums to see, so that helped a lot. The first day was more or less a museum day bouncing from free place to free place. Nothing too worth noting really. After walking around the old town and seeing all the monuments, churches...ect, all the free attractions were depleted. For dinner I went to a pub to try some haggis, and it was surprisingly pretty good, much better then I was expecting. Like most of Edinburgh, the pub I was at is supposely haunted, but more on that stuff later.
The second day I decided to take a small excursion. Trips to Loch Ness were available but a little expensive for me, so I took a quick trip to Rosslyn to see the Rosslyn Chapel, recently made famous by the Da Vinci code. This building was really cool as pretty much every spot inside and out was sculpted with a ton of different symbols and such. It was a huge mess of Christian and Pegan symbols and some say has links to the Knights Templar.
One of the more famous stories is the Master Pilar and Apprentist Pilar. The story goes that master completed 1 pilar and left to seak inspiration for the second pilar. The apprentist wanted a pilar of his own and sculpted the last pilar. When the master returned, he saw the pilar was completed and when he heard his apprentist did it, he hit the apprentist with a mallet across the head, killing him. Elsewhere in the chapel is the carvings of the master and apprentist, with the master positions so it is facing the apprentist pilar.
Another neat thing is the 7 corporal works of mercy and the 7 deadly sins carvings. Greed and Charity were placed in the wrong place however.
Throughout the chapel, there at 103 greenmen scattered about, which is a pegan symbol.
Finally the roof is carved with Stars, and various flowers. The amount of symbolism present was quite impressive.
After returning back to Edinburgh I checked out Holyrood palace and the parliament and then climbed Arthur's Seat, the remains of a volcano. From here you can get a great view of the city.
The first thing I did the next day was check out the Castle. Edinburgh castle is huge and visable from almost everywhere and pretty neat inside. There were gates and canons everywhere as well as the honors of scotland (jewels), although they weren't as cool as england's ones.
After the castle, I stumbled across "A taste of Scotland" which had a bunch of free food and alcohol so that turned into my lunch/dinner. After eating more haggis, shortbread, cakes, black pudding, ice cream it was off to the drinks. Here I could sample a ton of different whiskies which was nice. They had a whiskey flavoured beer as well, which was weird. An interesting fact is that the most popular pop isn't coke but something called Irn-bru. It kinda like cream soda but fruity. Kinda different stuff. O yeah, all you can eat fudge also, yum. The next thing I checked out the Real Mary King's Close. Basically when they decided to build the city hall type building, they built it on top of some existing streets so they kicked everyone out and blocked it off. We got to tour the underground streets and it was all presented by guides as if it was during the time period that the street functioned. The area is also said to be haunted by a few different spirits, the most famous being Anne. During a TV show, a Japanese psychic said she felt the spirit of a little girl that was alone (probably left behind by her parents if she had the plague and didn't want it to spread to the rest of the family). The spirit was supposily sad it lost her favorite doll and every since there, people have been bring dolls and toys for her.
When it got dark I went on a ghost walk in the underground vaults. In one particular vault a poltergeist was supposed to be present. The men were split up from the women and childen and lined up on seperate sides of the room. Apparently it likes to attack woman and kids. I didn't see or feel anything, but did get some scratches, eh, who knows. On the tour I met some girls from Canada so we grabbed a few drinks. My night ended with another airport night to get ready for the flight the next day. The airport was not as nice to sleep in as Geneva, but o well, all good.
When I got to Barcelona, the first site I went to was the Casa Batllo, an apartment complex designed by Gaudi. The designs were really cool and all inspired by nature. The large window in the front resembles the bones in your hands and the balconies look like skulls.
The building had a strong under water vibe to it as well in the general design as well as lots of designs which seemed to be taken from nature.
There is a large central chamber that allows light to flow into the building. The roof is pretty wacky as well with need forms for the chimenys.
For lunch, I headed to a tapas bar and ordered some snails and squids. yum. After lunch, I headed to Pable Espanyol to see buildings of various time periods in Spain.
After a couple hours there it was off to the Sagara Familia for some night pics.
The next day I went to the Sagrada Familia right away to go inside. The outside have 2 massive facades, 1 showing the nativity and the other the passion (no clue what they are).
There is also 12 towers, 8 which are completed (i think). From where you were allowed to go, you could walk up 90m up (426 steps). The thing began construction in 1882 and probably won't be done for a while as its about 50% right now.
The design of the thing was really cool, definately worth checking out.
Afterwards I went to check out the beach for a bit and then to Parc de la Contadella which was like Prince's Island park, i guess.
I checked out the gothic section next and along the saw saw Barcelona's Arc de Triomf. In the gothic quarter is a large Cathedral, but it cost money to go in so I didn't bother. It was free a little later, but I forgot to go back. The next step was down Las Ramblas to do some shopping for people (here's a hint E, I got you something from here). I found a food market around there as well, so I got some fresh fruits, yum. I ended off the day with another Gaudi creation, the Parc Guella and Gaudi Museum. The park was pretty neat and had to famous lizard fountains and stuff.
Apparently the rain water from to roof is funnelled through the support columns into an underground reservoirs for the fountains, neat design. The museum was in Gaudi's house and was pretty conventional, which was surprising. I was expected the most wacky designs there, but I guess he didn't take his work home with him.
I decided to take a day excursion the next day and went to Monserrat to go to the Monestary there. The monestary is located on the top of some mountains, which was cool.
The basilica there was quite nice and you were able to walk up to the virgin mary shrine which was neat.
Near the monestary was also Santa Cova where it's said the Virgin Mary appear...ect. It was a small church thingy on the side of a mountain. After that I took a funicular to the top of the mountain for some stunning pictures of the valley, it was damn nice.
On the way back to the city I made a quick stop over to the football stadium for FC Barcelona and it just happened that the team was finishing practice and were boarding the bus to the hotel, so I saw some dude named Ronaldinho get on the bus, word the the street is he's good.
The final day I went to yet another Gaudi structure, La Pedrera, which was another apartment complex. Apparently it was the last civil project he did or something like that and thus the most complex designs and stuff but I thought the casa batllo was much cooler. Still you could see the evolution of his designs from building to building, which was nice. They had a museum thing showing a bunch of models and stuff which was nice and the roof was nifty again. I really like the control of light in his building, woulda been a cool place to live.
After that I had to go home so I raced back to the airport to fly home, thus ending my first solo travel. Next up, Russia.
