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Gaudí’s Barcelona
Our second day in Barcelona was for one thing and one thing only: Catalan Modernist architect, Antoni Gaudí. I cannot overstate the importance of this artist to the Catalan culture. We started our self-guided architecture tour with perhaps his most famous achievement: La Sagrada Familia. The soaring, exuberant basilica is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that’s (famously) one hundred forty years in the making (which is longer than it took to build the Pyramids!) Construction on La Sagrada Familia began in 1882, and isn’t expected to be completed until 2026, which is the centenary of Gaudí’s death. A site of controversy, Catholicism, architecture, and art, the basilica is probably one of the most-visited…
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Barcelona, Spain
Barcelona is full of color. It is the capital city of the Catalonia region of Spain, the second most populous city in Spain, and the home of Antoni Gaudí, whose name, architecture, ceramics, religion, and craftsmanship define the city.
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The Alhambra, Granada
The scent of honeysuckle hangs in the air. I can smell it on my hair as I brush it out before bed. Outside, a full moon rises above the Sierra Nevada mountains, and from our hotel window, we stare up at the Alhambra, its ruddy walls turned silver in the moonlight.
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Granada, Spain
Granada—It is a city that has inspired songs, poems, dances, theatre, food, and art. It is home to the Alhambra, a copper-colored fortress rising against the backdrop of the snowy Sierra Nevada mountains, and the subject of its own blog post. It is the most beautiful city I’ve ever visited. From afar, I grow fonder of it by the hour.
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No8Do, Sevilla
I fully recommend taking the train from Madrid to Sevilla. Super fast, free Wifi, a café full of snacks and treats, and time to sit back and relax as olive groves and sunflower fields zoom by. If you’ve been following my blog posts about Spain, however, you’ll be familiar with the fact that nothing on our trip went according to plan: missed flights, lost luggage, cancelled hotels—and that’s the short of how Matt and I ended up at the Madrid train station (with two cancelled train tickets to Sevilla in hand) trying to rent a car to Sevilla. By God’s miracle alone did we find the very last automatic car available for…
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Madrid, Spain
What are the best things to see when you only have half a day in Madrid? This was the question I posed to Google countless times before our trip, knowing that we would only have an evening and a morning to explore the capital city of Spain. Not enough time, I know! We would have planned for more time in this outstanding city, but in the words of my 3rd grade teacher, there were “things to do, people to see, places to go, fish to fry!” (She also used to say “cats to skin,” but as a cat-lover, that phrase never became part of my vocabulary). Madrid is everything I could ever…
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Segovia, Spain
Segovia lies just north of Spain’s capital city Madrid, a short thirty-minute train ride into the Spanish countryside. Tourists (like us) regularly select Segovia as a day-trip from Madrid not only due to its convenience, but also because it boasts three particularly spectacular sights: the Alcazar of Segovia, the Catedral of Segovia, and the Roman Aqueduct.
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Queenstown and Glenorchy, New Zealand
Our horseback ride took us out into “high country,” along the banks of the beautiful blue Rees River, to the base of the mountains, and into green, purple, pink, and white fields of lupins so high they touched my calves.
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Franz Josef Glacier, New Zealand
The glacier is constantly moving, so each day, the Glacier Guides have to carve, pick, and navigate new paths through the terrain.
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Tongariro National Park
Tongariro National Park is situated about an hour’s drive south of Lake Taupo, and is home to three famous volcanoes: Mount Tongariro, the smallest; Mount Ruapehu, the largest; and Mount Ngauruhoe (arguably the most famous, since it served as Peter Jackson’s “Mount Doom” in the Lord of the Rings films). These three mountains are hugely important to the Maori people.
