Barcelona, Spain

This is another relatively extreme tourism type entry, basically I was in Barcelona one week for a work conference.
While I could have made it out of the hotel more than I did, I really only spent one afternoon taking photos and being a tourist.

SO! 3.....2.....1.... lets do it... first up I went for a leisurely stroll through Barri Gòtic (the Gothic Quarter), this was basically a recommended area for anyone with an interest in old buildings, and trendy alternative type individuals sipping lattes.

As pictured here... some old buildings! And a statue of a man on a horse!

One thing I really liked in the Gothic Quarter were these cool little side streets that were super narrow... when us dirty foreigners think of Europe, this is exactly the kind of James Bond shit we are imagining!

Here is a pretty old church, the Cathedral of Santa Eulàlia, or more simply the Barcelona Cathedral... if you are a savage mouth breathing foreigner.

Then we wandered a little further to Plaça del Rei, the "Kings Square" which is a 14th century medieval public square. Inside of which is the Museu d'Història de la Ciutat, which sadly we did not have the funds or time to visit.

This was a beautiful big statue thing... the funniest part was the creepy owl on the other side of it...

That owl wants to eat your soul.....

Here we finally made it to Sagrada Família which is a famous church designed by Anton Gaudi, to be honest one of the most hideous churches I have seen in Europe, it looks like somebody consumed a lot of psiloybin mushrooms a handful of LSD and then created a church.

And next up some photos of the venue for the conferences party, at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya

And a bonus pug I spotted while out and about!

Barcelona - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona
Gothic Quarter - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_G%C3%B2tic
Barcelona Cathedral - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Santa_Eul%C3%A0lia
Placa del Rei - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pla%C3%A7a_del_Rei
Sagrada Família - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia
Anton Gaudi - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_Gaudi
Museu Nacional Art de Catalunya - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museu_Nacional_d%27Art_de_Catalunya

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial license.

Sacre Coueur, Paris, France

Part Two of the Paris blog! Several months after it happened of course...

A visit to the Sacré-Cœur (or Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris as it is also known), this impressive basilica resides at the top of the hill in Montmartre (the famously bohemian neighbourhood of Paris)

The basilica was originally conceived of in 1870 as a form of penance by Bishop Fournier, who suggested that the reason for Frances failure during the Franco-Prussian war was due to the moral decline of their society.  It was for this reason that the basilica was erected in what was then Paris' most rebellious neighbourhood.

The basilica was constructed using Château-Landon stone, which is very high in Calcite, which gives the building its distinctive white exterior.

Within the basilica is also housed one of the worlds heaviest bells, the Savoyarde which weighs an impressive 19 tons... however we did not spend too much time inside... instead we visited the catacombs beneath the basilica.

Montmartre means the Mount of the Martyr, and within Sacre Coueur's catacombs you will find many, beginning with the most famous St. Denis... an interesting fact about martyrs... St. Denis is a cephalophore, which is a very specific type of martyr which carries its own severed head.
Clearly this happened enough that they needed to create an entire word for it... weird.  There are in fact over 100 of them in French history alone. (and it is my new dream to locate more cephalophores around Europe!)

St. Denis is quite the badass however... it is said that when he was beheaded in Montmartre he walked all the way to the suburb which is now named after him, and the entire way he continued preaching from his severed head.

St. Francois Xavier, is the patron saint of "Catholic Missions" and was quite the globetrotter, performing missionary work in India, Japan, and Indonesia.  It is said that aside from Paul the Apostle, he converted more people to the faith than anyone in history.

Shamefully I don't recall specific details about these next few gentlemen, but I believe they were the priests responsible for the building of the basilica. (shoot me a note if I am wrong)

The man above is Cardinal Leon Adolphe Amette who was archbishop of Paris between 1908–1920, he was also the man to consecrate the basilica in 1919.

Unfortunately this one I do not have any details about...

And above the main relic chapel in the centre of the crypt.  Interestingly there is some mystery around the crypts... it is said that somewhere inside lies a piece of the sacred heart of Jesus, this is where the basilica gets its name.
This is mentioned in several guidebooks, and yet no official church documentation exists to back these claims..  so if a piece of the heart does reside somewhere in the crypts it is certainly not marked in any way.

This man I am sure was a kind, godly and generous man who has some fantastic significance.  But I challenge you to not immediately think of the Emperor from Star Wars... this statue was very unnerving.

So there you go, a very brief summary of the roughly twenty minutes we spent at Sacre Couer!

Next up! Famous Graves and the Dali Museum!

References:
Sacre Coueur - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_Of_The_Sacred_Heart


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial license.

Berlin, Germany

In November, in fact one month ago today! I was in Berlin with my friend Lisa to see Garbage play as a birthday treat, and since I had absolutely no time at all for tourism the last time I was there I thought I had better see some sights the next day.

Berlin is an absolutely amazing place I definitely recommend people go there at least once while in Europe, all the better if you enjoy clubbing since there are some phenomenal venues in East Berlin.

So here are a few pictures I took, sadly we ended up in LEGOLAND for a lot of the day, and missed a lot of good opportunities for other pictures hehe.

First up the Berlin Cathedral, we didn't go inside, but it is a fairly impressive building as cathedrals go.

 

The Altes Museum (Old Museum) is a museum for antiquities, and was really rather impressive too, sadly didn't have time to go inside for a look around since we were running to catch a tour group, which we also failed... we were not great at the whole tourism thing that day.

 

 

These various statues were all scattered about the place between the museum and the meeting point for the non-existent tour group, but they were quite pretty and more than a little disturbing so I had to take pictures of these too.

I have no idea who this man on the horse is since I had no local guide to tell me, but I would imagine he was probably quite the local badass in his day. (revision note: apparently this was the King of Prussia, so I may have understated how much of a badass he actually was a little bit)

These next two photos are of the Ampelmännchen, he is kind of a big deal in Berlin, since he has a whimsical hat and a brisk stroll about him compared to most pedestrian crossing characters, you can buy this on T-Shirts, Mugs, Shot Glasses... whatever you can imagine as a souvenir gift.

 

Next I will cover a few of the important landmarks, as represented by LEGO, and then their real world counterparts! Firstly the Berlin Cathedral again.

Here is the Brandenburg Gate, originally built to symbolize peace, later used as a crossing point for the Berlin Wall, now just a rather cool piece of architecture, you can learn more about this in the Wikipedia link below.

This is the Reichstag, which is basically the government building, it has a rather cool inscription on the front "Dem Deutschen Volke" which translates to "To the German People"

 

And here is the real Brandenburg Gate (We got out from LEGOLAND a little late to take any better pictures, and didn't yet have a tripod to get nice night shots)

And here is the real Reichstag! And that people is a wrap... sorry this post is not more exciting, but writing a post so long after actually doing it makes it harder to recall interesting facts.

References:
LEGOLAND Discovery Centre Berlin - http://www.legolanddiscoverycentre.de/berlin/en/
The Brandenburg Gate - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_Gate
The Reichstag - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_(building)
Berlin Cathedral - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Cathedral
Altes Museum - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altes_Museum

NEXT POST! Shall be Edinburgh for the Hogmanay Street Party on New Years Eve!