At long last, we we´ve reached a real computer! Welcome to the last four weeks of our lives in fast forward. We´ve written to you about all these things but haven´t been able to give you pictures until now.
BARCELONA:
Antoni Gaudi´s unfinished masterpiece: the Sagrada Familia! Its interior was recently completed, and it was sanctified as a true cathedral, but work is STILL being done on the exterior (one whole facade is basically yet-unbuilt).
Our new friend Saliou (closest to the camera). Looking back at our Barcelona post, we never explained this at all apparently! Through our host (my second cousin) Lissa, we met this guy Saliou who is an African drummer from Senegal. He speaks four languages but only a sentence or two of English, and was nice enough to invite us to the African dance class he plays drums for (pictured), and then to a club his band played at the next night. He was incredibly nice and kind, and the whole event was put Emily through her paces with the little Spanish she has - that and energetic body language was the only way we could communicate the whole time.
Us in Gaudi´s Park Guell, overlooking Barcelona.
Still in Park Guell - the place was filled with wonderful trees and plants.
More Park Guell
Montserrat! We took a day to hike around on a mountain nearby Barcelona. It had a real live monastery on it and also some climbable crevasses.
Montserrat was topped with finger-like rock formations that apparently attract rock climbers from all over. Some of us are more ´rock sitters´ though.
SALOBRENA:
Stretching after a long walk up and up and up and up. This beautiful white coastal Spanish town was made of stairs.
The beach! It was freezing cold but Emily was too excited to be deterred.
Leah´s sitting on what is locally known as The Rock. It juts out off of the shoreline of Salobrena and is very high over the water. In the background here you can see another little white village that is very nearby (we walked to it in like 20 minutes or so.
GRANADA:
Leah is Already Cool.
We went out on a guided hike to the Sierra Nevadas where we walked over a rope bridge...
....and Leah Experienced some waterfalls.
The Alhambra was every bit as beautiful as Emily wanted it to be. The water really was as green as it looks in this picture, no idea why.
The science museum in Granada (the Parque de las Ciencias) was having a special Escher exhibit, which of course we had to see. This room was part of that exhibit, and is otherwise indescribable. We took pictures here until the camera died.
MADRID:
For the Imaginauts: we found a statue of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza! It´s not a great picture, but it was a pretty great statue. Also, we have almost no other pictures from Madrid.
AMSTERDAM:
WE ARE A WINDMILL
We went on a really fantastic and well-led bike tour through Amsterdam and into the surrounding countryside. Besides this windmill, we saw a cheese farm slash wooden shoe making place, a house boat neighborhood (price range: 500,000-1,000,000 €), a lovely park where our tour guide claimed to have been conceived, and some baby cows.
This is a quintessential picture of Amsterdam: bikes, canal, trees, and Leah trying to figure out why the street names don´t match the map.
