Nimes, A roman Bullring which used to be a collesium

Nimes, France a roman fortress

I left Annecy France late in the day as I wanted to spend as much time with my friends there as I could. I booked the last train out of the town to Lyon France, which would get me back in the direction of Spain, knowing I would have to spend the night somewhere along the way. My three choices were Lyon, Nimes and possibly Narbonne, all in France. With the advice of my friends, I chose Nimes, a small village about halfway to my journey's end in Madrid.

 

Nimes is a village which surrounds a roman era and styled BullRing or collesium.

I got into town quite late but still decided to go out to explore the OldTown part of the village, while looking for a place to have some dinner. By this point, I'm getting used to eating dinner after 9pm and not finishing up until 11pm or later. The only saving grace is that I am walking a lot. So after dinner, a nice walk and picture taking session back to the hotel settles my constitution so I can sleep. Also bedtimes are quite late. It's not unusual to be texting after midnight with my friends on the plans for the next day.

I found a very elegant restaurant in old town, not the one the hotel suggested as that was closed but around the corner.

Nimes is French so I managed to alienate the wait staff with my poor french pronunciations. The good news is that I could read the menu, and not ask for an english translation. It was an interesting dinner. One of the items that came with the dinner was this very well cooked marrow bone with the marrow intact. I ate the marrow. trying to remember the health benefits of marrow. I know there are many.

So, dinner and desert of Flan and a good wine went very well so when done I headed back to the hotel.





Even at 11pm or later, and cold out,  there are people on the streets. And the pictures at night are fabulous. At the bullring, there was a very large Ferris wheel.

Not sure what the french call it. But going to the restaurant, it was lit.

Coming home it was totally darkened. See the difference in the atmosphere with it lit, and festive, and not lit, and very pensive.

More pictures. Thru-out Europe, in small cities and large, they all have holiday decorations up at this time of year. And they are all very localized. each street has a style, different from the next street. But all lit up.





The rest of the pictures that survived Apples purge

A quick run across France, 9 Hours on a fast train.

Annecy, France, gateway to the French Alps

I took a simple jaunt across France from west to east to say goodbye to one of my friends. This trip was much different than the one from Prague to Switzerland. I only had three very efficient train changes (Barcelona to Narbonne, Nimes, Lyon to Annecy) and three out of the four trains I took were high-speed. It was a total of about nine hours on the trains. But the time seemed to go by very quickly. As I mentioned before, the entire high-speed train network in Europe is a very comfortable and efficient way to get around.
Spending nine hours on train may seem like a lot of time.  But when you consider the 7 hour door-to-door time of flying, the nine hours, from city center to city center, on the train doesn't seem that out of line. And when you take away the aggravation of security in most airports, it's a lot better on your spirits.

Annecy, France (pronounced antsy) is very proud of the fact that they have the cleanest lake in all of Europe. When I say clean I mean drinking water clean. If you stand on the shore and look down to a depth of 20 or 45 feet, you can see the detail of the vegetation on the bottom. The lake is what I think they consider a medium-sized late in the alps. You can ride a bicycle all the way around it, a total of about 46 km. in fact they have what we would consider a duathalon of running and swimming around the lake every year. That's strictly a summertime occurrence as the water was quite cold at the moment. The lake does not get cold enough to freeze tho.

I am going to finish this post altho Apple has decided to delete half of my pictures from that day. I will never purchase another Apple product because of their idiotic insistence that only they, the Apple designers, know what is best for the users and take total control of the functioning of their products. Because of this, my IPad elected to delete all the pictures from the day in Annecy. These pictures cannot be replaced and as I consider myself a pretty astute user, I'm particularly upset that Apple made sure I was using the product only in the way they wish to use it.


It just so happened that the day that it was Annecy's annual fall festival and the town was teeming with visitors looking for holiday gifts and bargains. It's just seemed that everywhere I went in europe there were holidays and festivals going on. This was just the latest. This festival has been held on the first Tuesday of December for many years. They get 100,000 visitor for this 1 day event. The entire town (every street and piazza) was full of booths selling food items, beautiful sausages, cheeses, and bread. There also the usual flea market items like hand knitted caps and scarfs, and lots of home made jewelry. Because it was Christmas, there were lots of Christmas oriented items like mangers and Christmas tree ornaments and pretty much anything else you would want to light up your house.

Annecy is a very old town with Roman origins. Its style is like a combination of French Mediterranean and Swiss Village. It had snowed two days before I got there and there were vestiges of the snow pushed into corners here and there. And it was cold. I'm just glad I had my ski parka that I purchased in Geneva.
It is very close to the Alps. So close in fact that a lot of people stay in town and take the train daily 15 minute for a ride up into the mountains to ski at local resorts.
For those of you bicyclist fans, like me, and who watch the Tour de France more than once, you'll recognize the town as the entrée to Mont Ventoux, one of those make or break stages in that ill famed race. It is hard to visualize, with a temperature of -5°C, bicyclists screaming around the piazzas in the town during July in the summer heat. But they do and there's a lot of cyclist in the town itself. Even at that low temperature it is an efficient way to get around.

It was a very relaxing couple of days. I didn't do much but visit with my friends, and walk the town and take pictures (Which Apple promptly deleted. I will never forgive the software designers for that). Oh and eat. This is next to Switzerland so there's lots of chocolate and pastry around.
It's just one of those stops on the train that you usually look out at the platform and say this looks like a nice village and I should stop here and look around, but usually don't, with every intention of coming back and exploring. Because of my friends being there I had that opportunity. And I'm glad I did. It is a university town, which is why my friends are there, and that always lends a certain element of excitement and freshness to a village. It has the Annecy Lake, with its crystal clear water, its active boating community, and its ferries traversing the lake from town to town. The buildings and streets are right out of every french or swiss movie you ever saw. And the people couldn't be warmer, even allowing me to try to talk in my high school French. I like this area so much, its on my must return list when I make more time to get out of the city into the foothills area (bicycle tour anyone?). And I have started a program to relearn enough french to get around and have actual conversations.

An aside. One of the amazing aspects of my journey was the number of bilingual people I came across, who could naturally swap from language to language with ease. There is a need for, and a natural affinity to learn spanish because of the large hispanic community in California. But I'm starting with French. I did have 3 years of it many moons ago. If others can do be so fluent in multiple languages, so should I be able to.
I also was helping one of my newfound friends tackle a difficult personal problem which required a lot of introspection. He wanted to send me the results of his personal goals but realized he would probably do this work in his native language, German, end would need to translate for me. He said sometimes he does dream in English, but most of his hard work he prefers to think in German. And he speaks 2 other languages to boot. It is a real education for me to understand how the mind works, just on the simple issue of languages.

Back to Annecy. I spent a couple of day there going to the market, taking pictures and reliving what living in a cold environment would mean. I realize my blood has grown thin over the years and it would take a real effort on my part to give up the warm climate of Southern California. I'll drive to the snow, for the day, or for a week, thank you. And go back to the warm climate of Santa Barbara when done with the winter sports fun.
The rest of the few pictures that survived Apples purge of my pictures is in this library

Pablo Picasso and his link to Barcelona

The Picasso Museum

The Museu Picasso , located in Barcelona, Spain, houses one of the most extensive collections of artworks by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. With more than 3,500 works by the painter, the museum has the most complete collection of his works. The museum is housed in Barcelona's La Ribera and is located on Montcada Street. It is the first museum dedicated to Picasso's work and the only one created during the artist's life.

Naturally, no photographs are allowed. But the museum is laid out chronologically, so you start with explanations of his early years, his schooling and his first works. The thing that struck me most was his quality of texturing and technique. It is readily apparent that at an early age, he learned his great technique for applying paint. You can see it in the brush strokes. The paintings are readily accessible and so you can look at the detail of the technique and colors.

It is also interesting that while he always had a penchant for an unusual viewing (modernistic) of his subjects. there was a very radical shift in his later years to the Picasso radical style. Because the Museum is chronological, you can see the shift happen in the span of only a couple of years.  

I am not a museum person, or a mall person for that matter. I usually get sensory overload after 30 to 60 minutes of a Museum (less in a mall). I did get to the point that Picasso's colors and style got to me and I started to rush, but I spent a full 3 hours in the Museum, the story was told so well. Oh, and yes, english is everywhere, as well as Spanish and Italian

Highlights of the collection include two of his first major works, The First Communion (1896), and Science and Charity (1897). In particular, the Museum Picasso reveals Picasso's relationship with the city of Barcelona, a relationship that was shaped in his youth and adolescence, and continued until his death. There is a lot about his relationship with his wife Jacqueline, who was his Muse and close companion. She was the loving subject of many of his works.
It is definitely one of the highlights of Barcelona Art. Even if you question the Picasso style, his mastery of painting and influential evolution with other great artists of the era tells a great story. The Museum does a wonderful job of telling that story.

Roman ruins, Digging up Barcelona's past

The Roman Ruins under Barcelona

Walking thru the Born District of Barcelona, you see a lot of walls that look like old roman ruins, just like you would see in Rome itself. And you wouldn't be mistaken. Barcelona was an integral part of the Roman Empire 2000 years ago and many of the churches and buildings in Barcelona today were first built in the 300 A.D. time period.

I have been walking these streets and looking at the beautiful building across from my hotel, which to me look very old and Roman.




Then I found a Piazza of buildings behind the wall I had been admiring, a piazza that included a Roman Archeological Museum and excavation site

 

For your admission (and everything in Barcelona charges an admission) there is a walkway with placards depicting the excavation and what they have found.

I don't understand how, but they have determined that what they are excavating was a city block of that era and the 2 buildings they are uncovering were a public laundry where clothes were cleaned, and also a winery where grapes were turned to wine. The have even established the complete business cycle for running these businesses.

In the 7th century, these ruins were covered up to create the foundation for a church and its because of modern day work on the church, that the ruins were discovered.

I understand that this is a problem with any construction in the city. There is an ordinance, that if you uncover artifacts from the past in doing any construction, that an evaluation of the significance of the site must be done before work can proceed. And of course, it is voluntary to report. Which doesn't always get done.

Barcelona has a very extensive subway system (Metro) and it was during the construction of the metro that many more sites were discovered. And it substantially slowed down the construction process and added greatly to the costs. But the results are amazing, like the Museum of Archeology.

More pictures of the excavation site can be found here:  Roman Excavations

The Arc de Triomf

Every city has one, just not as elaborate or ornate as Barcelona's Arc de Triomf.

I really did not read up on this location or the significance of the Arc or the piazza where it resides, but it is right next to the government regional headquarters so my guess is it has a lot of meaning.

 It is a beautifully designed and constructed monument in 1888 for an exhibition in a very clean park. The park lamps are very ornate and look like they are early Art Deco in design, very flowery and ornate.

 


The Wikipedia page is :Barcelona Arc de Triomf

I like the pictures of the Arc and the Piazza. I hope you do too.

Church of Santa Maria del Mar

I won't be saying too much about this church in the old part of Barcelona. It just that ever night I looked at its beautifully lit up twin steeples. Eventually, I decided I need to actually go look at the church, which was only 2 blocks from the hotel.

 

I'll let the church pictures speak for themselves. The original church dates from 1329 but has been expanded since then.

It was also damaged in a few earthquakes and has had extensive repairs done over the years.

The statuary goes back hundreds of years, and yes, those are grave markers that you walk on in the sacristy with names and dates. If you didn't walk and look where you are walking, you'd miss them.

This is the second church that had a statue of Santa Barbara. It is commonly believed in my home town is that she was a minor saint (is there such a thing?) and there is little to say about her. I guess they have never been to Spain.

Here's where you'll find all the rest of the pictures:   Santa Maria Del Mar BCN