In Photos: Gaudi’s Barcelona

Gaudí. It’s kind of hard to visit Barcelona without spending your time gaping in awe at the architectural and artistic genius that he left behind all over the city.

A great deal of my week in Barcelona was therefore spent, gaping in awe, at his many truly incredible constructions. As well as gaping, I was also taking the odd photograph, which I’m sharing with you today. I wasn’t able to visit every bit of work he did, but I’d like to think that I took in the serious highlights.

In a future post I’ll be going more into the details of what to see and do in Barcelona. For now though, less detail: more eye candy.

Lets start with…

The Sagrada Familia.

We might as well start at the top. The Sagrada Familia is Gaudí’s masterpiece, the building that obsessed him in the later years of his life, and which is still under construction. It’s an ever evolving masterpiece, an easily visible part of the Barcelona skyline, and one of the most incredible buildings I’ve ever visited. You cannot go to Barcelona without visiting it.

Parc Güell

Parc Güell was Gaudí's attempt at creating a garden city development. I say attempt, because of the 60 buildings planned, only two were built, neither of which was actually designed by the man himself.

Instead, Gaudí spent his time focusing on the little details, like the enormous terrace. Gaudí also lived in the Parc for 20 years. These days, the garden is open to all, and is well worth the visit.

 

Casa Batlló

Casa Batlló, also known as the House of Bones, is one of the finer examples of a town house designed and built by Gaudí for a rich Catalan family. It is most well known for it’s striking exterior wall, made up of balconies which to my mind looked rather like the masks one would wear at a ball. Should one be invited to a masked ball that is. 

My favourite bit of the house was up on the roof, where what appeared to be the spine of a dragon was laid out as the roofline. I’m not sure it was a dragon, but given Barcelona’s close connection to St. George, I have hope.

 

Casa Mila, also known as La Pedrera

Not far from Casa Battlo is Gaudi’s other famous Barcelonian town house, the Casa Mila, which is known by pretty much everyone as La Pedrera, which translates as the Quarry. The locals at the time not being entirely enamoured of Gaudi’s style choice with the building.

As with the Casa Battlo, this was built for a wealthy family, and broke pretty much every planning rule in the book when it was put up. The price of great art in this case coming with plenty of building regulation fines, and rather irate owners.

Cascada in Parc de la Ciutadella

This fountain, in the pretty Parc de la Ciutadella, near Barcelona’s parliament building, was mostly erected by Josep Fontsere. It is understood that Gaudí did work on it, during his early student years. It’s nowhere near as organic as some of his later works, but is still a great looking bit of building! When we visited, it wasn’t in operation, and had a wonderful air of decay going on.

So there you have it. Five of my favourite bits of Gaudí work in photos. Obviously Gaudí left behind more than these pieces, and Barcelona is just stuffed with incredible architecture from people other than this great man. But for sheer madness, it’s hard to beat what he got up to! Let me know what you think of the photos, of Barcelona, or of life in general, in the comments below!

Also... don’t forget to check out my site’s facebook page, where I share lots more of my photos!

In Photos: Street Art of Angoulême (Part 2)

In my previous post I shared with you the rather fabulous trompe l'oeil that can be found on one of the walls in Angoulême’s old town centre, where two chaps do their best to break into reality.

Today’s post is about some of the rest of the street art that Vera and I found and photographed as we wandered around the lovely old town of Angoulême on a recent trip. Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So what do you think? Does Angouleme have sufficient street art to tempt you.. or do you need more from a city than just pretty paintings on the walls?

Let me know in the comments, and keep an eye out for the next post in my Angoulême trilogy, where I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the other attractions!

In Photos: Street Art of Angoulême (Part 1)

The town of Angoulême, capital of France’s Charente department, is notable for many things. It boasts an impressive location, high up on a rocky outcrop overlooking the Charente river. It has a rather fabulous collection of old buildings, from churches to castle ruins. And it has a wonderful old town that is just ripe for exploration.

And I’m going to save all that for another post, because over the next couple of posts I just want to share with you the other thing that Angoulême is famous for, that being it’s yearly international comic festival.

This has resulted in the walls of Angoulême being coated in a myriad of wonderful street art, from small pieces through to huge trompe l'oeils, or eye deceivers.

The first part of this two part series focuses on six images which take up a whole section of the street wall. Which, despite appearances, is entirely flat. Enjoy!

Escaping reality

 

 

 

 

 

Shout if you need a translation! Keep an eye out for the next couple of posts on Angouleme, which will cover the remainder of the street art.. and then some thoughts on the city itself.

In photos: Australian beaches

Australia has over 30,000km of coastline. By any standards, that is a fair amount. With all that coastline comes a lot of beach front – in fact, with over 10,000 to choose from, Australia has more beaches than any other country in the world!

In this post I thought I’d share some of the variety that this massive coastline has to offer, from moody clouds, to giant sand dunes to classic surfer beaches. Enjoy!

Oz has a lot of coastline. I think I mentioned that already. There are so many beaches in fact, that the people who started naming them clearly lost enthusiasm, and just started naming them based on their length. Like the ninety mile beach. Or the eighty mile beach. You get the idea.

This isn’t actually one of those beaches, instead, it’s a beach in the Newland Head Conservation Park in South Australia. i can’t remember its name, but I’m sure it’s something imaginative like “beach with fifty miles of epic cliff."

I did have remarkably good weather for most of my time in Tasmania, but I quite liked this moody picture of a storm brewing over the bay of fires, so that is the shot that is in this post. Don’t be put off though – Tassie has beaches to rival the rest of Australia.. even if the water can be a tad on the Antarctic side of cool.

This post wouldn’t be complete without including Australia’s most famous beach – that being Bondi in Sydney. This beach is great for learning to surf, as well as being so close to Sydney that it’s almost a crime not to visit if you’re in town. Good fish and chips too!

Fraser Island is, frankly, a stunning place to visit. Just off the Queensland coast, it is home to spectacular lakes, incredible beaches, and the endless pounding ocean. The beach here is all the more remarkable for also being the road.. and the runway. As the picture below shows. Heathrow, eat your heart out.

 

These granitic boulders are found at the Elephant Rocks beach in Western Australia, near the town of Denmark. Apparently part of the rock formations here look like a herd of elephants. Personally, I never saw it. Still stunning though.

Cape Le Grand National Park, way down at the bottom of Western Australia, is home to beaches that would rival any tropical paradise. Turquoise waters, pure white sands... you get the idea. There are also a whole number of walks that take you between the coves, across the plains, and up the funky looking hills in the area. Splendid stuff!

Did you know that Australia has the largest mobile sand dunes in the southern hemisphere? Well, I didn’t until I visited, giant sand dunes not previously having been something I associated with the land down under. Turns out, they are pretty big and pretty mobile. You’ll find them not too far from the town of Port Stephens on the New South Wales coast!

Oh, Byron Bay. What a town. This is a mecca for hippies, surfers and party animals. I have to admit, I was less than impressed on my first arrival (well, it was raining), but then ended up falling in love, both with the place, and with my girl, and stayed for nearly two months. You just can’t beat living by a beach and nice long walks to get a romance going.

Go, but be prepared to be captivated. Or appalled. One of the two.

You know when a place is famous as being the most something of something, rather than just for being a wonderfully pretty place where you can camp and enjoy life? Well, West Cape Howe National Park falls into that category, being as it is, home to the most southern point in Western Australia.

Admittedly, this totally worked on me, as it was the main reason for visiting (most southern point! Of an Australia state!), but it is also worth visiting for views and beaches like this. And yes, that bit in the lower right is the campsite. That was a good spot!

If you’re visiting Australia, chances are you might take a road trip. Victoria’s great ocean road is one bit of road that you should really consider adding to your itinerary, mostly because it features views like this. Not convinced? It’s also full of funky surfer towns, stretches of coastal rainforest, and all sorts of other delights. If you are planning a trip to Oz, this needs to be on your shortlist!

Last, but by no means least, in my post of photos of Australian beaches, comes this shot of Wilsons Prom National Park. A mere stones throw (by Australian standards at least) from Melbourne, this is a wonderful national park chock full of walking and beach based activities. It was also home to the only campsite I stayed at in Australia which had an outdoor cinema. What is not to love!

Well, those were some of my photos of Australia beaches. Have you visited any of these? Got a favourite beach in Australia that I left off the list? Get all excitable in the comments below!

In photos: My life in France (so far!)

For today’s post I thought I’d share some of my favourite photos from my first four months of living in France. The surrounding area holds all kinds of attractions, plus the rural nature of our current living arrangement makes for all sorts of lovely shots. Here are some of them!

The local towns and villages err seriously towards the cute. Old, plant covered buildings, beautiful shutters, serious stonework. What is not to love!

Our closest town, Nontron, is famous for it’s knife making. I’ll be writing about that soon. In the meantime, here’s an arch under the town castle.

Our regional capital, the town of Perigueux, has over 2000 years of history to explore - from its early Gaulic and Roman roots, to a fascinating medieval town centre and a UNESCO listed cathedral. This is Barriere Castle, a 12th century castle which as you can see didn’t do too well during the various religious wars and crusades of the time.

The town of Brantome is known as the Venice of France, largely because it has some water features going for it. It’s not that much like Venice, but it doesn’t need to be – this is an awesome little spot with fabulous restaurants and caves which once featured troglodytic monks. Who needs Venice!

Castle also feature heavily in the surrounding area – this part of France is said to be the land of 1001 castles. From the Norman style ruins of those such as this at Lastours, to beautifully preserved Renaissance Chateauxs such as those at Jumilhac - there are castles here to meet every need, and we’ve been out to see a number of them!

If you’re a church buff you won’t go short. This is the church in the little town of Montbron – as you can see, even the smaller villages have pretty impressive churches going for them. Visit the larger towns of the region, and the splendour just grows and grows!

Food is a big deal in France as well I have learnt. I wouldn’t go for these mushrooms, but there are nearly endless varieties of mushrooms that you can eat, and during the months of October and November, the surrounding woodlands are filled with hopefuls searching for treats to serve up.

…and if you do go out to eat (which we do, often!).. you can be assured that you will not end up hungry! This was just the starter in a four course Christmas Eve meal!

France has so many pretty villages that there is even an association of pretty villages. St Jean de Cole is a nearby village on the list, and also holds the title of being the village with the prettiest roofs in France. Who knew such a thing even existed!

Slightly closer to home, and we have our own bits of crumbly building to get excited about. This is going to be a new kitchen at some point, after a bit of work, Formerly it was the bread oven, which is what the hole in the far wall is all about. That is going to be restored to former glories.. if we can find a door to fit!

Like most of Europe, we also got hit by the freak snowy weather in the last month. This being rural France, our roads stayed snow coated and slippery for a couple of weeks – snow ploughs and salt spreaders do not feature highly on the local councils budget!

Rurality has its benefits. We have acquired four chickens who produce incredible eggs, as well as possessing fascinating personalities to amuse us.

History is never far away, and France has no shortage of that. More recent history here, in the village of Oradour Sur Glane, site of the most devastating civilian atrocity in France of the second world war. A staggeringly moving place to visit.

And finally, three photos of our garden, which is a mix of open land and woodland, and is also home to our small campsite operation. It is a wonderful place to explore and relax in :)

 

And that was four months in France, neatly summed up in pictures. As the days grow longer and the light more abundant, I’m hoping to get out even more and be able to share more of my adventures with you. Don’t forget to check out the sites facebook page for even more photos from my travels!