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Another Resource
One of my friends/co-workers who follows along here at baldheretic.com and read about the grand scheme suggested I take a look at Facebook for information on the upcoming trip. Turns out there are several groups dedicated to Valencia and Las Fallas.
Another resource! I have joined some groups and posted to the public forums.
On a related note, I’ve had some very good dialogue with the contacts I mentioned previously.
Contact
Previous trips have benefited from online resources like Tripadvisor to get insight into which hotels to reserve and sites like Expedia and Travelocity to secure plane tickets. We’ve even used city/state/country sponsored tourism sites to gather valuable information about our destinations.
This will be the first trip for us to use social networking as a means to enhance our vacation.
It’s been less than one day since I started my social networking experiment and I have already made 3 contacts.
Via Twitter I have met Iwan, a Dutchman living in Spain for the last several years working as an IT architect, and John who is a transplant to Spain from the UK. John has been living in a suburb of Valencia for the last 20 years working as a professional translator, translating Spanish to English.
I love John’s e-mail signature which includes a clickable link to his geographic location (http://maps.google.com/maps?q=39.637,-0.6195).
Via Flickr I have met Manel. Manel does not speak very good English, but he’s an avid photographer and is an active Flickr user. His photo-stream includes pictures of a photowalk in Valencia. He and his friends look like the Spanish equivalent of any handful of Assignment Houston photogs.
They’ve all been very kind and receptive to my social networking experiment, each offering to answer questions and even meet up when Cynthia and I arrive in Spain for the festival.
We’re off to a good start.
Social Networking Experiment
Cynthia and I are going to Valencia, Spain next year for Las Fallas. As an experiment I am reaching out via Twitter and other social networking sites to see if I can make contact with technically and socially like-minded individuals in Valencia with the idea that I can glean more information about our destination from a person or persons who actually live there, and possibly have one or more contacts when we arrive.
Right now I am using the search feature of Twitter to see who lists Valencia as their home.
Right off the bat I have encountered some stumbling blocks.
1. Must weed through erroneous search results for Valencia, Venezuela and Valencia, California
2. Natives of Valencia, Spain tend to twitter in Spanish or Valencian (Catalan).
3. Erroneous results due to the recent Formula One Grand Prix held in Valencia
I have reached out to a few I have encountered that list Valencia, Spain as their home and that have twittered in English. One in particular appears to work in the IT field so I am hopeful.
Next up I am going to search around on Flickr which I actually think might be more promising. Socially networking photogs tend to be a friendly bunch as evidenced by the recent Assignment Houston gathering at the Houston Museum of Natural Science
I’m not sure how this will turn out but it should be interesting.
I Think I’m Learning Japanese
For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to visit Asia. China, Japan, Korea…something. Cynthia has always wrinkled her nose and frowned at the idea so I wasn’t holding out much hope.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved the trips we have taken and I figured I’d be fine never going east.
Still, whenever the opportunity presented itself I’d revisit the subject. When a travel show would come on we’d watch it or I would mention that someone I knew just went or came back from somewhere.
Sometime earlier this year Cynthia caught a show on one of the learning/history/travel channels about life in Japan and something clicked. All of a sudden she was very interested in the idea of going there. We bought some books and she’s done her research and now it in the pipeline. If we can afford it, we’re planning for spring of 2010.
Cynthia’s also decided she would also like to learn Japanese and has signed up for language lessons. She in a beginner course and it remains to be seen how far she’ll take it.
She’s made flash cards of the first 40 Katakana characters she has to learn this week. I’m rooting her on the best I can and who knows, I might learn something myself along the way. I now know what the Japanese language is composed of Katakana, Hiragana and Kanji characters. That’s more than I knew last week.
Colored Lights Can Hypnotize
During festivities in a local park, constantly changing colored lights bathed the exterior of San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio, Texas. Kind of reminded me of this. Kind of.
Travel For Art’s Sake
I’m starting to get the itch to travel overseas again. In thinking about where we might go I was pondering where we’ve been. One of the things I that I have really enjoyed in our past 3 trips has been seeing the art museums. This got me to thinking about what we’ve seen and what we haven’t so I went out on the WWW and looked for a list of the 100 must see paintings and found Piero Scaruffi’s “The Greatest Paintings of all Times”list. This lead to finding his top 100 reposted on Listology, complete with pictures of the actual paintings.
I took the top 50 and have highlighted the one’s we’ve seen in our travels:
1. Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights (1504) - Prado, Madrid
2. Michelangelo: Il Giudizio Sistine Chapel (1541) - Cappella Sistina, Roma
3. Ernst: Europe After the Rain II (1942) - Sumner Collection, Hartford
4. Klimt: Beethovenfries (1902) - Sezession, Wien
5. Dali: Persistence of Memory (1931) - Museum of Modern Art, New York
6. Klimt: The Virgin (1913) - National Gallery, Prague
7. Bosch: The Last Judgement (1505) - Gemaldegalerie der Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, Wien
8. Klimt: The Kiss (1908) - Belvedere, Wien
9. Botticelli: Allegoria della Primavera (1478) - Uffizi, Firenze
10. Monet: Nimphee (1926) - Orangerie, Paris
11. Dali: Metamorphose de Narcisse (1937) - Tate Gallery, London
12. Leonardo: Il Cenacolo/ The Last Supper (1497) - S.Maria delle Grazie, Milano
13. Rubens: Fall of the Damned - The British Museum
14. Uccello: Battaglia di San Romano/Part I (1456) - Uffizi, Firenze
15. Van Gogh: Starry Night (1889) - Museum of Modern Art, New York
16. Raffaello: Sposalizio della Vergine (1504) - Piancoteca di Brera, Milano
17. Dali: Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (1936) - Museum of Art, Philadelphia
18. Bruegel: Triumph of Death (1562) - Prado, Madrid
19. Botticelli: Nascita di Venere (1485) - Uffizi, Firenze
20. Rubens: The Adoration of the Magi - Prado, Madrid
21. Monet: Cathedrale de Rouen - Musee National d’Orsay, Paris
22. Greco: Toledo (1599) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
23. Giotto: Cappella degli Scrovegni, Padova (1305)
24. Cranach: Flugelaltar mit dem Jungsten Gericht (1524) - Gemaldegalerie, Berlin
25. Seurat: La Parade du Cirque (1888) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
26. Ernst: La Ville Entiere (1936) - Kunsthaus, Zurich
27. Rembrandt: Militia Company (1642) - Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
28. Van Eyck: Madonna in the Church (1425) - Gemaldegalerie, Berlin
29. Bruegel: The Battle Between Carnival and Lent (1559) - Kunsthistorisches Museum - Wien
30. Leonardo: Gioconda/ Mona Lisa (1505) - Louvre, Paris
31. Raffaello: Trasfigurazione (1519) - Pinacoteca Vaticana, Roma
32. Rousseau: Sleeping Gypsy (1897) - Museum of Modern Art, New York
33. Piero della Francesca: Leggenda della Vera Croce (1460) - S.Francesco, Arezzo
34. Van Gogh: Potato Eaters (1885) - Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
35. Bruegel: Dutch Proverbs (1559) - Gemaldegalerie, Berlin
36. Greco: La Crucifixion (1594) - Prado, Madrid
37. Seurat: La Grande Jatte (1886) - Art Institute, Chicago
38. Altdorfer: The Battle of Alexander the Great (1529) - Alte Pinakothek, Munchen
39. Monet: The Grainstack (1896) - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
40. Klee: Ad Marginen (1930) - Kunstmuseum, Basel
41. Rembrandt: Belshazzar’s Feast (1635) - National Gallery, London
42. Van Gogh: Cypresses (1889) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
43. Rubens: St Agustine, National Gallery, Prague
44. Van Eyck: Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife (1434) - National Gallery, London
45. Renoir: Bal du Moulin de la Galette (1876) - Musee National d’Orsay, Paris
46. Renoir: Le Dejeuner des Canotiers (1881) - Phillips Collection, Washington
47. Goya: Aquelarre/ Il Grande Caprone (1821) - Prado, Madrid
48. Velasquez: Las Meninas (1656) - Prado, Madrid
49. Chagall: I and the Village (1911) - Museum of Modern Art, New York
50. Van der Weyden: Deposition (1435) - Prado, Madrid
Of course there is really no way to make a truly comprehensive list and there’s certainly some pieces we’ve seen that didn’t make this particular cut. It’s more a frame of reference for me in thinking about past and future destinations.
That being said, if I weight the decision based on this list, Berlin, Vienna and Prague are starting to look VERY interesting.
Remembrances
Cynthia continues to chug away at the scrapbook for the trip to Spain. She’s completed Madrid, Seville, Segovia and Toledo.
Granada and Barcelona are going to be HUGE.
She’s already filled 1 1/2 giant binders full of photos, ephemera and her own recollections of the vacation. I bet this will be 4-6 binders by the time it’s done.
This has propelled me forward in processing my photos. I have completed the following galleries here at baldheretic.com
 Madrid |
 Madrid - Retiro Park |
 Madrid - Segway Tour |
 Segovia |
 Seville |
 Seville - Alcazar |
 Cordoba |
 Toledo |
 Granada |
 Granada - The Alhambra |
There’s a partial gallery for Barcelona, but it is not complete.
Oh, and I should not forget the nearly complete gallery for William The Well Travelled Sheep…
Spain, Madrid, Segovia, Seville, Toledo, Granada, Alhambra, photography, Sony Alpha 100, travel, Europe, Segway, Memories, Jay Lee
Technorati Tags: Spain, Madrid, Segovia, Seville, Toledo, Granada, Alhambra, photography, Sony Alpha 100, travel, Europe, Segway, Memories, Jay Lee
Figueres
Still going through the pics from the trip. We’ve printed out the ones from Madrid we want to use in the scrapbook. Cynthia’s bought some supplies and she’ll likely start this weekend.
Looking at the shots from Figueres I am reminded how desolate and very depressing that small town was. We had taken the four hour train ride so we could visit the Dali Museum. Trust me, you had better REALLY want to see the Dali museum because that is ALL there is to see there.
While waiting for the train to take us back to Barcelona I set the camera to black and white mode and took a few pictures to help us remember the mood of that leg of our journey.
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