Barcelona: Sagrada Familia, Part 2

We're back home now, but there's still lots more to discuss about Sagrada Familia. I left off the last post talking about the Passion facade, which was to be sculpted by Josep Subirachs. He has been quoted as saying that he departed from Gaudi's style out of his deep respect for Gaudi's work. He wanted his work to be compelling as well, but he didn't think it was respectful to copy his style. The Passion facade, like the Nativity facade, tells a story through carvings. I'll summarize a few with pictures in this post:

Here's a sculpture of Judas kissing Jesus. You'll notice to the left by their feet, there's a square with numbers carved into it. Subirachs put in this "magic square" to pay homage to Jesus. There are 310 ways to add the numbers in the square up to 33, the age of Jesus at his death.


Another image, this one of the soldiers rolling dice for Jesus' personal belongings:


This carving of Jesus on his way to his crucifixion is significant in that Subirachs pays homage to Gaudi here by carving his likeness on the figure to the far left of the picture:


A couple of pictures of Jesus tied to a column being whipped:


Subirachs carved in a channel of tears to the side of Jesus' face in this sculpture:


Subirachs was asked to craft the doors for Sagrada Familia. He chose to make them entirely from brass. Some pretty heavy doors:

Inside the main apse, the entire ceiling isn't even completed yet, but this gives you some idea of the size:


The ceiling has incredible detail, symbolizing a forest full of trees, with light filtering in between them:


Closing this post, here's a picture of our main hangout in Barcelona. This is Cafe Zurich, located at the top of La Rambla, at the Southeast corner of Placa Catalunya. I hate coffee, but their Cafe con Leche and Canya (pastry, like a bear claw, covered with powdered sugar and filled with fresh pastry cream) are awesome. Place is always packed:

Returning Early

Michelle's grandmother is expected to pass away shortly, so we are returning today. I will summarize the rest of Sagrada Familia and Ra Beach as time permits over the next few days.

Barcelona: Sagrada Familia

Day 2 started out oddly. Michelle nodded off at 2 am, but I couldn't get to sleep. I started trying to sleep at 3am, but didn't fall asleep until 5am. My alarm went off and woke both of us up at 1:30pm. Yikes!

Most of the things we wanted to see were closed on Sunday, and those that were open were closing shortly. So, essentially, we had lost the entire day. The only thing open was Sagrada Familia, a Guadi work that had yet to be completed. It wasn't even on my original, makeshift list of things to see. To be honest, there wasn't much on the list, we were pretty much just winging it.

So, we took the subway up to Sagrada Familia. As we came up out of the subway, we turned around to see this:

****IMPORTANT NOTE: YOU CAN CLICK ON THESE PICTURES TO ENLARGE THEM. THE DETAIL IS INCREDIBLE.


Now, I'm Catholic, but nowhere near deeply religious. I felt humbled when Michelle and I visited the Vatican a few years ago, not only by the size and architectural magnificence, but by the historical significance. I never in my life thought I would ever see something as stunning.

This was even more stunning. I turned around, uttered an expletive, and told Michelle to look. We were both speechless. For perspective, the crane in the foreground is easily 10 stories high. The towers stretch to an unbelievable 400 feet high.

Antoni Gaudi was commissioned to build this work a mere 125 years ago. As many others have said before me, the scope is so vast, it may not be completed before my death. We have so many pictures, I'll be mixing in some pics over the next few posts so people can get a better idea of what's being created. One of the many incredible details is the fact that Gaudi uses color in sculpture in such a vibrant way. It is truly like nothing I've ever seen. Here is a close-up of one of the towers:





















As you can see, there's a tremendous amount of detail, both in color and carving. There are 4 finished columns on the front, 4 in the back. Gaudi contemplated a total of 18 towers. There are still 4 towers left to represent the evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and a main tower dedicated to the Virgin Mary. I find it incredible that Gaudi could contemplate such a large work. What I find even more incredible is that he knew he couldn't finish the work prior to his death. So, he drew and sculpted in smaller form every detail that he wanted those who came after him to know. For example, in this image, we can see how he intended the final towers to look:


I'll close this post with two pictures of my beautiful wife at the base of the Passion facade, sculpted by Josep Subirachs. There are some great pictures of this facade that I'll blog on in my next post.





















Stay tuned for more Sagrada Familia, dinner pics, and our adventures to Ra Beach (we drive there tomorrow).

Barcelona, Day 1

We arrived in Barcelona this morning at 9am after taking the red-eye from JFK. We had an enjoyable dinner on the plane and nodded off about 10PM, with 4.5 hours left on the flight. It was a pretty bumpy ride after we nodded off, so sleep was at a premium.

We were pretty wiped out when we woke up. Disembarking was easy in BCN. The first time I've ever seen a glass jet bridge, which gave a pretty cool view of the airport.



We took the train from BCN to downtown Barcelona (Placa Catalunya). After getting momentarily lost, we found our way to Le Meridien and checked in. Good news! We had been upgraded to a suite with a delightful patio overlooking Las Ramblas. Unfortunately, it rained most of the day, so pictures of the patio will follow later. After finding some lunch, we went back to the hotel for a 30-minute nap that lasted 3 hours.

All of the dinner restaurants we wanted to try opened at 8pm, a trend in Barcelona. So, we killed a couple of hours lounging around the hotel room(Michelle took a leisurely bath) getting ready, then headed out as night fell. We walked up Las Ramblas to check out a tapas restaurant a few blocks away. Everywhere we went, the streets were crowded.


We went to an enjoyable tapas restaurant called Ciudad Condal. We had a bottle of Tempranillo wine priced so affordably, we thought it was priced by the glass. We dined on Praws Brochette, Grilled Gambata (Shrimp), fried artichokes, dry manchego cheese, jabugo ham, and washed it all down with a Coca-Cola.

A short walk down the street to Cafe Zurich, where we sat on the second floor and asked for menus. No menus, we were told. Walk downstairs and read the one on the wall. All this was communicated in Spanish, and my Spanish is sorely lacking. I read the menu and selected a few things I knew the name of, then went back upstairs to order for Michelle and I.

Palmier? The waiter leaned over the railing to look at the pastry rack. No. All Out. Chocolate Eclair? No. Chocolate croissant? No. So, instead, he ordered us two pastries. One was a calayna, the other a chocolate berlina. A calayna is like a bear claw filled with fresh pastry cream, a berlina a rich, chocolate-filled doughnut. Two cafe con leches topped it off. We had a bird's eye view of one of the most happening spots in Placa Catalunya.


When we finished, we stepped outside. Placa Catalunya, a large square about 2 New York City blocks long by the same distance wide, had to have been packed with at least 10,000 people. There were 100 people just standing outside Cafe Zurich on the sidewalk. We walked back to our hotel, bought a few groceries, and opened our patio window to take advantage of the Mediterranean breeze. More to follow.

Competitours: For Those Travelers as Crazy as Me

If you're looking for a new adventure, then Competitours might be right up your alley.

Someone I know has started company that conducts Amazing Race contests for regular people.

He's a pretty smart guy, and an avid traveler, so I have no doubt this will be an awesome experience. And an international trip for less than $3K is a pretty darn good deal.

Hey, Steve. Do we get frequent flier miles, too? :)

Take a minute and read about it.

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! Ours was an enjoyable one spent with lots of family.

Michelle and I are off to Barcelona tomorrow afternoon. So, next blog post will be from a tapas restaurant while we're sipping intriguing Spanish wines.

Stay tuned for pictures!

Giants Lock up Home Field Advantage

This was supposed to be a meaningless game. Just beat Philly or Dallas (we already beat them both once), and we lock up home field advantage throughout the playoffs. But that didn't happen, so a game against Carolina in the freezing cold was to decide who had home field.

A quick 3-point lead is all we would see. We trailed by more than a touchdown for virtually the entire game. We tied it up late on a great touchdown drive followed by an awesome 2-point conversion where I was completely fooled on the fake handoff. We then faded a 50-yard field goal attempt at the end of regulation.

We won the coin flip in overtime, but couldn't move the ball. Neither could Carolina. When we got the ball back, Derrick Ward continued his utter domination, moving the ball almost single-handedly to the 1 yard line. On the next play, Brandon Jacobs makes it official with a touchdown.

Derrick Ward had over 200 yards on the day, and the Giants looked like the Giants of the first 10 weeks of the season. Justin Tuck was sick as a dog, and he'll need the week to recover.

But we know we've got a week off after next week. And we earned it.

FlightMemory

For those that read my blog regularly, this post shouldn't seem too abnormal. That's only because most of you know I'm a bit obsessed about frequent flier miles. A while back, I discovered a website called FlightMemory.com.

Most people will think I'm nuts, but you can view my work in progress. I know I'm missing some of my early flights, but all of my current flights are plugged in. The site tracks some fun stuff, like the fact that I've logged over 200,000 miles in the air, which is 85% of the way to the moon.

It also publishes some cool maps with dots for all the airports I've flown to. Stay tuned to Flight Memory for more updates. Here's hoping the maps have a lot more dots next year!

Another Way to Earn Miles

Shopping portals are a great way to earn airline miles.

Here's a good article in the NYT about them.

Look for another post on airline shopping portals in the near future. Or send me an e-mail with your airline of choice, and I'll help you get set up.

Giants to Play Dallas

The Giants have been flexed to the Sunday night game against Dallas. This is turning out to be a big game. No Brandon Jacobs, and potentially no Domenik Hixon. We're not good enough to steamroll teams without our strongest running back and two of our top 4 receivers.

So, this is going to be a good old-fashioned slugfest.

Governor of Illinois-One More Thing

I'm not trying to sling mud. But I'm sitting here watching coverage on Hardball about Blagojevich. Everyone is going out of their way to comment on the fact that Obama wouldn't let him anywhere near him. They quietly kept him off the stage in Grant Park. They kept him from doing any campaigning for Obama. Any.

He's the governor of Illinois. He's a Democrat. It's shocking that he wouldn't be called upon or included in some way.

Which means, in my opinion, Obama knew he was crooked. Haven't heard anyone say this. Everyone in the media says the opposite.

But how could you keep such a prominent figure from your home state out of the limelight, when everyone else was?

Was Obama smart to keep him away? Sure. But if Obama really is striving to change the ethical boundaries of politics, then he probably had enough information to sound the alarm.

I'm just saying.

Governor of Illinois Going To Jail

It's been widely reported that the Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, is heading to jail.

This had me laughing uncontrollably this morning. I was watching Hardball last night when it was discussed that he was demanding Bank of America to reinstate a line of credit to a company in Illinois that makes windows and doors. He said he would order the government of Illinois to stop using Bank of America for any services until they (BOA) reinstated the line of credit. He (and Obama) spent yesterday encouraging the employees to stage a sit-in so their grievances could be publicized.

Then, "Senate Rod" gets arrested this morning for offering Obama's Senate seat in exchange for cash, among other things. This from a man elected on a reform agenda.

Open the dictionary and look up "poetic justice", and there's our friend Rod.

Good to see Chicago politics hasn't changed this century.

David Gregory New Moderator of Meet The Press

A nod to David for sending me the official announcement.

This has been rumored for some time, with Andrea Mitchell, Gwen Ifill and Chuck Todd listed as top contenders. I would have been fine with Andrea, maybe even Chuck, although I think he isn't the type to ask tough questions. I think Gwen Ifill would have been a horrible choice.

Tim Russert's death was both tragic and sad. He left behind family and friends that loved him dearly. From a personal standpoint, I'll miss tuning in to him on Sundays. I think Tim would have been pretty happy with Gregory as a replacement. Even though MTP won't be the same after Tim, I think Gregory is the right choice.

Tim changed MTP into a completely different show. He got the best guests, and asked the toughest questions. In my opinion, some of his final shows were his best, in the most heated Presidential contest I've been alive for.

I'm not sure David can do the same thing Tim did. Don't get me wrong. I think David will attract quality guests, and conduct strong interviews. I only started watching MTP regularly over the past few years, and grew to look forward to seeing Tim go to work every Sunday.

I hope I feel the same way about David many years from now.

Obama's Pro-Union Stance Seems To Be a Bit Left of Center

Here's an article contending that Barack Obama wrote a letter to John Gage, the president of a major union for government workers.

Okay, I understand Obama is pro-union. I'm not condemning him for that fact, even though I vehemently disagree with unions. They served a purpose during the history of our country, but by and large, my belief is that they have run their course.

If Obama really did write a letter to a union chief saying he thinks that the TSA employees need collective bargaining to get more from their employer, I am severely disappointed.

Let’s step into a vacuum for a second and say that I actually agree that there are still groups of employees that need this type of protection because their employer may not be giving them all the benefits they deserve. Ummm, isn’t he President-elect? Doesn’t that mean he’s their boss? If he doesn’t agree with their benefits, he can fire their boss. It’s a politically appointed position. And don’t feed me some crap that Congress controls the purse strings, and we need unions to make sure Congress doesn’t screw them. Overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate nullify this point as well.

I know this description over-simplifies the process by which employee pay and benefits are determined. But he was elected on a platform of sweeping change. Do we really need to bring in special interests to renegotiate government employee salaries?

Deep Run at Venetian

After landing in Vegas midday on Wednesday, I went over to Bellagio to sweat Russell in a $5K event that he had made the final table of. He busted 7th after getting a bit unlucky. With no other work projects to handle, I decided to play the $120 buy-in 7 pm tournament at the Venetian. Since I'd gotten up at 5:30 am EST, this was going to be a long night if I did well.

We started with 7500 in chips. Before the first break, I had my stack up to 25,000, in great shape. I lost half my stack on a marginal decision, then lost another pot to essentially make myself a short stack with 60 players to go.

Fast forward 4 hours, and I'd grinded until we had 30 players left. They started dropping like flies, and I won a few pots to give me a big enough stack to open up my game. When we got down to 2 tables, I was chip leader at my table. The floorman (Mark) promptly moved me to the other table, where I was 7th in chips out of 8. Thanks, Mark. We can't be too pissed at Mark, since he's a Padres and Chargers fan. Mark gets a lot of practice saying, "This is a rebuilding year."

I still managed to pick up enough pots at the table to keep up with the chip leader. I was happy that I was calling with marginal hands, then either betting out or check-calling to win some nice pots from players too afraid to go broke. Very shortly after moving tables, we were in the money. There was no money until the top 3, so I played as such at the final table.

Early on, 9-handed, with about 110K in chips, I limped from early position with T9o for 4000. A bunch of players saw the flop. The SB was the chip leader, with about 130K in chips. It was checked to me on a Q92 flop, with 2 clubs. I bet out 5500. The chip leader called and we were heads up to the turn. He bet out 25,000 on the turn, a 5 of spades. This appeared to be a blank, and I was pretty sure it didn't improve his hand. I studied him for a while, and decided to call. I hadn't see him play even one pot at the other table, so I really didn't have a good read on him. The river was a red 3. The chip leader bet 35,000. I spent a long time thinking and studying him. I really felt like it was most likely he hadn't improved, and could potentially have missed a draw. But, he also could have a better 9 than me. The bet was big enough to leave him chips to play, which was the factor that almost lead me to calling. Well, I should have gone with my gut. My cards weren't even in the muck when he turned up JTo, for a busted straight.

Oh, well. I started stealing pots here and there, and worked my stack back up to 120k pretty quickly. We were down to 6 players, and I had 4 decent hands against short-stacks who reraised me all-in. Getting great odds on all, I called. I went 1 out of 4. Back down to 60k. We dropped two more players (1 of which I doubled up twice while I was holding AK). 4-handed, the blinds were 4K-8K, with a 1K ante. I had 89K. The clock had already expired, so I knew we were going to 6K-12K on the next hand, with a 2K ante. I had 7BBs left. On the button, before looking at my cards, I decided to steal the blinds. The SB was weak, trying to hang on to move up. The BB was erratic, but showed he could lay down big hands. I looked down at 27o. They were letting me open for small amounts and still folding, so I opened for 22K. The SBs cards hit the muck so fast, they caught on fire. BB thought for just a second, and called. He had about 12K less than me. I was pretty much done with the hand, but the flop was 234 with 2 hearts. I had the 7 of hearts as an emergency re-draw to a flush, but more importantly, it was virtually impossible that my opponent had a better hand at this point. He shoved in, and I was getting the right odds to call. He turned over K-T of diamonds (eep!). Turn was a T, river King.

Down to 14K, fold UTG. In BB, I get dealt KQo. Button and SB both call with worse hands, but the SB fills up with T8 off, and I'm out in 4th place for a whopping $600.

I don't feel like I've been playing good poker lately, so I was happy with the deep run. There were a couple of times where I felt like I may have made the wrong decision, but in the end I felt like I played solid poker. I don't think I'm 100% focused yet, but I do think I'm playing better.

The Significance of 60

Saxby Chambliss defeated Jim Martin this evening in the Georgia Senate run-off.

Read about it in the NY Times here.

Chambliss, a Republican, assured that Democrats would not reach a 60 member filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. I think it's interesting to note that Chambliss won by 20 points tonight (or, at least that's his lead at the time of this post). This race was razor thin going down the stretch before the run-off. Could the overwhelming victory be a statement by Georgia residents that they don't want to see one party have a super majority of White House, House of Representatives and Senate majorities?

I can't say I remember Walter Mondale saying too many intelligent things. I was fairly young when he was in politics, and most of what I read painted him to be a bit goofy. But, in a recent interview, he talked about the fact that during his political tenure, the Senate dealt with the reality of a 60 member majority.

He stated his position very well. 60 is more of a zone. 58 may be just as good as 60. 60 may be just as good as 62. It really depends on the issue.

My belief is that 60 Democrats is MUCH different than 60 Republicans. For better or worse, the Republicans circle the wagons much better than Democrats. So, even if the Dems got to 60, I doubt they would have that lock on a majority of issues.

Mondale's point is that regardless of the number, consensus building is still the stuff of smart governing. Here's hoping some of our current elected leaders were listening.

Giants Sweep Skins

The Giants went into FedEx Field on Sunday, and came out with the best record in the NFC still intact. It was a nasty weather day, but Eli Manning looked really good throwing the ball.

Other than a pretty dismal 2-minute drill at the end of the first half, the Giants moved the ball well throughout the game, even though the Redskins loaded up the box to stop the run. Eli had a career record number of passing yards in the first half on the way to a 23-7 win.

The Giants can clinch a bye in the first round of the playoffs with a win next week against Philadelphia at The Meadowlands.