Photos from Spain

- Everyone remember Margarita? She was the angel at our Halloween party 3 years ago (my how time flies!) I met her at karate class in Vancouver, where she was studying English and, despite beating each other up at our initial meeting in class, we became good friends. Such good friends in fact that she invited us to stay with her and her boyfiend (Alfonso, in picture on the right) when we got to Madrid. We meant to only stay for 2 or 3 nights, but they were so incredibly nice to us that we stayed for nearly a week!!! This is us eating a traditional Spanish snack called chorros - like a skinny donut that you dip in chocolate sauce...pretty tasty!






- Shot taken in Grenada of a spice and tea stall; it was so neat...all these different spices from Spain and Morrocco, and all different kinds of herbal teas designed to cure any kind of illness or afliction. For some silly reason, Brad and I decided to buy about 5 different kinds of these magical teas, even though we had to buy them in 500 gram bags, so now our backpacks are stupidly full of tea that can cure anything from headaches, to nausea, to arthritis...but, hey, at least our clothes smell nice.

- Me and Margui at the gates to the old city of Toledo - yes, Brad and I walked around all day saying "Holy Toledo, look at that _____" (Fill in blank with anything from 'dog' to 'cat' to church). It was fun.

- Me and Margui at the Don Quixote statue in Madrid.

Rewind a few days to Barcelona:

- Hoards of people walking up and down Las Ramlas.

Who out there has not heard of Antonio Gaudi? He was a Spanish architect who lived in late 19th and early 20th centuries. And he had undoubtedly one of the most creative minds in the architectural world before or since. His work is located solely in Barcelona. His most famous work is called the Sagrada Familia (Sacred Family). It is a church that was begun in the mid 1800s and won't be finished until about 2020. Gaudi knew this when he started, but was willing to take on a project that would take 200 years to build, becuase he believed "my client is not in a hurry".

- Outer facade of the church

- Inside the church he used different kinds of stone of differing colours to build the pillars . He did this for so the pillars could represent a forrest, where different kinds of trees grow. As a mark of his genius, he varied the type of stone used with the weight the pilar would have to bear.

- Niffty turtle holding 'the weight of the world on its back' on an outer pillar of the church.

- The famous gecko at the Gaudi park.

- Gaudi's third most famous work was an appartment block called 'La Pedrera'. It was and is an amazing blend of bizzare and outreageous designs with pure and effiencient functionality. These figures are chimnies on the roof and each one is both functional and unique - there are a total of about 18 on the roof.