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…
[tag]Spain, Madrid, Segovia, Seville, Toledo, Granada, Alhambra, photography, Sony Alpha 100, travel, Europe, Segway, Memories, Jay Lee[/tag]
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.
La Torre Del Oro
On our last night in Madrid (Oct. 24th) we hung out at La Torre Del Oro, a very interesting tapas bar in the Plaza Mayor dedicated to bull fighting.
Neither Cynthia nor myself are fans of this sport and we had no intention of witnessing a bull fight, but this little place was fascinating. Mounted on the wall were the heads of some notable bulls from previous fights as well as photo after photo of various toreadors.
And in the corner was a small television set showing previously recorded bull fights. It was like a bull fighting sports bar!
The bartender and Cynthia had a very animated discussion (in Spanish) wherein the rules and nuances of the sport were explained and discussed. I must confess, it was compelling to watch as the drama played out on the small TV. It was especially odd when they would show a slow motion replay of some particularly noteworthy cape swooshing.
I picked up bits and pieces of what was being said and I recall at one point, as the time was drawing near when the toreador would actually strike the killing blow, the matter of taking an ear as a trophy came up. That was when Cynthia looked at the mounted heads in the room and exclaimed “THEY HAVE NO EARS!”
I enjoyed a few beers while this was going on, all the while just looking around and snapping a few pics like this one of a shrine/alter I can only presume was intended to keep the bull fighters safe from harm.
All in all, a very fun evening.
[tags] Spain, Madrid, Bull Fighting, Tapas [/tags]
Fotomat
I’ve been spending a few hours each day sifting through photos from the trip. It’s an arduous task. I am processing over 3,000 images collected while we were in Spain.
The main goal is to isolate the ones I want to print, edit them if necessary and then make a re sized copy for upload to the gallery.
On the one hand, it’s fun going through the images. On the other hand, it’s making me a little loopy.
While I was processing the pics from Seville I noticed that I had two pictures of the garden of the Alcazar that were pretty cool. They got me to thinking that I really was wishing for a super wide angle on that day to try to capture more of the garden in one shot instead of these two:
Thanks to Photoshop, I now have the shot I couldn’t get in the field….
Back to work to the photo-mines….
Beggar – Madrid
Puerta del Alcala – Madrid
Standing on the Calle Alcala looking up to the Puerta del Alcala (Alcala Arch)
We were standing where you see the blue marker here. The arch is on the right side of the map.
Scrapbook
I’ve started the process of going through the 2500+ pictures I took during the trip. Right now I am just sorting pictures into folders for each major city visited. Then I will go through and break it down by site. After that I will need to go through and cull out the blurries and the duplicates.
Cynthia has another 1500 or so on her camera that need to be downloaded and processed.
Then comes deciding which ones to print for our “scrapbook.”
And no, it’s not one of those cutesy-crafty “hey, pass me the Elmer’s Glue, construction paper and a pair of scissors” kind of scrapbooks that seems to be all the rage these days.
It’s just something to put the pics in and all the paper we collected. Things like hotel receipts, metro and train ticket stubs, museum tickets and so forth.
The one from our European vacation was 3 fat three-ringed binders full. I expect this one to be even larger.
As I’m slowly going through my pictures I keep finding some cool ones I forgot about.
Something about convex mirrors compels me.
That’s the Edificio Metropolis in the background so I know this was taken somewhere near The Gran Via and Calle de Alcala.
It’s going to be fun going through these…