The Amazing Architecture of Barcelona

If I had my life to live over I might have become an architect. I am fascinated by beautiful and interesting buildings.

Barcelona has so many architectural gems that Franklin and I walked around looking up all the time to admire everything from gothic masterpieces and Modernista marvels. (Modernista is the term for Catalan art nouveau style buildings largely from the late 1800s through the 1920).

Without further ado here are some gorgeous buildings and interesting architectural details. I am not going to try to identify them.  Just enjoy the eye candy.

Lovely Lucca

Lucca, Italy in Tuscany is easy to love, with good food, attractive buildings, and an elegant pace of life.

The city is surrounded by Renaissance city walls. Inside the walls are cobbled street, handsome piazzas, shady promenades, good shops. It reminded me of Sante Fe, New Mexico, not, of course in architecture but in the quality of life and the general vibe. 

We never planned to visit here. It was only on our radar as a backup plan and as it turned out, we needed a backup plan because we didn't like our original destination, The Cinque Terre. 

One of those scenic Cinque Terre towns. 

Despite the April rains the Cinque Terre towns were extremely crowded with tourists and hikers. We saw few if any locals. 
Your friends who loved their visit here a few years ago got to stroll on the romantic, beautiful Via dell'Amore which has been closed for a few years and has no plans to reopen in the near future. However, it is still listed as open in all the tourist guides. We felt cheated by the false advertising. 

A view from our boat trip

We do like to walk (we try for 5-8 miles a day every day) but at our age we prefer easier and level walks to steep mountains. The trails that are open in the Cinque Terre are both too crowded and too strenuous, on these hills.  So we took a short but lovely boat trip along the coast instead. One night here was plenty and Lucca was just a short train ride away.  

On that train ride we passed Carrera. Many famous sculptures are made of Carrera marble, as well as marble countertops.  Here are the marble mountains of Carrera. 

All that white stuff- Carrerra marble.

Back to Lucca. The city walls are an important feature here and surround the charming historic part of town. They are unusual in many ways. First of all the walls were designed by Leonardo de Vinci. It was originally built for defense (largely against their nearby rival, Florence) but once the walls lost their military importance they became a pedestrian promenade. When Italy united the government pulled down alls all over the country but Lucca, a wealthy and fashionable city said they wanted to keep them and had to pay to for the privilige of keeping their walls.

Not what you expect a city wall to look like, is it?  This 8 km wall was designed by Leonardo de Vinci and since it is so wide it is a park with walkways, trees, an occasional spot for picnics, and more.  It seemed like everyone in town walks/bikes/jogs on the walls all the time. 

You walk up to the walls on paths like this. There were numerous tunnels and rooms underneath the walls as shown below 

Ok. Enough photos of the walls. Here are some other Lucca photos. 

Puccini, the Italian opera composer, came from Lucca. That is his house in the back of us. 

I went horseback riding one day and we passed this village surrounded by olive groves. 

Isn't this the prettiest plate of ravioli you have ever seen? I forget the flavor. Maybe butternut squash?

We loved Lucca and would definitely return for a longer stay. 

A Walk in the woods

Most days Franklin and I walk a lot. In cities that usually means lots of short walks, otherwise, we go to parks and take long walks.  Preferably in forests with big trees.

I thought I'd post some photos of some of the gorgeous forests where we walked this summer. I'll start with one of my favorites, Heritage Forest in Qualicum Beach. This isn't a dense, old growth forest, the kind Vancouver Island is famous for. This one is small, second growth so the trees are big but not huge, and not very dense so you can really see the shape and size of the trees. It is my favorite because there is an old manor house hotel right in front of it. We stay there and have this gorgeous little forest in our backyard.

The wide trails are lined with cedar chips and there are maps posted at most intersections. An elegant, well maintained forest- in fact, we met the man who maintains it when he was cleaning and polishing his laminated maps found at each intersection. It is a classy little forest, and if Queen Elizabeth had not visited one down the road a few miles (Milner Gardens and Woodlands) I imagine she would have liked this one quite a lot.

  I find the variety, textures and style of paths interesting- boardwalks, pebbles, cedar chips, dirt, pine needles, etc. I  hope you don't think they all look too much the same.

Well-maintained trails covered with cedar chips in some places. 

These nicely shaped holes were made by a pileated woodpecker. 

I guess in photos it looks like a lot of other places but in person, it is sort of magical. I think it is the soft, wide footpath covered in cedar chips that pleases me. And the maps. I like the combination of raw nature and civilization.

Speaking of magical forests, once again we went to Tofino which is on the sparsely populated west coast of Vancouver Island. It is more of a rainforest and another of our very favorite places.  There are lots of really big trees in Pacific Rim National Park. Some of the trails are covered in boardwalks because it can get very wet here. 

This is a rarely used path that we discovered. The boardwalk was overgrown with foliage

These next photos are from the Campbell River, famous for salmon fishing.  

Can you see the salmon in his left hand?  This trail is along the Campbell River.