Beautiful Barcelona

29.06.08

Even before we went for our trip, we decided that in Barcelona, we would take the Hop On Hop Off bus. Everyone who had been to Barcelona told us to do that, and that is exactly what we did.

The bus has 3 routes, we can follow any of it at any time (up to 9pm I think). It stops in all the main attractions. It even had an audio guide which you could listen to when you were sitting in the bus.

The bus was a double decker bus, with an open air top, but then I only managed to sit out top for a few minutes before running downstairs for cover.

I never expected Barcelona to be SO HOT!!
The sun was out.
There were no clouds.
It was like the sun was just burning you up, roasting you.

Anyway, we had fun.
Here are some of the photos we took that day.

The Sagrada Familia - unfinished even after 200 years!
One name you will NOT fail to hear when you are in Barcelona is Gaudi - a famous architect. Most of the attractions we visited are by him.
It is amazing how he could think (and make) of such amazing designs/work of art!

Every single line is a carving, every carving is a story. Gaudi paid attention to every single detail.
(The Sagrada is being built according to Gaudi's original plan)

Park Guell - another Gaudi creation.


It was SO HOT, my parents refused to go out to the clearing at the background.

The famous lizard at Park Guell


Next, we went up Mount Tibidabo. We had to take a tram and a *something* (forgot the name - something like tram also la) to get to the top.
This is not actually an attraction (at least I don't think it is), but then isn't it beautiful?!

The church at the top of Mount Tibidabo

The glass paintings were really remarkable. It was quite hard to get good shots of them, though. This was the best I could manage.

Hmm, not that many pictures, right? I guess we were just too busy enjoying the view (plus I didn't want to put too many pictures of the same place).

Today, I learnt that excitement is infectious.
I never planned to watch Transformers.
But then everyone is talking about it.
And many people have watched it.
Although many say that the first one is better, I am now thinking of watching the movie.
Although I still don't think I will enjoy it that much.
Just for the sake of saying that "hey, I've watched it!"
Maybe sometime this week if we can get the tickets?

Day 1 in Barcelona

Day 5 - there weren't that many pictures taken.
We spent half the day travelling from St. Petersburg to Barcelona and then getting to our hostel.

After settling down in the hostel, we just decided to venture to the nearby area.
When we got out of the hostel, we saw a HUGE parade.

It was the time of the Euro 2008 and Barcelona was in the finals.
We thought that the parade was most probably related to the football game and decided to take a closer look.

This is what we first saw.

Wondering what it is about? Well, we couldn't read it either. But they don't really seem like football fans, right?

Aah..now I see a word I understand. After more analyzing, this was the conclusion we came up to - A Gay and Lesbian Parade.
We had no idea what they were parading about.
But the were guys (?girls) and girls (?guys) topless, and non-topless walking along the street.

Now, my parents, there are not really the 'kampung' kind of people, but then they are still Malaysians and it was their first time getting out like this. They were kind of shocked (I think) to see what they saw. But they stood there, as we watched the parade go by.
We got quite bored after a while, and decided to walk on towards the main street - La Ramblas.

La Ramblas was quite a happening place - lots of souvenir shops (what me and Puspha loved) and lost of people just strolling. There were many people standing like statues (don't know what they are called) trying to make a living. Here is one of me and Puspha with Jack (he even posed with us!).

After that, we passed by a museum - Museu Erotica.
Just for the fun of it, knowing that back home there will never be a chance to go to such a museum, we decided to go in.
Truthfully, it was rather boring.
Nothing much to see.
Just walked around a little , took a couple of 'courtesy' photos since we were already there - nothing worth uploading though.

We left after a while, bought KFC for dinner and decided to sleep early, to prepare for a long day the next day.

This picture was taken from the Museu Erotica - the parade was passing through La Ramblas.
Just look at the crowd!!

Today, I learnt that Malaysian Tourism lacks in certain ways..

The Ugly Side of Tourism Malaysia

Today, after work, I went to Kellie's Castle with a couple of friends.

I have been there before, when I was much younger.
At that time, we (my family) were told that the place was going to be renovated to make it more attractive for an upcoming visit Perak Year or something like that.
So, I thought - it's been so long. Let's go see what it looks like now.

None of us really knew the way to Kellie's Castle. We decided to just drive up to Batu Gajah, and then see whether we can find our way from there on.
Guess what - right in the middle of Batu Gajah town, there was a signboard directing us to the castle.

When I saw this temple, I knew we were almost there. If you enlarge the picture, you can see that one of the statues on the temple is Kellie (don't remember his real name) himself.

Upon arrival at the place, we saw a few other cars there- not too many, not too few.
There weren't many shops around, just one 'makan' shop, a small souvenir shop and a ticket counter.
The ticket was RM4 - not bad, I thought.

This is the first thing I saw - oooh..1 point for being disabled-friendly.

Not too bad a view, don't you think?

We were told not to miss the bear hugging-tree by the ticket seller. Wondering what it was, we walked up towards the castle.
There was a signboard directing us towards this 'special-tree'.
Nearby the tree is another tree with a few newspaper clippings.

This particular piece said something about a guy walking around and then noticing that the tree trunk was shaped like a bear hugging a tree and that it is a 'miracle of God' or something like that.

This is the tree they were talking about. I looked at it. It looked more like 2 hippopotamuses in the middle of an indecent act more than anything else to me. And what I don't understand is, why the need for the red tape? Are they afraid the 'bear' is going to run away?

The rest of the trip kind of went into a downward, and then plateau phase.
The place was horrible!
There was no upkeeping.
There was bird shit everywhere.
I didn't dare touch the walls because they seemed SO FILTHY!!

Nothing was done to make visitors welcomed.
It didn't seem like a tourist attraction at all!
It was more like an abandoned house!!

It was quite shaming to see a few foreign tourists walking around with camera taking pictures.
Is this what they were going to show their friends when they go back home?
An empty, abandoned, dirty, so-called-castle?

Look at the pictures for yourself -

One of my most 'favourite' shots - notice the Visit Malaysia card? Now, look at the background

In almost every room, there was a white card, saying that 'if only this castle was completed, this most probably would have been....'. Most of it sounded like bull@*&$. This was in one of the rooms.
"What?!"

Another one of the white so-called explanation cards.

What's so mysterious about this corridor? I still wonder.

The view from the rooftop wasn't amazing, but it wasn't bad either.
The bad point - anyone can just fall off. No railings, no nothing.

There were even holes on the roof top - I can just imagine kids running around and suddenly getting their foot stuck in holes like this!

Nevertheless, we were already there.
We tried to find a few good spots where we could take some pictures.
Here are some that turned out OK..

The last picture of the castle.

It looks quite OK from the outside, but then it can definitely be much better. I can just imagine that if this was a western country, the place would have been probably done up to look like what Kellie wanted it to be, with furniture and pictures and stuff. Sad, really, knowing that this is what our tourism is offering.

27.06.08 - Peterhoff

This is going to be a post with few words and lots of pictures.

It was the 17th of June, 2008 - we went to the Peterhoff Palace, in St. Petersburg.
Technically, it is not 'in' St. Petersburg, it is at the outskirts of it.

The Peterhoff has 2 sections - the Palace and the Garden.
You can visit both the Palace and the Garden, but I chose to take my parents to the garden only because :
1. The garden is well known for its beautiful fountains
2. There would be insufficient time to visit both the Palace and the Garden (yes, it is HUGE!)
3. I assume the palace would be full of arts and paintings and I don't think my parents would have enjoyed it that much.
4. We can go to palaces in other places.

Here are the shots we took during that day, in the Peterhoff Gardens.
As I mentioned earlier, the garden is famous for its many fountains - each one different from one another.
I have no idea how many fountains there are.
We tried to cover as much of the garden as we could.
I don't think we saw all the fountains - but here are those that we did see.

(the pictures are not in order. This is my 2nd blog entry for today (preparing for tomorrow 'cos am oncall), so am too lazy to rearrange the photos).

The place is quite chilly because it is right next to the sea

This is actually the MAIN FOUNTAIN. Don't have a good enough camera to capture a beautiful shot of it - but trust me, when you see it for yourself, you WILL BE captivated.
(that's the palace at the background)

Looks like a place out of the movies, don't you think?

It was lunch time, Mom was exhausted!

One of the many walking paths

Cute Russian girl in a traditional Russian dress

(this is the only photo I repositioned - it was the last photo we took)
See how happy Mom was because we could go back - they were both tired out!

There are more fountain photos - had some uploading problem. Haih..

Happenings!

Hmm..quite a number of happenings nowadays....

But I have a specific topic to stick to, for the next 10 days or so - a year ago, today -my very own travel brochure (with limited amount of information).

A quick recap of a couple of things though :

The top new of the day - Michael Jackson died.
My response to the news - OK, so what? So many people die everyday and he is just one of them. I don't feel sad, I don't feel happy, I don't have any feelings.
Why should I, anyway?
It's not like I know him.
I know his existence, I know some of his songs, I enjoy some of his songs.
That's all!

I know many people don't agree with me and might not be happy about it, but hey, my feelings - I can't force myself to be sad for a stranger, right?

Another thing - Everyone seem to be SOOOOO into Transformers.
Everyone wants to go watch the movie.
Everyone is trying to get the tickets/friends to go watch the movie with.

I have had quite a number of invites to watch the movie.
So far, I've declined all invitations.

I didn't watch the first one, and I have no plans to watch the 2nd one.
Is it really that nice?
I didn't even like the preview that much.
Friends tell me I am missing a good movie.
Am I?
Really?

Right now, I think since there is really no other movies to watch, I MIGHT go for the movie, IF I really find the need to kill some time.
MIGHT.
IF.


Anyway, time to start my post.

It was our day 1 in St. Petersburg (SP).
We took the night train from Moscow to SP.
It was the 2nd time I took the train - and the ride was as it was the first time - convenient and comfortable.

We spent 2 nights in SP, in an apartment we rented. It wasn't the cheapest of places (not expensive either), but was very convenient, just along the main street.

Here are some photos we took around SP town that day.

At the Petersburg train station - taking pictures even before brushing our teeth!

Me and Mom at a huge lamp-post (duh!)
(in case you were wondering, by this time, we had already freshened up)



The Kazansky Cathedral - the inside is really, really beautiful

:P


The Church of something-something (a very long name, can never remember it).
It is said to be similar to the St. Basil's cathedral in Moscow, just blue in colour


The city was named after this guy - Petersburg - still wonder why the snake is there.

Mom insisted that she wanted Indian food. We walked and walked for about an hour (?more) looking for the Indian restaurant. See how happy Mom is that we were already there.

Today, I learnt about the existence of fracture blisters.

A patient was admitted for tibial plateau fracture type VI yesterday, and upon removal of his backslab today, he was noted to have multiple large (and unsightly) blisters on his shin and calf.
We first thought of compartment syndrome (which is what we are supposed to think of), but upon examination it was deduced that they were fracture blisters.

Fracture blisters are tense vesicles or bullae that arise on markedly swollen skin directly overlying a fracture.They occurred most commonly overlying the tibia, ankle, and elbow. They usually arise within 24-48 h of acute injury in most instances.

Treatment? My specialist said that it would be better to just let the blisters heal by themself before proceeding with any surgery (for the fracture). The outcome is usually better rather than just debriding the blisters and underlying skin.

P/s congratulations MMA Class of 2009 on your graduation. Enjoy your holidays. Don't think about working life, for now. You will have enough time to mull over that later on.