120/365: Controversial Design

According to Lonely Planet, when the new British Library building opened, people hated the design. I thought it was OK. Mostly I thought it was really cool that you could go inside and see the Magna Carta.

119/365: Not exactly a native species

This peacock was just randomly wandering around the grounds at Kew Gardens. Not native to the region, but it appears to be doing well.

118/364: A message ferrrr tha people

117/365: Jeefason

You also read his name as "Jeefason", right?

Working on getting this shot was fun. Carousels are a good place to try this technique, since you can anticipate their motion.

116/365: Water water everywhere

115/365: The barren trees of Hospital Clinic

114/365: It's fine if you don't like me but at least get my name right

113/365: St. Jordi is for everyone

April 23 is the Diada de Sant Jordi, which is kind of like the Catalan Valentine's Day. Traditionally, men give women roses, and women give men books. Fortunately, it's become customary for people to exchange books all around. I gave House 2 cookbooks today and he gave me both a rose and a book of short stories.

All around the major streets of the city bookstores set up stalls, and different groups set up flower stands. This stand was sponsored by a Barcelona gay rights organization. As you can see, their roses were not limited to the standard traditional red.

More pics from today are at Flickr. I've always loved how the buses carry little Catalan and Barcelona flags on St. Jordi.

112/365: The dismount

Today at Oxfam's Festa de la Solidaritat (a celebration of women's rights), a group of castellers were performing. Actually, these guys didn't call themselves castellers, but I don't remember their name and it doesn't seem to be on the Oxfam website. In any case, they were fun to watch. More pictures, including a couple of shots of actual formations, are at Flickr.

111/365: Will juggle for food

I didn't really get this act. These guys would run out into the middle of the street when the light turned red and do this juggling routine. Then, as soon as the light turned green, they'd walk between the moving cars soliciting money. It seemed stupid to me—even if people wanted to give them money, who wanted to get out their wallet, find a euro and give it to them all while the cars behind them were honking in annoyance?

110/365: Sicko

This one was the other possibility for today, but I just really love this sweatshirt. Besides, fun with black and white.

109/365: An invitation to sit

Parc Cervantes is right across the road from the hospital I'm working at. This morning I brought my camera to check it out. It turns out it's a small botanical garden that's known for cultivating roses. Maybe some afternoon I'll plan to take my laptop and work outside on this bench.

108/365: Some people still live here

This enclave, Colonia Castells, is smack in the middle of a firmly middle-class neighborhood. You can get a better sense of that in this photo. Over the next 10 years, the city of Barcelona is going to tear down Colonia Castells. According to a document that my apartment-mate brought home, this neighborhood was built in the 20s to provide low-cost housing to workers. Now, many of the homes are abandoned, but some people still live there, and the city is going to provide those people with new housing.

Barcelona changed dramatically for the 1992 Olympics, and I am surprised to see how much it has continued to change over the past 10 years. Some of the changes are quite nice, providing more open space and pedestrian areas, but others reflect the homogenization that modernity often brings.

107/365: Not as bad as it looks

I was occupied by taking this picture, but as far as I know, he didn't totally wipe out at the end of this.

More photos from today at Flickr, including a new space invader and this one from the Metro that I like a lot.

106/365: Watchdog

I ran outside with my camera for 5 minutes to just get whatever I happened to see. Nothing spectacular, but who doesn't love a puppy? And you also get to see the famous sidewalk tiles of the Eixample of Barcelona.

105/365: Candy Colors

104/365: The headbutt

Today I took a walk down to the Parc de l'Espanya Industrial. The name is odd, and I think this park is wholly underappreciated, but I've always liked it. The statue is of the dragon that Saint George slays, although it's called "The Dragon Without St. George".

Unfortunatley, this photo is obviously the money shot, but I can't stand how blurry it is. A few other photos of this park are here.

103/365: Off to Dinner

102/365: El metro fantasma

I don't usually do photos like this, but something about this one kept making me look back at it. It's a little creepy, and the woman's bag looks like a spider. Also, sometimes I'm fascinated by the images that a camera can record, and this is one of those things.

101/365: Hospital de Sant Pau

I'm not sure I love the angle here, but I did really like how this door opened into the hallway. The problem was that the staircase leading up to the door was blocked off, so I could only get the photo from this sort of odd angle.

The Hospital de Sant Pau, a landmark of Catalan modernism, is an actual functioning hospital today.

A couple more photos from the area around the Hospital de Sant Pau and the Sagrada Familia.

100/365: Kiddie Car

Not very spectacular for the 100th photo, but what can you do? I still have the headache that I came home with today and for once in my life, photos were close to the last thing on my mind. In any case, at least it's something kind of quirky.

99/365: The Human Swell

I had a chance to walk around the center of the city today. Since it's Easter Monday, both tourists and residents alike were taking the opportunity to go for a stroll. There has been an extreme uptick in tourism to Barcelona over the past decade, which seemed entirely obvious to me today. For example, I don't remember lines like this, even during the busiest vacation times, when I lived here ten years ago. I was glad I've already been inside.

A few more pictures from my morning stroll are here.

98/365: Foixa

In any case, here's a cute medieval town called Foixa. We passed through on our way to lunch at Can Llusca, which is an old farm house that my friend's parents own (actually, the half that's pictured is owned by another family, but you get the idea.)

Tomorrow is Easter Monday, and everyone is still on vacation (including me, although I'm back in the city now), so I hope to take some more typical tourist pictures to show off the city.

97/365: L'arros de Pals

Saturday was something of a mess. I had every intention of taking pictures of cute medieval towns, but by accident my friend locked us—and my camera—out of the apartment. I took some pictures with his point and shoot, but I don't know when I'll have a chance to get them, so I'll just use this one instead. This was taken after we got back from lunch, and after I could get a hold of my camera. The town where my friends' have a weekend house is famous for its rice fields. The mountains in the back are said to look like a woman. Her foot extends into the Mediterranean, which doesn't appear in this photo.

96/365: Sa Tuna

It's Semana Santa, and everyone left the city for the weekend. After a little siesta on Friday, we took a walk through Sa Tuna, a small town on the Mediterranean.

95/365: Grand Avenues

Europe is famous for its grand avenues, and this is probably the grandest in AEC. It's also one of those streets that the Liveable Streets people dream of in New York City, since it has a dedicated bike lane, bus rapid transit, and a street tram (not pictured, but it runs on a track that's on the right of this photo). Since it's Easter week and it's raining today, no bikers are out, but I saw plenty of them yesterday. Also, the bus line that happens to be running up the avenue in this picture is the one I'll be taking to my new office.

94/365: The new view

The window in my new bedroom overlooks this school. It's pretty, but on each side of the courtyard is a soccer field which may keep me from sleeping past 9 on the weekends! (Maybe that's a good thing.)

93/365: Fashion Forward

I just don't think I'm going to see this kind of stuff in AEC. I doubt they'd think to match their yellow hat with yellow tights.

92/365: Now I'm packing, OK?

For about 2 weeks now, people have been asking me whether or not I'm packed for AEC. Seriously. I get that I'm going for 2 months, but who packs earlier than the day before? I had started putting some stuff in a pile, but packed? No, I didn't start that until today, and I'm leaving tomorrow.

91/365: The model

We had a fun time watching this fashion shoot going on while we were eating brunch. Then we had a fun time watching these guys who walked by and whipped out their cameras to take their own photos of the scene.

March Retrospective

I was sort of surprised when I made this retrospective. I thought there would be more portrait close-ups than there are. Of course, there are some, but it's more varied than I expected. Street art, food, silly city moments like the Barbie dolls or the balloon man. I'd really like to work on wide-angle scenes more, since I like looking at other people's, but I feel like I don't have a very good eye for them. Maybe that will be a goal for AEC (which most of you will recognize from the pictures once I get there if you don't already know where it is!)