The Unexpected

Paris--Kenya--Spain, part six.

Some of the best things about having an adventure are the unexpected things. Here are a few from our adventure.

Sunrise over Greenland on my flight from Salt Lake City to Paris.

Seeing this guy pass by while we were on the Batobus, a water bus service on the Seine.

Deciding at the last minute to hop off the Batobus and check out the botanical gardens.

Actually seeing people in the Seine, which I've never seen before. I think these two are police officers doing a training exercise. 

Using this self-cleaning rest room in Paris. In between every single user, it closes its door for a few minutes, rinses itself off, then opens to let the next the person in. I'm pretty sure there's a panic button you can push if you accidentally end up inside during the cleaning cycle.

Hanging out with our group on safari. There were eight of us, half of the group Kenyan, and our driver. Great people, great dynamics. And the food was amazing.

Having the chance to visit a Masai village.

And stay dry inside one of their homes--pitch dark except for the fire in front of us--during a rainstorm. The mother built the entire house, which kept us warm and dry, out of cow dung. It took her about two months, and it has been standing at least nine years.

Helping half a dozen other safari vans get up a muddy hill. Our driver was the only one who was able to do it without getting stuck. It was fun to watch everyone, drivers and passengers alike, putting in their two cents about how to get out of our collective predicament.

Stopping under a tree for a picnic. This isn't our safari van. Imagine a vast expanse dotted with lone trees shading safari vans and picnickers.

How quickly we became jaded about the wildlife we saw on safari. "Zebra!" someone would cry, and we'd all jump up to take photographs. "More zebra!" someone would say. "Oh," we'd reply and maybe cast a glance. "More zebra," someone would think, and not bother to say it out loud.

Discovering the existence of albino zebra at the Nairobi National Park. 

Actually feeding and touching a giraffe. They have big tongues. And yes, I was touched by a giraffe tongue. I survived, but I probably don't need to do that again.

All of the blossoming bushes in the median as we drove for hundreds and hundreds of kilometers in Spain.

The birds circling and screeching in the Alhambra courtyards. 

This sweet view from our pension window in Seville.

A parade in honor of San Cristobal--patron saint of travelers--in Ontinyent, Spain, where we stopped for the night. We heard the band play and ran out on our balcony to watch a procession of motorbikes, cars, and trucks of all sizes barrel by, blasting their horns. We followed the parade to this park, where a priest was blessing each vehicle with holy water and city leaders were passing out ribbons to drivers.

Finding geese living in the courtyard of a cathedral in Barcelona.

This smiling lobster.

Parallel Lives

A little break from my trip tonight. Back with the last few posts on that soon.

Earlier today I was enjoying Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krause Rosenthal, who I met last week at a children's literature conference (she also writes picture books). In the C's under the entry called "Childhood Memories" she wrote the following:

1972
Amy receives a call at school; sister Katie is born, March 22. More excited about unusual occurrence of having principal deliver a message to her classroom than about having new sibling.

I realized in that moment that, except for the fact that Amy has done all sorts of things I haven't (like written New York Times bestselling books), we've basically led parallel lives.

This would be my entry. Same year, same event, slightly different details.

1972
Margy receives a call at school; sister Linda is born, June 7. More excited about unusual occurrence of having principal deliver a message over the intercom than about having a new sibling.

Of course, I was very excited about having a sibling. It's just that I already knew that was going to happen.

Inspired

Paris--Kenya--Spain, part five.

No trip to Europe would be complete without visiting some grand cathedrals and churches. These aren't even all of the ones we saw. 

We ended up visiting Notre Dame in Paris twice. Once after standing in an extraordinarily long line, which thankfully moved fairly quickly (is it always like that now?). 

And then again when we showed up the next night to see if there were any tickets left for a concert. There were! I thought the poster said it was an organ concert, and I wanted Maryann to experience organ music wrapping around and filling us up like I remember on many Sunday afternoons when I was there before. It turned out to be a choir concert with organ accompaniment, so we didn't have the experience I was hoping for. But the choir was beautiful.

Before we left Paris, we headed up to Montmartre and Sacré Couer (photo below taken from the second level of the Eiffel Tower, which we had climbed to the day before). We happened to visit the church during mass, and it was lovely to watch people walk forward and receive communion from both a priest and a nun.

The cathedral in Granada was perhaps my favorite of the old cathedrals we visited. I loved all of the massive carved wooden cupboards, drawers--which contained the bones of saints? I wasn't sure--and doors. I also loved the pale blue dome with golden stars.

The cathedral in Seville surprised me a bit. It's jam packed with gold and silver treasures (starkly opposite of the kind they say is laid up in heaven) and more creepy gothic details then usual. For example, one of the pall bearers carrying the alleged remains of Christopher Columbus below is wearing a robe covered with bats.

 

The highlight of visiting this cathedral was walking the 35 floors (ramps, not stairs) up to the top of the bell tower.

It seemed fitting to visit La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona on the last day of my trip. A progression from older to newer. 

We first saw it from a distance, and were surprised by its size.

 

We were still surprised by its size when we got up close.

And then we went inside. Wow. Wow wow wow. I confess I was a bit ambivalent about Gaudi before visiting Barcelona. I thought his work was intriguing and I enjoyed his sense of whimsy, but I'd only seen his work in photos. They simply can't do it justice. He was genius.

Gaudi's ability to translate elements of nature and incorporate unusual geometric principles into a building of that scale absolutely blew me away. 

I also discovered something Gaudi once said that will endear him to me forever. He had been studying plainoids (curved surfaces made with straight lines), and he wanted to apply them in his architectural designs. 

But he wasn't sure why no one else had. He expressed what I believe many people who see things a little differently feel, which made him human.

The fact that they have not been applied before and that I am the first to do so has made me think a lot. This would be the only thing that, in any case, would make me hesitate. Nevertheless, I believe that, convinced as I am of the perfection they represent, it is my duty to apply them.

Apply them he did, which made him a pioneering example for those of us who see things a little differently.

Here's the exterior and interior of a building with this undulating structure. It's a school on La Sagrada Familia grounds which was used to educate the children of construction workers.

And it contains one last gem I want to share in this post: a delicious replica of Gaudi's studio. 

La Sagrada Familia, which was begun in 1882, probably won't be complete for at least another 15 years. It's comforting to know in this age of microwave ovens, tweets, and quarterly financial statements that we humans are still capable of investing in long-term projects.

The Right Height

Paris--Kenya--Spain, part four.

I totally got it when Mitt Romney went to Michigan and proclaimed "the trees are the right height." As an northeasterner transplanted in the intermountain west, I appreciated what he meant. I generally feel more at home when things are the right height.

And now, after 30 years in Utah, I've discovered that I feel at home here. As I traveled through Kenya and Spain, I kept thinking that lots of things felt the right height: mountains, trees, shrubs, grasses. Of course, they were all different. But the same, too.

Here's Kenya, heading south from Nairobi across the Great Rift Valley:

Here's Utah at the northwest end of our valley:

Here's our tented camp in Kenya:

Here's a view from the car somewhere in Spain (wow, we saw a lot of olive trees!):

And here's a view in our Utah town:

Maybe the pictures don't quite capture it, but over and over I was reminded of my Utah home. All three regions were so similar in terms of color and scale, yet so different in terms of flora and fauna.

No matter how much southern Kenya reminded me of Utah, I'm pretty sure I'll never run into these guys at home.

And no matter how much southern Spain reminded me of Utah, I'm pretty sure I won't get to have breakfast under orange trees like these at home.

The Trade

Paris--Kenya--Spain, part three.

Before we headed out on our trip, I mentioned to Maryann that I wanted to be sure we visited Shakespeare and Company, an infamous English bookshop on the left bank in Paris, just across from Notre Dame, and the subject of documentary entitled Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man.

Maryann found out from the shop's website that one of her favorite authors, Lydia Davis, would be giving a reading while we were there. So we attended. And reveled. And bought books.

We also went to the Village Voice Bookshop in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés area of Paris. It's an English language bookshop that opened 30 years ago, around the time I was on study abroad. Sadly, it is closing this summer, so this visit was both my first and last. I had a nice chat with one of the shop owners and, of course, bought a couple of books.

I also wished I could move right in. 

Later on in the trip, after we toured the Alhambra in Grenada, Spain, we spent a little time browsing the gift shop. Earlier in the day, I'd seen the UPS driver deliver a stack of boxes to the shop with a hand truck, including this Baker & Taylor box. It reminded me of the old days at our bookstore, when our UPS driver delivered stacks of boxes with a hand truck, including Baker & Taylor boxes. Baker & Taylor was one of our primarily distributors. I had no idea it was an international company, but of course why not?

I bought a copy of Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra there and started reading it straightaway, especially enjoying his description at the beginning of traveling from Seville to Granada. We ended up going the opposite direction that afternoon, but for us crossing the Sierra Nevada mountains was fraught with far less hardship and danger. We didn't run into any contrabandistas or bandoleros along the way. In fact we didn't run into any trouble like that during our entire trip. Not even a pickpocket. 

On the Hunt

Paris--Kenya--Spain, part two.

After a bit of searching, we found my favorite crêperie in the Latin Quarter in Paris. At least I think it was the same place. It felt like it was in the same place. And whether it was the same place or not, the crêpes were très délicieux.

Despite a slightly disappointing visit to the Rodin museum (things were not very well displayed, but perhaps they are in transition), we did manage to locate one of the sculptures that remained censored and unseen in a crate while the art museum at BYU hosted a touring Rodin exhibition about 15 years ago.

On the first day of our Masai Mara safari, one of our group dropped her camera out of the van into the tall grass while we were hanging out with some elephants. Luckily we (and by we, I mean the people who looked for it while I stayed in the van and took a picture of them) found it. Can you see the elephant in the background there? It looks further away than it was in real life.

Once one of the groups on safari spotted this lioness guarding her pride's kill (a formerly massive buffalo), it wasn't hard for our driver to track her down. She wasn't going anywhere.

Unlike the lioness, it took a while to track down this cheetah with her four cubs. We kept hearing reports of sightings over the radio, but descriptions like "she's by some rocks and a tree" weren't specific enough even for James, our seasoned driver. As soon as we found her, though, a dozen other safari vans showed up. We could tell she was getting a bit concerned, wanting to protect her cubs. It was amazing to see her, but we started to feel bad about putting her in such a spot.

We opted out of renting a GPS with our car in Spain, which was basically fine until we hit the oldest section of Seville where our pension was. Streets, nearly all one way and rarely marked, curved this way and that, often dwindling down into pedestrian paths. Maryann was a great navigator, but it was just too crazy! At one point, I spied an open parking space and pulled our little black Peugeot in so we could get out and search on foot. Turns out our pension was a mere 50 feet away and we couldn't have gotten a better parking space if we tried.

Even on foot, it was nearly impossible to find a bar the woman at the pension recommended to see a more folksy--not touristy and overproduced--flamenco show. She vaguely circled the area on our map, which turned out to be fairly unhelpful. Then everyone we asked gave us different directions. After searching and searching, we were finally rewarded with a quirky venue, extremely talented musicians, and a very stern flamenco dancer. She scared me a little bit. Loved her red shoes though.

On our last morning together in Barcelona, my sister and I headed to Park Güell, a neighborhood designed by Gaudi but never fully developed. After misreading the map and ending up at Palau Güell, which was closed because it was Monday, we figured out where we really needed to be and that we should take the metro. When we emerged from the station, there were no signs directing us to the park. I think we looked confused, because a very nice gentleman stopped to tell us how to get there. We sort of understood what he said. The long hike up the steep hill without knowing exactly where we were headed or how far it was or what we would find was absolutely worth it. See?