Flat Mr. Hunter admires the gothic side of La Sagrada Familia, which has a nativity scene
Mr. Hunter's keeper has longed to visit Gaudi's famed Barcelona cathedral ever since she saw Irving Penn's marvelous photo of a funeral procession passing in front of La Sagrada Familia.
Funeral Cortège in front of La Sagrada Familía
Irving Penn
Thanks to the Pebbles From Paradise blog.
Flat Mr. Hunter and the austere Passion facade
Beautiful! Mr. Hunter can't wait to see this cathedral with his own wooden eyes. A big "Gracias!" to Liz for taking Flat Mr. Hunter to Barcelona in the meantime.
After our pilgrimage to the Courtauld, we walked down The Strand and paid a visit to St. Paul's Cathedral. We arrived just as they were finishing up Evensong, so we had a chance to sit down and listen to some of the soaring and lovely music.
Here's a YouTube video somebody posted
that shows a snippet of Evensong music at St. Paul's.
The day we went to St. Paul's happened to be tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks. It felt odd not to be in the U.S. on the 9/11 anniversary.
At the Blitz and Firefighters Memorial across the street from St. Paul's,
many people had placed wreaths, including some to honor the 9/11 victims, and this gave us a good chance to stand and remember that day, to think of all the people whose lives were lost or destroyed, to reflect on how our world has changed so profoundly because of what happened that Tuesday morning.
The card reads:
In memory of our 343 New York Colleagues
Who made the ultimate sacrifice 10 years ago.
The UK Firefighters Memorial Trust
London
11th Sept 2011
I had especially wanted to return to St. Paul's Cathedral since I'd watched a documentary called The Blitz: London's Longest Night a few years ago. The film is a affecting mix of interviews with survivors of the Blitz, re-enactments of some events on the night of December 29, 1940, and even some footage of the fires that surrounded and threatened St. Paul's.
As I stood at the Blitz and Firefighters Memorial, I thought of 9/11, and also I thought of the Blitz and those firemen and other Londoners whose stories I'd heard in the documentary. There was one fireman in particular -- he had survived simply because another young firefighter had come to relieve him about one minute before a huge brick wall collapsed in flames right where the survivor had just been standing. The documentary took the time not just to listen to this man's story, but also to show him sitting quietly, still grieving and stunned by this vision of the wall falling down.
After our exertions on Cotopaxi, we were all hungry and ready for a break.
It took awhile to drive back down all the bumpy dirt roads since we'd been up near the refugio on Cotopaxi, but once we turned back onto the Pan-American Highway, it was a short ride to the place we'd be lunching: Hosteria La Cienega.
Beautiful sight: the driveway is lined with eucalyptus.
Eucalyptus aren't native to Ecuador, but we saw various kinds
of eucalyptus trees all over the place.
This symbol repeated on the backs of the dining room chairs.
Hosteria La Cienega
Eucalyptus trees
Mr. Hunter rests on some eucalyptus leaves.
Naranjilla juice --
and a naranjilla fruit beside the glass
We all ordered soups. I had vegetable soup.
And there's some more salsa de aji in the middle.
At Hosteria La Cienega,
they served a big bowl of popcorn to go with our soups!
It was tasty. This is our guide's bowl of ceviche.
After our late lunch, we walked around the grounds of La Cienega,
which is a hotel as well as a restaurant. We stepped into the chapel, wandered around the gardens, and even got to look into one of the hotel rooms.
Mr. Hunter and one of the carved chapel doors.
The chapel
Mr. H liked the papery bark on this tree.
The bust of Mr. Hunter
poses with a bust of explorer and naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt.
Von Humboldt slept at La Cienega in 1802.
This couch in one of the sitting rooms
reminded me of one of my favorite picture books:
Spectacles, by Ellen Raskin.
More on that in a separate post.
Our guide pretended that he was going to add Mr. Hunter to the fire!
I should point out that we saw a number of guests hanging out in different sitting rooms,
and more than one of them mentioned that they were COLD.
(Haciendas can be chilly -- hence the need for fireplaces and stoves.)
Naturally, Mr. Hunter is a big fan of The Amazing Race, and he was tickled this week to see teams directed to the city of Salzburg.
Mr. Hunter and his traveling companions basked in this view from the Hohensalzburg Fortress. That's Salzburg's Old Town in the foreground, and the Salzburg Cathedral (with the green dome) on the right.
The Baptistery in Florence is home to Lorenzo Ghiberti's famous Gates of Paradise doors, which feature bronze panels that illustrate various Bible stories. The doors on the Baptistery itself are now replicas, and the original panels can be seen nearby in the lovely Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.
Here's Mr. Hunter admiring the replica doors.
We'd paused to take these photos on our way to the Accademia. Earlier that morning, we'd caught a bit of a parade for the Festa di San Giovanni and the Calcio Storico. When we got to the Accademia, we realized that we had plenty of time before our reservations to go see Michelangelo's astonishing David, so we headed back toward the Duomo and the Baptistry to see if we could catch more parade action. When we got there, another part of the parade was in full swing, and the Gates of Paradise were wide open!
Here's a snippet of the Festa di San Giovanni parade.
We ditched the Vatican Museum tour before they dropped us at the tour-sanctioned gift shop. By this time, we were blazing and thirsty and ready to sit down for a rest before making our way into St. Peter's Square. Shade was in short supply, but we were thrilled to find these frozen bottles of water.
