These panorama attempts of the Valencia post office’s rotunda came out flawed — but beautifully so.
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Click for full size
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When Panoramas Go Beautifully Wrong
Travel
Galactic Panda’s Guide to Sevilla, WordCamp Europe Edition
We’re attending the WordCamp Europe conference in Sevilla this weekend.
We’ve been in Spain for two months and in Sevilla for the last 2 weeks, so we thought it would be fun to pass on some of the cultural lessons we’ve learned, to help other WordCamp Europe attendees navigate the culture and have a great time while here.
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In Sevilla, in between moments
Hola de Sevilla!
Catherine successfully navigated us to our apartment from the airport — two busses — without any help.
Now we are waiting 40 minutes for our Airbnb host to arrive to let us in.
Happily there’s a beautifully decorated neighborhood bar two short blocks from our place, and the gin and tonics are amazingly generous in Spain.
Our plans for June
Folks, we give you: Valencia.
On the other hand, we’ve exciting things to look forward to elsewhere this month. Our bags are packed. The place is clean. Tomorrow, we board a train for Barcelona.
Steve and Catherine on the Mediterranean shore of Denia.
On Saturday, FC Barcelona plays Juventus for the European football championship title. The game will be played in Berlin, but I expect the atmosphere in Barcelona will be unforgettable. ¡Vamos Barca!
We’ll just have Sunday (the 7th) and Monday in Barcelona with Scott and Emily. I’m determined to spend as much time inside Sagrada Família as they’ll let me get away with. My parents’ photos of Gaudí’s otherworldly cathedral were the biggest reason I wanted to visit Spain. I’m excited to see it for myself.
The four of us will be in Palma de Mallorca the 9th through the 13th. I know we’ll have fun; it will be interesting to see how much of it we remember later without photos. 😉
The Barcelona apartment we’ve rented.
Our new friend Mattheus also wants us to checkout Granada’s Muslim tea houses called térrías (sp?) and to experience first hand the origin of tapas: Small plates of food to cover your glass so the insects can’t get to your cerveza. Order a drink, get it with food. Sounds just fine.
We’ll keep you updated as these adventures unfold — although for the next few days, we have a few Valencia round-up posts in store.
Week of Panos Day 7: Valencia’s Central Market
Pick your language: In Valenciano you’ll say “Mercat Central”. In Castillian/Spanish, “Mercado Central”. In English it’s “Central Market”. Either of the first two will work in a taxi, and probably so will the third.
180 degrees (or so) of Valencia’s Central Market.
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There are supermarkets and produce shops on every other block in Valencia, and few smaller open public markets on the periphery of the old city. Despite all of the choices, the historic Central Market remains relevant as the place with the freshest, greatest quantity, and best quality food.
The number of booths, the variety of food, the size of the building, and its architecture are all impressive. My favorite is the architecture.
This rotunda.
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This roof.
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Week of Panos Day 6: The City of Arts & Sciences
Oh, the City of Arts and Sciences. It is one of the most photogenic locations in Valencia. Every time you turn around, there’s some gorgeous natural or architectural beauty to admire.
Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences.
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To the far left is the Opera House, “Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía.” It’s the building that looks a little like a white orca leaping out of the water. Next to it, the half dome is the “Hemisphéric” (appropriately named), which houses an IMAX cinema. Dominating the photo is the “Museo de las ciencias,” which is Spanish for “brontosaurus skeleton.” This is the home of their interactive science museum. (Here’s where my Portland pride rears up and says, “Go OMSI!”)
Off in the right you see the “Ágora,” a large hollow space for conferences and concerts. Beyond that, but not pictured is the “Oceanográfic,” which is the largest aquarium in Europe. Last but not least featured in this photo is the “Umbracle,” the cage-like structure to the far right. This was a really nifty, beautiful space filled with trees and plants, and is used for weddings and concerts and the like.
Our friend and informal tour guide here in Valencia hates this place. Alba was here during the construction of the CAS, and witnessed rampant waste, miss-management and corruption that turned a 300 million euro “emblem of civic ambition” into a 1.1 billion euro symbol of Valencia’s massive debt.
As United Left party member Ignacio Blanco puts it, “The buildings are like symbols of an era when the politicians thought we were rich.”
The place is inspiring in its beauty and grandeur, though. Here are a couple more shots:
Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences is an an art and a science, itself.
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Click image for a larger version.
Week of Panos Day 5: Inside the Monastery of Valldigna
A few days ago I posted photos from our trip to the Monastery of Valldigna, about an hour south of Valencia. Here are a few more shots from that day.
Looking towards the entrance towers.
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A Courtyard inside the Convento de Valldigna.
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Looking out at the valley of Valldigna from inside the Monastery. It’s a sea of orange groves leading to the Mediterranean. What looks like a stone column near the center is the edge of an old wall (recently restored) that extends out for several meters.
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Week of Panos Day 4: Plaza of the Virgen
Today’s panorama: Plaça del Virgen, a beautiful open space of stone in the Northeast quadrant of Ciutat Vella, about a 30 minute walk from our house. We’ve relaxed here on several weekend afternoons.
Valencia’s beautiful Plaça del Virgen.
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The Plaça del Virgen panorama from left to right
Wherein I tease you with topics for future posts.
- At extreme left, difficult to see, a Valenbisi station, part of a shared city bike network system. More on that in a future post (MOTIAFP).
- Apartment buildings where we’ve observed residents hanging tapestries from their balconies to match the theme of decorations in the plaza during festivals. MOTIAFP.
- A beautiful bronze fountain in the foreground, which we mistook for Bacchus. MOTIAFP.
- La Basílica Virgen de los Desamparados — The Basilica of the Virgen of the Homeless. MOTIAFP.
- La Catedral Metropolitana — The City Cathedral. MOTIAFP.
- The headquarters of Valencia’s organization of seven irrigation districts. Believe it or not, MOTIAFP.
- Umbrellas shading restaurant tables. Dozens more extend behind the camera — there are more just outside the left of the frame. We’ve spent hours seated here, enjoying this view, people watching, eating paella, drinking espressos, agua con gás (sparkling water), and pitchers of Agua de Valencia (MOTIAFP).
BONUS Panorama!
Here’s the view from 20 meters further back, including all those tables.
Ustedes quieren cervezas? Entran!
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Week of Panos Day 3: Valencia’s Old City
My panoramas are all just like COMING AT YOU. We’re saving some of the better ones for later, so bear with me.
Here’s Valencia, the city we call home this month. I took this on May 8th, I thought around midday, but the camera reports that it was at 5:36pm.
Valencia’s Old City
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The back side of Torres de Serrano, viewed from inside the historic Christian wall.
I took this panorama from atop the left turret of Torres de Serrano, pictured here. Torres de Serrano is one of two surviving gate complexes from the late medieval Christian era. They’re named for their view of a serrated mountain range visible to the north on a clear day. I stuck my camera out of a crenel for the panorama; the walls visible at the sides are the parapet.
In medieval times the Ciutat Veilla (“old city” in Valenciano) was walled to keep out invaders — or to keep in tax payers, depending on whom you ask. The Romans, a free republic, the Visigoths, crusading Muslims, and crusading Christians all took turns ruling here — each with their own infighting princes.
Each group in power cannibalized and built on top of the roads and structures left by groups they supplanted. The result today is a labyrinth of streets winding through buildings that incorporate Roman roads in their foundations, ancient city defenses in their structures, and in their walls, weathered marble plaques once blistering with political relevance.
If you blur your vision a bit while looking at a street map, you can make out rough concentric circles where these groups built ever-larger new walls in their times. The Christian wall is the latest, largest, and most distinct thanks to an unbroken ring of busy modern avenues. You can see this on Google Maps bounded by the serpentine river park on the Northwest and Northeast, Carrer de Guillem de Castro on the Southwest, and Carrer de Colón on the Southeast.
Week of Panos Day 2: The Epic from Funchal
Today’s panorama is a kind of mirror image of yesterday’s: Viewing the Norwegian Epic cruise ship in port from a park in Funchal.
The Norwegian Epic (the huge one on the right) in port at Funchal, Madeira on April 27th.
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The epic is massive. We spend 11 days aboard with more than four thousand other people, 9 of those days in a non-stop straight shot across the Atlantic, but we never once felt claustrophobic or crowded. Nor were we eager for the trip to end.
Objects in the photo are larger than they appear, so to give you more appreciation for its shear size, the Epic is 329 meters long, and it’s about half a kilometer away from my vantage point here.