Hey all! Just a quick update as I’m sitting at my layover in Istanbul on my way to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
I have blog posts to write for the last few days, but have been busy (and resting in preparation for this next flight, which will take 10 hours).
Posts should come in the next day or two 🙂
I was tired this morning! I didn’t manage to roll out of bed (and shower and everything) until about 1:30 PM local time. Oh well – again, I’d rather explore well rested than try to cram every last second full of activities and not be able to enjoy it.
Breakfast was at a little cafe inside an art school that is in the same building as my Hostel. It was a simple chicken panini and a plain latte sweetened with honey – but the panini was delicious, especially the sauce to dip it in.
There are the WEIRDEST little cars here! Bikes here are what Mopeds were in Spain – everywhere, parked on the sidewalks and anywhere else they fit, and by FAR the most common mode of transport. On the roads, bikes always have the right away – even above pedestrians! You need to watch out when crossing bike paths, because they will not stop for you 😛
But! In addition to bikes, they have a multitude of 1-2 person electric and gas ‘cars’ that are likely limited to about 45km/hr top speed (close to 30 MPH). These require a different license than normal cars if I remember right, and can be driven on most bike paths too.
These little cars existed in Spain and France too, but were far less common. Here, I see one every few minutes. The gas ones make the cutest little put-put sound.
On my walk, I found a man playing “Can’t help falling in love” by Elvis Presley on a saxophone, and stopped to take another (240P) video of him.
I also ran across an antique store selling tiles from houses rennovated in the 60’s – but these tiles were from the 1600s and 1800s! Quite old – and each hand-painted! Of course, most of them were pretty expensive, but they were fun to browse.
After this, I walked to the Stedelijk Museum, which is a contemporary art museum (next to several other museums). Entrance for a student (which I feel like I’m close enough to still ;)) was only 10 euro, so I went in and explored.
After the museum, I took public transit back to (near) my hostel and grabbed a kebab pita wrap for dinner, before prepping for a remote job interview I had at 7:30 PM local time. I think it went well!
Finally caught up to today 🙂 The next few days might be busy too, so we will see when the next dump of posts happens! All for now.
Lyon -> Amsterdam 4/13:
This one should be quick – most of the 13th and 14th were travel days by train. I stopped in Lille, a little town in Northern France, for the night – otherwise it would have been about 16 hours by train. I’ve found that the slower travel is worth it for me – less recovery time when I do get to my destination.
While walking to the train station in Lyon, I stopped at a cafe for breakfast, and snapped a few photos along the way.
One neat thing I’ve noticed in Lyon – there are cracks in the sidewalks that have been filled in with little mosaics. According to one local I met, this is all the work of a street artist called Ememem (named for the sound his moped makes). He calls this art “flacking” – turning cracked blemishes in the sidewalks into public works of art that are owned by all.
The one on the left was the first thing I took a picture of in Lyon!
After a few hours on the train (during which I technically stopped in Paris, but only to switch trains), I was in Lille!
I was pretty tired from travel, so I got myself a (supposedly) nice dinner (I don’t know if it was just not something I liked or if this restaurant wasn’t great) of Flemish (local) cusine, and turned in for the night.
Lille -> Amsterdam, 4/14:
Breakfast was a mocha and a delicious breakfast sandwich at an apparently very popular cafe.
As I traveled on the train, it became pretty obvious as I drew closer to Amsterdam – windmills began passing by every now and then. I didn’t manage to catch any out the window, but I did snap a photo of this cool old warehouse.
Amsterdam’s train station was also really cool looking! I didn’t have much time to stop though – my next train left in 5 minutes so I had to run to the next platform!
After crossing a large canal with a ton of other people on foot and bike, I was almost to my hostel (the red building in the photo below).
The room in the hostel is utilitarian, but comfortable and quiet. I don’t spend a lot of time in there anyway!
That’s all for this day! Still no Mopeds 😉 But, I can rent them here! We will see when it happens. I’m a little scared to have that much power on the roads of Amsterdam 😛
Today was more exploring of Lyon!
The view from my AirBNB was fantastic – I was up on the 9th floor of a high-rise building built up on a hill overlooking the Rhône river, which flows from the Alps down to the Mediterranean Sea.
My AirBNB also had two persian cats, who were both very friendly.
Every time I came back to the AirBNB at night, the white one would follow me around meowing – I think all she wanted were pets, since when I did pet her for a few minutes, she stopped meowing (and she had food and water).
Breakfast today was fast – a cappuchino and a chocolate (not actually a croissant, but that’s what we call it in the US).
Nearby the cafe, there was a street market selling CDs, Records, Posters, and books/comics.
Afte this, I went to a cute antique sovinour store and picked up a couple of trinkets for friends back home. They had vintage postcards from Lyon – much cooler in my opinion than most new ones (if less usable as postcards because of already being used :P)
Next up was the Musée Cinéma et Miniature – a museum in Lyon with several floors of props used in movies (a lot of which I recognized!) and then one floor of little miniature scenes crafted by artists of the museum.
My camera does not do well in low light, and most of the museum was darkly lit. Most of the props look better in the movies anyway. However, I did see some from movies I enjoy a lot, particularly from Wes Anderson’s films – there was a whole room dedicated to his work, with props from the Grand Budapest, Isle of Dogs, Astroid City, and others.
In an adjacent room was a short film showing some behind-the-scenes looks at how Astroid City was filmed and the props it involved. I really enjoyed seeing this – Anderson’s team creates a 3D model of most of the world the film is set in, and then builds as needed at different scales. The train from Astroid City was about 1/10th the real life size, for example. Of course things that humans interact with, like the diner, are real size.
After a few other stops including a (currently non-functioning) animatronic from Alien, I headed up to the miniatures floor.
This was honestly the more interesting part of the museum for me – a lot of the movie props were kind of gross looking and were much better in the movies…
But the miniatures! I had to stop myself from taking a picture of EVERY single one.
After the museum, I slowly meandered back to my AirBNB on foot, and took more photos along the way.
Sorry for the long delay between posts! I’ve been remarkably busy since leaving Lyon. Amsterdam is great – I’ve rented a bike to explore the city, three days only cost 21 euro!
More posts to come – I’m sitting at a bakery hoping to write just a few more before I continue exploring 🙂
Still no moped – maybe I will rent one tomorrow?
Today’s travels (4/13) have me headed from Lyon to Lille, both in France. Tomorrow, train schedules willing, I’ll finally be in Amsterdam – but to be honest, I’ve loved my time in Lyon and am sad to leave.
There are gonna be a LOT of photos in this one, since I spent most of the 11th walking around the amazing Parc de la Tête d’Or – or “Park of the head of gold”. According to Benoit (pronounced like Ben-whee), a local I met, legend has it that Louis 16 buried a head made of gold shortly after this park’s construction. Digging is, of course, forbidden. Wikipedia’s version of the legend says that Jesus’s head is supposedly be buried here. I guess legends change source to source, maybe that’s part of what makes them legends 😉 Either way, the parcel of land has been named this since before 1530!
One of the (many) attractions of the park is a section of botanical gardens. There are several very old greenhouses full of plants, and of course I explored them.
The parc was full of people jogging, lounging, exploring. Many were locals, though I could tell some were tourists like myself. It seems a popular place – the largest parc in Lyon, and apparently today was pretty sunny compared to the last few days. Everyone was out!
The greenhouses created some almost sci-fi shapes, which I enjoyed photographing.
While next to the one on the left, I also snapped a selfie in the reflection of the glass 🙂
One of the coolest greenhouses had carnivorous plants! Not a lot of Venus Flytraps, but a TON of other types. I was really into carnivorous plants for a while, so I recognized a lot of these.
Sundews like these have long slender leaves with little hairs on them. Each hair has a glob of sweet, sticky sap to attract and trap insects. Once trapped, the leaf slowly curls around the insect to digest it.
When I had sundews, they tried to flower often! The flower must rise far above the plant, so as not to eat the pollinators 😛
Pitcher plants like this rely on their deep “pitchers” to catch prey and slowly digest them. The pitchers evolved to make it difficult to escape the slippery walls once an unwitting bug falls in.
There are SO many different species, and this greenhouse had a lot!
The pitcher plants took up most of this greenhouse, and their flowers were beautiful!
Butterworts like these look harmless enough, but their wide flat leaves are like flypaper – sticky, sweet smelling, and hard to escape once landed on! They also tend to have pretty flowers.
A few more pictures from the greenhouse:
The parc also had a free zoo! I didn’t walk through the zoo, but I did see a couple of zoo animals and a number of resident parc animals.
As I continued to wander the parc, I discovered a large lake (well, I knew about it from Google Maps) in the middle of the parc. This is where I found most of the geese in the gallery above – but as I walked, I heard piano music and singing drifting across the lake (Zombie, by the Cranberries). I made my way around (eventually) and found a public piano with a crowd of people gathered around.
I took a video – but be warned, this is a digital camera from 2003 – video technology on consumer digital cameras was . . . not great. The sound is fine, but it is actually 240P quality.
Sometimes when I’m walking around a new area taking photos, I see things that I like more for the texture or color than the photo itself. Here’s a collection of these types of photos:
Besides the main attractions, the park was also filled with various little structures – benches, wells, grounds houses, and more.
There was even a mini train around part of the parc!
I did not have time to explore the whole parc – by 5PM, I was able to check in to my AirBNB (I wanted a break from 16-person rooms), and I’d been walking since 11AM!
A few more photos from the parc and my walk to the AirBNB.
After resting and unpacking, I went back out for dinner (Tacos – but totally different than in the US, more like burritos with kebab/gyro filling) and went to a parc with a view over the city for sunset.
Sorry Katerina and Felix, no mopeds in this post. This was before you sent me Moped money! Mopeds are way less common in Lyon than they were in Barcelona, but I’m sure I’ll find one to rent before the 19th. I did try the rental bikes in Lyon though, and they seem to be the fastest way for short distances (besides a car, if you can find parking, maybe).
That’s all for now! Posts for 4/12 to come 🙂 I may not make a post for today, if there isn’t much to see – after the train, I plan to be lazy in my Airbnb in Lille for the rest of the day and go to bed early.
Today was a travel day! My route would take me from Barcelona-Sants (a train station here) to Lyon, France, where I would take a couple different trains spanning most of the day to get there.
I did have time for a quick breakfast at the closest cafe – one that was clearly themed for American tourists. Their food was a little pricier, but it was still delicious – the omelet and smoothie both, and the cortado I had was also tasty.
After that, it was a quick rush via the metro to my train station, where I arrived ~15 minutes early, then waited nervously for the sign to update and show me which platform to go to (mine was Cerbere).
We finally boarded the train and I was on my way!
I discovered that taking photos was hard – first, the windows are somewhat dirty. Next, we are speeding along quite quickly – quite a bit faster than cars on freeways here go! Google says around 320 km/hr for high speed trains in France, which I think I was on (that’s about 199 MPH).
Lastly, I didn’t always get a window seat and sometimes that meant I didn’t want to be the one American tourist reaching over people to take a photo of the (for them, very normal) sights.
So – enjoy this small collection of blurry photos from the first leg of the trip 😛 (This is the Spanish countryside, we aren’t in France yet at this point.)
As I rode this trip, I noticed another english-speaking tourist about my age sitting across the isle from me. He was reading a book about the social history of artificial intelligence and took out a film camera to shoot a few pictures out the window, so figuring I’d get along with him I struck up a conversation towards the end of the trip.
Sam is from London, and is on a little several-week trip of his own via train around Europe. He was also on the next train I was on, so we decided to sit together (I sweetened the deal with the promise of Uno).
While changing trains, we also met Laila, who’s been studying abroad in Madrid since January, and is from California! They were happy to join our little crew for Uno, so we found a booth with a table on the next train and played Uno, talked about public transit in the States VS in Europe (Europe wins by a landslide), our travel experiences, and our future plans and hopes for work (none of us want to find ourselves locked into a corporate job that keeps us there because it pays well, but also, money is important for quality of life . . . )
Laila also taught me how to say “Parles-tu anglais?” (Do you speak english?) – something that has become extremely useful in the last 24 hours, and also a majority of my French vocabulary (aside from “Oui” (yes) “Non” (no) and “Merci” (thank you)).
At the next station, we all had different trains, but we exchanged WhatsApp contact information, and I got a selfie of us all before we parted ways.
I had about an hour before my connecting train arrived, so I wandered around Narbonne (the town we stopped in) and found someplace to grab lunch. The waitress’s answer to “Parles-tu anglais?” was a quick “non” – so I fumbled through Google translate and showing her my phone’s screen until she procured a simple baguette ham sandwich and an orange juice for 6,85 euro. I think by the end we were both relieved to have survived the interaction!
The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful. I did not have a window seat so I wasn’t able to grab a lot of pictures – but I did snap this one of the golden-hour countryside through the water spot stained window.
Lastly, there was this really cute little dog on the train. I really wanted to pet it, but I wasn’t sure if that would be ok.
I’m currently in Lyon France, but more to come on yesterday’s travels soon 🙂
Barcelona has started to feel easier to get around. While I still don’t know much Spanish or any Catalan (though I am told Catalan is less commonly used), things no longer feel completely alien to me and I feel confident getting around.
My first goal for the day was to get coffee with Declan, a friend I’ve known for a couple of years. They used to live in Portland, but moved in September to Barcelona for a graduate program in stop motion filmmaking, which cost them a whole $10k (for tuition). Walking to the coffee shop would have taken over an hour, so I finally braved Barcelona’s public Metro system. After a few fumbles (trying to put the ticket in the wrong way, then going the wrong direction for a stop till I realized I was getting further from my destination), it was easy!
I kept using the metro system and (I think) ended up taking it a total of about 6 times over the next day and a half. It was clean, fast, easy to navigate, and felt pretty easy despite not being able to understand any of the announcements.
I forgot to get a selfie with Declan 😦 but I did snap a photo of this vintage scooter! It looks a lot like a clone of the Vespa P200E.
Declan showed me their school’s studio where they’ve been working with their classmates on their final project – a stop motion movie about a little clay boy inside a cave created from his mother’s body. They showed me the puppet itself, and the different heads, expressions, and such that can be swapped or moved – and then the actual set itself. I wish I’d taken photos, but I was too busy to think of it.
After parting ways with Declan (they’re a busy grad student!) I headed to Parc de la Ciutadella, a large park with a bunch of old buildings (including a couple of greenhouses), a fountain, and a pond that you can paddle around on with ducks (for 30 minutes, after paying 7 euro).
There I met up with Ronan, a friend I made while in Barcelona. I thought when I met him that I’d found someone who could show me around – but it turns out he’d just moved from Ireland two weeks before! So we decided to explore more together.
At this point my camera died, and I hadn’t been able to charge the backup battery – so the rest of the photos from today are on my phone.
Josh had recommended La Boqueria, a street market in the (Gothic quarter?) – one of the sections of Barcelona that is very old, so we went to check it out after we finished walking around the park.
The gothic quarter was really cool – a lot of what you imagine when you think of old europe – narrow cobbled streets with shops on all sides and buildings leaning in over the top. A lot of it was pretty touristy and crowded, but nonetheless neat to see.
Once in the market, we both started to get a little hungry (it was past lunch time). There was a lot of seafood, fresh fruits and vegetables, and empanadas.
There were a ton of stalls with fresh juice in small plastic cups for 2.50 euro each – after hunting for a bit, Ronan and I found one selling them for only 2 euro, and we each got one. I got a strawberry coconut. I also got a spanish sausage empanada, and a bag of (deliciously crunchy) green grapes.
After this we checked out a nearby cathedral that was an easy walk:
At this point we were both a bit tired, so I went and checked into my hotel for a small rest.
The hotel had a pool on the roof – the view was great, but the pool wasn’t heated, so I didn’t get to go swimming.
Dinner was a couple more empanadas I picked up from a nearby stall on my walk back to the hotel, and then I turned in early since tomorrow was my next travel day.
I have (two!) more days in Barcelona – I wanted to get some proper sleep, so I extended my stay by booking a hotel with a private room instead of a shared room with 15 other people. The cost difference is significant though – the hostel only costs about $30/night!
Today, I started with breakfast at another cafe. I’ve been enjoying ordering whatever new coffee sounds interesting in the moment – this time it was a cortada (coffee and steamed milk, about a 50/50 ratio). I added a packet of sugar, and it was very enjoyable.
Alongside the cortado, I got toast with eggs, cheese, avocado, mixed greens and tomatos. Plus, a glass of fresh orange juice – this has been a menu item every place I’ve gone – I think it is popular in spain. I’m not complaining!
As usual, the breakfast was delicious, and I think this one was also around 15 euro. I think I tend to pay more than average (my research indicates 5-10 euro is normal), but I’m eating a larger breakfast than is typical (I think a pastery and coffee is more normal).
After breakfast, I returned to plan the next leg of my trip in more detail and do laundry. The hostel has a washer and dryer, but they cost extra money – almost 10 euro for a wash and dry! That’s quite pricey, but the convenience is hard to beat, and I won’t need to do laundry again for at least a week.
Speaking of the next leg, here’s the plan. Thursday around 11AM, I will board a train and spend the next 6 or so hours on my way to Lyon, France. I chose Lyon primarily because it was along the way and made the train ride not too long. There, I stay for an evening The next day, I will take a train to Luxemborg and stay there (the capital is the same as the country). Finally, on Saturday, I will take a train to Amsterdam.
Training all the way back down to Milan would have taken too long and I would have had to leave Amsterdam earlier than I wanted to – so instead of spending less days, I ended up getting an economy ticket to Milan, which should allow me almost a week in Amsterdam! Going down by train would have taken at least 4 days if I wanted to not be travelling for more than 8 hours, so it made sense to me.
After breakfast and logistics, I walked to Basílica de la Sagrada Família, an unfinished church from the 1800’s. It towers over everything nearby, and tourists swarm its grounds. I didn’t go inside – the lines and ticket costs didn’t seem worth it, but I did shoot a few photos.
Among the tourists there was a man blowing huge bubbles, and there were kids running underneath.
I also shot a few other interesting things along the way…
After the basilica, I decided to head up the hill behind the city, where a large parc had multiple trails and good views of the city (the photo above was from there).
The rest of the photos aren’t anything super special, so I’ll put them in a gallery with notes in the captions.
Barcelona takeaways / culture shocks / impressions so far:
Probably the biggest culture shock so far is how common smoking is, and how few restrictions there are on where it is done. It’s very common to see someone smoking at a cafe outdoors, or sometimes even inside (though this seems discouraged). My cab driver who picked me up from the train station was smoking inside the cab as he drove me! I didn’t realize that the US’s laws around not smoking close to buildings weren’t the norm – nor that a general public disgrace towards smoking wasn’t everyday either.
This city is SO easy to get around! If I had a driver’s liscence here, I could rent a moped off any corner and get around easier than anyone in a car. Walking is super easy (definitely easier than driving), and I hear public transit is good – but I’ve been too afraid to try it yet.
Food seems to all be fresh and high quality – maybe this is just where I’ve gone, but I think adjusting back to the US might be challenging…
Anyway – Barcelona is now on my list of places I will consider living and working. It has its problems – high rent from foreign landlords buying properties to rent exclusively to tourists is one, but there are a lot of things to like here.
Lastly – I just had the best mango I’ve ever had! It did cost about 5 euro, but I think it was worth it. Below are the before and after photos.
All for now! 🙂
Here’s the first of Barcelona! I’m currently sitting in the courtyard of my hostel (very quiet at the moment, I think most people are out exploring right now), eating some fruit I picked up a bit ago, and writing this post.
4/6: Sunday
All I did this day was sleep. The previous day, I left Boston at 6PM on the 5th, flew for about 6 hours to Lisbon and arrived at midnight Boston time, or 7AM (on the 5th, still!) Lisbon time. There, I went through customs (A tired border officer said nothing to me and simply stamped my passport. Easier than getting into Canada!). After another two hours of waiting, I hopped (more like slogged) onto my connecting flight to Madrid.
Once in Madrid, I took a taxi to the train station I’d booked a train to Barcelona on. At this point I had already been awake almost 20 hours, and was really starting to feel it. Unfortunately, the train to Barcelona was another four hours or so – in total, when I arrived at the Hostel, I hadn’t slept (properly) for over 27 hours. Lesson learned: it may seem cheaper to split some travel into a couple of tickets, but I would have had a much better time had I paid $100 more for a direct ticket.
Once I got to the hostel, I took a much-needed shower, then fell asleep (at around 6PM Barcelona time) until the next morning.
4/7: Monday:
Being in Barcelona is really cool, but not knowing the language kind of terrifies me sometimes. Most casual interactions can be passed with a smile and nod, but interactions at restaraunts, for example, need some type of common language. My first stop was a cafe for breakfast – cafes are SUPER common here, I pass them every 3 minutes when walking in the city, it seems.
“No ingles” was the server’s response to my poorly pronounced “hablas ingles?” – but he was, nontheless, a server, so he sat me down and handed me the menu (a QR code to their online menu). After some deliberation, I ordered a Cappuchino, a fresh-made juice containing Apple, Lemon, and some vegetable I don’t remember, and a Tuna Sandwich with Avocado. All were delicious and fresh. I think it cost about €13.75 (~$15 USD), which (considering the quality and atmosphere) seems on par or better than what I would expect to pay in the US.
Freshness, excellent taste and reasonable prices seem consisten in all of my food experience in spain so far. Coffees (while much simpler and less sweet than what we Americans are used to) are usually only a few euros, and I haven’t paid more than €15 for anything yet.
After this, I headed back to the hostel and finished yesterday’s blog posts about Boston.
Lunch was at a cafe that was a 3 minute walk from the hostel – a chicken feta salad with an excellent honey mustard dressing, sundried tomatos, and a tasty acaii smoothie. This was one of the more expensive meals I’ve had – coming in right around 15 euros.
Then, I headed to the beach, and spent a LONG time laying in the sun. It’s too cold here to swim, but the sun has been hot and shorts and a t-shirt is comfortable during the afternoon. On the warm beach under the sun, the light breeze made it perfectly comfortable. I did use sunscreen, which is the only reason I don’t look like a lobster today.
After this and some other things, my path back to the hostel took me through the parc (park) where the Arc de Triomf (not the one from Paris) is. Feeling especially like a tourist (something I am trying to avoid looking too much like here, lest I get squirted with water guns), I took my camera out and started snapping various angles.
I also snapped some photos of nearby interesting architecture. The abundance of balconies here is cool!
I’ve also been enjoying trying street photography. The camera I brought has a screen that will flip up 90 degrees so I can hold it at waist level and see what it is seeing – handy for when you don’t want people to realize they are being photographed.
This building looked nice. Sometimes that’s all it takes for me to snap a photo, and sometimes I think too hard about it and decide not to.
This woman walking her dog also caught my eye, and I feel pretty good about this photo! There’s a slight bit of motion blur to show them walking, and the camera actually focused on them. This was one photo taken from waist height so it wasn’t obvious 🙂
I was starting to get hungry at this point (the walk back was about 30 minutes, and with all the photos I was taking, it took more like an hour). A kebab shop happened convenitently across my path, so I popped in and got one (which I forgot to photograph).
Again, I had planned for this post to cover three days – but I think I will split it again, since today (4/8) has a lot of photos 🙂
All for now!
Here’s the second half of my boston trip!
I had planned to go back to Bean and Leaf Cafe for another burrito, but ended up sleeping in till almost noon! By the time I got showered and out the door, they were closed. Instead, I headed to Bova’s and got a few pasteries. I did stop at the coffee place again for another espresso, this time with a shot of hazelnut!
I wanted to check out the Boston Common (a large park in the opposite direction of the North End), so after finishing my breakfast at a table next to the burial grounds, I started walking (and snapping photos).
I ran across another historic graveyard on the way, and snapped a few more photos of gravestones.
After the graveyard, I finally got to the Boston Common. The Common itself was large and pretty busy (and there wasn’t a lot to see), but right across the street is a garden park, so I spent a lot of time walking around taking photos there.
While I was walking, I saw another (cute!) guy with a camera. While I was taking the photo below, he got a picture of me! He came up and asked me about my camera, and we had a conversation about photography and he showed me the photo of me he’d taken. I don’t remember his name though, oops!
Walking back to my hostel, I snapped a few more photos of the interesting architecture along the way.
After another short rest, it was time to head out for dinner and to explore the MFA (Museum of Fine Arts) with a friend I met along the way.
Dinner was at Hobgoblin in Chinatown, a jazz bar style restaraunt with live piano music and delicious thai food with my friend. It was their recommendation, and it was great!
Next, we took the Orange line train to the stop closest to the MFA. I really enjoyed taking the subway the few times I did in Boston – it was clean, about as fast as driving in a lot of cases, easy to navigate, and way cheaper than Uber!
We did not have enough time for the MFA (a full day seems like it might be enough? we had two hours), but we did get through a couple of exhibits on ancient art (and a few from only a few hundred years ago!). I found a lot of pieces that had patterns I think would look really cool as tattoos, so I took photos for future inspiration.
This bowl and several others near it had a simple design of a bunch of hands reaching across or into the middle.
My friend I was exploring the museum with. The high contrast made this a little challenging for the camera, but I like how it turned out!
After the MFA closed at 10, we headed home. The next morning, I got breakfast at another coffee shop (this time a sour cherry cheese danish! Also delicious) and had a slow morning in. It was raining in Boston, and I got this picture from the window of my friend’s apartment (28th floor!).
That’s all for my Boston trip! Today’s itenerary in Barcelona is still up in the air, but it involves getting lunch and dinner, going to bed on time, and exploring! I might check out a museum, the beach, or a local park. Who knows, maybe all three?
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