For Spain
I aten't ded.
I've been in Madrid and a European Space Agency data centre in the nearby countryside, working the excessive and extrovert-heavy hours that tend to happen at conferences, and then having to stay out very late each night in sometimes-fruitless search of restaurant food I'm not allergic to in the land of carne and queso.
I did find time to visit some museums and tourist sites, including an Egyptian temple moved brick by brick away from flood damage from the Aswan Dam, and the Reina Sofia, where Picasso's Guernica made me cry in my jet-lagged haze. I also managed to explore an abandoned 15th century castle with a new Czech work friend and get interrogated by a TSA technician on my last hopper flight home from New York due to chem-test alarms being repeatedly set off by something from that, my hair dye, and/or the hotel soap; it's nerve-wracking not to know what caused it. (I am still tired enough for few words and serious understatements.)
Here's the whole first album of 20 or so, for the curious. There are more pictures from the Palicio de Cristal greenhouse, the rest of Retiro Park, more city wandering photos, and food reviews which will have to wait to be posted another day. All of them are just my tourist photos as it were, but it's good to have a selection of cameras back in my hands again; it had been an embarrassingly long and uncreative winter.
Actually, I've been back for most of a week, but that's what it's taken to catch up on work, sleep, and not being ill. Hopefully I'll find my words soon.
I've been in Madrid and a European Space Agency data centre in the nearby countryside, working the excessive and extrovert-heavy hours that tend to happen at conferences, and then having to stay out very late each night in sometimes-fruitless search of restaurant food I'm not allergic to in the land of carne and queso.
I did find time to visit some museums and tourist sites, including an Egyptian temple moved brick by brick away from flood damage from the Aswan Dam, and the Reina Sofia, where Picasso's Guernica made me cry in my jet-lagged haze. I also managed to explore an abandoned 15th century castle with a new Czech work friend and get interrogated by a TSA technician on my last hopper flight home from New York due to chem-test alarms being repeatedly set off by something from that, my hair dye, and/or the hotel soap; it's nerve-wracking not to know what caused it. (I am still tired enough for few words and serious understatements.)
Here's the whole first album of 20 or so, for the curious. There are more pictures from the Palicio de Cristal greenhouse, the rest of Retiro Park, more city wandering photos, and food reviews which will have to wait to be posted another day. All of them are just my tourist photos as it were, but it's good to have a selection of cameras back in my hands again; it had been an embarrassingly long and uncreative winter.
Actually, I've been back for most of a week, but that's what it's taken to catch up on work, sleep, and not being ill. Hopefully I'll find my words soon.