England again

It's hot here in Jaca, up to 34℃, and it was even hotter when I left Huesca at two o'clock this afternoon after doing speaking exams in a (thank goodness) air-conditioned school all morning. It was actually hot in England while we were there last week; to the extent that we didn't need jumpers or jackets, and I wore sandals all the time apart from travelling to and from the airport. Hot there isn't the same as hot here though. I think we were very lucky with the weather-it rained on Wednesday while we were heading for the airport, and nothing more.
Our first full day we had a long walk through parks and streets.

This is Dr Who's Tardis in BBC Langham Place! 

Later we went to St Paul's Cathedral. It cost us £18 each. The very beast thing is going up into the dome and climbing to the outside gallery at the top.

Just outside the City

The wonderful St Pancras Station with the wonderful statue of Sir John Betjeman, who made great efforts to save the building from destruction.

j

I loved the name on the blackboard

This is a massive sculpture of a (wartime) couple kissing,

with wartime station scenes on the base.

We had three fixed dates: Friday was Shakespeare's Globe, booked in April. Magic! We were there by 9am for the guided tour.

 These are someone else's photos of the theatre, which is a modern re-creation of a 16th century playhouse.It's a proper Shakespearian "wooden O" and it's very exciting.

 We had a lovely, rather dramatic guide. She asked people's nationalities, and I was the only British tourist. Most were from USA or Canada.
                                                     
                       

These photos are mine! The green tubes and white balls are for the forest in "The Dream"

After the morning tour we spent a nice half hour in Southwark Cathedral, then joined the seething crowds in Borough Market. You can see the most extraordinary food there.

gooseberries

and ecological  delivery vehicles

But mostly people and more people.

The play, A Midsummer Night's Dream started at 2 pm. We had seats (and cushions) quite high up in the first row of balconies. The production was unconventional in terms of sex: Puck was a woman,  https://www.facebook.com/ShakespearesGlobe/videos/10154451610405774/ the "rude mechanicals " apart from Bottom were women and Helena was Helenus with a passion for cruel Demetrius. Mortals were modern, fairies were tatty Elizabethan. Here's a link for a little video from the Facebook page: 

https://www.facebook.com/ShakespearesGlobe/videos/10154451610405774/

It was cruel, it was funny, it was magical!
Because the play started at 2 it was finished by 5 o'clock, which was too early to finish for the day, but not early enough for much. We went on the Docklands Light Railway to the Cutty Sark in Greenwich and walked up the hill to look at the view.

London from another angle.

England again

It's hot here in Jaca, up to 34℃, and it was even hotter when I left Huesca at two o'clock this afternoon after doing speaking exams in a (thank goodness) air-conditioned school all morning. It was actually hot in England while we were there last week; to the extent that we didn't need jumpers or jackets, and I wore sandals all the time apart from travelling to and from the airport. Hot there isn't the same as hot here though. I think we were very lucky with the weather-it rained on Wednesday while we were heading for the airport, and nothing more.
We had three fixed dates: Friday was Shakespeare's Globe, booked in April. Magic! We were there by 9am for the guided tour.

 These are someone else's photos of the theatre, which is a modern re-creation of a 16th century playhouse.It's a proper Shakespearian "wooden O" and it's very exciting.

 We had a lovely, rather dramatic guide. She asked people's nationalities, and I was the only British tourist. Most were from USA or Canada.
                                                     
                       

These photos are mine! The green tubes and white balls are for the forest in "The Dream"

After the morning tour we spent a nice half hour in Southwark Cathedral, then joined the seething crowds in Borough Market. You can see the most extraordinary food there.

gooseberries

and ecological  delivery vehicles

But mostly people and more people.

The play, A Midsummer Night's Dream started at 2 pm. We had seats (and cushions) quite high up in the first row of balconies. The production was unconventional in terms of sex: Puck was a woman,  https://www.facebook.com/ShakespearesGlobe/videos/10154451610405774/ the "rude mechanicals " apart from Bottom were women and Helena was Helenus with a passion for cruel Demetrius. Mortals were modern, fairies were tatty Elizabethan. Here's a link for a little video from the Facebook page: 

https://www.facebook.com/ShakespearesGlobe/videos/10154451610405774/

It was cruel, it was funny, it was magical!
Because the play started at 2 it was finished by 5 o'clock, which was too early to finish for the day, but not early enough for much. We went on the Docklands Light Railway to the Cutty Sark in Greenwich and walked up the hill to look at the view.

London from another angle.

Candanchú

Yesterday was bright and clear but not very hot. We took the car to the ski resort of Candanchú and climbed up the Pista Grande. The wild flowers were delightful. Then I spotted edelweiss flowers, which I had never seen in the wild before; climbed up a little bit to take photos and see them better. After that, we saw lots and lots of them; anywhere there was a flat horizontal place.

In general, flowers up there above 2000 metres above sea level are short and small. They have a relatively short growing season because the mountains can be covered in snow from November to as late as May or at least April. I saw white campion, forget-me-nots, lots of little yellow flowers, I think some were "lady's bedstraw" (galium verum) and potentilla but I'm not sure of the variety.

Not all the flowers are short. every now and then there were lovely irises. I didn't get a good photo; this is one I googled. 

This is some kind of Alpine primula

The blue one is Round-headed Rampion

In this photo you can see my trekking poles which were absolutely when we had to go down a steep scree slope. 

If this photo had higher resolution, you might have been able to see a "sarrio" standing sentry on the high rocks. We watched a flock of them run down one side, up the other ahead of us. They made moving around the mountainside look so easy! Sarrio is a local name for chamoix.

The last stretch of the way down.

Barcelona

A couple of weeks ago I went on a weekend trip to Barcelona with the choir. It was 36 hours, from 9am on Saturday to 9pm on Sunday, with a concert in the middle.
What with one thing and another, the concert was a minor part as the order and even content was changed at the last moment; we were cut short to make way for the mass and anyway there were only about thirty people in the audience!
However, we did have a good time! First of all we stopped for a few hours in Sitges, a beach resort which is quite famous. That weekend was Gay Pride, though we didn't see the parade.

In the foreground, five of ours drinking cocktails with rude names

After dinner we got back on the coach and headed for Barcelona. It started to rain; one of those violent spring storms which lasted about an hour. Found the Casa de Aragón, changed and walked to the church where the concert was to be held. It's a rather impressive modern one.

Unfortunately, the concert had been put before the mass, so we didn't have very long, couldn't sing the whole programme for our tiny audience!

Well, following that we returned to the Casa de Aragón and ate some nibbles of ham and cheese while people sang Aragonese jotas.

Our hotel was another coach ride away , on an industrial estate; I know some people wanted to go out and eat and have fun-it took them a long walk to find a Burger King.

Sunday morning was the fun bit. We had a morning out in the centre of Barcelona. The coach left us at Plaza Colón. 

Geese in a cathedral courtyard

The wonderful Modernist Palau de la Musica

Cathedral of Santa María del Mar

Chapel of Saint Eloy-patron of blacksmiths. The statue is on an anvil.

Barcelona is full of tourists. Foreigners everywhere! The other thing you really notice is the maniac cyclists. They are not supposed to ride on the pavements, but they do, rather aggressively weaving round the pedestrians. I'm sure accidents happen quite often. There were some really brilliant buskers.