This is Iglesia de San Gil y Santa Ana that sits at the mouth of Carrer del Darro in Granada, Spain. A landmark shot of the kind that is frequently derided by landscape photography aesthetes, “Oh, look, it’s another church façade”. Except that in this case, the sunlit façade offers…
I have reached the end of my photostream from the recent Costa Brava (and Barcelona, and French Occitanie) trip. All of the pictures worthy of public display can be found on Flickr in my albums: Villefranche-de-Conflent Albi Barcelona Catalonia and Costa Brava The final picture is similar to the one…
The resort town of L’Escala has never featured on our Costa Brava itineraries despite being among the closest towns to our customary base in L’Estartit. Its main claim to sightseeing relevance is in nearby Greco-Roman ruins, which is the type of attraction that rarely receives priority when I travel with…
This past summer I finally managed to visit the remaining point of the Catalonia Dalí triangle that was mentioned at the start of this post. In Portlligat the House-Museum of Salvador Dalí offers a delightful look at the place the painter called home for over 50 years. Portlligat is a…
I should be running out of superlatives after describing places like Rupit, Camprodon, or Beget. However, if I were to identify my most favorite village among the ones that I saw for the very first time on the recent Costa Brava trip, it would be Cadaqués. Located on Cap de…
Our “free time” in Barcelona the last couple of years has been structured around major highlights, ostensibly because one or another member of our party had not been to Barcelona since early childhood, if at all. In truth, when I am back in a city that I know really well…
We lately allow only a single day in Barcelona for our stays at Costa Brava – the distance between our base and the city makes more frequent visits a bit impractical. Last year, if you recall, we specifically targeted touring Palau de la Musica Catalana, and I also managed to…
I did not keep the promise I had made at the end of my last Girona photo-essay. A full-day exploration of the city’s various points of interest did not make the cut in the final plans of our recent Costa Brava stay. A dinner and a late afternoon stroll was…
With the largest residential marina in Europe, Empuriabrava is a magnet for people who love amphibious living. The lion’s share of houses back out on one of dozens of canals, and every household here owns at least one boat. The canal network was planned and built in 1960’s-70’s. Its main…
I used the word tiny to describe both Villefranche-de-Conflent and Rupit recently, but compared to Beget either of those can be called a metropolis. Beget is the tiniest of tiny. The postal stop at the edge of the village has 27 mailboxes, which may or may not be the basis…
There are places in the world that are effortlessly picture-perfect. Camprodon, in the Pyrenees an hour and a half away from Costa Brava, is one of those places. The view of its iconic bridge and the houses flanking river Ter is a ready-made postcard. The settlement of this site dates…
Tiny Rupit regularly features on selections of the most beautiful villages in Catalonia. The mountain village straddles a small gorge, with a hanging bridge connecting its two banks. The old part of Rupit is built on the ridge over the river and looks as if floating in the air from…
There are several serial properties on the World Heritage list that inscribe prehistoric rock and cave art. The most extensive of them – in fact, somewhat excessively extensive – is the Rock Art of Mediterranean Basin of Iberian Peninsula, which comprises 758 individual locations in the eastern part of Spain.…
Looking forward to this familiar gorgeous view for the next couple of weeks.
You probably recall that I went to Madrid in late October for the expressed purpose of seeing a football match. Of course, I could not miss an opportunity to improve my collection of Madrid photos. So, I walked around the city and looked in to a number of major points…
It took three visits to Toledo for me to finally gather a reasonable portfolio of shots of this wonderful town (my limited World Heritage feature is found here). And the town is more than deserving dedicated photographic efforts. It is full of narrow sloping street such as these… …small shaded…
University town of Alcalá de Henares is recognized on the World Heritage registry for being the first such planned town and a model for subsequent others. As is often the case with so recognized locales, it is cute and lively without having any knockout features: just a really nice place to…
We gave ourselves less than 24 hours at the conclusion of our recent Costa Brava vacation to immerse in the vibrancy of Barcelona. That amount of time is grossly insufficient, but thankfully we have been to Barcelona before and could pick just a couple of specific targets to make even…
Once a trip – hardly ever more than that – I decide to get up early enough to photograph famous vistas in the serenity of dawn. A single night in Barcelona at the conclusion of our recent Costa Brava vacation gave me an opportunity to improve my portfolio of Gaudí…
Think “Barcelona architecture”, and the first name that comes to mind for majority of people is likely that of Antoni Gaudí. It is well-deserved, since a number of Gaudí’s creations are veritable symbols of Barcelona. But there are other tremendous architects who also contributed to this fantastic urban landscape. Among…