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This story in The New York Times made me miss New York City more than anything has in a very long time.  All over the city, artists have created murals protest racism and police abuse. This critic surveys the murals , and compares them to the Neolithic cave art in the caves of France and Spain. We saw cave art in Spain (stories here and here , but no pictures), something that I had longed to do ever since I first knew they existed. It was a peak travel experience for me. I love street art, and I love New York, and I love that someone links these things together.

This post on the design blog Core77 brought back so many wonderful memories of our recent trip to Spain, especially my total infatuation with the city of Barcelona, and the wildly beautiful architecture of Antoni Gaudí. Click here to see a wonderful animation of the projected completion of La Sagrada Familia in 2026. Thanks, James!

Finally, some peace and quiet. This is the first time since the sewage flood on July 8 that our home is quiet . This lovely state of affairs exists because we filed a complaint with the Landlord Tenant Board, requesting our Landlord be ordered to stop renovations on the basement until after we move out. The complaint has not even been processed yet, but the Landlord backed down. Another lesson in Know Your Rights ! (I would like to create a new tag/category for wmtc called "know your rights," but I feel like it would apply to half my posts.) With a plan for Tala's rehab , and the construction crew banished, we can finally breathe around here. Or at least I can. Allan is coping with deadline pressure, but at least now he has a quiet space to work - albeit it's the kitchen table. On my days off, I've been working on sorting our photos from our trip to Spain and putting them online... and I'm finally finished. There are more photos than anyone wants to look at,*...

We used to send a lot of postcards from our travels, but that is a ritual lost to time and email. A few people do still get postcards, though: my mother, Allan's great aunt in Vermont, and in this case two friends, for specific reasons. I bought the postcards, tucked them away, and kind of half forgot about them and half kept on the lookout for a post office from which to buy stamps. Every time we saw a mailbox - yellow in Spain, marked correo - I remembered that I didn't have stamps, but I never saw a post office. We asked about stamps at a souvenir store, and they told us to go to a tobacco shop. Anytime we saw a tobacco shop, I would remember the stamps, but we would be busy, or looking for something else, or they were closed for Sunday, or for the long midday break, or for whatever reason, I didn't go in. In a few different cities, we asked again, and would be directed either to a tobacco shop or a post office. Then I would forget about the postcards until we either sa...

For most of the trip, I was hoping to spend a few hours in Toledo on our last day in Spain. Allan was skeptical at best, feeling it would make the day too rushed and pressured. I was holding out hope until the last moment, but once we found the highway out of Bilbao and saw the time, I realized he was right. What's more, the medieval synagogue in Toledo, the main site I wanted to see there, is closed on Mondays. The interior is supposed to be beautifully preserved, but we wouldn't get to see it anyway. Ah well. I reluctantly gave up on the idea. We had breakfast in Bilbao across the street from our hostal, in a lovely little cafe/bar, the kind that will make me miss Spain. I must note that I asked for a slice of something at the bar, thinking it was an egg tortilla... and it was cheesecake. Yummy cheesecake, but nevertheless, I had cheesecake for breakfast, a first for me. Naturally when I finished the cake, the host came out of the kitchen with a big egg tortilla. We had a goo...

In the Guggenheim, we took audioguides as a substitute for a tour of the building, which in this season are only in Spanish. The audioguide is included with admission, and available in a huge range of languages, including Catalan - clearly a political statement from Basque Bilbao. We joined many other people standing in the atrium, the focal point of the interior, listening to the audioguide and looking around at the dizzying curves and cubes and ramps. The atrium is strange and wonderful. Outside on the patio, you are suddenly on the prow of a ship, a theme that is echoed many times in the building. The narration describes Frank Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim as a sculpture, and it does look and feel more important (and, in my opinion, better) than any of the art it houses. I know this bothers some people, who believe that a museum should be neutral and disappear behind the art it contains. I don't see why that should be. Surely Frank Lloyd Wright's original Guggenheim Museum u...

I almost forgot to mention, we had some interesting news from home. Everything is fine now, but Essie had her hands full for a while! I warned Essie about the danger of skunks in our backyard after dark: absolutely never, ever let the dogs run out into the backyard after dark!! I've lost track of how many times our dogs have been skunked, and I'm determined to make sure it never happens again. But there's no accounting for early-morning skunks! Maybe this skunk was an early riser or maybe he was staggering home from an all-nighter, but either way, a skunk and our dogs greeted each other at around 7:00 in the morning. I won't go into details, but Essie handled it heroically. Luckily I caught up with her by text and phone before she went to too much unnecessary effort. Then Essie took the dogs to the dogpark. When she went to leave, our car wouldn't start! Some nice people at the park had booster cables and helped her out. That has never happened to us, ever. Appare...

We've had another outstanding day of seeing cave paintings, an entirely different experience that complemented the other two cave tours. We left Santillana del Mar early and drove on back-country roads to the town of Puente Viesgo, to see the caves known as El Castillo and Las Monedas. The countryside here is beautiful - lush green hills dotted with red-roofed stone houses, groups of cows and sheep and horses grazing here and there. The rural routes wind through little town centres with the usual shops. I know Spain is suffering under severe unemployment, but we see no evidence of it. (I'm not suggesting the reports are over-rated, only that the misery doesn't show.) In Puente Visiego, there was a car park and an interpretation centre, so right away this was more developed that the cave at Covalanas. There was a bit of confusion about our reservation - they had two spots reserved under my name, but no time listed - but the friendly park staff assured us that we would defini...

Today we fulfilled a travel wish we've harboured for many, many years. We saw two sets of paleolithic cave paintings. * * * * The day started out a bit interesting, with an early-morning phone call that appeared to be from our dogsitter, scaring me (although it turned out to be a mistake), and a non-working shower. While we ate breakfast, the desk clerk wanted to tell us the shower was fixed, so she wrote this on a scrap of paper: "The bath this one are repaired. Forgives the inconvenience." I have no doubt my Spanish sounds equally amusing. We had to wait for the tourist information office to open in order to get a regional map; our large road map of Spain is useless for local driving. This meant getting a later start than we wanted, so we were unsure if we'd get to the first cave in time for our 10:40 reservation. As it turned out, the cave was much further away than we thought, and after we found the town, we then had to drive past the town, leave the car on a trai...

Getting out of Madrid was a whole lot easier than getting in. We found our way to the highway easily, and had a short drive to the town of Segovia, to see its famous Roman aqueduct . It's pretty amazing to see a gigantic, completely intact stone aqueduct right in the middle of a town: see here . It's about 32 kilometres (20 miles) long, 28.5 metres (93.5 feet) tall at its highest point, and made of more than 20,000 stones, and not a drop of mortar. Years ago, we saw the Pont du Gard , a famous three-tiered Roman aqueduct in France. We went way out of our way to see it, and were well rewarded for our trouble. This one in Segovia was equally impressive. It was a beautiful, sunny morning and we took a lot of pictures. Segovia has a "centro historico" dating back to the middle ages, with a Jewish quarter, old churches, and an alcazar (castle) with, I hear, an impressive view of the valley below. There are dozens of similar towns, and we wanted to make sure we have time fo...

Today was the second half of our Madrid art tour. We were out early again, went back to the same local joint for breakfast (the counterman remembered what we wanted, which we enjoy), and were once again at the museum before it opened. This was Reina Sofia , the national art centre and museum specializing in 19th and 20th century art, and home to Picasso's "Guernica". Finally seeing Guernica in person was, for me, a highlight of this trip and one of the most moving art experiences I've had. I was quite overcome - in tears - both at the power and emotion conveyed in the painting, and by what it symbolizes. I felt the way I feel when people sing The Internationale; I am usually too choked up to sing, with tears streaming down my face. (I cry super-easily, so perhaps for someone else this might be shedding a tear or two.) Just as the Spanish Civil War became a symbol for the international fight against fascism, for autonomy, for democratic ideals, for social justice - and...

After our cheap pollo asado dinner, wine, and a shower, we had a new perspective on life. We woke up early the next day, had a little breakfast in a neighbourhood joint, and got to Museo Nacional del Prado - otherwise known as The Prado - before it opened. Our hotel in the Cuatros Caminos barrio is right near a big metro station where four different lines converge, and it was very easy to zip downtown. The Prado is a big museum, not quite as huge and sprawling as the Metropolitan or the Louvre, but too big to see all of it. We had already decided to do a "greatest hits" tour, using the museum's own highlight guide - a floor plan plus thumbnail pictures of each painting with its room number. For an additional 9 euros at admission, we bought a beautiful 400-page guide. The book gives background and context to every painting and artist represented in the museum, plus a history of the museum itself, and is available in eight different languages. The English-language version...

We interrupt this travelogue to bring you an important announcement. I got my first librarian job!! This is a part-time, temporary position in the children's department of the Central Library, where I was a page for 14 months. I am thrilled. But wait, there's more! I also interviewed in a competition for eight part-time positions, not librarians, but great experience doing reference and programming. I was one of the top scorers and was offered my choice of four of these positions, including two that are permanent. So what does this mean? It means I can be a part-time librarian until March 2014, and if I don't have a full-time librarian position by that time, I have a permanent, part-time position doing reference and programming at the Central Library. I chose the " Reader's Den " department, for the opportunity to work with teens and do readers' advisory both youth and adults. And here's what I didn't tell you. A few months ago, I interviewed for a...

If I get a decent sleep one night, I'm not allowed to have one the next. Apparently it's a new law: no sleeping two nights in a row. So since I'm awake at 5:00 a.m. again , here is the latest round of notes I've been collecting in my notebook. * * * * When you drive on the highways in Spain, you see these giant billboards of a black bull. There are no words on them, just a huge shape of a bull. There's one on the cover of our Lonely Planet guidebook: here . I thought there was only one of these and it was famous. Turns out they are many of them. Googling "giant bull billboards in Spain", I learned that these actually started out as advertisements, but are now a public-domain symbol of Spain. This Wikipedia page explains how the government of Spain banned all highway billboards (wow!), but how a court decision kept these wordless symbols on the road. I also found this: Catalan separatists want them gone . On the road from Cordoba to Madrid, we also saw the...

This post has two parts: the clerk and the lost. The clerk. I had a good night's sleep and woke up at the leisurely hour of 8:00. We had breakfast at the hotel and packed up, ready to hit the road to Madrid. And wouldn't you know it, the desk clerk handed me a bill for one dinner and two nights. I politely explained that I had called to cancel one night, and was told that was fine. Desk clerk said I called too late, I had to be charged for two nights. Naturally, I repeated my position. We went back and forth for a while. He alternated between rapid-fire Spanish - to which I would reply, "No comprende, despacio, por favor" - and English. I alternated between English and my crappy Spanish. He would tell me I had cancelled too late, and I would tell him that I spoke to someone and that person said it was fine, I could cancel, no problem. I was careful to be firm but not angry, to not lose my temper. I held in abeyance the "I'll pay for one night or we'll le...

We left Ronda very early: we had to ring a bell at the desk and get the hotel manager out of bed to settle our bill. Poor guy shuffled out in his slippers, completely confused. We had to remind him we needed our parking validated, then remind him we needed to pay! Funny. I had been up late blogging the night before, then woke up crazy early - a theme on this trip. I spent the wee hours of the morning getting directions and booking a hotel in Madrid, before it was even a halfway decent hour to wake up Allan. As you might imagine, as we left Ronda, our main goal was to go around the mountains rather than over them. I navigate with a combination of Google Map directions, our own map, and a careful reading of the options at each roundabout and intersection. This seems to be the only way. The Google Map directions never completely correspond with reality. (Was that the fork where you bear left? Is this unmarked calle the street we need? And so on.) We seemed to be driving through the v...

We have seen many happy, well-cared-for dogs on this trip, dogs of all shapes and sizes, all obviously loved. We have seen no street dogs. There are some feral cats living in the Alhambra. That is always sad to see. But the street dogs that have broken our hearts in Mexico and Peru and elsewhere do not seem to be in Spain, at least not where we have been. * * * * On the drive from Barcelona to Granada, I realized that we brought no music with us. We never even thought of it. I blipped through radio stations, even though I knew it would be useless. Radio sounds exactly the same, regardless of language. Top-40 hits, classic rock, sports talk, the scourge of "lite FM" - all of it sounds exactly the same. On one station, I heard the words "Yustin Beiber". I looked at Allan. "Did I just hear the name Justin Beiber?" Yes, he heard it, too. There is no escape. (Non-Canadians: you have no idea.) * * * * Everyone says hola here. That may seem ridiculously obvious,...