Bali High

Villa #6 at the Annora Bali Villas, Semiyak

I spent many hours lying by the pool, looking up at this (it wasn't just relaxation, it was a necessity -- we were melting from the humdity, and jumping into the pool every now and then also helped)

The route from the villa to the beach involved walking down some paths and cutting across a private courtyard and using their gated access to the beach. You had to remember which gate you took to the beach, and go back through the same gate, or you'd be lost in the warren of lanes behind every gate. I took pictures of what I passed, a sort of 21st century trail of breadcrumbs so that I could retrace my steps later.

Not at all like Bondi Rescue Bali. Semiyak is so much quieter than Kuta.

Waiting for the sunset at Ku De Ta. The flying ships are kites.

I'd forgotten that it's a Bali thing that the hotel staff leave you towel origami of animals as part of the turn-down service. I had a scorpion on the first day,  a turtle the next, and this looks like a running puppy.

Eat, pray, love has really taken over Bali. Still, getting a tea leaf reading after your morning cuppa must beat reading the horoscope in the paper.

Ham and eggs, two ways (Spain #10)

In Barcelona market.

At home. Same jamon (I carted back a whole leg, so help me god). Yet different. Maybe the difference was that it wasn't served by a smouldering guy with a ponytail. :)

Oddities (Spain #9)

Dali is made in China and cheap at 10 euros.

KualaLumpur, Barcelona is a souvenir shop selling mostly Barca FC tshirts. 

Please do not molest.

Look up (Spain #8)

I didn't realise until I went through all my pix as I downloaded them that I took a lot of upward looking shots. I think it was because I just couldn't get over how beautifully blue the sky is.

He's looking up too

Two of these figures stand near the ferry terminal. Couldn't figure out if they are buoys or floating sculptures.

This one is a sculpture.

This was at the Dali museum. We didn't "get it" until one of us accidentally looked up at the picture through his camera lens, and in that long focus, it was the face of Abraham Lincoln clear as a bell.

Gargolyes

Long-distance focus (Spain #7)

My yoga teacher tells me that to do a balancing pose, one should focus on a fixed point. So I usually stare at a spot on the opposite wall. It wasn't until I was doing tree pose on the balcony of the parador and was focusing on the hills across the valley that I realised I'd never focused long-distance before.

I still did a wobbly tree. But the view was terrific.

Now that I'm home (Spain #6)

... I can finish the potboiler that I started reading on the flight back. I had wandered into a bookshop called Free Time. Everything in it was in Spanish, of course. But I found one gem in English -- The Gaudi Key. It's the Barcelona version of The Da Vinci Code.

A religious brotherhood has an artefact that they must protect, and Gaudi, the architect of Sagrada Familia and all those Modernisme buildings, hides it but leaves a code of where he's hidden in his architectural work.

Now, his apprentice's granddaughter must crack the code. The romp takes you through an intimate look at his buildings in a mix of fact and fiction. The book would not have made any sense to me before I went Barcelona. Now that I've been, I need to go back and check out more closely all the knobbly bits in the wavy buildings that the book's mentioned.

It's doing a better job than the tourist guide stuff.

Poking around (Spain #5)

I don't know what the dickens he was doing here