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update
# 3
Date:
Wed,
25
June, 1997
09:24:07 (PDT)
Subject:
update
numero
tres
ARLES
RTW
Travels
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The
people at the American embassy couldn't have been more helpful
and we had her new passport within an hour. The saga with VISA
continues even a week later. AmEx checks were waiting for us the
next day in Barcelona.
Three
days in Barcelona made it our favorite of the large cities. We
attended a fireworks and symphony performance outside the Pilau
Reial (royal palace) that was excellent and raised my spirits
dramatically. We didn't actually know where we were going; just
followed a crowd, paid our admission, and sat back. There is an
architectural style in Barcelona, pioneered by a guy named Gaudi,
that I had never seen nor heard about and could only imagine in
cartoons. ML described it as scoops of ice cream and meringue
with angels and gargoyles stacked on here and there. His crowning
acheivement, a work in progress since 1893 and still years from
complettion, is the Sagrada Familia Cathedral. Pictures and words
are inadequate. Only Walt Disney could have approached this in
originality. Most of Gaudi's creations, however, are real life,
lived-in and used houses and buildings. As nice as Barcelona
was, we've found that, a fabulous museum or two aside, the smaller
towns and villages are our favorites, so the move to Arles was
a welcome relief.
(24
june)
In Switzerland,
if you take the train from Geneva, then change trains in Montreaux,
then again in Zweissman, then again in Interlaken to go to Lauterbrunnen,
then take a funiculer up to Grutschalp, then a train to Murren,
and THEN a gondola to Gimmelwald (poulation 150), you will get
as close to heaven as I think possible. At the end of a U-shaped
valley, teetering on the edge of a 1600 foot sheer wall, surrounded
by little ribbon waterfalls and loomed over by the Eiger, the Jungfrau
and the Schilthorn peaks, Gimmelwald is the prettiest place I've
ever seen. Two hundred year old chalet houses, barns and cheese
huts dot the flowered meadows. The Pension Gimmelwald, built in
1895, where we stayed four days, and the Hotel Mittaghorn, where
we stayed three, are the only two hotels that, along with the youth
hostel, will sleep around 75 people. No grocery store, no gas station
(no cars), no souvenir stands, and apparently, no skulking theives
because nothing was locked, chained or nailed down.
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