Today is my dad's birthday! In celebration of that fact, we decided to just relax and take it easy so it would be a low stress, low navigation kind of day.
Just kidding. We went everywhere. First up was Spain's Arc de Triomf.
Complete with unappreciative hipster man on the lower left corner.
For my readers familiar with la culture française, you'd recognize the similarities between that arch and the one in Paris. And you're right. They are very similar.
That's honestly all the city guide said about the arch. I don't know if they're connected or if they'll eventually turn into stargates, I have no clue.
Shrugs
We also visited a MASSIVE Gothic Cathedral that they had here.
Damn, look at those fractals.
Even from that wide shot, you can see the ridiculous intricacy of the architecture.
At this point, I think every blog post I have on Spain has contained the word "architecture" somewhere.
It didn't really have a badass name like the Notre Dame or anything, it was only called the "Gothic Cathedral," even in the city signs. But it's still very fancy.
Incredibly, they had LCD screens at the time this was constructed.
Later that night, we ate at a delicious Asian buffet called "Wok."
This restaurant was across from our hotel, so since we didn't have to go far, we just... wok'd.
The buffet wasn't that great compared to buffets in California though. They had sushi, but they only allowed you to take FIFTEEN PIECES per eating session. Which kind of sucked. But we still left with full bellies, so it was still worth it.
Happy 50th birthday, dad! You're a ripe old age now, but it's been fun having you as my dad for the past 18 years. Here's to many, many more years!
RFotD: My dad says he is 50 years old every time I ask him, so I'm not sure if he really is 50 this time or if he's just lying to me again.
If you asked me what a "Tibidabo" is prior to today, I would have thought it was a kind of Japanese snack, or a Filipino meat covered in vinegar and soy sauce. But nope, neither are correct. Tibidabo is actually the name of a HUGE amusement park, situated at the top of one of Barcelona's mountains.
Pretty, huh?
This place is AMAZING. They had some pretty awesome rides, including this little spinning plane ride that goes OVER THE MOUNTAINSIDE. You can see it on the right side of the picture above.
They also had a Ferris Wheel...
Wonder if it ever takes a day off.
And, strangely, the entire thing was right next to a very large church called the Sagrat Cor, or the Sacred Heart.
The big thing on the left.
Later on in the day, we also tasted a Spanish staple: paella! Essentially, it's fried rice mixed with sauce and a BUNCH of seafood, and it is DELICIOUS.
It took 20 minutes to prepare, which sounds like a long time until you actually see it:
The rice is hidden beneath the layer of sauce around the seafood.
Yes, it was the most amazing thing I've eaten. The bowl that it came on was MASSIVE, but my entire family still managed to finish it.
Well, most of it, at least.
\
We also visited Park Guell today. It's a relatively large park, with some more nice architecture from the very creative Antoni Gaudi, which you saw in yesterday's post. Here's a few pictures that I grabbed!
I especially loved the look of that tower over there, so of course...
Golden Hour Joby looks amazing. Or it might be incorrect white balance Joby, I'm not sure.
And to end today, here's a pretty disturbing candy bar that I found in a shop on the way home.
Manufacutured by the Soylent Corporation, Philippines Division.
RFotD: Filipinos also come in milk and dark chocolate flavors. Allegedly, they are named because they have a brown outer layer and a white inner layer.
8/5/15, 11:20 PM CET
Did you know that Lucerne used to be covered by a glacier hundreds of years ago? Well, it was. And the only remnants of the glacier now are the very intricate carvings it left on some of the bedrock in Lucerne, some of which we got to see in the appropriately-named Glacier Museum.
Woo! Geology!
...Yeah, a museum entirely about glaciers rocks sounds really boring. And it kinda was. I mean the science is cool, but when the museum is largely just pictures with a bunch of text, it becomes about as fun as reading a textbook. Which is to say, that it isn't much fun.
Thankfully, it wasn't exclusively about rocks and ice. They also had an AMAZING mirror room, which, although completely unrelated to glaciers, was still my favorite part about the glacier museum. Check out these really trippy photos I got while in there. For added confusion, try to figure out which people are real and which are reflections.
Don't worry if you can't do it, my mom couldn't either, and she was
actually there.
Yeah, I am one of those people that use the viewfinder to take pictures.
Don't judge.
I don't know why, but my sister looks like she's Angelina Jolie on the poster for
Mr. And Mrs. Smith.
Things got especially trippy when we reached the end of the maze, where they had a bunch of really tiny mirrors that show off just how cool of a look you could get with a few mirrors.
I like this one a lot because of the lights in the background.
I think this is my favorite picture though:
I call it "Joby in Space."
At one point, Megan actually ran into a mirror believing that it was a passable hallway and it was pretty funny because she was saying something like "It's this way!" but she got interrupted mid sentence by her reflection, which was pretty funny.
Also, the plot of land that the museum is on includes part of a mountain. They had a little wooden tower built on the top of the mountain as a viewpoint, so we climbed it. And the view was SPECTACULAR.
Seriously, it's AMAZING. It looks like it's straight out of a painting.
Afterwards, we decided to explore our inner Charlies and pay a visit to a real Swiss chocolate factory!
Unfortunately, Johnny Depp was not there to greet us.
Initially, I thought their mascot was really creepy. Look at this brown, almondy bastard:
The "A" on his hat actually stands for "asshole," not "Aeschbach."
...But after the entire tour and seeing him literally EVERYWHERE in the factory, I grew to love the guy. And so did Joby.
Awwwwwwwwww.
"It's almost adorable how ugly he is." -Samantha, when talking about me.
The actual factory was awesome too, except for the fact that I probably got diabetes from all the FREE CHOCOLATE WE GOT DURING THE TOUR. They outlined every step of the chocolate making process, as well as the differences between types of chocolate (largely determined by the ratios of cocoa cake/cocoa butter/sugar used in making them), and after every step they showed, they had stations for FREE CHOCOLATE. I especially liked it when they let us sample their white chocolate, since that's the chocolate I like the most. But my favorite chocolate dispensing method they had wasn't the free chocolate fountain with customizable toppings nor was it the Skinner Box-esque dispenser of small chocolate cubes, it was this hot piece of ass.
Little do you know, the back of this donkey actually has a cutout of Olivia
Wilde's face.
You see, when you press the green button on his face, something magical happens. Doctors would almost call it miraculous. And if you see it yourself, you'd definitely be inclined to agree with them.
That's right, they have a DONKEY THAT VOMITS CHOCOLATE COINS IN THE FACTORY AND IT'S AMAZING. We came at a time where there was literally no one else in the factory, and since the donkey dispensed a coin EVERY TIME, we decided to exploit it and get a BILLION of these things.
Actually, it was more like thirteen gold and silver coins, but nevertheless, it's a lot of free chocolate.
My sister and I also got to make and decorate our own chocolate, which basically involved pouring melted chocolate into a mold and putting toppings on it before it hardened. Here was my sister's chocolate bar:
Colorful, melty goodness.
And here's mine:
Uhhh...?
I think it's quite obvious who the more artistic one is here.
We ended the tour with a picture on this massive stack of chocolate coins:
And by "we" I mean Joby.
And we FINALLY wrapped up the day by exploring the sights that nighttime Lucerne had in store for us. Take a look at my pics:
Every day, we ate at the lakeside of Lucerne, and every day, we loved it.
Switzerland is amazing.
RFotD: Switzerland would be even more amazing if the stuff there wasn't so expensive.
If you had unlimited wealth and power, what would you do? If you answered something like "help the needy" or "save it for a rainy day," you'd be choosing the most logical answer. It's also the more boring answer, in my opinion.
It's a good thing that the German royalty weren't either of those things, because with their endless influence and resources, they created GIANT FUCKING HOUSES.
I mean they were quite large, not that they were literally big brothels.
Welcome to the Residenz Munich, where Germany's royalty lived from 1385 all the way up to 1918 With an area approximately nine billion square meters and over five thousand rooms to get lost in, the Residenz is designed to ensure that German royalty never has to endure stepping on poor, non-marble peasant ground ever again.
But now that it's a museum, it is the peasants that get exclusive access to the palace. And we peasants had fun.
If by "fun" you mean "pretended we had this amount of wealth, then yes.
Joby certainly liked it too.
Silverware, except it's gold. So it's... goldware?
"Everybody say 'M.C. Escher!"
"Oh fox, you so silly."
Afterwards, we went to a traditional German restaurant, traditional because all of the waiters wore lederhosen!
This is from Google Images since I didn't get
any pics of them, but it was basically like this.
Continuing with the traditional German environment, we decided to order another German Classic: the Apple strudel.
Just wait, in a few years, they'll come out with an Apple Strudel 2S or something.
My previous experiences with Apple strudel consisted only of the rectangular, vaguely-breadlike shit that Pillsbury expects you to shove in a toaster, which meant that I came into this dessert with low expectations. But much like the cannibalistic version of Sleeping Beauty, when I took my first bite, I fell in love.
Another famous thing that the Germans have is this giant mechanical clock they have on a building called the "Glockinspiel." Today, the Glockinspiel had a performance at 11 AM, noon, and 5 PM, and we were lucky enough to not only catch the 5 PM show, but we had a pretty good view.
So I filmed the whole thing.
Yeah, it wasn't exactly Cirque du Soleil. But then again, it is pretty impressive considering the size of those figurines, the fact that the thing is autonomous, and the fact that it was made A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.
But this thing, however, was probably made this year. And it is infinitely more impressive.
RFotD: I believe the thing dancing in the video above is a "Wolpertinger."
There's an interesting theory that the more acclaimed you are as an artist or a writer, the easier it is for you to get away with calling something "art."
Case in point: we visited the Huis Marseilles (the museum of photography) in Amsterdam and I had no idea what one of the exhibits was.
"Sure."
The exhibit supposedly centered around Brazilian favelas being composited on top of picture of the Amazon forest. That was it. Boom, find it at your local art gallery, pass go, collect your 200 dollars.
I mean I guess.
Seriously, it looks like an assignment I had to do in kindergarten where I had to cut and paste pictures to describe my personality that my teacher told me to redo because I taped a picture of Kate Upton on it.
Where's my art gallery, huh?
They had another installation that I really liked though. They were old pictures from newspapers that has anonymous photographers because back in the early days of journalism, giving credit to photographers wasn't commonplace. So even though some of these pictures were fantastic, we'll never know who took them. Take a look at some of my favorites.
Me and Samantha, circa 1929.
A lawyer covering his face to protect his identity
when defending an infamous client.
Hitler wearing lederhosen.
What do I rate it? Nein out of ten! HAAAAAAH!
Joby found one of his ancestors too.
Godspeed, little guy.
This one actually had a very interesting story, so I took a picture of the plaque.
Here's a picture of two explorers who managed to capture two natives and a gorilla on a trip. For some strange reason, when I see that gorilla's face, I am reminded of our very own shirtless Mikey.
"I regret nothing!"
"NOTHING!"
And lastly, here are African women and their lip plates.
Looks like my mom when she yells at me.
Today was a pretty chill day though. Our last day in Amsterdam, and we didn't really have anywhere to go, so we just walked aimlessly until we stumbled onto something, kind of like blind wingless seagulls.
We tried bitterballs though. They're apparently a Dutch traditional treat, and no, despite their name, they aren't just an occupational hazard for prostitutes in the red light district.
Although they certainly look like they are.
They're fried veal balls filled with gravy. And they taste... Okay. I didn't particularly like them, and I certainly wouldn't try them again, but I didn't hate them either. Ehh.
RFotD: In hindsight, I actually would eat those bitterballs again, they have a very interesting taste.
