Barcelona

Last night we landed back in London Gatwick after a week in Barcelona, it’s such a beautiful city and it was so nice being back somewhere I had been before and remembered and recognised. I really hate the feeling of being a stranger in a new city, so it was lovely to know my way around and return to some of the good places I had been to before. Aral had also been to Barcelona before, so we had a chance to share our knowledge and also discover some new places together as well. Neither of us had managed to get to see any of the Gaudi stuff when we had been before, so this trip we saw the Sagrada Familia, (although we didn’t walk up the 300 steps inside!) Casa Batllo and Casa Mila. I very much like Gaudi’s flowing organic architecture, and although the Sagrada Familia is his life’s work and very impressively ornate, I do prefer the Casa’s.

Barcelona is truly the city that never sleeps and it was a rare treat this time of year to be able to walk back to the hotel at night in the warm breeze. Waiting for the train at Gatwick last night was rather a different experience (absolutely freezing).

The reason of course I was in Barcelona was the Adobe MAX Europe conference, where Aral was speaking about SWX The conference was quite good and I met lots of new people and saw some people I already knew. The difference between this conference and FlashForward was drastic and simple, FlashForward treats their speakers with respect and Adobe act like they couldn’t care less. I was in Erik Natzke’s session, which was wonderful and in one of the bigger rooms and the tech guy walked out halfway through, so when it came to the end of his talk and he asked for the lights to be turned down there was no one there, which resulted in him having to get up and turn the lights down and the sound up himself. This kind of thing makes the speakers look unprofessional, and is very unfair considering most of them give up a lot of their time to prepare and give sessions.

Anyhow, moving on from Adobe…

I am very much glad to be home, but sad that Aral is going to be half way round the world and away from me for another week, and that I am going to miss the debut of Phlash5! I think the next week will go pretty quickly as I’ve got lots to do before Aral comes back and I’m house, cat and dog sitting next Friday for a week whilst my mum goes to Sorrento with my aunt to tour around the coast for a week

The few photos I took with Aral’s new camera are with him, on a plane soon to be in LA, so I will try to upload them when he gets back. Unfortunately, the photo’s of Boston that I took whilst I was there, seem to have been lost in transit

Ciao for now

P.s Here’s some links to create some appropriately spooky things for Halloween.

Felted Pumpkins Crochet Pumpkin Craft Spiders

Skull Hat

Extreme Pumpkin Carving