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jay farrer and benjamin gibbard

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Friday, August 19, 2016

bye bye Amsterdam

What? We left Amsterdam 6, 7 weeks ago? gaaaaaaaaaaa!
Here are some final views from the continent:
 
















Sunday, July 17, 2016

Last days- Leiden

A last trip to Leiden and a visit to the Hortus Botanicus, the oldest botanical garden in the Netherlands, dating back to 1590.
hortus botanicus









Saturday, July 16, 2016

Last days- Kröller-Müller Museum

The Kröller-Müller Museum is an art museum and sculpture garden, located in the Hoge Veluwe National Park near Arnhem (Its in the middle of a forest). The museum was founded by art collector Helene Kröller-Müller and opened in 1938. It has the second-largest collection of paintings in the world by Vincent van Gogh. 

krollermuller









Sunday, July 10, 2016

Alcazaba

In Malaga, June 18......climbed the big hill to the top of the Alcazaba which is a palatial fortification in Málaga. It was built by the Hammudid dynasty in the early 11th century. This is the best-preserved alcazaba (from the Arabic al-qasbah, meaning "citadel") in Spain. Adjacent to the entrance of the Alcazaba are remnants of a Roman theater dating to the 1st century BC, which are undergoing restoration. Some of the Roman-era materials were reused in the Moorish construction of the Alcazaba.









Monday, July 04, 2016

Alhambra

The Alhambra takes its name from the Arabic al-qala’a al-hamra (the Red Castle, the Red One, the Red Fortress, etc.). Its on my tee-shirt!

The first palace on the site was built by Samuel Ha-Nagid, the Jewish grand vizier of one of Granada’s 11th-century Zirid sultans. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the Nasrid emirs turned the area into a fortress-palace complex, adjoined by a village of which only ruins remain. Completed towards the end of Muslim rule of Spain by Yusuf I (1333–1353) and Muhammed V, Sultan of Granada (1353–1391), the Alhambra is a reflection of the culture of the last centuries of the Moorish rule of Al Andalus (Muslim Spain), reduced to the Nasrid Emirate of Granada. It is a place where artists and intellectuals had taken refuge as the Reconquista by Spanish Christians won victories over Al Andalus.


After the Reconquista, the Alhambra’s mosque was replaced with a church, and the Convento de San Francisco (now the Parador de Granada) was built. Carlos I (also known as the Habsburg emperor Charles V), grandson of the Catholic Monarchs, had a wing of the palaces destroyed to make space for his huge Renaissance work, the Palacio de Carlos V. During the Napoleonic occupation, the Alhambra was used as a barracks and nearly blown up. What you see today has been heavily but respectfully restored.