2019 Spain Road Trip

15 Dec 2019

Duration:
11/24/2019 - 12/07/2019

Destinations:
Barcelona - Tarragona - Peñíscola - València - Cuenca - Toledo - Consuegra - Granada - Nerja - Malaga - Estepona - Casares - Seville - Barcelona

Planning

I wanted to start the trip from Barcelona, the famous capital of Catalonia, and drove all the way down to Costa del Sol, a coastal region in southern Andalucía. There is only one direct flight from Boston to Barcelona - IB2626 A330-200 operated by Level Air (6 hrs flight). For lodging, we chose the famous paradores in most cities / towns we visit.

Arrival at Barcelona

We arrived around noon, picked up our rental car at Sixt Aeropuerto de Barcelona - El Prat. The whole process was very smooth. We got a Volkswagen T-Roc SUV (automatic transmission), for which my only complaint is it didn’t have a backup camera.

Tarragona

The Noguchi museum in Queens, NY

11 Jul 2019

When I went to Sapporo in 2015 for the first time, I visited Moerenuma Park and fell in love with it immediately. Since then, the park’s architect, Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), has become one of my favorite.

I began to search Noguchi’s other works and was happy to find that he had a dedicated museum (or the Isamu Noguchi foundation, some call it) in Queens, New York. So we decided to pay it a visit on a warm July day, and below are some photos of Noguchi’s sculpture works I took. You can find the entire list of collections here.

Dia:Beacon in Beacon, NY

10 Jul 2019

Dia:Beacon is an interesting modern and contemporary art museum located in Beacon, New York. We visited the musuem in July 2019, a pleasant detour of our independence-day road trip from Boston to Pennsylvania.

The exhibition space is inside an old multi-level factory. I didn’t find the sculptures and art work particularly intriguing per se, but I did feel a sense of uniqueness, probably because they’re adequately set up and placed with the perfect amount of light shedded into the room. Below are some photos I took.

Not sure if it’s structurally necessary to have these many pillars in the underground level , but it’s a smart use of repetition and very visually appealing. I happened to capture a lady walking in between the pillars.

Easy & Me