I had never heard of the La Sagrada Familia before arriving in Barcelona but my wife had. She said it was a must see building designed by Guadi so off we went. I didn’t really know what to expect but when we arrived I was blown away.
La Sagrada Familia - interior
The scale was impressive but the details are what truly blew me away. The building started constructed in 1882 and it’s still not done yet. The president of the foundation recently announced that the iconic Basilica will likely be completed by 2026. Even though it’s not finished yet it’s still an amazing sight and definitely worth the visit. There is some controversy surrounding the building which I didn’t really understand. However, anything that has been under construction for over 120 years is bound to have some good stories. This just adds to the character.
Everywhere you look there is amazing detail from everything to the floor to ceiling spiral staircases to the massive stain glass windows. It’s hard to capture the magnificent of this building in pictures.
La Sagrada Familia - interior
La Sagrada Familia - interior
La Sagrada Familia - ceiling
La Sagrada Familia - interior
Climbing the spiral staircase at the La Sagrada Familia
La Sagrada Familia - nativity scene
La Sagrada Familia - front entrance
View from the top of the La Sagrada Familia
La Sagrada Familia - entrance
Like I said, it’s hard to communicate the magnificence of this buildings in pictures but hopefully these will spark your interest and the La Sagrada Familia will get a high spot on your travel list. I know I’ve put a spot on my calendar already to visit again when its completed in 2026.
Travel Tip: Spend the extra money and get a reservation to take an elevator to the top. You might have to wait around a while if it’s a busy day but it’s worth the wait.
We got back from our epic 3 month European adventure a while back. It’s taken me a while to get through the thousands of photos and videos but I’m getting there. To get an idea of where we went check out the video animation above from tripline.net. Tripline is a new site that helps you share the places you plan to go or where you’ve been. It’s still in beta so there are a lot of features to be desired but still a cool travel site.
We travelled thousands of kilometers across 23 countries in Europe experiencing the best the continent has to offer. From the thermal pools of Iceland, the polar bears of Svalbard, running of the bulls in Spain, climbing the dolomites in Italy, experiencing the history of Budapest, hiking the glaciers of Switzerland, bobsledding in Austria, sipping wine in Burgundy and so, so much more. Stay tuned over the next few weeks for new blog posts of our adventures through Europe.
We had our first walrus sightings today!! I haven’t ever seen a walrus before except in pictures. They look ugly in pictures and they look even uglier in person. However, I could sit for hours watching them flop all over the place while making all kinds of interesting noises. Before we had our first walrus sighting we had another early wake up call for some fin whales off the bow.
Fin Whale with calf
After we had our fill of pictures of the fin whales we headed towards Woodfjorden. Once again we were amazed at the polar bear spotting ability of the crew. Several kilometers away they spotted a polar bear on land just before it headed into the water.
Polar Bear on land
Polar Bear testing the water
Polar Bear shaking the water off (while in the water??)
As the polar bear swam off so we continued on and found some more bears on the ice. Can you spot the bear? I had a 500mm lens with a doubler on which gave me over 1000mm of reach and still the polar bear was only a spec on the ice. This was also taken after the captain had been slowly maneuvering towards the bear for a little over 30 minutes. I guess I need to buy a bigger lens!!
Can you spot the polar bear?
Later in the day we had a chance for a zodiac ride. We couldn’t land on the island because a polar bear was spotted on the land. This did give us a good opportunity to get some polar bear pictures from the zodiac. We weren’t able to get as close as I would have liked but we did get a few good looks at him.
Zodiac in front of Polar Bear
Polar Bear with flowers
One of my favorite things about Lindlbad Expeditions are the little things they do to make the expedition memorable. My number one little thing they do is the hot choco zodiac that roams around on the cold arctic days to warm up the freezing travelers.
Hot Choco Zodiac
Our last stop of the day was Moffen island. Walrus paradise. It was also our furthest point north on the trip. 80 degrees north to be exact.
Another very, very early wake up call this morning… 5:30am early. No worries though. It was to announce a polar bear off the bow.
Sleeping polar bear
It’s amazing how the staff and crew can spot these creatures from so far away in what seems like an endless sea of pack ice. They have binoculars and spotting scopes but even with those tools it takes years of experience to be able to pick out the slightly off white color from the rest of the white. However, once they are spotted far off in the distance the captain maneuvers the ship closer so the rest of us can get a good look.
Scanning for polar bears in the pack ice
Polar Bear through the spotting scope
Polar Bear resting on the pack ice
We were lucky enough to see a polar bear with a kill which isn’t uncommon but not seen on every trip.
Polar Bear with a kill
Even the birds were happy… at least the dominant one was happy because he scared away the rest of his competition.
Birds eating Polar Bear kill
I spent most of my time hanging out taking pictures out on deck above the bridge or out on the bow. However, I go on the bridge once and while to warm up and talk with the staff. As I’ve mentioned before, the staff and crew on the NatGeo Explorer are some of the best I’ve travelled with. One of the interesting things I learned from the staff is that when a Polar Bear sticks out it’s tongue it means that it’s stressed. I thought it was just a regular yawn. Not the case though. It seems like the presence of our ship was disturbing it and after a while the captain backed away to let the Polar Bear go about its business.
Polar bear sticking tongue out
We caught up with another Polar Bear later taking a little swim.
Polar Bear swimming
Did you know that polar bears can swim hundreds of miles without resting. They can also jump 7 feet out of the water onto the ice. We never saw this happen but that would be a sight to see. A 1500 lb polar bear jumping 7 feet out of the water. I guess we’ll have to go back to try and get that picture.
Today was a one polar bear encounter after another. Amazing experience and a couple of good photographs too
One of the top animals on our list to photograph has been the “Ice Bear” or Polar Bear. These elusive creatures are getting harder and harder to spot in the wild but we knew we could count on Lindblad Expedition’s National Geographic Explorer and their crew to find them for us. We travelled on the National Geographic Explorer to Antarctica last year and had an amazing time. The ship, crew, staff, Nat Geo photo instructors and Antarcitca itself was one of the most amazing places we’ve been to. Many of the passengers on the ship with us in the Antarctic raved about the trip to the Arctic. Since seeing Polar Bears was on our wish list we booked the trip immediately after returning home.
Polar Bear in field of arctic flowers
Lindblad calls the trip to the arctic the Land of the Ice Bears. They market the trip as an 11 day tour of the Svalbard archipelago. In actuality, you only have 5 days on the ship searching for the elusive Ice Bear. All of the other days are travel days or embarking/disembarking from the ship. The trip was still amazing even though it was shorter than we expected. An extra 2 days at sea exploring the archipelago would have been perfect. It would have allowed extra time to search for Polar Bears, Walruses, Whales and most importantly not feel rushed when trying to get that perfect shot. Overall, the photography experience in Antarctica was far superior and I came away from that trip with much better pictures than this one. Even though it was only a 5 day trip they packed as much into every moment as they could and I did end up with a few good photos.
Over the next week or so I’ll do a few posts that describes what we did and what we saw each day we were on the ship. Similar to what I did for our expedition to Antarctica.
The photo instructors onboard the ship put together a video slideshow of the passengers best photos from the trip. Miki and I submitted some of our favorites. We tried to submit pictures that other people wouldn’t have posted so we tried to get a little creative and kept the wildlife pictures to a minimum since everyone else had lots of them.
Some of my favorites.
- Polar Bears above.
Arctic Landscape
The Ice of the Arctic
Waterfall flowing off the Austfonna ice cap. Largest ice cap by area in Europe.
Kayaking in the Arcitc. (Gopro camera attached to end of kayak paddle)
Spot recently came out with this new GPS tracking device called the Spot Connect. It’s a small hockey puck looking GPS receiver/transmitter that can sync with the iphone. Being the gadget freak that I am I picked one up to test out. One of the functions is an option to track your progress and send near real time updates via satellite to a webpage. No wifi or 3G signal needed. I’m heading out to the black hills in South Dakota so I’m going to give it try. If it works as expected you will be able to track my progress via the map abovelink here.
You can also use it to send short e-mails, update your facebook and twitter accounts and activate an SOS signal to have somewhere come rescue you if need.
Here is static page that will have my latest location… if this thing actually works. Spot Nate!
At some point I’ll figure out how to integrate my latest location to the google map at the top of page showing all our travels. Haven’t been able to figure that out yet so if anyone knows how drop me a line.
The process to get a Russian tourist visa is a complicated one. Even more so if you are an American. Here is what we had to go through in order to get tourist visas for our long weekend trip to Moscow and St Petersburg.
Step 1) Get a tourist voucher from the hotel. This is an official document that needs to be issued by a hotel or travel agency inviting you to visit Russia. It’s pretty easy to get but did take a couple days for the hotel to issue it. There wasn’t any cost as long as you stayed at the hotel. Travel agencies will also issue it free of charge as long as you do a tour with them.
Step 2) Download the visa application forms. Visa form for US, UK, and Canadians here. Everyone else can download the one here.
Step 3) The form for US citizens asks for an extraordinary amount of detail. Some of the things they ask for are:
List EVERY educational institution you have EVER attended.
List EVERY professional, civil and charity organization which you are / were a member of or cooperated with. Really? I asked for clarification on this one and the visa officer said that even if I donated money to a charity that needed to be listed.
And my personal favorite, list ALL the countries you have visited in the last ten years and indicate the year of visit. I’ve been to about 50 countries and the visa officer made me list them all out on a separate piece of paper with the year of visit.
How many people would actually remember of all these things and what would happen if it wasn’t accurate?
If you aren’t a US, UK or Canadian citizen then the form is very simple. It’s the standard stuff like name, address, trip duration, etc. None of the details that were required for americans.
Step 4) Take all these forms and a passport sized photo to the Russia immigration office and wait for a week for them to issue your visa. Americans need to pay about $150 USD and others need to pay about $50 for the standard processing time for a single entry tourist visa.
Ok… so maybe it wasn’t all that arduous but I did spend more time getting a visa to get into russia than any other country I visited. It was worth the trouble. A trip review for our long weekend in St Petersburg and Moscow will be posted shortly.
Doing the Polar Plunge in front of the National Geographic Explorer
We liked our trip to Antarctica on the National Geographic Explorer so much we booked another trip on the same ship to the Arctic this summer. In preparation of the trip to Arctic, they had National Geographic photographer Ralph Lee Hopkins give a webinar on the Top 10 Essentials For Making Better Travel Photos. These tips don’t just apply to trips to the arctic. They are very useful tips that will help you take better travel photos wherever you go. Click on the link here to watch the webinar.
Here are the top 10 tips that Ralph covers in his presentation.
As our tuk-tuk driver led us on foot down this seemingly innocent looking alleyway to go see a temple, the people that occupied the alley when we entered had disappeared when we were walking back out. I didn’t think anything of it at first but then as I was walking ahead of Miki with our guide, I head a loud noise and then an ear piercing scream. I instantly turned around and saw Miki had stopped dead in her tracks and was looking skyward. She wasn’t hurt. No one was near here…
What happened, I yelled.
I was hit by a water balloon she replied.
What? A water balloon?
Our tuk-tuk driver interjected with a big smile on his face and said, “don’t worry… it’s holy”
Huh? A holy water balloon. The balloon is filled with holy water? That makes it’s ok that Miki got hit by a water balloon that someone threw off a 4 story building.
No, no our tuk-tuk driver replied. It’s for the festival called holi (with an i not a y). The kids are just practicing.
Still confused as ever we shrugged it off and kept on exploring the market in the old part of Delhi. We later found out that India had a festival coming up where they throw colored powder and colored water at each other. The main day of the festival was 2 days from now and kids were already honing their water balloon throwing skills on unsuspecting tourists. There weren’t many other tourists around so we became high value targets and had multiple attacks during our short walk. Those kids are very quick and this was the best picture I could get of two of them.
2 holi attackers
We had to leave Delhi the day before the festival which is to bad. I would have like to prepared myself for battle and gotten some revenge Lot’s of people were getting ready for the festival and the street vendors were there to help.
Street vendor selling colored powder for holi
Colored powder for the holi festival... it gets everywhere.
Our tuk-tuk driver continued to take us around the old delhi markets. The sights, sounds, and smells you experience are what travelling is all about. This was a different planet.
Old Delhi market tour
Drivers in India are some of the craziest yet most skilled drivers we’ve had the experience to ride along with during our travels. Our driver could easily talk on his cell phone while a motorbike was speeding past a truck that was heading right for us. Our driver didn’t flinch and mildly steered out of the way continuing his conversation as our knuckles turned white hanging onto the railings for dear life.
Delhi's crazy drivers
The best part of visiting markets around the world is mixing with the locals. Miki is an expert at that and always love trying her hand at new professions.
Miki the vegetable seller
Miki the tricycle driver
Miki the nut and spice merchant
You know those immigration cards you need to fill out when you enter back into your home country. There is usually a check box that says have you handled any livestock during your trip abroad… or something like that. I wonder if this counts.
handling livestock?
A final panorama of Delhi…
Our hotel concierge, taxi driver, and even a few blogs recommended to stay away from this area of Delhi because it’s too dangerous. I’m glad we went and explored a little even though we had a few scary moments with some water balloon attacks. All part of the fun of travelling.
One last thing, you know what a mid western, meat and potato boy craves after eating nothing but indian curry for 2 solid weeks… a Big Mac. Luckily there was a Mc Donalds close by so off we went. We entered the golden arches and I stood patiently in line waiting for my turn to order. While waiting I took a look at the menu and…. WHAT… no Big Mac. No double quarter pounder with cheese. In fact, no meet at all. Duh… cows are sacred in India which means no beef. Not a problem though. The Chicken Maharaja Mac to the rescue. Not as good as beef laden Big Mac but it still hit the spot.
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