On our last evening in Ponferrada we were treated to a glorious sunset while dining at the Templar Castle:
The next day we took the train back to Madrid. Although we spent a couple of days there before coming back home, I did those without carrying my camera with me – so this is the end of our tour!
While walking around Ponferrada we saw this sign:
When looking where the arrow pointed, we saw this alley:
We decided to eat elsewhere.
In Ponferrada there is a Templar Castle. It was great fun to walk around a castle like it was the most normal thing to have in the middle of the city. One of the events we attended was in the castle itself, so I got to take some pictures on the internal grounds too.
In Ponferrada, like all the other places we visited in Spain, there are lovely details at the center of roundabouts. The ever-present fountain, of course:
But there was this incredibly cool sculpture near our hotel:
The “film” is metal and the scenes are made by metal strips being bent to make the appropriate shadows. It’s so impressive – and each is a work of art in its own right.
We arrived in Ponferrada early in the morning and sat tiredly in the hotel lobby until our room was ready. (The staff were amazing – brought us wonderful coffee and fruits and kept apologizing that the room wasn’t ready despite us arriving before most people would even be up!)
When we finally moved out to walk around, we found out there was a festival happening – what timing to catch the final day when we weren’t even aware it existed! It looked like a Renaissance Fair. There was a display of birds including these two rather sarcastic looking owls:
There were also a ton of food vendors. We stopped at this one because it smelled amazing.
This is where we got the delicious festival food I posted earlier (a looong time ago, actually) – and I still have yet to grill jalapenos!
I was walking on campus at work and saw a crowd of people looking in a tree. I wondered if they spotted a hawk, which we sometimes have around. But when I got closer I realized it was a tiny kitten. I am happy to report the kitten was successfully rescued and was immediately taken in by a co-worker who has experience with feral kittens. We have no idea how it got there but suspect someone dumped kittens in the hopes they’d be adopted. That’s a ridiculous thing to do.
No, I don’t expect you can see the kitten in this picture.
zoomed in, you can just make out the poor kid.
I never thought I’d put a garlic plant in my pond, but I did. It’s called “society garlic variegated (Tulbaghia violacea ‘variegata’)” and the flower is a delicate thing. I loved the way the lilypad in the background made for an interesting effect here.
Our water lilies are enjoying the hot summer and have been blooming regularly. We recently had a ten-lily-day! We were close to an unprecedented eleven-lily-day but it didn’t happen… YET.
As a reminder – the date in the title is the date of publication, not the date the photo was taken. I was recently in a window seat on the correct side of the plane as we flew into Seattle – so I got a couple of lovely photos. I’m pretty sure this is Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams (background) but not 100% certain.
There are no significant peaks in the second one. I just thought the whole scene felt like a painting.
While in New York we also visited the Intrepid Museum. I’m not going to lie – at $31 a person in order to see the space shuttle as well, it was an awfully expensive a ticket for what you saw. There was really cool stuff, but while I get that we couldn’t go *on* the shuttle, they could have had some doors open so we could look in it at least. However, we had a good time and I am glad we went.
I loved the backlight effect while we were on the flight deck.
Of course as a Star Trek fan, I had to see the Enterprise!
The Intrepid is a ship and still on the water – and the ropes keeping it there are impressive!
@KellyOSullivan 