Anniversary

We went to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (Musium of National Arts of Catalunya). This was a huge place and it had Romantic, Gothic, Renaisssance and Baroque, & Modern Art. It was here that I found I was very unknowlegeable in the Arts. It would have been much more enjoyable had I have known anything. This is in the very beginning of the building.

I did love the top of the ceiling.

Here is a huge auditorium in the building. I'm not sure what they use it for. They must have concerts there.

Here is one of the pictures. I thought that many of them really looked alike, that is why I would have loved to understand art more.

This is one of the rooms. There was over a 1000 pieces in this building.

On the outside it had a beautiful view of the city.

Elder Southwick loves this and said it is a cool arch. I can't remember what it is.

Another building by Gaudi. Intesting, isn't it.

This is a beautiful building. I'm not sure which one.

This is a picture of the Rombla down town. Later you will see some mimes that are on this street. This street is about 1/2 mile long.

One of the many fountains here in Spain.

A statue that is in the middle of a round about here. Notice the water coming out of the animals mouths.

All along this street there are these decorations. Spain is very famous for their arts. Another area that I don't understand. I took this picture from the Tour Bus that we were on. We could get off and back on when ever we wanted. We could stay off as long as we wanted also. It was great because if we didn't want to see something, we could just go on.

Look down this street. This is a famous building around here. It is know as the bullet building
among us Americans. It is a great land mark.

A picture of the sea.

A picture of the Columbis statue down by the Sea. This is the Christopher Columbis we know. He is very famous here in Spain.

I tried to get this picture sooner, but I couldn't. It is a elephant standing on his trunk. I wanted to get the whole picture but I was to late.

Another statue in a round about.

One of my favorate places is Tibidabo. It is a famous Cathedral and you can see it very well from our piso. When we are lost, when we see Tibidabo we know at least what area we are in.
This is taken inside the Cathedral.

I am outside looking at the front of Tibidabo.

It was very cloudy when we were up there, but this is the best I could get. Most of the time it was in the clouds and I couldn't get a picture of it.

We are looking down on the city from Tibidablo.

We are now in Park Guell. Another of Gaudi's famous places. You can see from the lizard some of Gaudi's art.

From a hill looking down on a house in Park Guell.

All along the park were people playing and hoping for contributions. Most of them are really good.

This is made from rock. You can see the steps going up. There were a lot of people up there so when we were up there, you had to be careful not to fall off.

If I remember right, Park Guell is about 20 acres.

My baby over looking the big city.

Another entertainer. I loved his music. I've never seen this instrument before, but it has a really pretty sound. It is similar to the Xylophone. But the music is much finer or more delicate. I wish I would have bought a CD he had.

More of Gaudi's work.

Anniversary

Here is the walk way in the front of Park Guell.

These arch ways are build all out of stone.

This is the enterence of the Park Guell. This is another park that was done by Gaudi.

Our Anniversary

I don't know what I did, but I can't get any more pictures on this one, so I'll have to do another one. This is what our fruit and Veggie stands look like. They are on every street.

Here are three houses that have Gaudi's impressions. You will have to inlarge them to appreciate them.

Weekend with Winters

The Winters were here and we had a little get together with our friends. This is President and Hermana Hinckley and Hermana Julie Lund. All the dishes we served were truditional American. It was great. I made potato salad, Hermana Hadley made a really good jello salad, Hermana Lund did a great relish tray and Hermana Hinckley made BBQ beef. It was great.

Here are our friends the Winters. They look great even after being pick pocketed on their arrival to Barcelona. Welcome to Barcelona!

This is the rest of the group. Elder Hadley, Gary Dewie, Elder Lund and Hermana Lana Hadley. This is in our piso in case you didn't recognize it. Brother Dewie's wife works in Madrid. He usually goes there on weekends but was here then, so we invited him over.

From our balcony we over look a park. They play all sorts of games. There is a basketball court, Bocci Ball, swimming pool, ping pong, and there is a large area for little kids. The Swimming Pool is a private place where people go. I think they must have memberships there.
We are directly over two soccor fields. They play there a lot. Now that it is getting cooler, it is used for practice mostly. In the building right to the left. (All you can see is the roof) The far back part on the left corner is where our Chapel is. We don't have to walk very far to get to Church. That is really nice.
This weekend was a holiday of some sorts and all the parks had things going on. Ours had these little go carts that the kids drove. Or should I say, their fathers drove. At night there was a very loud band that played until 3:00am. We didn't get much sleep that night.
The other side had these air games or what ever they are called. There was no water like we usually see with these play areas. The kids were all having a great time. I think it is interesting how the people take advantage of these parks. I think it is because no one has a yard and that is where the kids play. The parks are always busy.

Sagrada Familia

The Sagrada Familia is an huge Cathedral that was started over a 100 years ago. They are still working on it. Now they pay for the work and construction from the fees that you pay to get into the Cathedral. This is what you see as you enter the building. The people in the middle are workers cleaning up after construction. This part will be finished a week after we were there.

One of the windows in the Cathedral.

I needed a picture of Delwyn in the Cathedral. This is looking to the left of the entrance inside.

A beautiful glass windown in the Cathedral.

They had a picture of Antoni Gaudi who is the architect of this buildind and many other buildings in the City. He has very odd taste, but he is very popular. I bought a bell to show you some of the designs he works.

In the back of the building on the outside. To really see it, make it larger on your screen. There are so many details that you can't get on camera.

This one is a closer one from the back. This building is huge.
From the front of the building on the right side. You can see on the top where they are still working.
This is a picture straight on. It is a very popular place. We had to wait in line for about a half hour before we could get in. This was the slow part of the day too. The only bad part was we were just 3 minutes late to go on the tour that took you to the top part of the building.
The top part of the front that I couldn't get with the one above.

The Rombla

Down by the old part of Barcelona there is a street called The Rombla. It is just a wide walk way about 30 feet wide. There are many things to see and you can buy just about anything you might want, especially trinkets. Along the way there are a bunch of mimes. I took a few pictures of them. This guy changes directions every few minutes. He does it in a fun way.

Most of the people never move a muscle. I don't know how they don't just fall over an die. We have decided this guy must have a strong poll in that flat piece of medel on the ground and up through his arm and it is hocked to a seat of some sorts that he sits on.

These two I've seen many times and they have never moved or changed at all. You will notice a can in front of them. That is where you put your money.

This lady is fun. She works with the people and has a good time with them. When she does that, people give her more money.

This is a store that is along the street. This is a case of candy. They have everything from meats, fruit, veggies, fish, just anything you would get in a supermarket. It is all displayed like this. That candy really looks good. There are a few flys flying around though. We've never bought anything there, because it is more expensive than what you would pay at some other place. This is close to the Mediterranean Sea so there are a lot of tourists that come here.

I haven't seen her do anything but stand and smile.

These two are kind of scary. Every once in a while they will jump out at you. They scared a little boy one time and he wouldn't go near any of them anymore. I can't say that I blamed him one bit.

She never moves.

I put this picture in because we were walking on Saturday just to get some exercise. This is the biggest soccer stadum in at least Barcelona, maybe even Spain. If I remember right it seats at least 50,000. I'd like to go to a game while we are here. I couldn't get the whole thing in one picture. It is longer than it is wide.

October 24, 2010 - From Delwyn

Dear family & friends,
It’s been a busy month for us – I continue to be amazed how, as we go day by day, it sometimes seems to drag but, when viewed week by week or month by month, time seems to be passing very quickly. We think things are going well for our family – the zeal for writing to parents seems to have waned and even our best letter writers are pleading ‘busy lives’ when we see their notes. We love hearing from you and appreciate very much when you find time to send us a note. I have to plead ‘busy life’ too as the reason this letter is a little later than the 20th.
Earlier this month we got a Friday off to celebrate our wedding anniversary. We bought the 2-day version (have to be used on consecutive days) of a city bus tour that visits virtually all the major tourist attractions in Barcelona. Friday morning we found what we think is the closest stop to our piso, got our tickets and started a route that took us to some of the places we knew we wanted to visit. At our first planned stop – Sagrada Familia – the ticket line was already over a block and a half long so we skipped it saying we’d come back another day. We spent most of two hours in Güell Park – it’s easy to see why it’s such a highly recommended place to visit. Designed by Barcelona’s famous architect Gaudí, it’s about 37 acres of hilly terrain with amazing rock structures built of rocks or built into the natural rock formations of the terrain, lots of interesting but unusual buildings and colors that range from functional to strange. We hope the pictures we took will give you an idea of some of the sites found there (not yet posted but we still have hope). We then rode bus and funicular to the top of Tibidabo – the highest point in the Barcelona region. There’s a church/cathedral there that we see from the front window of our piso and that is partly surrounded by an amusement park that’s been in operation for nearly 100 years (I’m pretty sure some upgrades have occurred). While we were there the low hanging clouds blew past us partly obscuring some of the otherwise spectacular views of the city and surrounding area. The tour guide had informed us that Barcelona has a population of about 1.5 million and the greater Barcelona area has population of about 3 million – we’d been misinformed on that point by a factor of 2 (either that or someone had been telling us the number of motor scooters here). We rode the rest of the blue route, getting off the bus only for a visit to Subway for lunch, (a lot of the places we’d already visited or weren’t very interested in seeing) until we again came to Sagrada Familia and could see that the lines were much shorter than in the morning. So we stood in line, were told at the ticket window that they were closing in just under an hour and that the main floor was being cleaned and polished – we opted to go in anyway. There wasn’t much to see inside the main hall – the massive support columns for the roof and external tower structure are unusual – and the elevators were closed so we couldn’t go up but the exhibits in the basement were interesting. They showed a lot of the models used in the design and building of the cathedral, gave a lot of history (the under-construction cathedral had major damage and loss of plans and models during the Spanish Civil War) and explained how the finished product is to look. By shortly after 6:00 we’d seen nearly everything that was open to the public and were pretty much worn out so we went to the Metro and came home. After Friday’s experience we decided we’d ride the entire route, see sites from the bus and decide which one’s we wanted to spend time at – we did that and things worked out pretty well for us. So on our second lap we got off at Poble Espanya – a model Spanish village built for the International Exhibition in 1929 and it’s incredibly real even today. There are a host of small workshops where we saw people weaving, blowing glass, sewing and painting – just doing all kinds of craft things and their products are for sale in the shops. The streets and courtyards go in every direction with no apparent overall plan (so true to life here) – we were actually afraid we’d get lost in the place. We had no information about what to expect so it was a delightful experience for us. We then spent a couple of hours in the National Museum of Art – Cataluña and the thing that impressed me most was the massive size of the building itself. It’s also referred to as a palace and I think that means a palace was converted to the museum. The exhibits are divided into periods of time and, to see and read the signage associated with each piece, would surely take days. Since much of the art of those centuries is associated with the Christianity of the day, we saw a lot of artists’ paintings and sculptures using the same themes from the New Testament. For those of us without much knowledge/appreciation for that type of art, it doesn’t take long to want out (about 2 hours). Our next stop was at Plaza de Cataluña where we found a Burger King for something to eat, wandered down the Rambla again wondering if it was different in the evening than during the day (not much that we saw) and came home.
One weekend our friends called and invited us to go with them to Parc del Laborint – we deferred the cleaning of our piso and went. The park was designed, starting in the 1700s, by a wealthy family who lived on the property and it was continually expanded for a couple of centuries before they gave it to the city of Barcelona. It includes 3 levels with a variety of gardens, structures, fountains and lots of trees & shrubs – it’s very beautiful even with only a few flowers in bloom now. We found and entered the maze for which the park is named – the paths are formed by hedges consisting of a double row of tall, skinny evergreen plants. A short distance in, none of us had any idea of where we were or where we’d been so we kept wandering (as everyone in there seemed to be doing) until we found our way to a fountain and statue in the middle of the maze. There’s apparently more than one way in because we found our way out without having to cross a mud puddle that we’d negotiated on our way in – it was interesting and fun. We spent about 2.5 hours in the park and think we saw most of it but didn’t venture down the path with a sign warning of wild boars - I’d have been happy to see one from a distance but wanted nothing to do with any close up encounter.
Our friends John & Gaylene Winters arrived came to spend four days with us and it started with a little excitement. They’d flown from Germany to Gerona, Spain, taken a bus from Gerona (about 1:15 up the coast from Barcelona) to here and transferred to the Metro to get to our piso. I guess we should have gone down there to meet them but these stations are so big and so busy we didn’t know how to determine where we could meet them and they felt like they could make it okay anyway. Some guy there offered to help them get on the right Metro line but led them around for a while and ultimately picked John’s wallet from his pocket – obviously the work of an experienced pick-pocket. It was about 10:00 when they arrived at the Metro station near our piso so we told them which way to walk and hurried down to meet them. Once we got settled in our piso we used Skype for nearly two hours to call three credit card companies to cancel the cards and make arrangements for them to still have a credit card they could use for the remaining three weeks of their trip (12-day Holy Land cruise and more time in Germany). We’re hoping things work out okay and two card companies were helpful in making arrangements to keep their cards active – they got some cash with one so that’s still alive. If you come to Barcelona, be very careful with any money and valuables.
In the last month we’ve cleaned and made repairs in pisos from Gerona in the north end of our mission to Vilajoyosa in the south and quite a few places in between. We have three pisos we’ve not done yet because two are planning to move and the third is vacant. We haven’t been to the Baleares for cleaning but Pte Hinckley says not to worry about those – I’m not worried about the pisos, I’d just enjoy a trip to the Islands! This past week, the Lunds (another of the mission couples) went with us to the Valencia area to help clean some pisos and take a little break to see sights in Valencia. It was a whirlwind trip and we were exhausted at the end of each day but we had a lot of fun and saw interesting things. We saw/toured a couple of the gate towers for the old city wall, visited the basilica/cathedral complex and climbed the bell tower to overlook the entire city – it’s a beautiful and interesting place. Saturday morning we had a tour of the Lladró factory there – what an interesting and amazing place!
We’ve been involved in zone conferences, training conferences and were able to see most sessions of General Conference on that weekend. The transportation workers staged a one-day strike of the Metro and bus systems here – that inconvenienced a lot of people and made traffic on the streets much lighter (I guess everyone just stayed home for the day) but I don’t know if it’ll have a political impact. We’ve been lost – both in the car and on foot – several times but each time we’ve found our way to where we wanted to go and been able to get back to our piso at night so things sure aren’t bad.
The days are getting shorter and the weather has cooled significantly in the last month – we’re wondering how to get the heater in our piso turned on. We love and appreciate each of you – keep those notes and letters coming and we’ll be home before we all know it (out fly-home date is January 12th). Love, E&H Belnap

September 20, 2010 from Delwyn

Dear family & friends,
Well, it’s time again to extend greetings from Barcelona and share a few of our experiences from here. First, a little family news - we had a note on Monday, Aug 30th, from Sam & Heidi telling us their baby (their third) had come and gave us measurements but didn’t tell us when she was born. That evening I opened Skype on my computer and it didn’t show that Sam & Heidi were online but, a few minutes after that, we got a call from Heidi on Sam’s phone. They were still in the hospital but were getting ready to check out and could only talk for a few minutes because of activity with the hospital staff. Their baby, Audrey Teal, was born about 8:30 AM on Sunday morning (Aug 29), weighed 7lbs13oz, is 20.25” long (as opposed to tall) and both baby & mother are doing well. On Monday we did another Skype call with them on the computers and both are looking great. The baby has quite a bit of dark hair and, would you believe it, blue eyes! Of course we’ll be glad when we have the opportunity to be with and hold the baby in a few months.
At our final visit with Flo’s doctor, we saw him for a couple of minutes and he pronounced her fit with no need to return unless she develops complications – just continue to do stretching exercises to restore range of motion and strength. When we went to pay (the usual 70€), the system wouldn’t take my credit card (that’s another thing we’ve gotten a little paranoid about) so she pulled out her debit card and the system wouldn’t take that either. Because I’d pulled money that morning for a rent installment I had enough cash so I paid with that but we were left wondering what was wrong with our cards. I filled prescriptions that evening and my card was okay and the next time I got on the internet I discovered one of the attempts to bill my card had been successful meaning we’d paid him twice. So during the next two weeks, we went three times to the office to try to get it corrected but they were closed each time. On my fourth visit I got in, explained the double-payment problem with my few words and phrases and they understood enough to bring me 70€ - I felt like I’d conquered a mountain even though the hardest part had been trying to catch them in the office.
We took one of our cars to a dealership for recall work – they said it might be ready that afternoon but five days later they told us it was ready for pick up. We needed the car and I was available so I carefully checked the Metro route I’d need to get there, made the right decisions and went to the service desk. While waiting my turn I realized I wasn’t sure how to drive back to the office so I tried to ask a couple of guys how to get to a main street I know but they apparently didn’t understand the question or didn’t know themselves. After half an hour they delivered the car to me and I started for the office. I was doing okay until I ran into a one-way street I was familiar with but couldn’t use because it’s one-way, the wrong way and from there, it seemed like every turn I made was into territory I’d never seen before. It’d be nice to say I was enjoying new scenery but I was so lost I couldn’t even tell where I was to call for help let alone enjoy the situation. I finally hit a major street I’d seen on maps, found a place to pull off on a side street and called Elder Lund for help. After his explanation I was able to make my way to the office – took me about 45 minutes for the 20 minute drive.
To help with the parking dilemma here, the entire city is parceled into zones that allow permitted cars to park on the streets if we pay 1€/week for a ticket that goes in the windshield. One day Elder Lund and I went downtown with what we thought were the papers we’d need to get a parking permit for the van we’d brought from Bilbao. He’d talked to the elder who’d last done the permit process but I had no clue what we had to do. We rode the Metro downtown, found the street we wanted but couldn’t find the office. Our walk looking for the office took us thru some wet cement (they were sealing some tiles in a walkway), we eventually found the place (office doesn’t face the address street) and waited our turn to present our documents. The agent told us we needed a signed letter from Pte Hinckley authorizing us to apply for the permit so we returned to our office, got the signed letter (we were lucky that Pte Hinckley was there) and went back down. We got a new agent who barely glanced at the letter of authorization, went thru our papers on the van and gave us the stickers we needed for the parking. When we got back to the office I made some notes that we’ll put into a file that we hope will make it easier for us or whoever has to do the process the next time.
Flo and I are back in the piso-cleaning business – we’ve done about half those in the main part of the mission. We made one trip to Zaragoza to clean the two pisos there, got lost trying to get from one piso to our hotel (we were taken unfair advantage of in that case – they’d closed the two streets it sits on for street work) but got the work done and wanted to see the cathedral there. We finally found a parking spot, took pictures of the outside (it’s so tall we’d have had to go across the river to get a picture of all of it) and went thru the inside (no pictures allowed, except to those callused to the request) and were very impressed with the ornate carvings and sculpturing all thru the ‘chapels’. In some places the gold and silver overlays were just incredible – sure wish we could have recorded it with the camera. An interesting point was that the signs called the building a temple and asked that reverence be shown. I don’t know if that’s recent terminology or if it’s been that way for a long time but there were no guides to ask. While we were cleaning a piso in one of the Barcelona suburbs we got a parking ticket that I couldn’t figure out how to pay. The instructions are in both Spanish & Catalan but part of the Spanish was missing and no one in the office knew what to do. Knowing that the speeding tickets we saw in Bilbao were paid at a bank or the post office, I went to a post office and asked about paying, got some instructions that I thought I understood but, when I went to try it, it didn’t work. While I was trying that at a pay station near the office, I asked a parking ticket officer how to take care of it and he told me I‘d have to go back to Cornellá to do it (that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true). I went back four days later to finish some repair work and we went on the street to find out how to pay the parking ticket, found the ticket-writer guy in nearly the exact same spot as we’d been parked and asked him what to do. He told us we should have done it last week but that we needed to put 4.20€ in the pay machine, keep part of the ticket is spits out, put the rest in a small envelope with the citation and deposit the envelope in a slot in the bottom of the machine. We did that and, if it turns out to satisfy the citation, that’s the cheapest way to park we’ve run into – I might try it again.
We went with the other missionary couples here to the Barcelona Aquarium – it’s a very interesting place. There are so many different aquariums and kinds of fish I have no idea of the count but the large, featured aquarium has a moving walkway to keep people from standing in one place for too long. There are several 5’-7’ sharks swimming around with thousands of other fish and the signs say one can make arrangements to swim with the sharks but I didn’t need to check into details on that offer. There are lots of eels, some sea snakes and huge numbers of fish with names I’ve never heard nor read – made me feel pretty uneducated. There was an exhibit of penguins that I’d loved to have watched for a lot longer than we did but we needed to keep moving. We were there for about 3 hours and I’m sure I could have spent twice that long and still not seen and read all there was to see.
A couple of weeks ago we were visited by a couple of General Authorities and their wives (Bishop Edgley & Elder Teixeira). At our staff meeting Monday morning the only topic was a review of our plans and preparations for their arrival and the time they planned to be here. Elder Parry (Pte Hinckley’s secretary) had laid out a 6-page schedule that, in some cases, was a minute-by-minute itinerary for their time in Barcelona. We spent most of Monday preparing the cars and office – Flo spent nearly all day cleaning and bringing better order to the offices and the Elders helped me prepare the cars. We took some thru the car wash but where we took them, they don’t have facilities to clean the inside so we had to do that ourselves. Below our office is an underground parking garage where we keep the President’s Toyota and Hna Hinckley’s Opel and I found an occasional electrical outlet down there. It’s so dark it’s like working in a dungeon but we took down the office vacuum cleaner and an extension cord, vacuumed those cars and one of the Elders brought down the VW Transporter so we could clean it. As he backed it into the area we were working he caught the driver’s side mirror on a column, broke the housing apart and shattered the mirror glass. We got the housing put back together, taped the mirror with packing tape so the glass wouldn’t fall out and finished our cleanup work. The visit was a very short stay – 1 day, 2 nights – but we had a couple of interesting and informative meetings and we enjoyed the short time we had with them.
That’s about all that I have time write and may be more than you have time to read. Thanks to all of you for your friendship, your love and concern in our behalf – we love you and pray for the blessings of our Father in Heaven on all. E&H Belnap
PS. Some have asked that we give our addresses so they’re below. Delivery is probably surer at the mission office – that’s where most of the missionaries have mail sent and, except on holidays, there’s at least one delivery a day into the office.

We live at:
Elder & Hermana Belnap
Travessera de les Corts 260, 6° 2
08028 Barcelona
Spain

The mission office:
Spain Barcelon Mission
C/ Calatrava 10-12, bajos
08017 Barcelona
Spain