Almost the end of our time in Zaragoza

I'm posting some images from an amazing walk we took yesterday, mostly because they are pieces of a whole that is not recognizable. Maybe I'll post something about the context later.

Today we have a hectic social agenda, to say goodbye to people before we leave tomorrow. On Sunday, we'll drive to stay the night in Guadalajara, close to Madrid. Monday is travel day: up at 4AM to get to the airport at 5 for the 7AM flight. We return to Mpls by way of Paris. Somewhere over the Atlantic, we will (I hope) sleep for the eight hour flight as we turn back time 7 hours. We arrive at 1PM on the same day. Then: Shuttle to ramp, hope the car starts, home, to face the fact that the heat went out on my house-sitters, who got the gas people in quickly to do the repair on the boiler. God, I hope it works!

Collages

 I pillaged a Science magazine and a couple of Spanish newspaper supplements for the elements of these two collages. Click on the image to embiggen.

Do something creative every day in 2013

Looking over my "life list," I remember how many items are about expanding my range of ways to be creative: knitting, sewing, beading or making jewelry, playing with photos, writing. I found iHanna's lovely blog when she was the curator of the @sweden Twitter account. One of her first posts for 2013 was about her intention to make a collage every day this year, a kind of "project" she has done before (here's a list). I decided that I wouldn't (couldn't) make a commitment to one particular art form, but that I could make room every day for creativity.

Jan 1, I took a "photo safari" around Zaragoza and put up three blog entries with some of my photos. Jan 2, I pillaged the magazine pile and cut out words and images related to the turning of the year, and to my exploration of making major changes in my life. It was hella fun, and I ended up making two collages: one inside the cover of my current journal using mostly words, and another more visual one on a journal page. I've taken photos of them and will decide if they are good enough to post (the photos, not the collages), because I'd like to document these projects. But I'm not going to beat myself up if I don't manage to write or post about this every day. Maybe I'll end up doing a weekly round-up on a particular day; I'll see how it works out. I'm adopting iHanna's tag of #365in2013.

New Year's Day walk (3/3)

 Not all of the walk was about urban monuments or urban art. One of the delights of river walks is the edge between the built landscape and the wild. There were quite a few mallards swimming upstream.

 Between the path and the river, scrubby banks with wildflowers.

 One of my favorite flowers in the area (una malva).

 Parrots are an invasive species here, but the are just as charming as the ones in San Francisco.

 I saw quite a few cormorants--Great Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo)--flying and swimming. This one dove several times, and always emerged upstream.

Looking back from the Stone Bridge, you can see the kind of vegetation on the banks. 

An encounter that included vigorous sniffing.

New Year's Day walk (2/3)

New Year's Day walk (1/3)

The Stone Bridge (Puente de Piedra) stands where the Romans had originally built a wooden bridge. Built again in the 1400s, it has been partially destroyed by floods, and rebuilt over the centuries. A pair of lions stands at either end.

I began my walk by crossing the Puente de la Almozara, from the southern bank to the northern bank. Just a few decades ago, that side of the river was mostly gardens and farm land: we have watched as block after block of apartments have been built.

From the middle of the bridge, looking east and upstream, I could see the Pasarela built during the Expo that leads to the new train/bus station, Delicias. Almost all of the buildings constructed for the Expo are unused, a product of the frenzy of speculation that preceeded the current economic crisis in Spain.

The next bridge down is the Puente de Santiago, and you can see the Stone Bridge in the distance. a flotilla of ducks is hanging out in the shadow. On the other bank one can see the monuments of the various ages of a city that is more than 2000 years old: the Roman walls, the Moorish tower, the Basilica del Pilar, the church towers of San Juan and San Pablo.

The Basilica (above) is an impressive heap, but it's not my favorite church at all. The river is wide and fast as it moves through the city. The water is high now, in the winter, but will get much lower in the summer.