Well, hello! It's been a while since I've posted, but I'll re-kick off with some more travel blogging. On Sunday, January tenth, our family went down to Palo Alto and met up with Grandma Susie and Grandpa Bob to see the Rodin sculpture garden and gallery there and the chapel at Stanford University. On Monday, we went to the mission of San Juan Baptista, and on Tuesday to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I thought I would share photos large today rather than in collages – after all, I am very happy with my new camera and its great pictures. Please tell me in the comments which you prefer, this or collages.

 

This is the front of the chapel at Stanford. It was really amazing to stand there looking at it and realize that that is all mosaic!

 

Although most of the Rodin statues are in the gallery/sculpture gardens, the Burghers of Calais are near the chapel.

 

I thought that the pose of this one of the Burghers is quite interesting. He appears to be wondering at the fate he has volunteered for, and almost surprised. Seeing all these statues by Rodin, I thought it was very interesting how different it is seeing such things in three dimensions, not only two. It is very neat how you can really walk around these statues, and they are almost on a level with you.

 

Here is the Thinker. Another thing that was interesting looking at Rodin's statues was how they are actually not quite perfectly proportioned. In the Thinker, as well as in the Burghers of Calais, the hands and feet are too large compared to the rest of the body. The effect is quite intentional, though, and they would not be quite the same if they were perfect. After all, you might say that that non-perfection is what Rodin's statues, so different from the classical and neoclassical statues favored at the time, are about.

 

The front of the Mission church of San Juan Baptista. It is still used as the parish church for that area, and is really doing quite well when you think that it is over two hundred and thirty years old although restoration work has been done.

The gardens at the Mission are so peaceful, even now. San Juan Baptista is now the only surviving mission with a fully enclosed courtyard.

 

I wonder what this view from the Mission hill was like, three hundred years ago? Probably nicer. Grasslands, I suppose.

 

I saw a piece of kelp get washed around by the waves. It was interesting to see it get apparently taken up and moved but then end up at about the same place it had started from.

 

We saw a sea otter! It was a ways away, but I was able to get a decent picture.

 

I don't have very many pictures from the aquarium, partly because the lighting is not that great in there – of course they have a whole bunch of fish that are not used to nearly as much light as we are.