Smorgasbord Posts from Your Archives #PotLuck – La Mercè in #Barcelona and a few visits. Hospital de Sant Pau and Palacete Albéniz by Olga Nunez Miret

Welcome to the series  Posts from Your Archives, where bloggers put their trust in me. In this series, I dive into a blogger’s archives and select four posts to share here to my audience.

If you would like to know how it works here is the original post: https://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com/2019/04/28/smorgasbord-posts-from-your-archives-newseries-pot-luck-and-do-you-trust-me/

I am delighted to begin a series of four posts from the blogs of Olga Nunez Miret, author and translator who I can highly recommend. For her first post I have selected one from 2016, from a trip that Olga made to her home town Barcelona.

La Mercè in #Barcelona and a few visits. Hospital de Sant Pau and Palacete Albéniz

I thought I’d share a few pics from my recent visit to Barcelona. As you know I visit quite often for family reasons, but this time, I was there for La Mercè, that’s a festival in honour of the Virgin of la Mercè, patron of the city. You can check a bit more about it here.

As you’ll see if you check the link, plenty of things go on, but I decided to take a chance and go and explore a couple of places that I hadn’t had a chance to visit before, at least in detail. During the festival many of the museums are free, and, better still, some of the buildings that usually aren’t open to the public are.

First I went (with my mother), to visit l’Hospital de Sant Pau (St Paul’s Hospital) the largest art-nouveau (or Modernista, as we call it here) complex in the world, designed by architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner (who also famously designed el Palau de la Música Catalana, and absolute wonder) between 1905 and 1930. Now it’s open for visits and has not been used as a hospital for a while, but it’s well worth a visit and is a Unesco World Heritage Site.

The buildings are pretty special and the wrought iron features, stained glass windows and gorgeous tiles are to die for. My pictures don’t make it justice, but…

It was cloudy in the morning but it improved

One of the features up close

 

One of the stained glass domes

Gorgeous tiles

In the afternoon we went to visit el Palauet Albéniz (Albéniz Palace, the official residence of the Spanish Royal Family when they visit Barcelona. It’s a small place and if there are big banquets or receptions they use another bigger Palace in Pedralbes, that houses a museum most of the time. To tell you the truth they don’t visit very often). It’s in Montjuich and if you’ve visited the Olympic Stadium, the Olympic museum, el Poble Espanyol or any of the other features in the area, including Plaça Espanya and the magic fountains, you might have gone by it, but other than the garden, it’s not usually possible to visit inside. But it was open to the public. Not only that, but there were music and dances in the gardens, food vans, and entertainment, including actors playing the part of butlers and maids, keeping the people queuing amused by giving instructions as to what to do, introducing each person to everybody, asking where they were coming from…

Here are a few pics:

Dalí painted the fresco in the dome and ceiling at the entry

As you’ve probably noticed I like stained glass and domes…

The banquet hall

The kitchen

The building itself

A view of the garden. I told you it was sunny later.

The hospital is open to visits, but the little palace isn’t usually open although the gardens can be visited some mornings, but do check the information if you’re curious.

©Olga Nunez Miret – Images – 2016

If you are planning on visiting Barcelona.. something to put on your list of places to see… Thanks to Olga for letting me loose in her archives.

A selection of books in Spanish or English by Olga Nunez Miret

One of the recent reviews for Deadly Quotes

DGKaye 5.0 out of 5 stars Good suspense April 15, 2019

This is Book 3 in the captivating Mary Miller series where Mary gets involved with fellow doctor and pathologist Leah Deakin to solve the mysterious new serial killings case of Deadly Quotes.The author Nunez-Miret uses her expert knowledge as a real life psychiatrist to bring to life in her investigative characters and pulls it off perfectly – like watching a real-life crime drama.

We are engrossed in this tale of murder where the suspect is already in jail. This is an intriguing start to the story which progresses with the discoveries of some new dead bodies and only quotes left behind on the corpses’ computers, taken from a book written by a serial killer still in jail. The investigation keeps us glued to wanting to know the facts as much as the investigators do and keeps us wondering if the killer in jail is responsible for these killings or could it possibly be a copycat killer.

I’m not about to give out spoilers here, but if you love a good mystery with well written investigative story, you will love this book as well as the others in this series. These Mary Miller mysteries are all standalone reads, so don’t feel like you have to have read the others, although well worth the reads, to keep up with the mysteries.

Read the reviews and buy the books: https://www.amazon.com/author/olganm

And on Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Olga-Núñez-Miret/e/B009UC58G0

Read more reviews and follow Olga on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6562510.Olga_N_ez_Miret

Audio books – http://authortranslatorolga.com/my-audiobooks/

About Olga Nunez Miret

Olga Núñez Miret is a doctor, a psychiatrist, a student (of American Literature, with a Doctorate and all to prove the point, of Criminology, and of books and people in general), she writes, translates (English-Spanish and vice-versa) and although born in Barcelona, Spain, has lived in the UK for many years. She’s always loved books and is thrilled at the prospect of helping good stories reach more readers all around the world. She publishes a bilingual blog (http://www.authortranslatorolga.com ) where she shares book reviews, advice, talks about books (hers and others) and about things she discovers and enjoys.

Olga has translated her own books into Spanish of course and she has also translated some excellent Spanish books into English and you can find out more here. http://www.authortranslatorolga.com/translationstraducciones/

Follow Olga onSocial Media

Website –http://www.olganm.com/
Blog- http://authortranslatorolga.com/
Facebook –https://www.facebook.com/OlgaNunezMiret
Twitter- https://twitter.com/OlgaNM7

Thanks for dropping in today and I hope you will head over and enjoy other posts in Olga’s archives. Thanks Sally