Barcelona Trip - Valencia (April 12th)

The aquarium entry

Beautiful forms under a cherry blossom

Underground viewing of Aquarium

All glass tunnels with a view

We had a free day before we heading back to Barcelona so Porcelanosa brought us to the nearby city Valencia. It's actually the third biggest city in Spain and it wasn't always the beautiful city it is now. The government infused a lot of money into this city and development really helped it to take off. We spent the day at the Aquarium within the City of Arts and Sciences, a large scale urban recreation complex designed by famed architect Santiago Calatrava. This development took 2 years and is a key driver in the revitalization of the area. There is a huge controversy because the original budget of $300 million, spiraled to a final price tag of $1.2 billion (euro). Santiago's fees were 12.5% so I guess not all Architect's have to be starving artists. But if you leave behind all that controversy, the whole development is truly magnificent. It includes a large world class aquarium, a science museum, planetarium, opera house, lots of outdoor courtyard space, and a very beautiful cable suspension bridge.

Cable suspension bridge

City of Arts and Sciences

Palace of the arts, now used for tennis matches

Looking back at the bridge

The team by the water

We had a lot of fun in the aquarium just walking around and being amazed by nature again. Its humbling that no matter how great our manmade structures are, nothing could ever compares to the wonders of nature. I learned so much from the aquarium that I felt like a 6 year old again. I learnt for the first time that a tiger shark will have 3 or 4 babies. But the last two babies will be eaten by the first two when they're inside of the mothers womb. This is their way of feeding their unborn. Truly amazing in a weird and wonderful way.

Another big lunch with the group

3 types of Paella

After the aquarium and walking around, admiring the other buildings within the recreation complex, we went for yet another huge lunch of meat and Paella. These Porcelanosa hosts really know how to treat you right.

The main square of Valencia

The Cathedral in the main square

Looking up at the entry arch

Looking up at the door

Barcelona Trip - Castellon (Factory and showroom tours) (April 9 - 11th)

This trip started off as an invitation from Fontile to visit the Porcelanosa showroom in Spain. I later decided to extend another week to the trip so that my wife, Janey and daughter, Katelyn can come and join me in Barcelona. The trip started off with a group of local interior designers meeting at the YVR airport for a late night flight. Robert and Jessica from Fontile were the fearless leaders of the pack and we kicked it off by having dinner at the Milestones restaurant where all 13 of us ordered salads. I guess this shouldn't come as a surprise since we are in Vancouver, or at least for the time being.

The group of designers on the tour

After a long travel day consisting of two flights and a 4 hour bus ride, we made it to Castellon, a small town, but head quarters of the Porcelanosa Group. I learnt that Porcelanosa started with humble beginnings as an orchard of all things. Then for some reason, they decided to give up the fruits and went for tiles instead. The small tile store that started more than 40 years ago has now grown into a group of companies totaling $1 billion (euro) in revenue. They have 8 brands which manufacture floor and wall tiles, kitchen cabinets, plumbing fixtures, and building system components to support their products. It's an amazing story to hear that the three partners (two brothers and another family) were able to grow to such success in a relatively short time. I learnt that the owners are still very much involved with the company and have an open door policy to any staff that wants to talk to them. In fact, they still operate out of the original, modest little red roofed building that was their original tile store. It's quite an interesting site to see this little building surrounded by huge, state of the art factories much larger than itself. It's a great testament to their humble beginnings and success. My interpretation of owners keeping the small building is that they don't forget where they came from. Currently, Porcelanosa Group employs 3000 people in this head quarter town and has showrooms worldwide.

Automated forklift, like a industrial sized Roomba

The first three days was spent touring the 8 factories/showrooms of Porcelanosa. All the factories were amazing to see. They were gigantic in size and can easily fit a couple of football fields in each one of them. The facilities are state of the art with fully automated production lines. There really isn't many factory workers because of the high tech machinery. Those that were there were people to control the quality and also R&D workers. The factory was so high-tech that they had their own automated forklifts which knows exactly where to go any any given time. They were even smart enough to stop if it senses someone in front of them, almost like your little Roomba vacumn but on a much bigger scale. The main Pocelanosa factory was built in 2001 and even back then, they had an eye towards energy efficiency. The mega-kilns where they fired the tiles produced the most excessive heat. So they designed the system to take the wasted heat from the kiln and converted it into extra energy for the rest of the building. In fact, this is a net positive building because they produce more than enough heat needed, so they actually re-sale back the excess to the city. Another interesting note is that because of the large facilities, each employee is assigned their personal bicycle to get around within the building, complete with personalized name plates. It's great efficiency for both the staff and the building.

Staff on bicycles for energy efficiency

Porelanosa's stocking center capable of 50,000 million tiles!

Their product showrooms were amazing! The spanish (and europeans in general) are so advanced in their design and craftsmanship that it was a lot of fun to look at. Some of the tile grout joints I saw were only a 1/16"! This is coming from North America where we typically only see 1/8" as the smallest. It blows my mind the precision they can achieve. The designs and presentations were so well executed, I only wished that we had such showroom resources in Vancouver. I truly felt like a kid on a shopping spree in my favourite toy store.

The Porcelanosa chefs showing their Paella creation

Not only were the showrooms and factories top notch, the Porcelanosa hosts were equally phenomenal. In fact, I think their head office looks for hosting skills as a hiring requirement. Every showroom we went to had a cafe where there is a full menu of coffee and alcohol beverages. In the whole factory complex, there were two full service restaurants dedicated to servicing guests only.

Here's a sample of our daily routine during the tour days:

1) Arrive at 1st showroom/factory

2) Morning coffee in the cafe

3) Tour and be wowed

4) Coffee break

5) Tour 2nd showroom and be wowed

6) Long lunches (less the siesta)

7) Coffee break & tour the 3rd showroom

8) Free time before dinner

9) 2 hour dinners

10) Sleep with absolutely full stomaches.

11) Repeat all of the above on the next day.

Iberico ham hanging at the restaurant

The typical meals consisted of at least 4 courses, a lot of meat and plenty of wine. The famous meat here is Iberico Jamon (Ham) which we had in every meal since we've been here. You can see it as a smoked pork leg that hangs at every restaurant or market. Its kind of ironic that this trip started out with all of us ordering salads at YVR. Yes, we designers could be a bit wishy-washy sometimes, but we didn't do the ordering, I swear!

Me and Jamon

From talking to our hosts, we learnt that the typical work day in Spain is quite long. People typically don't get off work until about 8pm and that explains why our dinners have typically been at 8:30 or 9:00 in the evening. By the time dinner is done, we usually don't get back to the hotel until about midnight. The locals still start their workday around 8 or 9am in the morning but I think their afternoon lunch breaks are longer than what we're used to in North America.

Dubai Cruise - Seoul Layover (Feb 7th - 9th)

Seoul was a quick layover for me. It was on my routing so I figured I minus well check it out. I was flying from Hong Kong which was 18 degrees to Seoul which is currently -17 degrees. I definitely wasn't prepared for this weather so I guess the first stop is to get some gloves and scarf in the morning.

Street stall on wheels...

....looked real yummy.

Had to try it.

It hit the spot!

This is my second visit to Seoul. The first time was about 12 years ago and to be honest, I didn't remember much of it. The things that stayed in my memory bank was that people were quite pushy and did not speak much english. My impression during this trip was better. People still didn't speak much english but definitely weren't pushy and were not rude. One thing that I noticed this trip and the last was that Seoul is very technologically advanced. 12 years ago, I noticed that they had Samsung flat panel monitors everywhere in the subway displaying their advertisements. This was when North America was just starting to go away from CRT's. This trip, they had the monitors even bigger and thinner. But what impressed me is that Seoul now has WiFi throughout the city; on the streets, in the subways, and in the buildings. All you need to do is buy a prepaid card like you would for a cell phone package and you have the convenience of the internet at your finger tips. Everyone was using a Samsung smartphone; the Note 2 was the most common, then the Galaxy S3. I saw some iPhones but that's about it for phones. You can tell that Samsung dominates the city. Samsung ads were all over and you see nothing but. In Korea, Samsung is a conglomerate that does much more than electronics; they have life insurance, heavy industries, construction and even operated a theme park. I wanted to go to the Samsung D'Light which was like a Samsung Electronics superstore but it was closed.

I got to Gangnam but didn't see Psy around anywhere.

Individualized stores of the Bukchon shopping area

A street stall that looked really good. 

Selling deep fried rice cakes

So I spent my one and half day layover looking for culture, history, and design. I visited the Bukchon Hanok area where I did a walking tour of heritage courtyard houses. These houses originally belonged to aristocrats and are pretty much the last remaining ones in Seoul. Over the years they have been demolished for new development and it was not until 1977 that these houses were designated as Local Cultural Asset and were slowly restored. Nearby this area were markets selling Korean antiques and novelties. They were small pedestrian only streets with quaint little shops all with individualized architecture. It made for a great walk and exploration. I also saw lots of little food stands along the way and couldn't resist trying the local flavours. The stall I stopped at in the Bukchon area was selling deep fried donut style cakes with fillings inside. I really didn't know what it was nor did they know how to explain it to me. It looked good, especially in this freezing cold weather, and I was adventurous. It turned out to be quite yummy. The dough was extra chewy and the filling was slightly sweet. That kept me warm for a bit then I continued on. Eventually, I ended up trying three different stalls and ended up skipping a proper lunch that day.

Looking into one of the Honok homes

The interior courtyard, fairly typical of these homes

Cold but happy in the Bukchon Hanok area

Evidence that it was cold

Looking down the street. Can you see the modern buildings beyond?

Next stop was the Myeongdong District, a young shopping area which is also the cosmetic capital of Seoul and maybe even the world. Korea had a lot of cosmetic brands and they all had their individual stores here. I was assigned a mission from my wife to hunt down a specific BB cream for her. So with a picture of the box, a smart phone, and a GPS, I proceeded to this area jam packed with young adults hanging out on a Saturday afternoon. I must have visited 10 different stores all of which didn't carry this specific brand nor could they tell me where to find it. So after all that walking without any luck, I aborted my mission and took interests in another street stall. This one was manned by a husband and wife team which were selling boiled snails, some sort of intestine with soup, dumplings and spicy rice cakes. I opted for the rice cakes cause I remember having them before at a Korean restaurant back home and the was tantalizing over how good the spice would taste in this cold day. On the way back, I headed over to the Agpujeong District where high end retail stores were clustered. It was recognized as the Redeo Drive of Seoul. My objective was to check out specific stores which I had researched to have nice interior designs. Unfortunately, by the time I got there, it was dark and many were closing. I guess I will have to resort to the internet images.

A small restaurant in Bukchon that got my attention. Notice the rubber chicken?

He was selling grilled chicken skewers

It was apparently quite famous and decidly very yummy!

The street stall I stopped at in Myeongdong

This was a great sight on a cold winter's day

The next day, I really only had half a days time because of my flight time. I chose to spend the time walking around Gwanghwamun Gate. This was one of the few historic city gates of Seoul. I didn't expect much initially, but when I got here, I realized that Gwanghwamun was actually the main gate for Gyeongbokgung Palace. This palace complex is about the same size of Disneyland and was originally built in 1395, three years after the Joseon Dynasty was founded. I took lots of pictures and spent an hour walking around the palace grounds. I learned that this complex was destroyed by fire during the 1592 Japanese invasion. It stood derelict for 276 years until it was rebuilt in 1867. In 1915, during the Japanese occupation, all but 10 buildings were demolished since it was the symbol of Korean sovereignty. I'm not clear on the history, but I presumed that the Japanese coveted Korea and kept on attacking them within a span of 300 years. The current palace is an effort of restorations that took place in 1990 and was completed in 2010.

Gwanghwamun Gate 

Me in front of the gate

A guard at the gate.

A few more guards at the gate.

Seoul turned out to be very interesting. It's a high tech city where the people are very fashionable and presentable. I was walking around the streets in -17 degree weather, bundled in layers and layers of clothes but I can see the Korean women wearing short skirts. They might have been cold inside, but they looked good on the outside. In fact, Korea is rumored to be the plastic surgery capital of the world in terms of how much gets done. It's very common for people to have multiple plastic surgeries to improve their face. I heard that moms would give their daughter a plastic surgery as a gift when they are 18. When I was walking around, I did see many advertisement of plastic surgeries showing before and after shots. I also saw many plastic surgery clinics so I guess these operations may be as common to them as north americans going to the diet clinics.

Korean drum with Gyeongbokgung in the background

Writeup on the history of Gyeongbokgung. Can you read it?

The changing of the guards

Further inside the palace grounds

Looking up from under the incense urn

Seoul also offered a lot of history and culture. One thing that I am dying to find out is the original roots of the Korean people. I suspect there is some correlation to the chinese, because there are many similarities. Koreans and Chinese share the same new year and I've noticed some words in Korean mean and almost sound the same as they do in Chinese. The current day written characters are different but the signs in the historic palaces and gates use chinese characters so maybe it was an evolution from the same tribe? If anyone knows, please enlighten me.

The wonders of the Coast Mountains from the air

This trip felt like a long time for me. I started to miss home and work about 12 days into the trip. It was a clear winter's day as I was flying back to Vancouver. I could see the majestic coast mountain range and that familiar comfort of seeing Vancouver from the air made me smile. 

I'm home.