Friday, May 15th- Barcelona, Spain

First of all, Barcelona is in the Catalonian region of Spain and the people are fiercely proud of this heritage and will call themselves Catalonian before they will call themselves Spaniards. They think the bull fighting popular in other regions is barbaric, they pride themselves on being creative and modern and civilized and associate themselves more like northern Europeans, just some interesting thoughts on the people. Other than the pickpockets on the train, we found the people we met to be absolutely delightful and helpful.


Another thing they are very proud of is their style and architecture called Modernisme, started by the famous Antoni Gaudi. His architectural mark is all over the city, when I saw pictures of some of his work before we left, I have to admit I was very skeptical. While his style is still not my favorite, I respect and admire his unique vision and creativity. I only say this, because there are a few pics of his most famous works including but not limited to: La Sagrada Famila, Park Guell, Casa Battlo, and La Pedrera (aka Casa Mila). This is Casa Battlo, designed as a residence, interesting no?




When we arrived in Barcelona, we were tired from a long day of traveling but still wanted to jump right in so we decided to buy tickets for the Barcelona City Tour, which is a double decker bus that travels all over the city and stops near many of the highlight attractions, you can hop on or hop off wherever and catch the next bus. We figured this would be a good way to get a feel for the city and take in many of the sights while still being able to sit and relax on the top deck. It was pretty fantastic. And travel tip for anyone going to Europe, we noticed that most of the major cities offer services like this (and could potentially be great ways to take in the sights, particularly with limited time, like our port days off ship). Here are some of the fantastic sights we were able to take in from the comfort of our bus.



One thing that struck me about the city (and later all of Europe) is how amazing and historic most of the streets and buildings really are, even the nondescript unasuming building in the historic districts are so beautiful. I absolutely loved the neighborhoods with historic buildings towering over narrow streets with ornate rod iron balconies and beautifully aged wooden shutters. And how, you would turn a simple corner to find another building more beautiful than the next that has been there for hundreds of years, and tucked into these narrow streets are shops, homes, hotels, cafes, even churches all tightly packed side by side. I loved to watch the changing architecture in every street and city that we traveled, absolutely amazingly beautiful. So when you see lot's of pictures of random old buildings with beautiful balconies and details, you'll know why ;)







Unfortunately, the way this is working, it's making it difficult to label and describe specific pictures but I'll work on making that better. The odd rounded shaped building is called Torre Agbar but we had our own nicknames for it, and interestingly enough it houses their water dept... and lights up at night but we never did see it all lit up. The wavy metal and statue are the Monument Colon (monument to Christopher Colombus), and Port Vell area, the beach is of course the Mediterranean close to the Barcelona Olympic Village from the 1992 Olympics. And just some other beautiful buildings and neighborhoods.