Barcelona

Looking out at the sea from Montjuic mountain overlooking the cable car ride

Using the zoom to focus in on La Sagrada Familia (Gaudi building) from the Montjuic mountain

Day One:- Took our cheap Spainair flight via Scandanavia Air carrier and spent the first day on Las Ramblas watching all the street performers, gripping my handbag for sheer life, and taking in all the sights..continued down to the beach, to Barceloneta, lighter coloured sand for a change, lots of art structures and pieces on the boardwalk. Had to catch the Metro back as the old feet were screaming. Tomorrow we have a list on an A4 sheet of paper of things to do. We have 2 days to get them all done before we catch a train up to Figures to see the Salavador Dali gallery and continue onto Cadaques a small fishing village for a little rest before flying home.

Day Two:- Our pensiona was beautiful to look at but had no sleep due to the free internet computer just outside our room that was in constant use all night, backed up by the 24 hour reception of constant, filing, hole punching, phone calls, behind that, and the communal area that was in use. The lack of sleep put us in the mood to ask for a portion of refund for our accommodation which was equivalent to about $150/night Aussie dollars, they agreed on giving us back 10 euros, so we checked out, and found a much quieter place around the corner run by a lovely lady with no English but a really cute dog. We´ve put up with unclean, tiny rooms before but being sleepless on an expensive holiday is not on. Last night had absolutely beautiful Italian meal, served by a lad from Naples, even finished with a couple of Limoncello drinks from Positano, nice to have different food for a change. Something I haven´t mentioned before is there is not much multi culturalism in Spain, it wasn´t until we were in Malaga that we saw the first Asian person and a handful of Muslims with the head dress. There are no Thai, Chinese, Indian restaurants around, and it wasn´t until Barcelona that we saw a Kebab shop. Its strange, and weird considering we saw it all in Australia.

Anyway, set off to see some Gaudi buildings at the La Sagrada Familia, Cathedral, La Pedrera, and the Casa Batllo. We were totally Gaudied out, and I personally dislike it, but its different I guess. Finished the afternoon off at the Picasso Musuem. This was so much better than the one in Malaga, a huge amount of work from every stage of his life, and we started to appreciate his art alot more after this.

We are started to feel a little exhausted from the travelling and the buildings are all so beautiful but start to look the same after a while, we are looking forward to getting back out of the city soon.

Day Three: Set off to see some parks today and miscalculated our metro stop slightly and had to attack the park from the back which turned out to be a cliff face, climbed up part of it and ended up in some peoples back yard, to had to go all the way around. The park we visited was called Parc Guell, which was purchased by a Mr Guell who commissioned Gaudi to decorate it. It was lots of strange structures covered in mosaics, was quite different.

Set off to see the church with the large rose window in the world but were closed for siesta. Sometimes the 4 hour siesta can get a little annoying!! Anyway decided to head up the mountain which is called Montjuic, it housed the Olympics and Expo, and you could really spent a day wandering around it. We had planned to take the train straight up the hill to where you could get a cable car to the top to the castle, but misjudged the stop again (not having the best day) and had to walk to the stop (about 1 hour uphill), then realised that the cable car is being pulled down to put a brand new one in..(more cranes), and walked to the top to the castle where we enjoyed an icy cold beer and the view. Richard and Kevin from Madrid I´m sure will appreciate the climb we put it, its quite a way. Barcelona is huge especially viewing from a mountain, it is set in perfect squares .. my photo doesn´t show it, but have bought post cards showing all the squares.

Day Four: Spent last night at our favourite tapas bar, Navarra, said goodbye to our lovely lady and dog at the pensiona, and set off with our 25kg each suitcases to tackle the Metro without lifts. It was the most physically difficult experience I have ever had and Kev had to agree it was the most stressfull. The Metro is way underground, and there is no way you could live here in a wheelchair. We only needed to go one stop, but 3 hugh flights of stairs down across a platform, back up 2 flights across another platform, down 2 more flights, I´m not kidding there were more. Got the train 1 stop, up 2 flights of steps across a platform, up another flight, across and down and out to go back down to the Renfe station and buy a ticket to Figueures..a backpack would have been easier!