Buzzing Around The World With Fellette & Doug

Barcelona, Spain...

Another beautiful day coming up as we pulled in Barcelona, an enormous port, but surprisingly clean. There was an early morning haze but we could make out some of the landmarks that this city is famous for.

We were on our own today, Jim and Gail were with friends for the day. We took the shuttle in to the foot of the Ramblas, the strolling street in Barcelona. It goes from the Christopher Columbus Monument

at a right angle to the waterfront. Our objective was at least to see the Cathedral Sagrada Famililia [Sacred Family]. It was started in 1882 and is today still under construction, not renovated, they are literally still building it. Antoni Gaudi was appointed project director on it after one year of construction and put his distinctive mask on it. he spawned the term Gaudy, meaning, in my humble opinion, overadorned. You be the judge. He certainly influenced a lot of the architecture in Barcelona.






We spent over two hours there, taking in the short video and taking the lift up in one of the spires, walking up the next 80 stairs to prove we are still fit.The views were awesome and after a bit we felt more at ease in the lofty perch. Surprisingly some of the ornamentaion work is amazingly crude. On the spires, there are broken beverage bottles set into the concrete to form what from below would be colour variation in the concrete. This truely is a construction site as opposed to a church, temple, or cathedral or whatever they call it.






The ship came in at 10:00 so it was time for lunch by the time we had finished the cathedral. We found a quaintsy little restaurant where we had an enjoyable Tapas lunch before getting on the Hop-on-Hop-off bus. This is Fellette's favourite way to see a city. We hopped off to see the Royal Palace, that wasn't that impressive and switched busses to take a run outside of the downtown area. The Football Stadium is a big attraction, there is a Football Culture in some countries and this is one of them.






Barcelona is a lovely city, very clean, orderly and vibrant, there was none of the apprehension regarding pickpockets although one never puts their guard down. While travelling in Europe in 1960 Barcelona was my favourite city. Pity we didn't get more of a chance to appreciate and explore it. Next time maybe.

The street vendors were selling palm fronds of all description for tomorrow would be palm Sunday.

Before we knew it, it was time to head back but first a trip to a Farmacia for some cold medication, [Doug has it again], and a too brief stroll down the Ramblas. A quick bite in the Lido upstairs restaurant and off to bed, early. No really big adventures today, just a great day with the two of us.

posted by Doug and Fellette @ 11:22 AM