Barcelona, an early beginning

Well, I said I was going to start this blog at the start of our BIG adventure. The serious traveller stuff, climbing volcanoes, trekking through the mountains, exploring Mayan ruins and so on, but since leaving the boat we have been seeing some great places that should be written about. After all life is an adventure in itself.

So this blog is about our week in Barcelona, we left the boat a bit earlier than planned so that we could see the city, and i'm really glad we did, it would be a shame to miss such a lively and interesting place.
On our first two days we were very good tourists, we bought tickets on the 'bus touristic' and got up early to pack as much as possible into the day, unfortunately everyone else had the same idea and the line up at Plaza Catalunya was huge!
We ended up walking to the first stop due to impatience, which is when I had my Marilyn Monroe moment while walking over one of the subway vents!
First place we visited was Casa Batllo, which was built by Antoni Gaudi, who was an an architect here during the early 20th century and is responsible for most of Barcelona's most famous building's and has hugely influenced architecture here. My favorite quote about him was said by his architecture professor "Who knows if we have given this diploma to a nut or to a genius. Time will tell." I guess that sums up his style, everything he creates is a piece of art and a glimpse into his imagination.
Casa Batllo, nicknamed Casa dels ossos (House of Bones) is like walking into a dream, there are no straight lines, everything is flowing and morphing into different shapes, Gaudi was influenced by nature and in this house by the ocean in particular. Another thing of importance to him was light, all of his houses have that in common, how to maximize the amount of light coming in, in Casa Batllo he uses stained glass to filter the natural light.
The outside of the building is mosaic tiles and on the roof the chimneys are weird and wonderful shapes and tiled also, there is also a turret and dragon on top as well. Maybe you can guess this was my favorite of all his works.
Next we headed to Casa Mila, better known as La Pedrera, another of Gaudi's buildings. This one is well known for it's large roof top chimneys, again tiled and made into different shapes and styles. Some of the hallways in La Pedrera are like walking through a giant rib cage, another weird and wonderful creation of his.

This was definitely our 'Gaudi' day, as our next stop was Sagrada Familia, which is a massive church, and one of the symbols of Barcelona. It has been under construction for over a hundred years, and it still isn't finished today! This is due to it's immense size and also the amount of detail, from the facade which is packed with carvings to the towers 18 in all, representing in ascending order of height the Twelve Apostles, the four Evangelists, the Virgin Mary and, tallest of all, Jesus Christ. It's impossible to describe it, or even see all of it, all you can do is stand in front of it and look in awe.
To end our first day of sight seeing we went to Park Guell, yes another one of Gaudi's creations. This was created as a housing development, meant to give it's inhabitants lots of outdoor spaces, gardens, benches paths etc, but it flopped. There were only ever two houses built here, one of them being Gaudi's own house. Since then it has been converted into a public park, full of mosaic benches and winding paths and even a dragon water fountain.

One of my favorite things to do in Barcelona is walking, and people watching. Almost every night we headed to Las Ramblas, which was only a couple of streets away from our hostel. This is where it all happens, stalls with flowers, animals and papers and street performers in between, and lots and lots of people. On the weekends it gets even busier and has people selling paintings and crafts.
Another favorite thing to do here is eating and drinking! The food is fantastic, paella to die for and lots of hole in the wall tapas bars. Pimentos were the best find, peppers, usually stuffed with something, and pimentos padres, roasted green peppers sometimes with a bite, and washed down with a big jug of sangria. What could be better?

Day two was another 'bus touristic' day, although I knew there was no way I could listen to another audio guide or visit another museum!
First stop was Placa d'Espanya, which is the site for a huge and very impressive palace. At night the fountains are turned on and there is a lights show which would be pretty cool but we missed all that. Not to worry, we got the beach volleyball competition instead!
The palace is now the art museum, and really we should have gone in and seen it, but instead we wandered around the expansive grounds of Montguic. We discovered a great botanical garden, and then ended up at the Joan Miro Foundation. I had studied one of his works at school, and thought maybe I was a bit of a fan, but actually a lot of his work is very abstract, and so hard to appreciate. The funniest thing was a nursery group of about 20 four year olds! I wonder if they got it better than we did?
I know I keep saying I'm sick of museums but there was one exhibition I was dying to see, the Murder exhibition at the Natural Science Museum. We got dropped of at Parc de la Ciutadella, and then went and solved a murder! The scenario goes the museum curator has been murdered and you have 6 suspects and using forensic evidence you have to decide who dunnit. Loved it!

The rest of our time in Barcelona was much more relaxed, we wandered the endless winding alley ways of the Barri Gotic for hours, and never seemed to see the same street twice. We somehow missed the Santa Maria del Mar Cathedral (which is pretty huge) and stumbled across it on one of our walks. Very beautiful gothic style architecture, with a great roof top view.We went to the Mercat de la Boquería, a huge market, packed with yummy food stalls and little tapas bars, fresh fruit, meat, fish, bread. Anything you could want.
One night we went to a Flamenco show in Poble Espanyol. The show was fantastic, and we were able to wander around afterwards. Poble Espanyol is a replica village created in 1929 to show traditional spanish architecture at the worlds fair, and is full of craft shops.

Everything else is a blur or eating, drinking and enjoying ourselves in what is now one of my favorite cities in the world, Barcelona.

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