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Published: January 7th 2010
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Hola - buenas tardes!
Well yesterday we woke up to a beautiful day - blue skies and sunshine and freezing - on a Public Holiday so decided to take a leisurely stroll down the famous La Rambla - which is about 10 minutes away from us and have a quiet and easy day. La Rambla is an exciting place to be and a hive of activity all the time but yesterday we saw some of the buskers - how fantastic are they?!! Wow they really are something else - take a close look at the fruit staff picture.... they do expect payment when you take photos of them and some turned away if you didn't pay so you couldn't take the photo.
La Rambla is is Barcelona's centrepiece - about 1km long, thriving pedestrian thoroughfare which cuts a swathe through the old town from Place de Catalunya to the Mediterranean sea. Lots of small interesting shops and market stalls - buskers and apparently a great place for the pickpockets.....!
We went off to a side street and found a wax museum so decided to go in and have a look - thinking that it wouldn't be much but
it was great and over 3 floors or 2 and a mezzanine - was spooked when one moved towards us in the semi dark but was quite relieved to find it was one of the security guards!!
From there we wandered on down past Christopher Columbus statue on a column to Port Vell and headed to a seafood restaurant overlooking the marina for lunch. It was quite warm in the restaurant - as it always is indoors but boy you have to really rug up when leaving as it is so cold.... brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
As we left we noted that a group of Sudanese (?) had set up 'ground markets' - that is goods on sheets on the ground with ties at each corner of the sheet - we soon discovered the reason for this - but had been coveting one of the Prada bags they had for sale but didn't buy it - great copies though! However, next thing we saw was all the bag sellers quickly gather up their sheets and run like hell - the police had swooped in to get rid of them from a public area - it was amazing how it all happened
- never seen anything like it.
We wandered on for about 10 minutes or so around the gothic area and saw another lot of Sudanese running in all directions and a whole lot of them went to the underground opposite us, with several motorbike police chasing after them - then along came heaps more police cars and vans - 13 in all and 4 motorbikes - it was pandemonium there with armed police heading down to the underground. After about 10 minutes or so several of the police brought up the sheet bundles and put them in the boots of the police cars - apparently the designer bags had been stolen and were real - how bad is that - I could've had a real Prada bag or two - for a steal!! Was planning on getting one for a friend for her birthday... told her about it in an email but no response.... hmmmm wonder why...
Later on we went out for a bite to eat after our exciting day and found a reasonable restaurant not far away and they had lamb on the menu!!! You all know I love my lamb.... now don't you?! In we
went and ordered a beer and Brandy and Pepsi and looked at the menu and of course ordered the lamb.... language is not easy here but one waiter understood a little english..... we thought.... anyway out came dinner - we weren't sure what to make of it but tasted like chicken and looked nothing like lamb... so in the end we asked the guy who understood English and he said no not pollo (chicken) it is rabbit!!!!!!
After our quiet day we went home - had a bath and conked out.
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vicki
non-member comment
hey
Sounds fab so far, bugger about the bag[s] and the buskers wonderful!!!