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Published: March 6th 2010
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A Miró on La Rambla
Probably the only work of Miró you are permitted to step on A weekend of walking and running the streets of Barcelona
Last year we went to Berlin and ran the annual Berlin Half Marathon. We enjoyed that very much so this year we decided to go abroad again to run a race. We looked around on Internet for races and found a half marathon in Barcelona that suited us perfectly.
We arrived in Barcelona on Friday afternoon. We took the airport bus to the city centre and walked to the youth hostel we were booked into.
All we did on Friday evening was to visit a local supermarket and buy supper for the evening and breakfast for Saturday morning.
On Saturday we first went to get our bib numbers for the race on Sunday. After that we walked around in central Barcelona for the rest of the day.
We have both been to Barcelona before so we didn’t have the need to see every single tourist attraction. That’s part of the reason we decided to go to Barcelona in the first place. We primarily wanted to relax on this trip, not see a lot of sites. Maybe it sounds like a contradiction that we wanted to relax
It is a genuine Miró
Yes it is a genuine Miró. It's even signed and run a half marathon. Well, to us it actually isn’t. Anyone who reads this and exercise on a regular basis probably knows how it can be so. To those of you who don’t exercise all we can say is, try it you might like it.
We started our "walking in central Barcelona" by walking down one of the most famous streets in the world, La Rambla. La Rambla attracts many tourists and as a consequence from this the street today is lined with plenty of restaurants and many shops geared towards tourists. Shops selling t-shirts with the text “My brother went to Barcelona and all he got me was this stinking t-shirt” is of very limited interest to us but there are other things too on La Rambla, things that we like.
About half way down La Rambla there is a large market. Just walking around this market and look at all the foodstuff that’s on sale there is a treat for both the eyes and the soul. We especially liked the fruit juices they had. You can get addicted to fruit juice. We have terrible withdrawal symptoms nowadays.
In the middle of La Rambla there
Placa Reial
Placa Reial is a square next to La Rambla. is a mosaic created by the artist Joan Miró. It is probably the only work of Miró that you are permitted to step on!
Next to La Rambla is a district called El Gòtic or Barri Gòthic. The oldest houses in El Gòtic dates back to the Middle Ages. El Gòtic is much older than other districts in Barcelona and also differs a lot from the rest of the city in character. The streets in El Gòtic are dark and narrow and several houses have gothic features such as gargoyles.
Ake visited Barcelona in 2001 and what he remembers from El Gòtic back then was that the district felt seedy and a bit unsafe. Today it doesn’t feel seedy. It actually feels a bit trendy.
One of the highlights of El Gòtic usually is the Cathedral of Santa Eulalia. It was not quite a highlight when we where there though because they were doing some major renovations to it. Cranes and scaffolding can really kill a good tourist site.
Another major attraction of Barcelona that we found to be covered with tower cranes and scaffolding was Sagrada Familia. This we expected though because the construction of
El Gòtic
The oldest houses in Barri Gòthic dates back to the Middle Ages. Many houses have gothic features such as gargoyles Sagrada Familia is not finished yet. It was started in late 19th century by the architect and artist Antoni Gaudí. Today, more than 100 years later, construction is still going on and is expected to last for at least one decade more.
Antoni Gaudí created many interesting buildings in Barcelona. When we walked around on Saturday we saw two more of his creations - Casa Milá and Casa Batllo. The style Gaudí used is known as modernist. Gaudí was by far the most famous of the modernist artists but not the only one. There are many houses in Barcelona created by other architects working in the same style. We saw one of these houses, Casa Amatller.
In the hours when we walked around Barcelona city centre we also saw a few other things such as Cascada, a large fountain in Parc de la Ciutadella, and the Arc de Triomf. Both the start and the finish of the Barcelona Half Marathon are just next to the Arc de Triomf. So when we walked by on Saturday we had a chance to see where we were going Sunday morning. We also saw the podium where the best runners in the
El Gòtic
The streets in Barri Gothic are dark and narrow race were going to receive their medals. We decided to fool around a little bit with the podium and take some photos of ourselves there.
On Sunday we went up early to have breakfast. The race started already at nine o’clock in the morning and since we don’t want to run on a full stomach we went up already at 6.30 AM.
After breakfast we went down to the starting point of the race and made ourselves ready. We had pretty good weather during the race. It was a bit cold this morning so we decided to have warm clothes on when we ran. Before the race it actually snowed a little bit. But as soon as the race started we got warm again and we could enjoy ourselves by running the streets of Barcelona.
We were both very happy with our performances this day. For Ake it took 1 hour and 55 minutes to finish the 21 km long race, which is his third best time ever. Emma beat Ake by finishing the race in only 1 hour and 51 minutes. That did not come as a surprise to neither Ake nor Emma. Emma is planning
Roman Aqueduct
This is a small surviving section of a Roman Aqueduct on attending a full marathon in Stockholm in June this year and is because of that exercising much harder and more regularly that Ake.
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Svante
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Hej Åke
Hej Åke. Jasså har du varit ute och sprungit nu igen. Det är väl tur att du inte är där just nu. Det lär finnas mycket mer snö där du. Som vanligt så tittar jag mest på bilderna och blir en smula avundsjuk. Jag skulle bra gärna vilja resa en hel del också för att fotografera men inte springa. Vi hörs. Svante