I spent the weekend in Barcelona. I still love the fact that I can just go overseas so easily at relatively last minute (only booked tickets a few weeks ago), relatively low cost and only for a few days. It is just something that you can't do from Australia!! Anyway I left work early on Friday and went straight to Gatwick. The EasyJet flight was running on time and I arrived into Barcelona airport at around 10pm. Managed to get the Aerobus and then the Metro to my hostel very easily. I was quite surprised as even though I have been [View Full Entry]

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Today we finally got some of that legendary Spanish summer heat. We decided to take a trip to Parc Guell, a wooded and hilly 30 acre park in the north of Barcelona (that was intended to be a gated community a century ago). The Parc features a number of structures designed by Antonio Gaudi. Antonio Gaudi was a engineer, architect & artist who lived in Barcelona in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and whose work is part of the "Catalan Art Nouveau" style. The buildings he designed are very unconventional, and feature curved (rather than straight) lines, bright colors, [View Full Entry]

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Sunday 13 July 2008 The film of the night was Ghost Rider, which could've been an alright film, but the quality wasn't great, so it was a bit of a strain to watch. I didn't really get the ending though - why couldn't he have just taken back his ghost riding power?? Hmmmm.... Monday 14 July 2008 We watched All The King's Men, with Sean Penn playing a hick - he was soooooo hard to understand! Again I fell asleep halfway through. Tuesday 15 July 2008 My evening class students asked when the last lesson was - 18th December. They said [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday we went to Camp Nou, home of FC Barcelona, one of the world's biggest and most popular football clubs. It was packed with visitors from all over the world. (And Bruce Springsteen fans hovered outside the grounds, awaiting a concert by Springsteen that evening.) Barcelona is the club for which Ronaldinho played until a few days ago. The stadium seats almost 100,000 people, and they offer a nice self-guided tour with audio guide. There is also an excellent museum describing the history of the club, which (we hadn't known) is closely tied to the Catalonia independence/autonomy movement. In both the [View Full Entry]

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We did a lot of walking around our first couple of days here in Barcelona, almost all of it intentional. Our very nice apartment is located not too far from the Placa de Catalunya, a large, central square that divides old and new Barcelona. We took a walk on Las Ramblas, which runs south toward the harbor. It used to be a medieval drainage ditch along the outside of the walls of the old town (Barri Gotic), but is now a pedestrian friendly (crowded) area with outdoor bird markets and flower sellers, and shops with outrageously expensive souvenirs. We also saw [View Full Entry]

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This year in Spain we stayed in Barcelona and there was a chocolate muesem. They had really sweet chocolate sculptures like horses pulling carriages and the FC Barcelona logo. We got to see people make the sculptures. There was also a Barcelona stadium made out of chocolate. By mich@el $pence [View Full Entry]

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I suppose there are worse places to be stuck! More down to lazyness than bad luck, We didn't book our tickets to Granada in advance so have had stay in a hostel for the night. Anyway, on the bright side it's a comfy night sleeping on a bed! 12 hours by train to Barcelona, with stops along the way, was never going to be plesant. Add an 90 year old geriatric with a foul temper and things got a whole lot worse! Kathryn's seat was next to the crusty old timer but luckily managed to swap with a kind senor. [View Full Entry]

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Barcelona is a very modern city with a lot of Gaudi architecture, which i hated. On every second house you have an egg or a fruit or something weird. Sagrada Familia is very impressing from far away, as long as you don't see the details it looks impressing because of it's size, but once i came near my first thought was : this must be a joke. It looks like from a comic that has something to do with starwars and fancy fruits, because on the summits of the towers there were lemons and melons and berries and whatever. Of course [View Full Entry]

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Todos los que me conocéis en profundidad lo estabáis esperando, así que ahí va mi comentario escatológico. El otro día fui a la farmacia de Rocío a por mi botiquín particular para el viaje y después de dejarme 70 Eurazos (con descuento), me he dado cuenta que soy un poco más virgo prudens de lo que pensaba y no tan libra. Total, que me he surtido de paracetamol, antibiótico, antimosquitos (además de la mosquitera portátil, 2 botes de Relec, afterbite, pulseras ahuyentadoras y las pastillas de la malaria), gasas, pastillas para migraña, antihistamínicos,... Pero con lo que realmente alucinó Rocío fue [View Full Entry]

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After having gotten back from Ramon's very late this morning, I woke up at around 1430. I was going to try and get to the school today but I ended up going the wrong way down the street which took me to Las Ramblas so I continued down it heading towards the biggest and main port near Barceloneta, Port Vell, where I ended up last night with Ramon. I sat for a while reading a guide book and planning what to see before I went home. There is a big shopping centre called Maremagnum, and I had a little look inside. [View Full Entry]

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