Barcelona

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We decided to go to Barcelona for a few days as it was only a few hours away by train. I was hoping to buy quite a bit in Barcelona as it was apparently cheap and there aren’t that much places to shop where we are staying down south of France. On the train trip to Barcelona we got told we didn’t need to get seat numbers although we soon found out everyone else that hoped on had seat numbers so we were hoping we didn’t have to move to other seats. When we got to the train station in Barcelona we had to wait two hours at the train station to get seat numbers for our train trip back.

Once we had booked our seat numbers we took a taxi to our apartment. It took a while to find it because we were looking for a building with a reception to it but all it was was a door. So we rang the phone number that was on the booking and she said the door was unlooked and our apartment was on the first floor. We got to the first floor and stood there waiting for a while as there was only one door there. It ended up being another two floors up. The cleaner was still cleaning the apartment so we went and had a drink whilst she was finishing. We weren’t to sure on the apartment as all the apartments were private apartments and the place didn’t look to nice. We decided as long as it had Wi-Fi we would stay as that was the only reason for booking the place.

We decided to stay at the apartment so we paid the lady, put our bags down then went to find a sightseeing bus that went around Barcelona. It was a struggle trying to find a bus because protest were going on about un-employment there were tens of thousands of people protesting on the streets. We finally found the bus we wanted and hoped on. The bus went around most sights. We saw the Olympic village from when the Olympics were last in Barcelona and we even saw the beach. We had planed to have tea by the beach but the bus had to do a big detour because of the protests and closed roads so we went able to get off at the beach. Instead we had tapas which is the type of food Spain is mostly known for. Tapas are separate foods on their own plate so you can just order what you want.

The rest of our time in Barcelona was spent shopping. The prices weren’t as cheap as I had thought because Spain uses Euros as well so it wouldn’t be any different to France in most shops. Although there were a few shops that were still cheap because they weren’t a chain shop. There were a lot of shoe shops in Barcelona and quite a few were pretty cheap which was good. There were heaps of shops to choose from as we were staying on one of the main streets in Barcelona – La Rambla. We saw a lot of the same shop in one area. They were basically just down the road from each other which could either be good or a bit of a pain.

The most famous sight in Barcelona is probably the Sagrada Familia church which was designed by the popular Spanish architect Gaudi. Amazingly enough Gaudi never got to see it finished. It still isn’t finished today after starting it over one-hundred years ago. We went and had a look at the incredibly detailed church but never went inside as the queues were too long although we did walk around the outside of it.

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