Barcelona-Wow, what a city!

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Wow! How did I miss this city the first time I came to Spain. Bareclona is great. Its a big city, but it has tons of character, its right on the beach, and it has tons of cultural stuff to do. I love it! My parents and I arrived in Sunday afternoon. We were so tired but decided to venture out to see some of the sights anyway. First we headed out for a yummy Spanish meal (food is excellent here) and then we headed down to the ocean.

The beach is amazing. It is already really warm here so there were a ton of people sunbathing. Then we caught a chair lift that goes across the bay to Monjuic, which is a small mountain on the ocean where the headquarters for the Olympics was located. After the ride we headed down to the main walking strand "La Rambla" and stopped for some tapas and people watching.

Today was our first big day of sightseeing. We started off by visiting Barcelona´s cathedral. We were pleasantly surprised when we walked in th entrance and found ourselves in a tropical graden complete with geese. The inside was just as pretty. Then we decided headed to Plaza Catalunya to pick up the hop on hop off tourist bus. Our first sight was Gaudi´s Casa Batllo. It is a very unique building, almost looking a bit like a kid´s play house, placed in the middle of a busy shopping and business street. Then we walked three blocks down to another Gaudi building, La Pedrera. Not quite as odd as the first Gaudi building, it it still used as an office building today.

Afterwards we got off the bus at Plaza de Espana and walked to the city´s main museum. This places is not just any museum. It is a huge palace like building perched on the top of a hill. It´s quite awesome to look at. We didn´t go in as we are planning to go to three other museums, but we did head to the back side to find the 1992 Olympics headquarters. It was so cool to see where all the games had occured. We were actually able to walk in and see the swimming pools where all the competitions happened and the stadium where the track events and soccer games occured. Next week the "Copa del Rey" soccer finals will be held there.

Very tired, and eager for some food, we stopped off at an Irish pub for some chicken sandwiches. Then we took a brief rest at the hotel and headed to our last and most amazing sight of the day, La Sagrada Familia. We arrived outside the church and were completely in awe. La Sagrda Familia was started by Gaudi 40 years before he died (he passed away in 1926) and is still being built today. He was hired by the church to build it and it became his life´s passion. He would change the plans weekly paying attention to every little detail. The level of detail is amazing and the strange design is very unique. It sort of looks like a drip sand castle. Anyway, take a look at some of the photos and judge for yourself.

Now, it is off to bed and on for another day of sighseeing tomorrow 😊

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