Blogs from Catalonia, Spain, Europe - page 13

More pictures. Noticed that I missnamed the Evangelists. Me BAD. Sorry. Not Peter and not Paul. Ten Hail Mary’s and one Our Father.... read more

If anyone asks us what was the major thing we noticed (and liked) about Barcelona, we would respond by saying that every street and road had trees both sides and on many occasions down the middle too. The trees stood out and that’s impressive. There is no building in Barcelona taller than any building in our city of Perth. A very uniform height throughout. A huge proportion of the residents live in apartments/flats. Barcelona is a city that benefited enormo...usly from having the Olympic Games in 1992. It transformed the city. Many areas were developed and redeveloped. The result was that the people benefited post Games. Many locals have spoken of that. There has been no negativity. Today we used the Hop On Hop Off bus to explore a greater area of Barcelona. Naturally we clicked ... read more

Today represents one-third of our way through this planned journey … and … we are still together … easy as. Our train journey took us through countryside that was high, dry, and surrounded by and crisscrossed by mountain ranges. We passed through and by, many very small villages and through numerous tunnels and over numerous bridges. The land use varied from small agricultural holdings of vegetables to orchards and vineyards to quarry based industry. Thankful to be in Barcelona it didn’t take us long to find and be checked in to our accommodation at Hotel Abbot, very centrally located and close to our planned activities. Shopped for fresh food which resulted in Jane concocting up some magical meal in our room. We adjusted our mode of travel plan for next week re: car hire cancelled and ... read more

We decided to take another day trip today to the mountain Monastery of Monserrat. We (of course) went and got our daily croissants at our new favorite breakfast place Patisseria Hoffman, Kelly getting a ham and cheese croissant again, Cody getting a chocolate apricot marmalade croissant as well as the ham and cheese croissant. We trekked the 40 minutes to the Barcelona train station (not nearly as close as we would have liked!), and were on our way to Monserrat by 10:30 am. The train ride is about an hour, and then we took a cable car up to the top of the mountain. The monastery dates back to the ninth century, with the abbey being built in the 11th century. Monserrat is the home to one of the oldest boys choirs worldwide, Escolania, which dates ... read more

We had an early start to our day with a 9:00 am flight out of Lisbon. We managed to hustle down our street to the front of the Museo de Fado between calling an Uber and them arriving, as we do not have cell service beyond our WiFi areas. Luckily, this was a trek down the street with our luggage versus the trek up a few days ago. We enjoyed breakfast in the airport, Cody embarking on a McDonalds meal. It hit the spot for him and gave him the taste of home he was looking for. On the plane, we finished our first complete crossword of the trip, as they are extremely hard puzzles, we both napped til arriving in Barcelona. We landed in Barcelona around 12:00 with the time change, and navigated our way ... read more