Blogs from Catalonia, Spain, Europe - page 268

Well now that I have a stunning set of permanent sunglasses attached to my face there will be no pics of me for awhile! After my wonderful time of the beach, shopping in the markets off Las Ramblas and generally watching the world pass me by in Barcelona I decided that a day on a mountain with monks was in order...so Montserrat here I come. Well in the middle of NO where there is a magical mountain that houses the art work of the likes of Monet, Picasso and Renoir to name but a few. It also has the most amazing cathedral with the shire to the Black Virgin and a very friendly kitty cat. For those of you who know how much of a bad mother I am for having left my little Mickey with ... read more

Spent alot of time near Las Ramblas. Visited the Olympic Stadium, ate paella and ice cream waffles, went to the Sagrada Familia (amazing!) and Parc Guell (also brilliant). Picasso museum and a day by the 'beach' and lots of shopping! ... read more

Since we were taking a night train from Barcelona to our next stop, we had a beautiful full day of sight-seeing during our last day there. We started with a trip to the Picasso Museum, then on to a Don Quixote exhibit, and then took a walk through the beautiful Park Guell which features much more work by Gaudi. At the Picasso Museum we saw the evolution of Picasso's work. I'm glad we were able to catch it there since we didn't have time to make it to the Picasso museum in Amsterdam! And Don Quixote was very educational for me since I didn't really know anything about him (including the spelling of his name)! Keith took Spanish in high school and knew about Don Quixote from having read the book (yes, I know it's fictional) ... read more

First of all, the night train was awesome. Except for the fact that we were late for breakfast (honestly... no one told us there was a time limit) and we missed it, the ride was great. The train was a little shakey, but that may have actually helped us to sleep better. The beds were pretty comfortable, and we both slept really well! Two thumbs up for night trains from us! So, we arrived in Barcelona bright and early yesterday morning, immediately bought our train ticket leaving Barcelona (we´re finally catching on to the whole "buy the ticket ahead of time, and don´t put it off so that you have to make a special trip to the train station just to buy the ticket" thing), then found our way to our hotel. For those of you ... read more

Well with our Contiki tour all finished up it was time to split from the rest of the group (most of who left for Scotland yesterday - which is a bit of a shame really as if we adn't have booked Spain before leaving Australia we would have gone with them). Made our way out to Stansted Airport, my first experience with Ryan Air, and jumped to the back of the very long and very slow moving check in line. Finally we got our extremely technologically advanced handwritten boarding cards and moved through to the departures area. Here is where we got the second part of the Ryan air experience where there are no reserved seats and its get on board and just sit down anywhere. Finally in the air and in just under 2 hours ... read more