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Flamenco
Their feet moved so fast! What a city! There is so much to see and we crammed in as much as we could in 3 days! We could have easily stayed another week! After being to some less touristy areas it was very strange to hear so much English being spoken on the streets!
We loved Barcelona although dropping off the car was quite a mission! Richie was fantastic with the driving (even on a 7 lane roundabout without lines and people pushing in all over the place! We had a close call with a bus...) although we didn’t actually have an address of where to drop the car off - just a suburb. To cut a long story short we drove around Barcelona for an hour before finding Hertz at the airport. It wasn’t the right place to drop it off but the people were lovely and let us do it anyway. We then caught the train into town and had a 40min walk with our packs on to find our pension (cheap accommodation). It was a huge relief to get there and also a relief in a way to get the car off our hands so Richie could have break from driving.
To maximise our time we decided to buy a 2 day pass on the hop-on, hop-off tourist bus. It gave us some good info about the sights. We did each of the loops and chose La Sagrada Familia as our first stop. This is Gaudi’s master piece which is a work in progress. I don’t think words can describe it. It was jaw dropping and HUGE!! Gaudi really was eccentric in his designs but also a genius. We loved his references to nature and the displays within the Sagrada Familia showed this really well. We went up the tower which was extremely high and a little scary for Lysh! We definitely plan to go back when it’s finished. This is planned for 2020 but is dependant on anonymous donations from the public.
Gaudi’s Park Guell was really cool and we had a good walk around and took in the view over the city. Unfortunately it was really busy and a little hard to enjoy the beauty as we found some people in the crowd quite pushy and rude! It was great to see the lizard though - definitely the highlight for Lysh. We also saw 2 of Gaudi’s other
famous creations - the La Pedrera and the Casa Batllo which are both very unique!
Next stop was FC Barcelona’s stadium (Camp Nou) which is huge and holds up to 100,000 people. It’s like sunrcorp stadium on steroids! There was a local game on the night we were leaving which was a shame! It would have been great to be there to see it live.
We also had a look around the port and the beaches but it was a bit cold and cloudy so we didn’t get to see it at it’s best but we could imagine how packed the area would be in the middle of summer.
We visited Castell de Montjuic which also gave us a great view over the city. Barcelona hosted the 1992 Olympics (of course you trivia buffs know this) and near the Castell we had a good walk around Estadio Olimpic de Montjuic and went into the stadium. It’s always nice to find a free attraction! We also enjoyed wandering down La Rambla, watching all the buskers and other tourists and watching out for pick pockets! Along La Rambla we ducked into Mercat de la Boqueria. These are very interesting
and colourful markets with fish, chocolate, fruit, bread, deli and butchers stalls. Some of the things in the butcher stalls like the skinned goats heads were hard to look at! There were other things which we chose not to find out what they were!
There were many other interesting things to see in the city - other modernista buildings, plazas, monuments including a famous one of Columbus and many pieces of artwork. There’s too much to describe!
We had planned to go into the gothic Cathedral however when we arrived they weren’t allowing anyone in and there were uniformed police and secret service looking people everywhere. We could tell something was going on! We decided to hang around and found out that there was going to be a religious service (funeral ) for Samarach who had sadly passed way the night before. A lady told us that the King and Queen were coming so we decided to stay and watch them arrive. The cavillary really arrived with the King (not that we recognised him but we confirmed it in the paper the next day)! There were a bunch of cars in a procession and heaps of body guards
jumped out and surrounded the King as the cars pulled up. It was pretty cool to see. After all the guests were in the cathedral Samaranch’s body was then carried in. One of the pall bearers was Raphael Nadal. It was very hard to get photos of this from where we were standing though.
Later on that night we finally got to see a flamenco show. Although Barcelona isn’t the best place to see flamenco we absolutely loved it!! The singing and dancing was very passionate. Kate had taught us a Spanish saying which is “es la leche” (it’s the milk)which means it’s the best/it’s the bomb. Lysh got a bit excited and yelled that out at the end - we hope the context was right! We also met a nice Aussie couple at the Flamenco and had a good chat.
Sant Jordis day is on the 23rd ... of April. On this day men are supposed to give women a rose and women are supposed to give men a book. Richie had read about this and we thought it might be a tradition that people don’t really partake in. We were very surprised to see that
it is a huge deal! Everywhere we looked there were roses and book stalls. It was also a lot busier that day than the others. We didn’t give each other gifts but it seemed like all the locals certainly did! There was a fun festive atmosphere to the day.
We had one other important stop in Barcelona - the landromat! Since leaving Kate and Keith in Madrid we’ve been handwashing along the way (the washing line has been very well used - thanks Tobey!) so it was nice to have everything clean! While I was at the laundromat and Richie was buying train tickets it didn’t take long for a very forward Spaniard to think I was available and teach me some Spanish pick up lines. The men are very forward here! Luckily Richie wasn’t long!
We spent our last night in Spain in Girona as we had an early flight to Rome the next day. We didn’t really get to explore Girona but it looked like a nice place. We were a little sad to be leaving Spain but excited to go to Italy of course!
Hasta pronto Espana, to quote Arnie, we’ll be back!!!!!
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PremK
R.K
exquisite!
I've never actually been to Spain, but from the pictures that I see, especially from your blog, it seems like Spanish people are architecturally gifted on so many different levels. The structure of all of these buildings looking at your pictures are absolutely incredible! How did it feel being in the Olympic Stadium?