Barcelona

Hello everyone,

We arrived in Barcelona on Friday afternoon and caught a taxi to our apartment. It is  HUGE! We did very well with our apartment selection, both here and in Lisbon.

We have spent Saturday and Sunday exploring Barcelona. We have walked and walked. Barcelona is a very easy city to walk around as it's flat with lovely wide streets and lots of benches placed strategically for weary walkers.

We visited Sagrada Famlia. It is truly amazing both inside and outside. We took the elevator up the bell tower at the top of the church. Magnificent views but a very high and cramped space. I was quite glad to come back down. They think it will be completed by 2030. They are using all the admission money, 11Euros per person, to fund the construction and so it is moving ahead quite well. There is a museum below the church in the crypt area and that is all about the design and construction of the church. They have some of the models Gaudi used and some of his scetches and the models and drawings that the later architects and sculptors have used. Gaudi himself is buried there. you can see his tomb - very plain and simple, surprisingly.

We also visited La Pedrera, the apartment block Gaudi designed in 1910. There you could visit the roof terrace, the attic and one of the apartments as it would have been in 1910. It is still used as an apartment building, with people (very rich people) living there. It is a really interesting building with curved walls. Each apartment is semi-circular, looking down onto an internal courtyard. It also has great views from the roof top.

We also walked past many of the other incredible buildings that were designed and built at the turn of the 20th century, the Modernista buildings. They even have the footpaths marked so that you can find them.

We walked down into La Rambla, the real touristy area of Barcelona. There again the streets are wide with pedestrian walkways in the centre of them. It is very lively and bustly here, with heaps of street vendors, restauraunts, cafes, bars, souvenir shops and Louis Vuitton handbag sellers, of course. We were looking for the Cat Bar which Andi had read about. Eventually we found it, a tiny little cafe/bar with cat pictures on the wall. Not as impressive or exciting as we'd hoped.

 
Will continue exploring Barcelona for the next couple of days and then it's time for the big flight home. See you all soon.

Maz, Great Gran and Andi