Day 46 Barcelona

Me copying the pose of Christopher Columbus

Here is the rest of him !!

our sangria :)

Our lunch, explains why we walk so much

Us on bus

A Gaudi example

Another one



Inside church, didn't post any of outside (look it up)



Us at Park

View from park

We love turtles

Park

mmmmmm, Katie had smurf flavour

Beach!

While it might be 9am in Australia it is 1am here and I have just got to
the room after playing drinking games with the "kids". Luckily I am a
good player and didn't have to drink too much.......
It is a sea day tomorrow so can sleep in but this usually takes over an
hour to do, so will be brief. Barcelona is a lovely city and we had a
great day. We didn't dock til 10am and Katie, Dan and I got off about
10.20am and walked into the city centre which took about 25mins or so.
It was a Sunday and all the shops were closed except for the ones on the
tourist strip and the beach area, and these were mainly souvenir shops
and restaurants. It made the city centre quiet for traffic as well as
having not many folks around, well except for the 4000 odd from the 4
cruise ships that were berthed here today. (but it didn't feel crowded)
Our first stop was finding an Internet cafe which we eventually did and
we very happily skyped , Grant , Meg and Scarlett and then Di and
Louise. It was lovely to speak to them all and can't wait to see them
all in person very soon. That took up about an hour and we decided on
lunch before venturing any further. We found a lovely restaurant where we
ordered some tapas and some sangria which came served in Fosters glasses
(very weird) but very yummy.
After lunch we decided to hop on the Tourist Bus and go on a tour that
would take us to La Sagrada Familia where we hopped off (gave up writing
last night here and went to sleep!) to see this famous church of
Gaudi's. You could just look from the outside or spend about 14e to see
inside. The queue looked long but we decided to see where the end of it
was and just as we got there we could see a huge group approaching so we
jumped in and it only took about 5 mins and we were inside. And weren't
we glad we did, it was amazing, probably 2nd only to St Sophia's in
Istanbul for our vote. We spent a bit of time there and were going to go
up the lift to see the top of the spires but there was an hour wait so
we hopped back on the bus and were taken past more of Barcelona before
arriving at Parc Gruell, another Gaudi masterpiece of 15 hectares of
parkland. It was a 10 minute uphill walk to the park but as we noticed a
gelati shop on the way I knew the downhill trek wasn't going to be so
bad! The park is a place you could spend all day at but we only had
about an hour as it was getting late and we only saw a fraction of it.
The weather was again lovely but we have learnt to walk in the
shade........but we still got a little burnt!
Back down the hill via gelati and onto the bus for a 30 min tour back to
the centre of town. It was now after 5pm but Dan and Katie wanted a swim
at a beach so after another 40 min walk we eventually found it, as it
was now 6pm and we had to be back on ship by 7pm, it was a quick dip. We
next had to find a taxi which wasn't easy but we did and got back about
10 to 7! Barcelona is a beautiful city with so much to see and do and I
am so glad we saw it on a Sunday without any of the traffic and city
workers around and the tourist bus was great. You had headphones with a
choice of language and 2 different routes you could choose and were able
to hop on and off at leisure.
Showered and then we went upstairs to find food and eat and play
cards......which brings me back to the start of this blog.
Thought I should stop saying I would visit places again but I would visit here (and Monte Carlo). Maybe at the end I'll name the top 3, but gee that will be hard.....what's not to like about visiting all these amazing places!!