Barcelona
We are just now leaving Barcelona and it is an amazing city! We were able to see a lot of different parts of the city last night and today. Last night we went on a tour that took us to several different areas. We drove past Las Ramblas, the main part of town and then saw some famous buildings one of them was a crazy looking house designed by Gaudi. We weren’t able to get a good picture of it, but we have several hundred others to remember the town by!
We stopped by La Sagrada Familia (spelling??!!) – absolutely incredible! It has been in the construction process for over 100 years and still has many more years until its finished. The detail on the church is amazing. Evidently this was another design by Gaudi that he worked on until his death.
After that we went by a palace with a huge series of fountains, it was really gorgeous at night. Near there we stopped at the Spanish Village. It was built in the 1920’s for the world fair and has replicas of buildings from each of the different areas of Spain. We had time there to look around at the whole area From there we passed by the Olympic Stadium and back through town.
This morning we went on a tour of the Gothic area. We walked through the Cathedral of Barcelona – again incredible! After that we walked through the old medieval town that is still being used for businesses and apartments. The best part of that was seeing how close everything was built together and how it wound around through that part of the city.
Next we walked down Las Ramblas, that is the main entryway and shopping area of town. There are different sections – one is for flowers and one part is where they have the human statues – that was different, perhaps that will be our next job after retirement! There is also a marketplace that is centuries old. We got lots of pictures of the colorful displays of fruit, candy, fish – all sorts of stuff! It is actually where all of the locals shop daily for fresh items.
As our guide in Oxford said, the city is “heaving”. There are so many people everywhere we have went it is really hard to keep track of our group but so far we haven’t got lost!! Tomorrow we are off to Cannes to do a tour with a smaller group. There are 20 of us that have signed up for a tour of Cannes, Nice, Eze and some other small towns with a picnic in the countryside. Eze is a small medieval town. We have really enjoyed seeing those towns and the history behind some of these areas. It is hard to believe some of these buildings are 100’s of years old!
We stopped by La Sagrada Familia (spelling??!!) – absolutely incredible! It has been in the construction process for over 100 years and still has many more years until its finished. The detail on the church is amazing. Evidently this was another design by Gaudi that he worked on until his death.
After that we went by a palace with a huge series of fountains, it was really gorgeous at night. Near there we stopped at the Spanish Village. It was built in the 1920’s for the world fair and has replicas of buildings from each of the different areas of Spain. We had time there to look around at the whole area From there we passed by the Olympic Stadium and back through town.
This morning we went on a tour of the Gothic area. We walked through the Cathedral of Barcelona – again incredible! After that we walked through the old medieval town that is still being used for businesses and apartments. The best part of that was seeing how close everything was built together and how it wound around through that part of the city.
Next we walked down Las Ramblas, that is the main entryway and shopping area of town. There are different sections – one is for flowers and one part is where they have the human statues – that was different, perhaps that will be our next job after retirement! There is also a marketplace that is centuries old. We got lots of pictures of the colorful displays of fruit, candy, fish – all sorts of stuff! It is actually where all of the locals shop daily for fresh items.
As our guide in Oxford said, the city is “heaving”. There are so many people everywhere we have went it is really hard to keep track of our group but so far we haven’t got lost!! Tomorrow we are off to Cannes to do a tour with a smaller group. There are 20 of us that have signed up for a tour of Cannes, Nice, Eze and some other small towns with a picnic in the countryside. Eze is a small medieval town. We have really enjoyed seeing those towns and the history behind some of these areas. It is hard to believe some of these buildings are 100’s of years old!