Barcelona

Well, it was off to Barcelona on Wednesday morning. We flew into the main Barcelona airport, so it was easy to get a bus from there to city center. Luckily, city center was very close to our hotel. We checked in, dropped off our bags, and off we went to explore our the town.

Exploring Barcelona was fun for two reasons. First, the city was very busy & bustling with activity. Second, we each new some Spanish so we could get by speaking in the local language. Everyone new English as well, but it was fun to try out our skills. Jen's skills are definitely better than mine. I can tell you my name, ask where the bathroom is, and order food, that's about it. Jen can actually hold a half-way intelligent conversation. Of course, the same is true when we're speaking English.

We started off by walking down La Rambla. It's a wide boulevard that travels down to the Mediterranean, starting about a mile inland. There are a bunch of shops, stands, markets, street performers, etc. The locals as well as the tourists frequent the area, so it was lot's of fun. At the end of La Rambla is a fairly large marina. Basically, there wasn't anything "touristy" about it, it was just fun to walk around taking everything in.

We did discover why there aren't any "Spanish" restaurants in the U.S. It's because their food is utterly horrible. We paid 26 euros for a small piece of fish and two small peppers stuffed with Lord-only-knows-what. It didn't taste too bad, although I wouldn't consider it good, but it didn't even take the edge off our hunger. After that we just headed over to a KFC and got a couple kids meals, with tasty ice-cream I should mention, to tide us over until dinner. That was basically our last attempt to eat local food, and it was very difficult to find anything edible after that.

We went to a Picasso museum in the "old city". I'm no art critic, but I wasn't that impressed with his work. Only a small portion of it was the weird Picasso style stuff we're used to, with noses where ears should be and eyes on top of each other. The rest ranged from simple sketches to landscapes to pottery and sculptures. The weird stuff was interesting, but it got old quick. He had some neat paintings of matadors & bulls, but the rest looks like it could have been made by a five year old. Again, I'm not an art critic (thank goodness), but I wasn't impressed. Boring.

I got the feeling I was back in high-school literature class, with everyone trying to find the hidden "meaning" and "purpose" behind the art. Of course a line on a page couldn't just be a line on a page, it has to be some sort of commentary on life in an oppressive world or something. Blah, blah, blah. Give me architecture and history any day over art.

We also went to a neat church in the old city. I've put some pictures below.

The coolest thing we saw in Barcelona was a church that was designed and started by Antoni Gaudi, a famous architect. It was immense and varied in its style. Gaudi models most things off nature, so there were columns shaped like trees, lots of fruit and animals in the stonework, etc. It is a very interesting building. It's still under construction, but that almost added to the charm. Check out the pictures below for an idea of what I'm talking about.

I guess that's pretty much it. Next up, Venice.