The drive from Zaragoza was rather uneventful until the very end when looking for the caravan park we passed by 2 leggy girls wearing pink lycra miniskirts and ultrahigh plastic heels – Our first highway hooker sighting! A little later (while still looking for the caravan park we passed an older, not so leggy lady with her boobs hanging so far out of her singlet it wasn’t funny. It seems they cater for all tastes here! Sorry bit of a tasteless start to the blog :(
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| "Very Nice" - Borat |
Onto some more tastelful sights!
Our first day in Barcelona! We decided to get tickets for the hop on- hop off bus , Bus de Touristic. As we didn’t know much about the city previously apart from Gaudi, we decided to use the first day on the bus top purely get a lay of the land travelling around the 2 main loops and seeing/planning the next day’s activities.
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| View from the bus |
But first a quick pit-stop to a local Irish pub to watch the mighty Reds play in the Super Rugby final – A great victory shared with some Aussies from Brisbane and 2 kiwis (who were not so happy with the result).
Because it was so far out of the way , one stop we did make was at FC Barcelona-the Futbol stadium and home of “Barca” soccer team, Spain (and probably the world’s) most successful team. Apart from dominating Catalonian and Spanish soccer they have also been the winners of the FIFA club world cup and European Championships. Over the course of the clubs existence they have won every national and international title possible. In 2008-9 they won them all in 1 year! The Barcelona 6! Pretty impressive.
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| Dave playing around |
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| Part of the impressive trophy collection - European Champions Trophy |
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| The pitch |
After this we hightailed it back on the tourist bus back to meet Tom and Bec for dinner, this being their last night in Barcelona.
Day 2
Having a better idea of the city we set off on a mad sightseeing day. We had bus tickets again so we used the bus to take us from place to place.
Stop 1 was the Olympic site from the Barcelona 1992 games. From here we had a decent view of the city although it was a bit cloudy and visibility was limited. There was also a rugby 7’s comp being held in the main stadium. We looked at going but there were no Aussie teams (only 1 Kiwi team from the entire Southern hemisphere).
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| I am feeling very Olympic today! |
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| This is a famous site on the Olympic hill, but is actually just the telecommunications tower - let down |
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| Rugby 7's |
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| Trust the boy to find a bike! |
We jumped back aboard the bus and made it back into the centre of town to have some lunch. We were hoping to pick up some street food from the markets but they are closed on a Sunday so we settled on some pitas from a stall on La Rambla – the city’s main tourist strip.
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| La Rambla |
Next on the agenda was the Sagrada Familia, the Catholic Basilica designed by Antony Gaudi. Gaudi was one of the most famous modernistic (yes Jess that is a word!) artists/architects and his buildings are certainly worth a look, different to anything we have EVER seen! He started construction on the basilica and it is still not finished today! The roof was only completely closed in during 2009, with Pope Benedict visiting and consecrating the church-making it a basilica in 2010. Gaudi managed to see the completion of 1 of the 3 facades – the Nativity Facade. Now complete is the Passion Facade, with the Glory Facade still with a lot of work to go. There are also still many bell towers left to go including the central tower dedicated to Jesus. Ironically Gaudi died after being hit by a tram on the way to church.
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| view from the bus, approaching the nativity Fascade |
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| Ongoing work on the basilica, the whole place had scaffolding around it - cant wait to come back when its finished (if we're still alive!) |
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| The Passion Fascade - telling the story of Jesus' last few days (more or less the stations of the cross) |
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| The inside canopy - designed by Gaudi to represent a forrest with the columns being the tree trunks and the roof looking like leaves of the plain tree - really amazing! We took heaps of photos of this. |
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| The glory Fascade - Our Lords Prayer in all of the known languages of the world. |
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| The nativity Fascade, completed in Gaudi's lifetime - this is the one with the dribble castle reputation! |
A story here totally unrelated to the church was a psycho lady that pushed her way in front of us in the line, went berserk at the cashier about not having enough time and then was tailed by security for the whole visit. She was more than a little strange.
After this impressive tour we continued with the Gaudi theme visiting Park Guell – a park designed by Gaudi to be the centre of a housing development. The housing development flopped but the park was amazing. It houses the famous mosaic water spouting dragon, but also some gravity defying porticos and of course more mosaics. Imagine crossing Alice in Wonderland and the Gingerbread house. Here we also got the best view of the city we had all day.
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| Welcome to Park Guell! |
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| Patting the famous dragon |
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| Barcelona = Mosaic captial of the world! |
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| The view from Gaudi's place |
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| Did somebody say gingerbread? |
By now it was 7:30pm and although late, we had one stop left to make – the Patio Andelucia for a Flamenco show; starring Jesus- not THE Jesus, just an apparently famous Flamenco dancing one. We were warned” not to lose it”(translation error - we presume they meant Don't miss it) and we nearly did! It was so much fun! We were right next to the stage and i was convinced they would get Dave up, but he was saved by some American tourists. A fun end to the night and our sightseeing tour.
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| The flamenco ladies - sorry I missed the pictures of Jesus, he was just too mesmorising for me to concentrate on taking photos LOL |
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| Luckily some of the performers were a little more pleasing. Oh and they were really good musicians too! |
