Barcelona, Spain

Hello Everyone
We made it to Europe safe and sound.  All of our flights went smoothly. :-)
We landed in Barcelona on June 5 and through the help of many kind people we found our way to your B&B in the La Sagrada Familia district. La sagrada Familia is a beautiful church and one of the most famous buildings in Barcelona.  It was started by Gaudi in 1882 and isn´t expected to be completely finised until 2020!  Our B&B was right down the street from this beauty and we had a wonderful view of it from our window.  If you would like to know more the website is www.sagradafamilia.org.  Our hosts Carmen and Francis were very nice.  They are from Cuba and have lived in Spain for about 10 years now.  Carmen is a film writer and director by trade but right now is working as a salsa dance teacher.  Francis is a waiter at a resturant in La Rambla (a very hip part of town).  Niether of them speak a lot of English and I know very little but it was fun communicating with them.  We all tried very hard to speak to each other and I think it paid off in the end.  lol

Our first day in Barcelona we spent walking through our new neighborhood to see what was around there.  We ended up walking all the way down to the beach!  It was beautiful but a little muggy and cloudy.  It ended up raining on us on our way back to our B&B so we popped into a little shop and shared a pizza.  Ahhhh comfort food ;-)  Later that night at our hostes gave us directions to all the places in Barcelona that we should see. It was hard at first because we were unfamiliar with their public transportation system but thankfully it was pretty easy to figure out once we saw what she was telling us about.

The next morning we woke up refreshed and ready to explore this new city (well, new to us anyway).  We took the metro to plaza de Espanya. The metro station is in the bottom of the old bull fighting arena that is now turned into a 4 story mall.   We went to the top and had a beautiful view the fountain in the middle of the plaza and of the Castell de Montjuic.  Wetook a picture of the sky line and went down to see the fountain, the Castell de Montjuic, Museu Nacion dÁrt de Catalunya, and the Estadi Olimpic.  It was absolutely stunning.  At the base of the castle there is a huge fountain, the magic fountian (you can find a video on you tube to watch it if you would like.  It is similar to the Balajio), but there was also many man made waterfalls leading up to the palace.  And of course with all waterfalls you need to have plenty of height which means lots and lots and lots and lots of stairs!!!!!  (Thank you to our trainer, Maria, who makes me do at least 10-15 minutes on the stair stepper every week, for the leg muscles to tackle all the stairs we have encountered and I am sure we will continue to encounter.) We went into the Catalunya Musium.  We stood inside and just stared at the internal architicture.  Everything is so detailed!  We didn,t go into the different parts of the musium to see the actual art work, we were impressed enough with just the building.  lol  We then proceded to go to see the place the held the Olympics and then walked back through the gardens of Montjuic and back to the arena for lunch.  After lunch we headed to La Rambla.  This is a very busy street that leads all the way down to the beach and is filled with shops and street venders. as you can imagine it is very popular with the turists.  Lots of things you can buy as suviners.  lol  The street looked like Santana Row with shops on the bottom and aprtments on top with a wide walkway in the middle and a one-way street on both sides.  The walkway is where the street venders and artisans set up.  It was very energizing being there.  As we were walking down La Rambla we went into the Mercat de la Boqueria.  This was a huge outdoor food market. My stomach got overwhelmed just looking at all of it.  lol  We sampled a few treats that we took home for dinner.  After we made it to the ocean we headed over to the Barri Gotica.  The architecture there was amazing.  There are many buildings from the Gothic period in this area and one breath taking Cateedral and of course I took a lot of photos :-)
When we got back to the B&B we heated up the food we bought at the Boqueria and enjoyed every bite.
When our hostess returned home she gave us a Cuban Salsa dance lesson.  Yes it is different than what we learn in the US and Europe.  It took us a minute to catch on but we got it and she showed us a lot of fun moves.  By the end of the night we were very exhausted!  We did so much walking and then to dance for a few hours after that our leg muscles were burning.  lol        

The Arena

Plaza de España

Castell de Montjuic

Inside the Museu Nacional de Art de Catalunya

The Olympic Statium

Mercat de la Boqueria on La Rambla

People we came across on La Rambla

The church in Barri Gotica

Yummy Dinner

Cuban Salsa Lesson

On our last day in Barcelona we went to Park Guell.  Guell created this to be a little community all its own but it was unsucessful.  Now we visit and see it´s unique architecture that makes you feel like you are in a page right out of a Dr. Suess book.  It was really something!  Lots of brightly colored mosaic tiles and beautiful gardens.  It was really crowded in the front where the houses were but as you walked further back into the gardens it was really nice.  The views from the top were remarkable.  You could see all of Barcelona right down to the beach.  We decided to a picnic lunch and enjoyed the view for a little while then headed back to the B&B.  After dinner our hostess came home and suprised us with some traditional Spanish Tapas.  She said it was very important we expirence and enjoy these tasty morsles.  Then we said our goodbyes as she was going to head out to a party and wouldn´t be back until 5am.
We had such a wonderful experience in Barcelona. The food was good, the famous sites were more than we imagined and the people were very kind.  We are excited to see what Madrid will have instore for us!

Park Guell

The view from the top:

This looked like a foot to me.  lol
This one is for you Heather :)

There was this huge stone cross at the 

top of the garden grounds. So Majestic! 

La Sagrada Familia (mentioned above)

Saying goodbye to our lovely hostess Carmon

Please excuse the mis-spelled words.  The computor I am using has spell check in Spanish.  lol  Go figure.