Done

I am finished. The energy has left me. It's been an exhausting, exhilarating time, culminating in today's visits to the Aquarium, the Egyptology museum and La Pedrera (a Gaudi house).

The Aquarium: good, but none too big and dominated by the shark tube. They have something similar at Brighton (I think it was), so I felt a bit miffed at the cost, which was high. A little disappointing - the Berlin one was better, and so was Copenhagen for involvement.
Egyptology: Excellent - good price, good content and a lovely visit. The stuff was not as big as the museums in London (British Museum) or Vienna (Altes Kunstmuseum I think) but good quality and well presented.
La Pedrera: Probably the best presented of all the Gaudi things. I'd probably recommend going there first and then deciding which of the other places you wanted to go to. I'd still have ventured to exactly the same places, but it would have been good to know more about Park Guell for example.
The Roy Liechtenstein statue near the harbour

The Columbus memorial: the commentary makes a singularly facetious point that it is the biggest such monument in the world. Like that matters. They then get a bit snippy and say that if he's supposed to be pointing at the New World then he's pointing the wrong way. My response is that if he pointed inland (i.e. the right way) then it would look more ridiculous than pointing out to sea. It's great.

The roof of La Pedrera (this means 'quarry' by the way)

The model of La Pedrera inside the building itself


I am off to France tomorrow where I shall not be doing much. I doubt I'll have internet either for a bit, but I'll try to stay in touch. If not, I'll be back online in Moscow... And very cold.

Day Tripper

A bit of a meh day today. Should have been good but... well, you'll see. Three parts to the day:
1) Torres Winery and tasting
2) Montserrat
3) Sitges

I'll get the cr@p out of the way first. The winery visit was dull, followed by a 'tasting' where they gave us each a half glass of their cheapest plonk. And it tasted like pish (although the more charitable folk said it was too young). Waste of time. Still, some suckers bought some wine so I guess they weren't too unhappy.
Sitges is probably a pretty seaside town, and it certainly has some interesting buildings, but by 7 it is dark at this time of year. So not the best use of time either (especially when tired and a bit ratty).

But then there's Montserrat. I'm not much of the spiritual, so I only really appreciate the physical side of it. And it's impressive indeed.

Great imagery...


Cloister, with plants representing hope, power, life and health. Or something.

Looking down on the monastery

View from the top

Television

Being the spiteful swine you no doubt are (that'll win 'em over), you will all mock my ignorance, whilst admiring my chutzpah. Probably the first anyway. Anyway, I met someone from Boston and a couple from Alaska. In my knowledge-challenged way, I pointed out that Alaska was known to me only by the TV show Northern Exposure, while Boston was far more familiar owing to the various David E Kelly shows set there. You see, I just don't know a dman thing about these places. Fortunately the Alaskans took it in the right spirit (noting that while the show was technically correct with moose roaming the streets, the one showed was actually an elk - far smaller).
The Bostonian was similarly amused, possibly because she was from California originally, so TV and first impressions are very important.

"Get on with it" you cry. Okily dokily...
I went to the Gothic quarter today. Goes back to Roman times, and there's plenty of stuff filling in the gaps between then and now
A broken aqueduct...


Yay! A fountain in a cute courtyard




Another fine fountain. Loved the colours here.

An extraordinary cloister. With geese!


I've got a rapidly growing collection of images of gargoyles, but you'll have to wait until either 1) I get bored or 2) I get to show you. Either way, do try to control your impatience ;-)

Look carefully, and you'll see the original Roman columns under the cathedral

Cathedral square

And outside:



I tried to capture the colours of this Gaudi roof. Can't do it justice...


I thought this was a lovely view of La Sagreda Familia, with the streetlight in the foreground

What's that? Sacrilege you say? Like I care. "This one goes out to all you Phoenix fans out there". Poor guy asked what team it was. Telling him didn't help, happily :-).

City Living

Okay, I'm getting repetitive. Yet another fantastic place, a routine superb time and a mundane set of delicious food and drink. Hard cheese.

Barcelona is expensive. Not like Copenhagen or Stockholm, where expensive is the cost of things, but rather the fact that there is so much stuff you want to do. And all of it costs. You find one thing that sounds good, and it leads on to another and another and so on. Suddenly, it's 6 hours later and you've completely run out of puff! But in the meantime you've seen...

The City Centre:

A silly foyer for a gas company (impressive, yes, but very silly also)

Fun and funky architecture

A bit of Gaudi (more anon)

A view of the city

A little more Gaudi, although this one I found rather scary.


And then there was the cathedral. Ambitious, hubristic, dominant, experimental. If the idea of it is enough to mark Barcelona as an exceptional city, then what will be the case when this place is finished. It is something else.