Barcelona
Just back from sunny Spain with Sandy, and it was excellent. We flew out there on Monday the 10th, staying in a hotel just outside the centre.
Barcelona is a gorgeous city to visit this time of year, nice and sunny but not too hot which was ideal for me.
We went to most of the major sites, using the open top tourist buses, good for getting a bit of tan.
Firstly we went into the main city centre and down Las Ramblas to the the market. There are some interesting performers down on Las Ramblas, and the market is interesting to have a look around, though not too friendly.
Then we went down to the gothic section of the city, to see the old cathedral and the little thin streets, interesting little walk, and quite similar to the back streets of Rome.
Then went to visit the Gaudi house and the Gaudi hotel, great colours and shapes, and lots of tourists there to see them. They are also surrounded by some nice shops and ice cream parlours.
The next day we went over to Sagrada Familia (pictured above) the Gaudi cathedral, very interesting, though it won't be finished for about another 25 years apparently, so once you are inside there are alot of cranes and scaffolding. The structure of the roof from the inside is really interesting to see, and the long walk up the towers is worth it to get a nice view over the city.
Then we went to a very nice park, which was part of the Royal summer palace, and fell asleep in the nice peaceful environment hehe.
The next day we went over to the large royal palace, to check out the big views over the city, we took the open top bus over there, and it went around the dock area too. We then went to the beach to chill out for a while in the sun, though the wind was pretty cold, especially for Sandy, lil sun creature :-D.
Every night we checked out different restaurants, and I would actually recommend their tapas places over all the others, especially if they're nice cosy places that also do Paellas. The french restaurants were not very nice, and quite over priced. We did take a recommendation from a taxi driver to go down to the port area for dinner, the sea food down there is great, but the whole area was a little bit seedy in my opinion and pretty expensive.
In general Barcelona is a gorgeous looking city, especially this time of the year, but the people in general were not very helpful and nearly know one spoke english except the hotel staff. Oh, and the taxi drivers don't seem to know where anything is lol...
