Spain - Barcelona - Montjuic Park II

Artists selling their paintings on Las Ramblas. We bought a couple of nice paintings to remember our trip.
Having a beer and Paella on Las Ramblas. Dig the orange jumpsuit in the background! : )
Large fountain just below the Palau Nacional which is the National Palace which was built in 1929 and is quite spectacular. I will post a picture of that later.
Monument at the site of the 1992 Olympic games.
Time for a reboot! : )

Spain - Barcelona - Montjuic Park

Busy port below Montjuic Hill.
Boom!
Many, many, many houses!
You can catch a cable car up to the top of Montjuic Hill if you are so inclined. We walked it as it was a nice day and wanted to see as much as possible.
This was a cool pub that we went to on Las Ramblas.

Spain Montserrat 3

At the end of one of the walks, was this building built into the side of a rock. Inside was a small church, and on the other side, was a beautiful spanish garden, where I tried to eat the olives off the olive tree!
You have to hope the rock doesnt fall.

Spain Montserrat 2

There were two funicular railways at the top of the mountain that took you to other parts of the mountain were you could go for walks to see the view over the valleys.

Can you see the cable car?


At the top of the mountain were a number of cats such as this one - they loved the tourists as they knew they would get fed. This one as at one of the highest points of the mountain.

Spain - Montserrat

Montserrat is a mountain about 1 hour north west of Barcelona that you can get to by train. The train drops you off at the bottom of the mountain, and from there, you get onto the cable car above. It climbs 1350 metres within 5 minutes, and they can fit 35 people at a time in the car. When we arrived the bottom of the mountain was covered in cloud, but as the cable car headed up, the cable car came out of the clouds and you got an amazing view over the valley.


At the top of the mountain is the Montserrat Benedictine Monastery , which was founded in1025 after a statue of the Virgin Mary was found here. Inside the Basilica is a 12th century black statue of the Virgin Mary. The Basilica itself is one of the most ornate and beautiful that we've seen.

Spain - More Gaudi

These are two apartment buildings that were designed by Gaudi. The first two pics are of the Casa Batllo and the second two are of the Casa Mila. When the apartments were built, neighbours ridiculed of the buildings, but now they are world heritage sites. You can go in to view the buildings but at €16.50 to go in (the Segrada only cost €10), and the queue of about an hour, we decided we would rather spend our time elsewhere!

Spain - Segrada Familia

These are pictures of the Segrada Familia. This is a cathedral being built in Barcelona, that was designed by Gaudi. They started construction in 1882 - and they're still going!
Gaudi spent 40 years of his life on this project, including dedicating the last 15 years of his life to it, including living there.
Construction wasn't helped by the war, with part of the cathedral being destroyed. When it is finished, there will be 18 towers - the tallest towers are still to be built.
As you can see, there is a lot of intricate design work, and it will be pretty amazing when it is finished. The design is based around nature - the pillars inside the church resemble trees, and the tops of the spires are nuts and berries.
It is due to be finished by about 2026, although that is in dispute. However, while we were there we only saw about 3 workmen, and they weren't doing too much so we're not surprised its taking so long (too many siestas).

Barcelona - Parc Guell

These pictures are from Parc Guell - a large park on the outskirts of Barcelona. It was designed by Antoni Gaudi, a famous architect in Barcelona and built between 1900 and 1914. It was orignally designed to be a housing development - but no one wanted to buy a house there, and only two were ever built. The council then turned it into a municpal garden.

We saw a number of Gaudi buildings in Barcelona (more pictures to come). Interestingly, he died after being run over by a tram! This is a famous icon of Barcelona - a mosiac dragon designed by Gaudi.

This is the Serpentine Bench - it took a lot of work to get a section without any people sitting there, as the park was absolutely packed with tourists.

This is the highest point of the park - and everyone likes to play a game of "how many people can we fit on top of the stones".

Spain - La Rambla

La Rambla is a busy pedestrian street in Barcelona, that has a lot of cafes, tourist shops and buskers. The buskers all dress up as different acts (such as gorillas, aliens, pirates and statues) and wait for people to give them money. If you took their picture, they expected money - but we were too cheap!
Yes, he is sitting on a toliet with his pants around his ankles!

Christopher Columbus is alive!

Spain - Barcelona

After Madrid, we flew to Barcelona for three nights, including New Years Eve.


We stayed across the road from the beach - but as you can see, the weather wasn't very good!
This is a huge food market along Las Ramblas. They say that you can get every type of food here, including such yummy stuff as unskinned rabbits, goats heads, and tripe.

This is the Port Authority building along the waterfront.

Madrid Food and Drink

We enjoyed all the food and drink in Spain, especially the tapas bars like below. The beer was cheap, and you could order a small plate of any food that you liked in the cabinet at the bar.

This was a great little cafe bar in Plaza Mayor. The hams hanging up are Iberian ham, and most stores sell them.

Enjoying a Mahou beer and some olives.

A typical food store in Madrid.

These are chocolate churros. The cafe that sold them was absolutely packed, you had to push and shove to get a table. Its only open during the night, as its traditionally a breakfast food and a lot of people enjoy them on the way home after a night on the town. You dip the churros in the hot chocolate which is very thick and creamy. If you order a hot chocolate in the cafes, you usually get hot chocolate which looks like this.

We accidentally ordered black pudding when ordering tapas. The menu was in spanish and we decided that the spanish name sounded yum, without realising what it actually was!