| Glenn's Barcelona Journals 5-29-02 It's our first full day in Barcelona and with a good nights rest under our belts we wanted to take a tour of the city that would be both fun and show us around a little. Mike's Bike Tours wast just the thing. We met up with the tour at 11:30 am at the Monument a Colon (Columbus Monument) at the bottom of the La Rambla (port end). While we waited for the tour to start we met a few of the other tourists that were also going on the tour including Terry and Anne Anderson who were on a cruise around Europe and spent their summers living in Norway (and live in Georgia the remainder of the year). Jordan introduced himself as our tour guide for the day and off we were. Our first stop was to the shop to pick up Beach Cruiser type bikes and go over the safety rules (mostly how to be prepared for the Spanish drivers and walkers). We then proceeded on to the Placa de Sant Jaume where the Palau de la Generalitat (the seat of Catalunya's government) and the ajuntament (city government) facing it. The Palaua was founded in the early 15th century and the ajuntament in the 14th century. Next was the Cathedral which is an amazing gothic structure with the facade created in the 1870's, well after the original building. Our next stop was the Palau de la Musica Catalana (Catalan concert hall) with it's exquisite mosaics and sculpture clusters representing Catalan popular music on the main facade. Inside includes a ceiling of blue and gold stained glass along with many sculptures, but we didn't have time for the tour (we saw the inside on postcards). The tour also included stops at the La Sagrada Familia, a famous work-in-progress church that Gaudi had dedicated his life to. The structure was started in 1882 while Gaudi converted his full attention to the project in 1910, until he died in 1926. (Gaudi so dedicated hinself to the project that he became a recluse inside the church during his last years. He died one day when he left the church and got run over by a tram just outside.) We also biked our way through a beautiful park on our way to the beach where we sat at a little restaurant and had lunch. We actually just had Sangria for lunch but you could have something to eat and go swim in the ocean if you so desired. After the tour was complete we returned our bikes back to the shop and were all invited to meet at the Glacier bar for drinks later (around 11:00 pm). During the 4+ hour tour we both had a chance to meet and talk with the other folks on the tour with us. This is where we met Chris and Stephanie. Chris and Stephanie live in Georgia but have taken 4 months off from work to travel as we have. (They were celebrating the completion of their third month of travel.) We had determined that Chris and Stephanie were thinking about going to see Star Wars tonight which is the same plan that we had. We told them that we would possibly see them there. It was around 5:00 pm by now and the movie that we wanted to catch was the 7:30 pm showing and we wanted to clean up a little before the show. We arrived a few minutes before the show, having taken the metro to get to the movie theater, grabbed some popcorn and drinks, and found ourselves some decent seats. Erin was very happy at this point as she had been talking about Star Wars since it came out last week. At the end of the movie we ran into Chris and Stephanie. We joined them for dinner at La Fonda (a restaurant highly recommended by Jordan, our tour guide). We enjoyed dinner and some good conversation until about 11:30 pm when we decided to head over to the Glacier bar. (By the way, the food at La Fonda was very good and very reasonable!) At the Glacier we saw some of the folks from our bike tour and hung around until well after 2:00 am.. As we were leaving Chris provided his e-mail address so we could keep in touch. It didn't take us too long to hit the sack once we arrived at home. |
| A close up of some of the architecture at the La Sagrada Familia. |
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