| Glenn's Barcelona Journals 5-31-02 Friday morning and we were heading to the flea market at Placa Glories Catalanes. The market was full of the usual junk you would expect to find at a any flea market back home, clothes, tools, toys, electronics, antiques, and junk. We strolled around the flea market for hours as it was a decent size market. We did buy one thing and that was a corkscrew. We had bought bottles of wine during our trip but always had to borrow a corkscrew so we finally bought our own. After the flea market we headed out towards Montjuic where the Olympics were held in 1992. We took the metro over to Placa Espanya where we walked up towards the Palau Nacional de Montjuic and below that are Montjuic's fountains. The Palau Nacional houses the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya and by now we had seen plenty of museums so we skipped by this one. Above the museum is the "Olympic Ring" where the main events from the 1992 Olympics took place. There is the Institut Nacional d'Educacio Fisica de Catalunya, a sports university, and the Piscines Bernat Picornell building, where the swimming and diving events took place. From here we stopped in to the Estadi Olimpic (Olympic Stadium) which is the main stadium for the games. The field below was being prepared for a World Football League game that was happening soon. Interesting to note how desolate the whole area seemed. It is a huge expanse of land and buildings built for millions of people to enjoy the Olympics but now, with very few people milling around, seems very empty and quiet. Next we walked up to the Castell de Montjuic. The walk was quite a little hike and took us a little less while to get to the top. The Castell de Montjuic provides some great views overlooking the city and the port. We spent some time walking around the castle before heading back down the other side towards the port. We stopped when we found Placa de la Sardana and the monument celebrating the traditional dance of the Sardana. We checked out the views of the port and relaxed on the grass while we read and enjoyed some ice cream while sitting in the sun. It was now almost 7:00 pm so we decided we should finish our walk back to the city and towards home. By the time we arrived back at the port end of La Rambla and had taken Erin's picture with the lions surrounding the Columbus Monument we were getting hungry. We stopped for dinner before ending up at the internet cafe for a few more hours of e-mails and journal work. We called it a night again around 12:45 am so we could make it back to our room before the gate was locked. Tomorrow the plan was a day trip to Montserrat. |
| Erin standing next to one of the Lions protecting the Monument of Christopher Columbus. |
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