Barcelona.

Barcelona. With us in it.
This shot was taken at the Jardin Guell yesterday, and what a day. We figured we could pretty much see the important stuff in one day, so early Tuesday morning we scrambled out of bed before the cathedral bells could chime seven, and walked the empty streets to the train. No-one, no-one wakes up this early in Spain. It just isnt done.

To save on walking we decided to tour it up a little and got tickets on one of the tackiest tourist devices known to man - the open-topped double decker bus. Thats right, we waved, took photos by the score and generally acted like cultural ignoramus´s (plural?) to fit in with all the other americans. i mean tourists. Yeah.

Whats Hot, Whats not.

Hot:
1. Gaudi´s architecture. You have to hand it to the man, he was a one-of-a-kind when it came to this stuff. The big cathedral place was amazing int its attention to details and sheer brassy nosed boldness. The gardens too had a huge amount of pizazz and flare, contrasted with the soft flow of the lush arbour (ah, waxing lyrical).

2. The maratime museum. I (dan) was like a kid in a toystore in this place - it was amazing. If any of you ever travel to Barcelona with a male between the ages of 5 and 50, go here and listen to the whinging stop dead. This place was simply supurb and i wont even attempt descriptions, except to say that it is housed in a building over 800 years old that used to house military galleys (real asterix stuff this) and has free audio guides. Free! in Spain!

3. Coffee. Must admit, so far Spain has turned it on in regards coffee. I have yet to come across a drop so bad i could not drink it, and for me that is quite something. The little cafe we found in the gothic quarter of Barca was highly cool, and reasonably priced (notice the money thing again?) . It was surrounded by some great little wine boutiques and a massive Gothic cathedral which came complete with geese.

4. Picasso. Went to an Excellent Picasso museum, which housed over a thousand of his works, many donated my family or the artists himself. It was great to get a real picture of the artists and his development from the earliest sketches to later canvasses and on to that wierd ceramics period which we should perhaps avoid. No matter what ingnorant people may say, he was a genius artist.

Not:
1. Gaudi. So anyway, everyone who goes to barcelona feels some compulsion to go see the Gaudi, which results in a tourism nightmare. The cathedral is covered (in some places, for miles) with graffiti from bored tourists doing the done thing, and deciding that they should be part of it, cause, afteall, they´re so important. Anyway, when we hit the gardens - more of the same. Teenagers yelling, bad mime, it was all there, and this in a garden! Without sounding like a snob (right) i would like to see the public kicked screaming from these places and entry restricted to those who promise to at least show a modcem of respect for the places and the man.

2. La Rambla. Do not believe tourist brochures. Nice lesson, grasshopper. The supposed throbbing heart of barcelona was in fact bleedingy bad, full of expensive (money Again?) food, bad english, and more mime. Damn you, mime.

3. The Catalunya History Museum. This was the worst museum we´ve ever been to. period. It had NOTHING, unless you count the endless plaster mock-ups of what life ´would have been like at the time´. I dont.

4. Americans. Is that a Gaudi? I thinks thats a Gaudi. Did you see that - i think it was a Gaudi. Hey! Gaudi. Gaudi. Did you get it? I think I got it. Yeah - I got it - i got the Gaudi.


So, weary and worldly-wise, we trained back to comfortable little Girona with a bunch of teenage backpackers sharing stories of drug and alcohol abuse along the way. Awesome. You did what? Awesome.

Well, thats about it from here for now - a few more photos may pop up to detail this trip, but until then, ciao.