Barcelona, Day 2

This is a shot of the house that Gaudi himself lived in. Sara and I paid the small fee to tour the interior. The house is in the Park Guell which is in a residential area of Barcelona and has world famous outdoor mosiacs. Especially the big lizzard that is part of a downhill fountain at the entrance to the park. Lots of my photos show how many visitors are there in July, but the people tended to be in clumps at certain areas (hot spots), there were other parts of the park with few people even at this most touristy time of the year. There is no charge to come to the park which is nice. That way, even the students on a tight budget get to see a lot of Gaudi's work. In Europe, over and over we found that not only museums and such charged a pretty steep admission, but the big churches sometimes did too. Seemed weird, but judging by the number of people around, I don't blame them for wanting to slow the flood of human bodies somewhat--heck, I had to do that at my own Gulf Shores house, so I can relate !

Sara is out looking for a place to change money so I am on computer and ready to do another gorgeous day. edit{Sara taking really long time, as in hours, so I will edit the crazy run together words}

First off, most places won´t let you send YOUR stuff into THEIR computers, so I can´t send photos up to the blog. didn´t bring a laptop, just a litte PDA. edit{plus forgot camera connect cord, might can buy one at camera shop if I see one} This is the first hotel to REALLY have actually in-room WORKING internet access, but I have no computer of my own to send the photos thru. I will ask at hotel desk later if maybe I can use some equipment of theirs.

The hallway guest use hotel computers (that I am on now) are even running a shareware browser I have never seen before and won´t let you use FoxFire or Internet Explorer so I can´t even ck my hotmail or gmail accounts as neither are compatible with this SlimBrowser I have to use. So there are definite limitations. Note this anyone who emails me on hotmail or gmail, can´t read at moment.

We had supper last night down at Port Olympic on the harbor at an outdoor restaurant under folding umbrellas. Sara had Hake, a fish that is white, sweet and mild and I ordered the Seafood Paella since they would do it for one person (many places only do two or more) so she could try to too. We had salads and grilled asparagus, beer and sherry and wonderful desserts. We felt that we should eat heartily since surely we had burned at least this many calories in our trek to the highest point in Barcelona.

And I DO mean highest point. We went up to the cathedral on the mountain top behind the city and then climbed to the tip top of the dome and lookout terrace around the dome on itty bitty winding stone circular staircases that are all outdoor and worked into the design of the fancy churchbasilicallica (sp?). The wind was stiff up there and not many folks went all the way up. Just a nice Belgian banker fellow and the two of us mostly at that time. All of Barcelona and the Med Sea harbor can be seen panoramma as well as the Pereynes behind on a clear day, which it was. Barcelona has much much better air London. In fact, I think London needs to do something about the problem, it is horrible..........those Olympic people are nuts, in my opinion, to send all those crowds there in 2012 to develop lung problems. Even your tongue gets coated with black sooty stuff.
The Olympics have already been in Barcelona, and that is one reason they have such nicely landscaped modern public areas and expressway embankments. The older public areas always were lovely I think.

Anyway---we went to one of Gaudi´s houses yesterday and went all thru it, Casa Batilló that he designed for the Batilló family. I´d only seen it in photos before. It is the very sensuous art nouvous style with curved everything and all custom windows , doors, ceilings, etc..much of it covered in tiles. We rode a open top bus a lot and saw several other Gaudi designed residences and public areas.

Yesterday we had only breakfast on the train about 7 am so we planned to get some lunch on our way up the mountainside to the church on top. But every cafe was closing for lunch as we got there, by about 3 or 4 we were really hungry and thirsty. Barcelona is warm and sunny, way warmer than Paris and of course cold London. We went in the small cafe/bar at the base of the Funicular that runs up the hillside and were begging for something. This cheerful Spanish fellow jumped to our rescue and invited us into (what we thought was ) his place and told the grumpy upset waiter/bartender to get us a couple of beers. Looked like were were out of luck for food, but beer was better than nothing and we were near faint. The cheerful fellow heard we were from Memphis and wanted to talk about the top four guitarists in the world, (his list, Clapton, Larry Corydel). Additionally he was really hoping that we, like him didnt like Rod Stewart, he also said. We realized that he was quite drunk, but in a cute sort of a way....we endured his attention long enuf to get the beers, (he was really quite funny) but as he began to tell us more about himself and how he had eleven children and just loved doing what it took to make them, we stopped talking to him about guitarists and told him we had come to Spain to visit churches, and in a very devout manner. While he was otherwise occupied, we slipped out and on our way.

Barcelona has a busy port with huge drive-on ferries pulled up to docks. They are big like cruise ships. I took some photos. Thshinye shiney colorful paint jobs. The port also has wonderful ancient buildings with incredible stone carvings and details. A monstrously large , color Liechtenstein sculpture is covered in mosaics and soars into the sky over some of the public walkways along the harbor.

This hotel is so nice that they even have this card by the bed with a choice of pillows, with photos and numbers, like 1 is firm and synthetic, 2 is real feathers (my choice), 3 is some weirdorthopedicthapedic oneYoutc...you just let then know which one you want.
They have a pool, a massage parlor and a gymnasium :o) it says....Sara and I were humming the theme from The Jeffersons in the elevator !