Seeing the sights in Barcelona

After visiting La Boqueria yesterday (Friday), we headed along a main street to Plaza Catalunya. The street had a wide tree-lined pedestrian area in the centre of it, with a few market stalls (flowers, magazines, caged pets for sale etc) and quite a lot of "living statue" buskers. See the video of a pile of iguanas below!





Plaza Catalunya is a square filled with hundreds of pigeons and surrounded by shops. It was here that we met up with local workers Kathy and Adelina in the early afternoon.



We had lunch with Kathy and Adelina, and then they took us on a whirlwind tour of Barcelona! They had a car, so we drove up to a few lookouts where we had wonderful views over the port (where our cruise will depart from) and the enormous city of Barcelona. One lookout was at a palace and another was at a castle. We also saw the stadium where the Olympic Games were held in 1992.



After this we went back down into the city and stopped at La Sagrada Familia, an abolutely enormous church originally designed by Antoni Gaudi, an architect who designed many of the famous buildings and places in Barcelona. Construction began on Sagrada Familia in 1882 and still continues to this day, funded by donations!!

Evidence of the ongoing constuction work - huge cranes, scaffolding etc - was very visible as we walked around the block with Adelina. It's impossible to describe the church so I will have to rely on photos. It's Barcelona's most identifiable landmark and towers above the rest of the city, clearly visible when we were up at the lookouts many kilometres away. The photos probably don't really convey the sheer size of it, but the big photo below is actually a panorama of about 8 or 9 photos that Ben took from across the road, because it wouldn't all fit into the one frame. You can tell the difference between the old and new parts. Unbelievable isn't it!!



Around 4pm, Kathy and Adelina took us 30 kilometres north east of Barcelona to visit the lovely family at the convention grounds. We had a wonderful visit with Antonio, Guillerma and Juana, and also briefly met Antonio and Guillerma's daughter Antonita and her husband Miguel. The workers had to translate everything for us and them, but it was a very special visit! We also had a very interesting tour of the grounds by Antonia and Kathy.



Afterwards, Kathy and Adelina put us on a train back to Barcelona, and I'll let Ben's next post tell the story from then on. :) What a great day!!!