Parc Guell photos

Here they are some more photos of the park. Enjoy!

Photo on left: The 'gingerbread' style gate houses. Now housing a bookstore and a museum...I think. We didn't go into either one. The right photo is one of the very cool stone arch colonnades, the road is on top of it! I want one my next estate.


Here is a close up of Gaudi's house. Also used as
a model home when they were trying to sell the idea of a gated community.



The terrace atop the area that was designed to be a market. Yep, all those columns were part of the market. Again, I'll have one on my next estate and hold a farmer's market every week. Those curve benches everyone's sitting on were designed by Gaudi to be ergonomically correct (is that how you phrase that?) For being what seems to be tiled cement they were mighty comfy...perhaps that was just because my feet hurt.

These guys were jammin' out and swinging their hat tassels in time to the music. Every time I tried to get a good picture someone stepped in my way. Cursed tourists. hee, hee, hee I hope you appreciate the irony in that statement. I have tons more photos of the park but I can't be bothered to post them right now and I'm sure you're bored with it anyways. It's much better in person. So go on, get to Spain.

Once we were done lazing about the park we hopped back on the trusty bus and settled in to have it take us around the outskirts of town and give a history lesson. We didn't learn much, but it seems that there is something designed/made by Gaudi everywhere you look! We hopped off because, once again I was desperate for the toilet and we needed to change to the red line bus to go up to Montjuic (the mount of the Jews) which was something DH wanted to do. As soon as we stepped off the bus two young girls asked us if we spoke English and if we could help them with their English assignment by answering some questions. I can't imagine how they knew we were Americans (dripping with sarcasm here). They were lovely girls and spoke amazingly good English asking us about the sights we saw and if we knew Spanish or Catalan (um...no). They were slightly amused by our list of Spanish phrases which consisted of 'I don't speak Spanish', 'Hello', 'Check please' and most importantly 'Where is the bathroom?' Are we prepared tourists or what (I think we fall into the 'or what' category).

Speaking of the bathroom that's the very next place we headed. Luckily, there was a Starbucks on the corner and these are perfect places to sneak and use the bathroom without having to buy anything. There are always lines of people and there is no key code to get into the bathroom (like there is at many McDonald's here) so it's perfect! The only problem for me is that once I'm inside a Starbucks I really don't want to leave unless I have a Mocha in my hand...so we split one. That problem solved we went to wait for the red line bus to show us more of the city.

That evening after a full day of tourist stuff, we headed to the Barcelonetta area right down by the harbor to get some paella. We were told this was the place to go, no matter what restaurant you went to if it was here the paella would be good. And it was. Not liking seafood all that much the hubby opted for the chicken option - we read the menus first to make sure there was more than one choice of paella. I went for the more traditional fisherman's paella and it was delicious. The white sangria was not to my taste -too citrusy - but it was still nice. There was a guy playing a guitar and singing and 2 very drunk young women singing along with him and being a bit obnoxious. Thankfully, they left shortly after the musician left after getting advice from the waiter on where to go for some entertainment.

And once we walked back to the hotel after dinner that concluded our 2nd day. Our 3rd day consisted of checking out La Boqueria market which was just around the corner from our hotel, trying out the crazy juices they sell their, popping into souvenir shops, buying chocolates, and eating tapas and sangria before catching the train to the airport and home.

There, it's done and in only 3 blog posts. Did anyone actually make it through all this twaddle? Well, congratulations if you did and better luck next time. Thanks for playing!