Barcelona, July 16th-20th.

Hola Amigos/Amigas - Greetings from Barcelona. The 2^nd largest city in Sp­­­ain (next to Madrid) located on the beautiful Mediterranean. We arrived early in the morning on Saturday the 16^th of July from a short 1 ½ hour flight from Rome. We were feeling a little haggard as we were operating on just a few hours sleep. Without too much trouble, we made our way from airport to train, to subway, to a two block walk arriving at our latest apartment. We are pleased with our digs.

The apartment building overlooks a beautiful residential street, with gorgeous apartment buildings surrounding us.

After a quick afternoon nap, we ventured out to explore this next city on our itinerary. Barcelona is much different than Rome. It is a quiet city, clean and quite a bit more laid back. There is not as much chaos, and you don’t feel as if you’re taking your life in your hands when you cross the street.

Our first stop was to visit the Sangrada Familia Catholic Church (Church of the Holy Family). As we approached the church from a side courtyard you could see the spires sticking many feet up in the air. This church is unlike any you’ve ever seen before, and we didn’t even get to see the interior (the line was 2 hours long). La Sagrada Familia is one of Gaudi's most famous works in Barcelona. It's a giant Basilica that has been under construction since 1882 (that's not a typing error!) and it's not expected to be completed for between 30 to 80 years.

The next stop was a stroll down the “Las Ramblas”. Las Ramblas is a pedestrian walkway through the very heart of the city centre. We saw all sorts of vendors, restaurants, bars and street performers and some pretty seedy characters. At the beginning of this walkway we sat and watched the children chasing the pigeons, the tourists sitting along the fountains, and the locals having a quick lunch break before going back to work. A woman in a burka trying to videotape her young son while chasing the pigeons, brought smiles to our faces. This area especially reminded me (Vicki) of my early childhood spent in Spain. I can remember going to the piazza and chasing the pigeons with my sisters.

Day 3 took us on a long bike ride through the city and down to the beach. Biking in Barcelona is much

different than biking in the States. First of all, you can’t really rent a “nice” bike with speeds. You rent a “cruiser beachcomber” bike with only one speed. I haven’t biked with breaks on the pedals since I was a kid, but it was fun. There are no rules with biking. You can bike on the streets, on the sidewalk, through pedestrians and I suppose, even in the subway if you wanted to. It was a blast!

The beach was excellent! (Tom here) There are two primary beaches in

Barcelona, one for tourists, one for locals. We rode the extra mile to the locals beach after an excellent meal of starters, pizza, and gelato, at the reasonable price of 7,50 Euros (about 11 dollars). Now, changing in the Public WC was NOT so pleasant, we should have just changed out on the beach in front of God and everyone, for that was the norm on the locals beach. It is a man-made beach, created after the Barcelona Olympics of 1992 that put this city on the world-wide map. Sand was clean, a few vendors but not as bad as Mexico, and the water in the Mediterranean was incredible. I (Tom) took a nice dip in the waves, but Vic hung back, using the excuse of "guarding our stuff" to avoid the water, :-).

Our meals have been simple and very different from the states. We wake up and have instant coffee with condensed milk (no fat-free half and half here!) with biscottis and perhaps a muffin, or a croissant from the shop just downstairs. Then, we get to our itinerary for the day usually by noon or so, walking many steps (Vic's average pedometer reading has been 20,000 steps), have a big lunch at about 2:30 or so, get home by 7 or 8, have a small simple dinner.

Our final full day in Barcelona was spent visiting the Cathedral of Barcelona and the Picasso Museum. As is with many of the churches in Barcelona, the cathedral is built in the Gothic style. There is a "ring" of chapels that surround the interior of the church and each one offers an "alter" to pray to the various saints.We even were able to light a few candles for some of our loved ones. Here is Tom lighting a candle for his dad, Gene Moore.

The high altar sits upon a tomb of Barcelona's patron saint, Eulaloia. She was a 13 year old local girl that was tortured 13 times by Romans for her faith before finally being crucified on an X-shaped cross. Her X symbol is carved in the pews.

Long ago the resident geese, there are always 13, in memory of Saint Eulaloia, functioned as an alarm system. Any commotion would get them honking alerting the monk in charge. they honk to this very day.

The Picasso Museum was well worth the 30 minute wait. It depicted his early years in Barcelona, 1895-1900, his time in Paris meeting up with Avant-garde artists (1900-1904), back in Spain, Madrid area until 1917, then skipped up to 1957 when he extensively studied and copied a number of 17th century artists, especially Velazquez "Las Menias". He approved the museum wholeheartedly, but he never visited because he vowed never to set foot in Spain again while fascist dictator Franco was in power.

We were especially impressed with his impressionist view of Velazquez, and there was a slide show super-imposing his stuff over the original, fascinating!

Adios, see you Paris!!!