Barcelona – July 2009

A must and long pending blog on Barcelona...a city I fell in love with immediately. It dislodged Paris as my favorite city in the world.

What I loved about Barcelona was the balance...between the modern and the traditional, between art, culture, sports and nature. It’s a complete city where you can get a flavour of everything.

So on one side you have the churches with their traditional Gothic architecture and on the other side you have the modern architecture – houses and churches designed by Gaudi; various museums and art galleries interspersed with the Olympic stadium and the football stadiums; La Ramblas - a shoppers paradise versus Montjuic – a walkers paradise with all its tropical plants and trees.

By the time we finished off with the immigration formalities and checking in at the hotel it was already around 2:00. A quick freshen up and we decided to just go hang out at La Ramblas.

After some aimless roaming around just getting a feel of the city, we decided to take the hop on hop off bus. The idea was to do the whole route to mark out the places that we want to see.

Even in the blazing heat I opted to sit in the open open on the top floor of the bus..no regrets about that. Barcelona is soooooo beautiful. They have the most amazing artwork at the street corners and roundabouts and musicians playing on the streets. Even the roofs of shops were artistic...so to say!





Some of my other favorites were 'Cap de Barcelona' (Head of Barcelona – a piece of Modern Art and the Smiling Lobster.


Another unique one was seen at the entrance of the Port of Barcelona called Ones or Waves, a sculpture by Valencian artist Andreu Alfaro. It is a stainless steel tubular sculpture formed by seven arcs whose undulation suggests the waves of the sea.



But one of the things that impressed me the most was at the Vila Olímpica. During the Olympic Games in 1992, the Olympic Village was originally constructed for the participating athletes on the opposite side of the city to the stadium. This area was originally a disused Industrial site but when the area was being developed numerous sculptures were made from materials recycled from the wasteland. The sheds in the below photo are all made from recycled stuff...I appreciate and admire their social commitment.

By the end of the tour I had marked out sooooo many places to see that I was like ...SO MUCH TO DO/SEE...SO LITTLE TIME’...the next day was gonna be quite busy!!!

TO BE CONTINUED