Barcelona

So I went to Barcelona 2 weeks ago with my friend Erin, who lives in London. Sadly I am just now writing about this!! But I just made this blog site so I guess that's okay. We went to Barcelona for super cheap! Only about £90 for the return flight and 2 nights at a nice little hotel!! We flew in Tuesday night and settled into our hotel. We decided to go on a bike tour the next day and see the cathedral and some Gaudi architecture. However, the bike tours weren't running yet, so we ended up buying a double decker bus pass for 2 days. We rode the bus around (on the open top) and saw a bit of Barcelona. We hopped off at the cathedral, but unfortunately it was under some renovation/construction and the whole front of the building was covered. :-( Outside of the cathedral was a neat little market, so we walked around a bit and then headed up the road. We actually just walked straight up from where we were and ended up right outside of Casa Batllo, one of Gaudi's major works. This place was incredible. We opted for the expensive 16 Euro tour, which included the whole main house and the attics and rooftop. It also had an audio tour thing included, which was great. Wow!! The place is incredible. Gaudi uses a lot of mosaic and just weird, unique designs. Everything sort of flows, no sharp edges, just soft, wave-like corners and pieces. Hard to explain, but incredibly beautiful. The rooftop is amazing. Random, but amazing. Very close to that place was another Gaudi work, which is now an apartment building. Anyway, we did a bit more sightseeing and then headed back to the hotel. That night, we ended up going for Spanish tapas and paella for dinner. Very traditional of us. Then headed to a flamenco dance show!! Awesome. Those are some talented folks, and they can seriously move like none other. Erin and I are pretty sure that we could also be flamenco dancers, and as soon as we got back to the hotel that night we practiced a bit on our own. We're considering moving to Barcelona to pursue flamenco dancing as a full time career. We are that good. Anyway, the next day we hopped on the bus and headed up to Park Guell, another Gaudi work of course. I guess that's what you do in Barcelona, see Gaudi's incredible architecture. Or so we did. This place was fantastic. Very colorful and bright and fun. It was a beautiful sunny day, so we spent a while there walking around. It is a park, so there's a lot of open space, but also some areas where Gaudi had done a lot of detailed work. You'll just have to see the pictures, I can't explain what this stuff looks like. Then we went to Montjuic, which is where the Olympic Stadium is. But, we did not see the Olympic stadium. We actually went to this other place at Montjuic called Pablo Espanyol. Pablo Espanyol has well over 100 different buildings that are set up like a miniature city. Many of the buildings are connected and there are little pathways between rows of buildings and such. It reminded me of Universal Studios, when you're on the tram and you go through the fake little Mexican city. Anyhow, each of the buildings are different and represent a different area in Spain, which was really quite interesting. There are stores and restaurants in many of the buildings as well. It was an awesome place. We had dinner there and then headed out to the aeropuerto. It was a quick trip, only 2 days, but enough time to really see a lot of the city and the culture there. We really enjoyed Barcelona. You should go!!