Beautiful Barcelona

I'm back from Spain, and working on getting my internal clock reset to Pacific Daylight Time. The trip was as wonderful as expected. My beautiful young niece Sarah has made a great life for herself in Barcelona, an exciting city full of character and interesting neighborhoods as well as fabulous tourist sites. Sarah and Oscar, her fiance, were untiringly gracious hosts and tour guides. As much as I enjoyed the Moderniste architecture and the labyrinthine Gothic quarter and other tourist sites, I really loved going to tapas bars with Sarah and Oscar, and once with some of Oscar's lifelong school chums, to watch futbol (that would be soccer in American parlance). The food was great, the shopping was fun, the chance to get a glimpse of Sarah's life was priceless. Here's a picture of Sarah, Oscar and me in a tapas bar:The biggest tourist draw in Barcelona is the Moderniste architecture of Antoni Gaudi and his followers (please excuse the lack of accents in my spelling - I don't have a Spanish keyboard here on Whidbey Island). Built at the turn of the last century, these buildings are amazing, fanciful confections of curves and swoops and colors and mosaic tiles. In the middle of a huge modern European city to see these fabulous fairy tale structures is a delight.
This is a picture of a few of the chimneys on the roof terrace of one of Gaudi's apartment buildings.Here is a partial view of another Gaudi building (less than a block from Sarah's apartment)Here is the famous Sagrada Familia cathedral, designed by Gaudi, which has been under construction for over a hundred years.And an undulating park bench in Gaudi-designed Parc Guell.
In the old part of the city there are older, more traditional architectural sights.
This is the Esglesia de Santa Maria del Mar, which is widely regarded as the most beautiful church in the cityUnlike the snarling gargoyles and monsters that perch on the rooflines of Paris, in Barcelona there are unicorns, smiling dragons and other fanciful details which I have to believe helped inspire GaudiThe millions of tiny shops range from uber-trendy to funky and hip to antique picturesqueAnd then there is Las Ramblas, a street that swarms with tourists, locals, vendors, swindlers, pickpockets, performers, flowers, birds, and cafes. It is like a cross between the Pike Place Market in Seattle, the Champs Elysee in Paris, and a circus.Midway down Las Ramblas, there is a huge market called La Boqueria with stands selling fruit, vegetables, meat, cheese, fresh squeezed juices, and other comestibles. Here you can see the ubiquitous cured pig legs hanging over a meat shop. We also played on Barcelona's public beach on a cool, cloudy dayStrolled through the gardens of Mont JuicAnd hiked up Tibidabo to the antique amusement park and cathedral on top.
After a week Barcelona, I rented a car and drove by myself throughout the Pyrenees and along the Basque coast and through Cantabrias, then through the wine region of La Rioja and back to Barcelona. Then, during Holy Week we joined Oscar's family in his father's hometown in Aragon for an amazing religious festival right out of the Middle Ages. More pictures of day trips, road trips and Holy Week in future posts.