I'm currently in my room pretending to read, but I'm too distracted by the snow flurries outside and neighbors building snowmen.
The first time I visited Barcelona was in the summer of '07, 3 young girls pretending to know how to visit a foreign country without our parents for the first time. I think we fared well, never mind the stolen wallet or injured knee. Well, since that first adventure to España, I've returned twice. Once, on a weekend in November with a few friends, with Kristen as tour guide and hostess, and secondly on a winter vacation with the whole family shortly after New Year's. Barcelona never loses it's charm, and I personally don't get tired of taking the Gaudí architecture walking tour.
I'll start with the most recent January visit, mostly because it's the way my pictures loaded into this thing, and I don't want to have to rearrange them all. We arrived after enduring the freezing temperatures of Paris, so the semi-cold weather of Barcelona was a nice change of pace.
Las Ramblas is one of the main tourist attractions of Barcelona, but it's definitely a must-see. The huge street is lined with shopping booths, tourist gift shops, street performers, and more. In this picture you can see the winter decorations that lit up beautifully at night.
This is the Palau Nacional, it is currently home to an art museum, but it was build for a 1929 Exhibition.
This is the view from the Palau Nacional onto Plaça España.
This is a picture from the fountain show that runs nightly there, you can see the fountain in the above picture while it's not running. The shows are really fun to watch because they set the water to music, each show with a different theme (i.e. Disney movie songs, Oscar-winning songs, etc.). This picture actually came from my other trip to Barcelona, but it fit in here better.
The Olympic Stadium from the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.
Now the next batch of pictures come from my trip to Barcelona in November with two of my friends Liz and Alyssa. We unfortunately had a mishap at the airport, leading us to miss the last flight out of Stansted to Barcelona... so we had to pay extra money and spend the night in the airport. It was pretty much the most uncomfortable night ever, even the fire alarm went off. They tried to tell us to all get up off the floor and go outside, but we all just mostly hung out near the door. Of course no one thinks there might actually be a real fire. So after the longest night of my life, we arrived in Barcelona the next morning and made our way to Kristen's apartment. There she had some leftover food, which was greatly needed/appreciated by us and we set out to do some sightseeing with only a few (1 or 2) hours of sleep.
This is the Sagrada Familia designed mostly by Gaudí. It's been under construction since it started, and it doesn't look like it will be done in my lifetime. As you can see, we got there at night, but when we arrived it wasn't lit up. We were disappointed, but figured we'd come back during the day when suddenly the lights came on. It's really a unique piece of architecture that some may feel is crazy, but I think it's fun to look at.
Park Güell is another one of Gaudí's masterpieces. It's situation on top of a hill that overlooks Barcelona. It's a refreshing alternative to the city, as there are trees and forest-like paths, and of course you get to view some more crazy, possibly drug-induced, architecture from Gaudí.
The view from the top of Park Güell
I believe this is a picture of Port Vell (Kristen may have to correct this).
So, that's Barcelona. Next up will be Edinburgh, Scotland.
