Saturday 17 July 2010

Europe Country 9: Spain (Barcelona) I


26 September 2009

Today was our first actual visit in the city of Barcelona. I was amazed by the buildings around. I had no idea on how to express why I like them. I think I just show you some of the pictures.



You may not believe what we saw in our hotel. We saw an antique lift which was still working to take passengers up and down in the hotel. Well, I am not really sure if it is old, but at least it is working in the old ways. Please watch the clip below.



pic: A quite and clean street
Barcelona is a nice place for cycling and you can save some time from walking. Unfortunately, we did not make a reservation and all we could do was just to take some photos and show to our friend, pretending that we did cycle in the city :)
We then headed to the market, called La Boqueria. It is a large public market and one of the city's foremost tourist landmarks, with an entrance from La Rambla. The market has a very diverse selection of goods. The market is clean and not slippery and without stench smell like what we have here.

pic: Selling whole pig?
From the market, we entered into La Rambla, a 1.2 km-long-tree-lined pedestrian mall in central Barcelona. You can get almost everything here such as postcard, souvenirs, food, drawings, and etc. Along the street, there are many people decorated themselves in different look and just pose/freeze there. If you are interested, you can take photo with them and then put some tokens in a container in front of them.

At La Rambla, there is an ornate fountain called Font De Canaletes. Tradition has that the one who drinks from the Font de Canaletes will come back to Barcelona, as the inscription on the floor suggests. It appeared in a very famous Taiwanese series called 流行花园. For Mandarin version, please kindly visit http://www.wretch.cc/blog/avenchen/31804042


We passed by these sculpture but we did not know their identity. From their dress, they do not look like Spanish right?
On the way to visit Guell Palace, we saw this. Again, we were not sure with the history but it looked nice. Does it look like kind of Egypt creation? Also we saw a group of ladies wearing in Spanish costume, probably they were having event/festival. Without a tour guide, we could only make some guess.


pic: public toilet for gents
Finally we reached Guell Palace, one of the creation of the very famous architect, Antoni Gaudi.


Antoni Gaudi was born in 1852 in Reus. He is considered as the greatest exponent of Catalan Moderism and one of the leaders of Art Nouveau in Europe, despite his architecture evolving into such a personal style that it is quite difficult to classify. He is today considered as one of the most talented architects in history and his works - seven of which have been made World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. He died in 1926, 15 days before his 74th birthday.



His first work that we visited was Guell Palace. It is located on a street adjacent to the Rambla. This home is centered on a main room for entertaining high socity guests. At the terrace, you can see chimneys of bare brick or decorated with ceramic work, glass, marble, porcelain or sandstone. It is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Site.



Before the day ended, we went to the naked beach. We heard that there are a lot of people sun bathe in naked. Of course, I didn't upload here, they are adult content :)

We met this little kid near the beach and surprisingly he only like our beloved Zhi Wei.

Below are some other pictures taken during our sightseeing.


pic: Another Bridge of Sigh?



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