Well, after trying to get up reasonably early, we were a little shocked to discover that it was nearly 10am by the time we hit the showers. We headed out to see the sights of Barcelona very cautiously, as our host at the Pension we are staying at had been full of warnings about ‘robberies’ and how dangerous it is. Usually when we ask, ‘but it’s safe enough to walk in the main areas?’ we get a reassuring ‘yes, yes of course, just be careful’. But when asked this question, Marion said, ‘no, it’s not like other cities. The Pyrenees Mountains are not just the border between France and Spain; they are the border between safe and crime’. (She is German and has slightly weird English). So after all of this, we weren’t quite sure what to think, believing that maybe we had made a huge mistake coming to Spain. Anyway. Maarten had a look on the map at the things Marion had circled and we organised our route. We started off by going to the Arc de Triomph (not the one in Paris, obviously), finding that it is a lot smaller than the ‘real’ one, yet bigger than the Bride of Remembrance in Christchurch. It was quite stunning though, all made out of Brick. I’m not sure how old it is, I assume that it is not from a recent war. Anyway, through the Arc was a long walkway, leading to a park that looked reasonably big on the map. We started wandering around it, pausing to look a t the most amazing water feature, then began to realise how big the park was; and that by turning left at the beginning we were taking the looooong way around it. That’s okay though, as we got to see a couple of really nice ponds, one that you could hire a row boat on even! As we walked, it started smelling a little ‘funky’ and we realised we were getting close to the zoo, but on discovering that it was €14 each we decided to continue on our way to the Marina. We headed left, but on seeing no other people down that street and remembering Marion’s warnings, we turned around and went the other way, which turned out to be a nice way to go anyway as we soon saw the marina in front of us. Man, there are a lot of Marinas on the Mediterranean! I don’t think that the Europeans ever do any work… Anyway, after wandering round the Marina and seeing (and hearing) a crazy guy talking to himself and gesturing wildly to some American tourists we decided to head off to the beach to see what we could see. The beach here is really lovely, just as steep as Nice, but sandy and rougher. There were a few people swimming, although it wasn’t the warmest of days.
Anyway, it had been a while since eating anything substantial, so we had a look at the menu of a beach side café. €4 for a ham and cheese toastie seemed like a bit of a rip off, but Maarty wanted a coffee, and the drinks weren’t too expensive so we decided to share the toastie… and we were very pleasantly surprised when it came out with a huge side salad as well! Very, very nice. After having our tasty feed, we headed off down the beach, finding yet another Marina, and spying a weird bronze fishy monument thing… even stranger than the cannabis-leaf looking thing in Christchurch square. Having seen enough boats to last us another couple of days, we headed off down the main street towards Safrada Familia, a huge Gothic Church. On the way we saw another weird building, this time it looked like a big glass penis! Ah, the Spaniards! Anyway, Sagrada Familia is amazing – I think that out of all the churches I have seen I like the Gothic ones the best. They have so much detail but in a different way. This one almost looked like it had icicles hanging down from it. It was pretty expensive to go in though, so we just admired it from the outside, which is probably the best view anyway. After having a rest in the park opposite the Church we headed up to the hospital, which Marion had said was free entry. Not sure if she meant that it didn’t cost if you were sick, or that it was a free sight, we decided to take a look. We discovered the most amazing hospital I have ever seen… It is a working hospital but in buildings that are hundreds of years old… well we’ll put a photo on so you can see.
We were getting a bit tured by this time (after 5 hours or so of walking) so go thte Metro back to the hotel to rest for a couple of hours, deciding that we would quite like to go back to the Sagrada Familia at night as it looked like it would be lit up well. On the way there we couldn’t quite figure out what to have for tea, and ended up at KFC... but not quite the KFC we have at home! Well, it was of course, but I had the most amazing chicken salad, and Maarty even got a beer with his combo, for the same price as a coke! These Europeans… We then headed back to Sagrada, and it was pretty cool, getting some more nice pictures of it before heading home.

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