Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Spain Day 3: Barcelona

The trip to Montserrat was wonderful, but it meant that our time in the city of Barcelona was cut short to just Saturday. Since we were leaving early Sunday morning, it was our only day to do
and see all that we wanted to before we left.
Barca street 

First Stop: Picasso Museum

The Picasso museum was great, even as someone who is not a fanatic about museums I really loved it. At the end of the tour Matt and I bought postcards and a small picture for ourselves, and I promptly left them at stop 2 on today's journey so sorry Mom, Dad, Katie and Bean but part of your gift is somewhere floating around Spain...oops! 


Second Stop: Park Guell 

This park was designed by Gaudi and is made up of beautiful mosaic tiles in the midst of the natural landscape of sun and palm trees.

Gaudi's house at the entrance to the park

The grand entryway

Examples of his mosaic work



One section of the park
(*note this spot is where America's Next Top Model filmed one of their season finale catwalks, through these caves!)


Matt and I in the entryway, he was nice enough to oblige my jumping photo

There was a hole in one of the walls and Seton and I fit inside!

The second section of the park, it holds the famous mosaic bench that wraps around this space

Matt and I trying to take a photo in the sunniest spot ever....

Take #1

Take #2

Third time's the charm!


Caitlin, Seton and Me at the top most peak of the park

Stop Three: Sagrada Familia

This is Gaudi's most prominent work in the form of this cathedral. It has never been finished, and this was very evident with the vast amount of construction that was going on.  There was an extremely long line to climb to the top, and in the interest of saving time to do more we opted not to wait. However, this is definitely one of the tallest structures I have ever seen. 


Stop Four: The Beach

Barcelona is right on the water and even though it was January, and not beach weather, we were excited to feel as though it was not the dead of winter. The weather was a lot milder the whole time we were there, staying around mid 50s to low 60s which was essentially tropical to all of us New Englander's where the alternative was temperatures in the teens. 

We made it to the pier around early evening, a beautiful time 



Beachside promenade

 Many beautiful sand structures along the way

We stopped for dinner at a restaurant alongside the beach overlooking the water. We had been walking so much that at this point we were all ready to drop just about anywhere.  This ended up being a good choice because earlier in the day we had made reservations to go to the Ice Bar and it turned out we had stopped for dinner at a place only a few doors down from our next, and final, destination. 

Stop Four: Icebarcelona 

The Ice Bar is something that has become very popular in Europe and since Caitlin and I had not yet been to one, we thought it would be fun to try it out with all of our visitors.  It is a bar in which the whole room, and everything in it is made up entirely of ice. You are given very puffy, eskemo-esque coats and gloves and you enjoy your drinks from ice glasses that rest on an ice bar. 

 IceBarcelona
(if you notice the red numbers they say -06 which is the temperature, in celsius, of the room)

Me, Seton and Caitlin

Our Group: Allegra, Me, Seton, Caitlin, Anne
Matt and Bobby (Anne's boyfriend who joined us for a small part of our trip)

Matt and I "getting warm" 

Matt taking a quick nap on the ice bed

Caitlin and I peaking around the ice corner

We had a lot of fun goofing around taking funny photos and sitting on the ice, but we only lasted just shy of an hour.  We left the room and warmed up outside using their space heaters until we were properly de-thawed.  After this we were all pleasantly exhausted, and could do no more so we called it a night.  Barcelona had treated us well but unfortunately it was time to get ready to come home. 

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