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Hihihihihi!
So, since last time I blogged we’ve been in Barcelona. Mum booked us a little apartment down in Barcelonetta by Port Vell which is basically the beach that is round the corner from their version of Auckland’s Viaduct. About a 20 minute walk up to La Rambla and all that, so not out of the way too much and was nice to be by the beach! Mum had a freak out, which seems to be turning into a common occurrence when we arrive at our accommodation lol… this time over the run down nature of the streets surrounding us and also the building/apartment itself. I won’t lie, the streets were a bit hori and the building was a bit shabby and smelt a little bit like pee; but it could have been worse, and it worked out sweet as.
We walked up La Rambla quite a few times, but the novelty of it wore off pretty quickly and we adopted another route to get to the centre of town from our apartment and vice versa. La Rambla itself was quite cool, typical pedestrian strip up a main road with lots of trees etc etc. The point of difference I guess you can say is that there a tons of street performers (I use that term loosely and really just mean lots of people dressed up in stupid costumes wanting money), lots of flower stalls (very pretty) and lots of pet stores specializing in birds but even had things (when I say things I mean animals LOL) like rabbits and turtles! WAYYYYY too many people though, kind of like Times Sq in NY. Too many tourists, which I know we are as well, but there’s a point when they start getting annoying! And I do have very low tolerance for stupidity…
The new tradition of hop-on-hop-off bussing it was fulfilled as expected (Mum’s obsessed), which was good because we got to see some pretty cool things (some of which we wouldn’t have bothered with otherwise) like the Olympic Stadium and the Olympic Port, the football stadium and the bull fighting stadium. On this we also got to see the Sagrada Familia which is one of Gaudi’s works. I think it’s his most famous creation and it is basically a Catholic church that has been under construction since 1882 and still isn’t finished! Apparently it ‘should be finished’ in 2026 which is 100 years after he died! Wtf is that about!? There are a few more architectural pieces around Barcelona city created by Gaudi – a couple of buildings and the lamp posts but to be honest, I found it all a little strange. As in, not to my liking sort of strange haha; I am normally interested weird and wacky things to do with art but this didn’t interest me in the slightest. I won’t lie, I was a little disappointed that I had this reaction! It’s all just a bit too Dr. Seuss-esque for my liking though and I find it very ugly. So needless to say, I skipped the Gaudi park. Ah well. If I end up changing my mind about him, at least I left something to go back for!
We visited the food market which was pretty spectacular – still stinky like the food markets that Cherie and I visited in South Am., but the food looked delllliiiiccciiioouusss! Stalls for veges, fruit (obviously) but other things also like all different kinds of nuts and even an olive stall! Yummo! I got a fresh juice (they all looked so colourful and tasty!) but unfortunately it (strawberry and coconut!!) looked a hell of a lot better than it tasted! :( lammmeee! I was thoroughly disappointed!
And talking about stinky… another observation made about Barcelona is that the town freaken stinks!!! Everywhere you go, each area, each corner has a different and disgusting smell! And it is not semi-fun times like “Guess That Food” on the busses with Cherie, no, no I learnt quick smart not to try and play “Guess that hideous gut wrenching smell” as it didn’t have fun results. After a while it all kind of merged into one bad smell… a mix between old trash, off seafood and vom. Great.
Other observations are:
- The main age group seems to be youth. I do not like youths. I know I was one, and was probably just as annoying but I find them very bothersome and overly cheerful which is also irritating (sign of getting old hey?). They seemed to walk around in massive groups and I was constantly wondering why they weren’t at school??
- A LOT of pigeons! To the point where I ducked numerous times as one decided it would be a gas to fly in line with my forehead until the last moment when I duck and it swoops up to dodge me. Not fun.
- Smelly. Enough said.
- A LOT of stupid tourists… Again, enough said.
- It’s SUPER smoggy – well I think it’s smog! At first I thought it was ash from the bloody volcano, but I think it was smog. Either way, not impressed. Could hardly even see the beach some days!
- Yummo tapas! Yay!
Anyway, I am now in Marseille after a very uneventful train ride, which was warmly welcomed after my not so uneventful one from Valencia to Barcelona; long story short – I was stuck next to a flaming ginger of a girl who was swigging red wine out of the bottle and eating crisps very noisily (one of my pet hates)… keep in mind this was maybe 9 or 10am! Turns out she was 38 years old, American and called Alexandria. And I had to spend the following 4 hours listening about how much she loves NZ, what she did on New Year’s Eve in Queenstown in 1999 and how she also drove through the outback of Australia flashing people her boobies. Yay.
xx
More photos up: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=209620&id=754266194&l=3e735f3afc
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