Vamos a Barcelona

Three days after arriving in London, June 2000, we went for a week to Barcelona. Richard had a talk at the University so we tagged along.

Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia. Catalonia is a Nation without State in the north of Spain, with its own language, culture and history. The city was founded by the Romans, who named it Barcino. Romans left their fingerprints here, and they gave us their language: Latin. Catalan is a language that comes from Latin with a French influence. It is not a dilect of Spanish.

Barcelona is a wonderful town to walk and enjoy the architecture which is dominated by Gaudi and the Modernistas. Around the turn of the century Gaudi turned architecture sure real and made buildings that were curved and full of color. Unlike anything ever made before.

Gaudi's still unfinished masterpiece is the Sagrada Familia Cathedral. It has been under contruction for over a 100 years.
Of Gaudi's works the one we enjoyed the most was Parc Guell, as you can see below.

Gaudi did a lot of work at the park with mosaics

We were lucky to see a procession in the streets of the old town
There were also some neat fountains.

In the background of this picture is a fountain that is balancing an egg in the stream of water. It is a custom there.

Morgan really got into the Barcelona soccer team. We visited the stadium which holds over 100,000 fans, one of the biggest in Europe.

He even got the Barcelona team shirt.
The kids had a great time.

I did not take the top 4 pictures above. I got those from various sites about Gaudi. If you want to learn more about him check out my favorite site at: http://www.gaudiclub.com/index.html

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last updated 26 July 2000