Day 6 - Barcelona Spain

Well today we woke up in Bacelona, and it wasn't raining :D

It was a normal morning, up and about fair early, and onto the bus for a trip into town. We did driving tour of the city and learnt abit about Spain's history. Seems it was a big place back in the day, but in more recent time its been abit of a nothing country, they weren't involved in either of the two world wars, but did have a rather bloody civil war between the two world wars...

The city itself is quite modern to look at, a big change from London and Paris. It was the sight of the 92 olympic games, and that can been seen through the city in the form of sporting arenas everywhere. There was one big church that we had a good look at, but I can't remember (he can't but i can Sangra Familia - Gaudi was one of the architects) the name of it... its still under construction, even though they started building it back before 1910... things go a little slower on spanish time. They are meant to finish in the year 2040, but aparently the date changes everytime Contiki go there... so who knows when it will be finally finished.

After the driving tour, we did abit of a walking tour through the old gothic part of the city. it was like stepping back in time. Old stone walls, and cobble pathways, narrow streets, wood and wrought iron doors and gateways. We went through to the old town square where Columbus was meet back, and then down some more narrow allys to an area that was used as an execution area for anybody that didn't agree with the king during the 1930 spainish civil war. From there our tour manager lead us out of the gothic town (which is almost a maze) and into the new town, where we had the day to ourselves. Because Megan and I are heading back to Barcelona by ourselves at the end of the Contiki trip, we decided to just take it easy and have a look around. We walked up and down the main street, got some lunch at a little local place (which cost heaps about 50 Euro, we normal spend about 15 Euro), and just generally took in the sights of the area.

At around 5pm, we meet back up with the bus and headed out to watch a Flaminco Dancing show. It was realy good to watch, and at the end we did some "latin dancing" as a group for abit of fun, it was a real laugh and well worth it. Its not something easy to describe, but it was very interesting to watch. They served us sangrea which is a red wine with something added to it, its quite sweet with a hint of spice to it. i didn't think it was to bad, but Megan wasn't impressed with it.

After the the show we headed down to Port Olympic for dinner. This seems to be the pary area of Barcelona and there where people everywhere. We had dinner in quite a large restaurant with most of the others off our tour, then headed home on the bus. On the way back we went past some water fountains that had been built for the 1929 world expo.... it was AMAZING. and awsome sight, was lights and sound, it was well worth missing the night out on the town to see it.
And that was barccelona :D

R&M