Barcelona

One of many plazas
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We finally arrived in Barcelona after a false start courtesy of me.... i thought I'd booked our flight from Dublin to Barcelona for the 11 April, however it turned out I'd booked it for 4 April..So we were off on the 12th instead at a very uncompetitive rate..

Barcelona was awesome, neither of us had been to Spain before and we both fell in love with the country! The city was beautiful with gorgeous buildings, wide streets, parks and plazas everywhere and a fantastic atmosphere!  We wandered all over the city and visited the city museum and the Picasso museum, both very good, especially the City Museum with it's underground exhibition of the roman ruins underneath the current city.

Semana Santa in Spain

Gaudi's Casa Batllo
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We had a Gaudi day where we visited an apartment building he designed, Casa Batllo, and it was amazing, the interior was so unusual and crazy, but simply beautiful.  As Jonno said, "it should look gaudy and tacky, but for some reason it doesn't". We walked up to La Sagrada Familia, the Gaudi church/cathedral/temple still being built (it started about 100yrs ago) and it was complete madness, but so stunning and brilliant.  The inside columns are designed to look like tree trunks with branches reaching up to the ceiling, with the whole effect of a forest.  We climbed one of the towers to get a better view of the dozens of other towers and while it was all a bit over the top, it was amazing. It will be mindblowing when finished.

Detail of roof of Gaudi's Casa Batllo
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We very quickly got into the Spanish time zone while in Barcelona, with dinner at 10pm and so on, though we did disgrace ourselves one night when we were feeling lazy and we went to the Irish pub around the corner... But on the upside we knew the name of the bar "Finn Macool' was in fact the name of the giant that built the Giants Causeway in the ancient myth :-)

While in Barcelona we fluked a culteral experience as we headed back to our hotel one day as we came across a Semana Santa parade, or Holy week (Easter) parade.  It was the full Spanish thing, with hooded people slowly marching, some carrying crosses (but no actual nailings thankfully) and massive floats of Jesus and Mary and marching drum bands.