Barcelona 12-18-04 1:11 am
Hola from Beautiful Barcelona!
So much to see! One of the most lovely cities in all of Europe. Picasso, Gaudi, Dali, y Columbus!
We visited the Sagrada Familia Edifice, which is currently undergoing an extensive repair and expansion. (Paid for by wedding taxes for the last ten years.) The cranes reach higher than anything else in the city. We reached 450 steps up (and then down) one of the spires. Good thing we weren´t afraid of heights and claustrophobic!
Gaudi´s Guell Park and Art Deco influence are evident throughout much of the city. Our Pension for four days is right on the Rambla de Catalunya. The Ramblas are the equivalent of Park Avenue in NYC, mixed with touch of sixth street and even more of the Russian Walking Streets. Plenty of buskers, pea-in-the-pod hustlers (tourists signs exclaim "It´s not a game, it´s a trick!"), as well as more human statues than we have ever seen! We have met ´a man frozen in the icebox´, ´a talking headon a plate of Paella´, ´roman centurian´, ´sad golden goddess´, all waiting to come to life following the clinkof a Euro or two in their bowls.
Culinary-wise, nothing to report...we are eating out of the provisions from home to keep costs down in this Euro driven market. We will eat out in Morroco.
Tomorrow we visit tiny Andorra, described as a cross between Shangri-La and Heathrow Duty-free. 3 hours there, 3 hours on the ground, 3 hours back. One more country for the list.Question: who has visited more countries? Jim or WMDB?
Glad to be on the road, outtamerica. Miss our friends, miss our comfy bed, miss our Kitties! In the next day or two we will post many, many pix on the website, but this internetcafe won´t let us download!
After Andorra, we head down the coast of Spain to Valencia and/or Granada and/or Seville. It depends on what we find along the way. Our neighbor Gloria has a good friend on Gibraltar. We will be dropping off a new baby gift for her and hope to get some tips on things to do on ´The Little Thorn.´We have heard that there is a good english language bookstore and Kosher restaurant there.
Time is running out. More later
jim and twmdb
Andorra 12-18-04 4:15pm
Hello All-
We are in the Principality of Andorra, a tiny but wealthy parcel of nation, nestled in the Pyrennes between Espana and France. Big ski area.
Entire capital city Andorra de Vella cannot be more than 1/4 miles wide, but quite a few miles long. The entire country is considerably smaller than Travis County, only 420 or so square miles.
Plenty of cheap shopping: we bought a bag of groceries, including sausage, cheese, a giant Heinekin, juices, chocolates, water, Cokes...all for less than $20. But this would not be a cheap place to live, for sure. It seems like every other business here is a hotel or auto dealership. We have seen every make of car available in Europe sold here, except for Maserati and Rolls, tho´we just may have missed them.
Doing just fine. Had a calorie-packed lunch in the park.Today is an easy day. 6-8 hours on a nice bus through the mtns, a little shopping, etc.
Thanks for opting in to our travelblog. We´ll talk to you all again real soon.
jim & karen
Barcelona 12.20.04 2:05pm
Hello Everyone!
Well the holiday shopping season is in full swing here
in lovely, cosmopolitan Barcelona. We leave today by train for Madrid.
There we hope to visit the terrorist bomb site and pay our respects.
Then we have a sleeper car for the long trip across
central Spain to Lisbon. We will not be heading
down the coast as originally planned.
We hope to be out of Europe before Christmas Eve so as
not to get stuck anywhere with every place closed for the holidays. We
have a connection in (on?) Gibraltar, but do not want to drop in on strangers
in the middle of Christmas dinner and such. Plus we want to get to some
place cheaper!
Barcelona bustles nearly 24 horas a day. The ramblas,
the famous walking street, is filled with couples, seniors, shoppers, buskers,
pea-in-the-pod hustlers, (signs warn: "It´s not a game...it´s a crime!") and
human statues ranging from a golden Che to Charlie Chaplin, to some poor soul
stuck, frozen, in a freezer, to ballerinas and plastic soldiers, all waiting to
come alive after, but only after, they hear the clink of a few Euros in their
can.
We are told that the Castilian region is the
wealthiest part of Spain, and Barcelona the wealthiest city. A few
beggars and sleeping homeless, but nothing like you see Stateside.
We visited the site of the 1992 Summer Olympics last
night. Very lovely park-like setting. Barcelona has a spectacular
collection of statues, parks, museums, and the like. Funny, as tourists, uh,
travelers, we have not stumbled on any ghettos yet.
We like to think of ourselves as seasoned travelers,
but we have broken a coupla´ cardinal rules this trip. One, the rule "To
travel happy is to travel light." We have too much luggage yet again.
Mainly gifts, food and other consumables.
And, of course, if you do not speak the local language
and you are traveling with someone who also does not, you end up talking,
surprise, mainly to each other. I think our longest conversation here has been
with Fernando, the friendly night clerk at the Neutral Pensiones, where we are
staying.
The final travel rule we broke was: "As soon as you
get into a story (locale) start fig´ring how to get out. We failed to book
ground travel tix until yesterday, costing us an extra day in Barcelona.
Oh! Such misery!
On to Madrid!
jim and the world´s most dangerous blonde