July 21, 2009

We docked in Barcelona early this morning and left the cruise ship around 9 a.m. After twelve days you almost assume that you just belong on a cruise ship. By the time we had waited an hour for a taxi, reality had set in – the cruise was over and we were back to reality. Well, almost. We were now in Barcelona for a few days, so I must admit that life is still pretty good.

We got to our hotel after a few minutes and settled in to our rooms. We took the metro to the centre of town and decided to purchase tour bus tickets and spend the rest of the day driving around the city and listening to the audio tour. These are the double-decker buses that are open at the top that you see in all the major cities in Europe. They aren’t cheap, but they are a good way to see the city. Barcelona has two one-hour routes and a third shorter route. We drove around most of the two longer routes so we saw quite a bit. We were able to get off and on any time we wanted, so that was great.

Barcelona is a beautiful city. It is well known for its unique architecture, and in particular, the buildings of Antoni Gaudi. The most famous building is the Sagrada Familia, a huge cathedral that is still about one hundred years from being completed. We saw many of his other buildings as well, along with famous buildings by other well-known architects. Of course a tour of Barcelona is not complete without passing by the stadium and museum of the Barcelona Football Club, which is like a cult here in Barcelona – kind of like the way Montreal thinks of the Canadiens. We also saw the Olympic Stadium and various other facilities built for the Olympics, and several buildings and parks built for various world fairs that have been held in Barcelona.

For supper we cave in to demand from the kids and ate at McDonald’s. It helped that the coupon books we received with the tour bus included McDonald’s coupons. We strolled around a bit more and then headed back to the hotel for night.