BAILED UP IN BARCELONA!

CATALUNYA
Barcelona, SPAIN
Day 49,50 & 51

Congrats Alan and Jodie on your baby boy! We know he´ll be beautiful and can´t wait to hear all about it!

Well! What a few days it´s been. If you think we´ve been galavanting around this beautiful city of Barcelona..eating paella and drinking sangria, looking at all the wonderful monuments, going to all the fabulous museum´s (art galleries)..and cathedrals and temples, namely Gaudi´s spectacular and brilliant Sagrada Familia, then you´re wrong...........

We´ve been bailed up in our rooms, recovering from ´something´. Greg had terrible gastric problems and i ended up on antibiotics..something i fear because some varieties make me break out in awful hives, due to allergic reactions...so we´ve taken it easy.

Been resting, drinking heaps of filtered water, lots of organge juice and we bought vegetables to cook here in the self catering kitchen. (Pity we weren´t in Portugal - they had orange machines in every restaurant we went to and fresh juice, it was quite incredible. It was also more expensive than wine!).

Thank goodness we´re in nice accomodation. The guy we met at the train station, Mario and his wife have been so wonderful. In fact, the set up is very different here because the communal kitchen, is their kitchen. And it´s like their sharing their house. Also, a few english people in here as well. 9 rooms.

Been thinking of you too Alena, and your experiences here in Barcelona...we loved your email about it all!

Yesterday...Greg recovered enough to go back to the Sagrada Familia, the genius Gaudi´s spectacular structure which has all the towers etc (took photos but you´ll have to wait until we are able to develop them to a disc before posting, i´d recommend you go to google and do a search, it´s just amazing!)

I heard that Antoni Gaudi died in 1926 after his structure, started off as a cathedral originally by another architechure and when Gaudi started redesigning it, it became a temple..the El Temple la Sagrada Familia, known to the locals just as ´Gaudi´s temple´ which apparently should be finished in 30 years!

Other architects are finishing his dream and there was a lot of contention as to whether it should just be finished quickly or built according to how Gaudi wanted it, thankfully the latter happened. There are 2 schools of thought with the Spanish tho, depending where they come from.....it´s very funny!

There are eight cranes working on it at the moment! Started being built before Gaudi died...and also interestly, and little known apparently, is that Gaudi actually got struck down by a car, here in Barcelona, in 1926 and died as an unknown in an out of town hospital. Sad. But that is apparently who he was, a bit of a recluse and an eccentric. And you can see that in his work, the playground he designed, in the rooftops and houses he designed.

It´s also known as one of the most spectacular works of an architecture in history...from the outside, when i saw it on our city tour we did after we first arrived, it looks gothic at the base, art nouveau in the middle and Picasso, cubist at the top!) You have to go look at it on the net to understand.

It´s meant to have 18 towers, six representing the central family with an eventual 174m tower representing Jesus and twelve spiers representing the 12 apostles...and the fruit at the top on the knaves is his tribute to nature. He was a religious man with an extreme love of nature. The way the structure peaks out from all sides of Barcelona...is quite overwhelming.

Anyway, its wonderful and today we´re going to go back and look INSIDE it! IT´s something that is very alluring. Over the past two days while we´ve been resting, i haven´t stopped thinking about it, knowning it´s just ´there´...certainly feel compelled to visit again. Can´t wait.

First day out to really look at it and not feel like crap! The other thing we really want to do here is see Picasso´s museo. Joan Miro has one too which is out of town a bit and so does Salvatore Dali, so we´ll see how we go. All the surrealist artists seem to come from Spain! Picasso has a whole history here..which i know will be fascinating to see in the museu dedicated to him.

Barcelona is a gorgeous city. So fresh and beautiful. And so medieval with a long history. And friendly too. This is the Spain our friends have said they love. Not the Spain that has arrogance and an unwillingness to change. If Madrid was the heart, this is the soul.

When we first arrived we knew we´d be here a while. Not knowing it´d be longer than we thought cos we were sick..arrgh. We had PLANS to go to Montserrat to see the monastary and to Sitges to try the liquers and to Andorra to have a spa, but that´s all gone with the wind.

But as Mum said, there are always places you miss, and other places to see. And i´ve had a chance to have direct email contact with my family and to read Mauve Binchéy´s epic book set in Ireland as well as devour some of the history books they have here at the hostal, all about Spain´s history, which is fascinating, so hey...there´s always a positive to being cooped up! Good hearing from you too Andy Pans :-)

The Las Ramblas is bustling and has artists on the streets and people and the port..it´s just beautiful. The harbour is gorgeous. The bridge going to all the restaurants is beautiful, called the Rambla de ma.

Okies...wé´re finally off to explore, now that we´re out of our cocoons! Not sure how long we´re here before we go to France, will let you know!

Meanwhile...can´t help singing...Oh Barcelona.............oh, oh oh...