Barcelona

View of Barcelona from Parc Montjuic

La Sagrada Familia, under construction

I flew from Madrid to Barcelona with one small carry on bag and a rather empty backpack . In Barcelona I stayed with my friend Lourdes, one of my classmates in the German course in Munich. The fact that Lourdes lives very close to the city center and that she has a scooter made it very easy to drive all over town. And that is exactly what we did as soon as I set foot in Barcelona: we drove to Parc Montjuic, a park located on top of a small hill with great views of the city and and the Mediterranean sea. This hill is also the place where the Olympics were held back in 1992. The weather in Barcelona was cold and windy but with a clear blue sky on most of the days. During my stay in Barcelona we visited all the "you must go there when you are there" places : Parc Montjuic, the beach of Barceloneta, Las Ramblas (a boulevard filled with street artists, restaurants and souvenir shops), Plaza Cataluña and Plaza España, La Sagrada Familia (the cathedral designed by Antonio Gaudi and which is still under construction with an expected completion date of 2020), Barcelona´s cathedral, the barrio gotigo, La pedrera (a house designed also by Gaudi) and of course a couple of tapas bars. I also had the chance to meet some of Lourdes´friends and go out with them for a drink and for some additional tapas.

Parc Montjuic -- Plaza España

La Sagrada familia, with Lourdes

During the one weekend I was there we decided to drive to the Sanctuary of our Lady of Lourdes in Lourdes, France. The sanctuary is located about 6 hours from Barcelona so we left on Friday night and completed our first half of the route. We found a hostel on the way to Lourdes but still on the Spanish side and spend the night there as it was going to be less expensive than spending the night in France. The next morning we woke up early to finish the drive to Lourdes. On the way over there we crossed the Aran Valley and were able to see the Pyrenees at a distance. We reached Lourdes sometime around noon and got to see most of the sanctuary that day: the churches, the grotto in which the Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette, a coffee shop and of course some souvenir shops in town. There was even time to take a bath in the pools (they are called pools but they are more like bath tubs) that are filled with water coming from the grotto where the Virgin Many appeared (which by the way was freezing cold water). On Sunday morning we headed back to Barcelona stopping first at a couple of towns that were on the way: Baqueira (the ski town where the Spanish royal family skies), Veilla, and Arties.

Driving across the "Valle de Aran"

Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes -- Grotto

The Pyrenees - Viella

I also did a one day trip to the city of Tarragona on Monday. Located still on the coast of Cataluña and about 2 hours by bus from Barceolan, Tarragona is one of the most "roman" cities in Spain with its own roman amphitheater and city walls. The bus drive to Tarragona was somewhat folkloric and colorful. I believe I took the senior citizens special (no offense please) and was probably the only person under 65 in the entire bus. The poor lady sitting behind me was driving with her husband and she had just been robbed in the elevator at the bus station. Before the bus departed (and only 5 minutes after they had started boarding the bus) everyone knew what had happened to her. The information spread rapidly from passenger to passenger and before I could take out my ipod to start listening to some music everyone was giving her advices on what she should or shouldn´t do, giving their opinions about the "crooks" who stole her wallet and the terrible pick-pocketing situation in Spain and some were just trying to console her. Everyone of the lady´s sons, daugthers, and sons-in-law called (no, the crooks did not steal her cell phone) and she repeated the same story over and over again. To this day I could even recite it...."Ay...fulanita, es que tengo un disgusto. Manolo nos dejo en la estacion porque tenia que seguir para el trabajo..bla bla bla" (Ay, XYZ I´m so disappointed. Manolo dropped us off at the station because he had to go to work, etc etc etc). The conclusion I made of all of that situation: no wonder we Latins are so noisy and opinionated. We come from the Spanish and those are definitely some of the traits we inhereted from them and still share with them. I could only stop, think back a couple of months back and be very sure when I tell you that something like that would have never ever happened on a bus in Germany. A German would rather have a root canal done with no anesthesia before advising or giving an opinion to a complete stranger without this one asking for it and insisting on getting it. I smiled and concluded that these are for sure the things that give life and color to our .

Tarragona Cathedral -- Roman amphitheater (Tarragona)