Barcelona

17 July
We decided not to tackle driving into this large city, the second biggest in Spain. Instead we drove to a smaller town inland, Vilafranca del Penedes and booked into a nice tidy, clean pension for two nights. This was the centre of one of Spain´s famous wine growing regions. From here we took a train in the afternoon in to Barcelona - a one hour trip which took us right into the central Placa de Cataluna. Emerging here from underground we were quite overwhelmed with the crowds and how busy it was. Our first destination was Parc Guell - landscaped by Gaudi. We were to become very familiar with Gaudi´s works over our two days here. This park is free to visit - and was very crowded. It contained several Gaudi inspired buildings - kind of weird, ornate, bizarre "Hansel and Gretel" buildings.
18 July
Next morning we caught an early train in to Barcelona. Our goal was visiting La Sagrada Familia before the crowds - the famous cathedral designed by Gaudi and still under construction since his death about 50 years ago. It was well worth the expense of the tickets and headphones with English commentary - it was truly amazing, both inside and outside - and has to be one of the urban wonders of the world, even though it is only half finished. It was very interesting to see construction going on around us - lots of scaffolding inside and out. Also people were working on plaster models in preparation for design detail. We spent quite a lot of time in the underground museum beneath the cathedral. This cathedral was certainly the highlight of our visit to Barcelona - and was very photogenic!
We spent the rest of the day touring the city, sitting on top of an open air double decker bus. We were able to get on and off as we wished and our tickets included three different routes around this vast city. Many sights to see! - the site of the 1992 Olympics, the Mediterranean port area, and walking the famous La Rambla - a wide and extremely crowded pedestrian street that stretches from the port area to the central Placa de Cataluna.