A Quick Trip Recap

I have many thoughts on traveling abroad and observations made while in Spain but I think I'll save them for another post. In all honesty, I'm still a tad jet-lagged and am looking forward to going to sleep soon. But, I want to give all of our 5 readers a quick recap of what we did on our trip to Barcelona.

A short 8 hour flight from Atlanta plopped us down in Barcelona, Spain. Pretty neat stuff. For 600 bucks you get a seat that doubles as a flotation device, half a soda and some peanuts. Whatever. From the airport we navigated our way via bus, subway, train and taxi out of the city to a small town to the northwest called Cardona, home of one of Spain's many paradors. These are historic castles and such that are owned by the government and run as lodging for tourists. Since we had always wanted to stay in a castle, we decided that Cardona was our best shot.

You can see the castle on the hill in background. The defensive position on the heights was impressive as the castle held a commanding presence over the entire valley. This picture was taken from the small town. We spent the night in neat and comfortable accommodations. The real treat were the views and the ambiance of the place.

From Cardona, we trekked back toward Barcelona via train and stopped at a place called Montserrat, a monastery also built on a mountain. Actually, Montserrat was above the clouds while we were there. The place is very old and we were amazed that it was constructed so high up. Yes, it was pretty touristy and we only saw 2 real live monks and 1 nun, but it was definitely worth the trip.

We then took the train back to Barcelona, were we stayed for the next 4 nights. The city is pretty amazing. It is a big city of 1.7 million people and boasts all the amenities you would expect, but it also has a rich history that really interested us. We found ourselves seeking out old Barcelona, tracking down Roman ruins and spending time in the Barri Gotic, or Gothic District. This is actually where we rented an apartment. The accommodations were fine and the location was perfect.
This is a picture of a remaining portion of the Roman defense wall that surrounded the original city. Pretty cool, huh? Our favorite museum was called the Museau de la Ciutat; its highlight were Roman ruins discovered and excavated in the 1930s. We saw the remains of the original city Forum, laundry, wine making facilities and a temple. Awesome stuff.

The enduring symbol of the city is La Sagrada Familia, a cathedral that began construction in the 1880s. Well as you can see from the picture, it is still under construction! Hard to believe. Antoni Gaudi is credited with the vision for the church and oversaw its construction for the first 30 or so years of the project until he was run over by a city tram. The work continues and is expected to end in 2026. I can't even begin to describe how unique this place is so you'll just have to take my word for it. The imagery is very different. Take a look at a few more pictures.

Getting sleepy....

The last highlight I'll share before I turn in is this: on our last full day, we decided to take a spur of the moment trip out of the city to Girona, about a 90 minute train ride northeast of the city. It turned out to be one of our favorite parts of the trip. We actually were able to walk a huge section of the Roman Wall in Girona. I wanted to pour hot oil from the top onto tourists but I was all out of hot oil. Bummer. We also saw a beautiful cathedral with the second widest gothic nave in the world behind St. Peter's. Yeah, it sounds like a stretch to me but you gotta have something to hang your hat on, right? Just ask Greenwood, SC and its Widest Mainstreet. But I digress. Girona was beautiful and also had an awesome restaurant called Blanc that served us some great seafood.

That is all for now. We will definitely try to write more soon. Feel free to post questions, if you have any. I also think that Kris is going to post our photos on Snapfish so we'll try to post the link to those as well for our 6 loyal readers out there.