Being in Spain was pretty cool. It is definately a very cool place. You feel it as soon as you get there. I cant place what exactly it is that is cool about it, you just have to experience it.
To start off with, everything moves very slowly. Dont expect to get everything done in a serious hurry. People are just chilled out. Another word of advice, dont expect to get ANYTHING done between 1 and 3 in the arvo. That is siesta. Now im sure everyone has heard a little about siesta. But whatever you have heard, i can assure you its nowhere near as true as you can think. People just sleep. And that is all that happens. Sleep. Everything shuts down. People sleep in the street, anywhere wherever they can. It is incredible. People say it is because of the heat, but pull your finger out Spaniards, it isnt that hot! Haha, but it was pretty cool, being the uncultered tourists we are we went walking and didnt sleep. We walked up on to a hill on top of the town and checked out everthing from there. It was a pretty awesome view. it looked over the whole of Barcelona. It was awesome.
We left there and walked into the town. We were headed before the Gaudi Cathedral. But before getting there we stopped at the Gaudi gardens in the main park on the hill. It was so interesting. Gaudi is a style all in itself. He came from the same school as the Austrian artist Hundertwasser. The whole ideal behind this style is the inclusion and mixing of every colour imaginable and the exclusion of any straight lines. What is produced is incredible. The way things fall of the buildings and the decoration is reminicent of Picasso, but almost gothic in the way it is stuctured. In short i love it! There is a picture of the cathedral in the photos somewhere. But we checked out the gaudi gardens and then continued into Barcelona for the Cathedral. When we got there i was so surprised. The gaudi cathedral is still being built. It will be hopefully finished in 2025. Every time a European goes to Barcelona they comment on what is new and stuff. Its awesome! It is incredibly huge, and amazingly stylistic, but at the same time, so impractical. It is really cool. Again, it is a thing that is really hard to describe in writing i suppose it is something that has to be seen.
After that we were all pretty tired (probably from not having our siesta!) And chilled out in a park and didnt do too much. I was really up for having a good tapas meal, i mean seeing as we were in SPAIN! I convinced some of the other Scrooges to fork out for a decent meal and we went to local restaurant. The menu i think was the coolest thing about this place. It must have had 20 post-it notes in it, changing things and adding things. We didnt really know what exactly what we ordered but it was good! Haha, but we had a great time and it was a good opportunity to share a meal with the people i had been having so much fun with. It was great fun. We followed that with an icecream, and then went to the supermarket to buy beers for a the big night out, thats to come though! Haha, Barcelona night life was great! But that deserves its own entry!
Paz