Eric's travels: Barcelona

We are still in Barcelona and are really enjoying our time in this great city. Since my last post we have continued to explore and the day before yesterday we took a tour out to Montserrat. As part of the tour we first stopped at a village called Colonial Guell, it was started by a wealthy industrialist in the early 1900's to provide homes and facilities for the workers of his factory. While the architecture is very interesting on some of the buildings the primary reason for this stop is to see the first church that Gaudi designed. It is considered a mini Sagrada Famillia without the spires.

The church was very much in Gaudi's style and we are looking forward to,seeing the bigger version once our tour begins.

Montserrat was interesting but extremely crowded, while it is easy to get to the top of the mountain today one can only be amazed when you consider the wrk and challenge that must have gone on when the monastery was first constructed over a thousand years ago. It was subsequently destroyed by Napoleon and reconstructed in the eighteen hundreds. The views from the top are spectacular and a little nerve wracking for a guy with a fear of heights. The mountain itself is also quite spectacular to see with its jagged rock faces and steep cliffs.

Our day yesterday was spent meandering the city, walking Las Ramblas, the cities very busy pedestrian strip that links the main plaza with the waterfront. We spent time walking the beach and of course sampled the odd glass of wine.

We did have a unique experience the other day after our trip to Parc Guell. We had decided to go and see another monastery that is apparently quite beautiful. We got off the bus and walked up to the entrance to find it closed. On our way back to the bus we saw a well dressed young couple with a tourist map looking at things, we mentioned it was closed and all walked down the hill. Shortly thereafter Marilyn got hit with a large amount of bird poop. The couple saw this and very nicely, or so we thought, came to our aid with a package of wipes. The stuff was everywhere on her and the woman and I cleaned her up, they also notices there was some on me although I had not felt anything hit me, Marilyn confirmed it was all down my back. The man then cleaned off my back while I helped with Marilyn. We go all cleaned up and then headed off to the bus to get back and take a shower, we thanked this "nice" couple for their help. Later, back in the room, I went to get some money from my wallet and found it was empty, wow, had we been conned.

We are actually pretty careful travellers, Marilyn has a travel purse with straps that cannot be cut and a snap closure that she keeps on her front all the time. I tie my wallet into the pants pocket and keep any valuables in the backpack with the zippers clipped together. In this case those things saved us some heartache, as we talked about it later Marilyn said she felt a tug or two in her purse while she was being cleaned but it is virtually impossible to open it the way she has it set up. I put the backpack,down to help,with the clean up and at one point the man went to,put Marilyn's coat on the pack but with the clips he would not have had time to quickly Open and steal the contents. With my wallet, I felt a tug at one point and did check, but the wallet was still there, because it was tied in all he could do was pull it and empty the cash, happily no cards were taken. In the end the little adventure cost me about $150 euros but it could have been much worse, the one real disappointment was the loss of an email address from a friend on the Camino. In the end it was a very cleverly done con.

Now it is all money belts, all the time.

Until next time

Gaudi's first church