Barcelona

Barcelona

We stayed in a lovely spacious light apartment in Barcelona. Our apartment was on Ramblas, a very long, busy, touristy street. On Ramblas you can find mimes, street performers, pet shops, flower shops and lots of people.

The mimes are dressed in outrageous costumes and wear amazing makeup so you can't tell who you are posing with. Some were quite scarey.

We had our photos taken with many mimes.

Lots of Gaudi's work is in Barcelona. Gaudi was an amazing designer and architect. He took inspiration from nature.

While in Barcelona we visited many of his famous works of art, including an apartment block called La Pedrera, and a park called the Parc Guell, which features in lots of movies.

We also went to see some flamenco music and dancing. Flamenco is traditionally from this part of Spain. It is mainly very fast guitar playing, accompanied by percussion such as clapping and drumming. It is also sometimes accompanied by singing, and flamenco dancing, which is danced by a woman in a long layered dress and high heeled tap shoes. The dancing was sharp and fast, and had lots of intricate, fast footwork. The singing sounded like a strangled cat... (Sabine suggests not going without earplugs - but then you miss the guitar playing).

In Barcelona we went to a Imax theatre, and saw a 3D movie on prehistoric sea monsters. As it was our first 3D movie we weren't used to the effects, so we jumped a lot - especially when anything with teeth swam towards us (which was most of the movie). It was a lot of fun and we enjoyed it heaps, and even though it was in spanish we still loved it.

One day we caught a flash cable car up a tall hill.

From the cable car you could see amazing views of Barcelona - which was a lot bigger than we had expected.

It had a castle on top, which we walked around before walking back down, stopping at the water and sand park (no water though, because Barcelona is in the middle of a severe drought).

One night we took a tour bus around Barcelona when it was dark. We enjoyed this because the city looked so different when it was dark. We saw a huge fountain lit up, by different coloured lights. There was classical music playing, and as the music changed the pattern of the fountain and the lights, changed with it. It looked spectacular.

On the last day in Barcelona we went to the zoo. There were lots of animals here, including different ones that you don't get at Wellington zoo.

There were all the usual monkeys, camels and tigers, but there were also huge anacondas, elephants, pink flamingos and hippos.

That night we took a twelve hour night train to Paris. Our cabin was quite comfy.

It had four seats.

These folded away once the beds were folded out.

We had a hand basin, and they gave us things like toothbrushes, toothpaste and mineral water. I (Chantal) thought it was a bit like school camp - lying in a bunk, sucking on Wurthers!

We loved Barcelona, but were ready to start our new adventure in Paris...