Thursday 30 August 2007. The Island Star reaches Spain and Barcelona is our port of call today. On last year's cruise we opted to do a tour on mountain bikes. That's been well and truly crossed off the bucket list so we'll just hop off the ship and use our legs as nature intended today!
We wanted to see one of the famous Gaudi houses and after perusing the map, we head out confidently up Las Ramblas. If you look at Barcelona close up on Google Maps it is called "La Rambla", so why do we give it the plural form as though there were more than one? For the obvious reason actually - the street is a series of shorter streets, five in total: Rambla de Canaletes, Rambla dels Estudis, Rambla de les Flors (site of a flower market), Rambla dels Caputxins, and Rambla de Santa Mònica. We were warned to keep an eye out for pickpockets, but we saw no untoward behaviour at all.
Well... we did come across a few naked ladies in a park, but they were all stony-faced.
What a feast for the eyes Barcelona is if, like me, you love architecture and beautiful street furniture. Set the buildings against a deep blue sky and some stunning iron street lamp standards and I'm quite happy clicking away!
The sky was cloudless and I always have a polarising filter on my camera which makes the most of a blue sky. Look at the number of statues on this corner building. Even if finding the Gaudi building eludes us, I can't complain that the day has been a disaster!
But then, here it is anyway. This is Casa Batlló. There are virtually no horizontal straight lines whatsoever.
The Catalan artist and architect Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926) has works all over Barcelona, the most famous being the as yet unfinished cathedral La Sagrada Familia, the most-visited monument in all of Spain. Casa Batlló is known locally as the House of Bones as it does look a little as though some of the shaping has been modelled on various skeleton parts. It was built in 1877 and is just one of Gaudi's creations to be granted a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
It is an extremely hot morning. Gasping for a drink we make it back to the coast and find a stall selling fruit juice that is a very welcome sight on our way back towards the ship.
By the port, at the foot of Las Ramblas there is a statue of Christopher Colombus. He is portrayed as though pointing towards the New World, though actually he is pointing south south east, to somewhere in Algeria... Or perhaps, judging from the colour of his head, he is pointing accusingly at a pigeon...
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