SIX DAYS IN BARCELONA

Well, here we are December 23, 2011 over a month since we first arrived in Barcelona and I am just now getting around to updating our Travel Blog.  My my, how time flies!

We had a great visit in Barcelona.  I wrote about our first day there on my last blog and for the remainder of our time there we mainly walked around, took a hop-on, hop-off bus tour, went for a little train excursion to a seaside resort, ate well, attended a classical music concert and basically enjoyed the sights, the food and sounds of this magnificent Spanish city.  Following are some of the highlights of our stay there.

On our second day in Barcelona, because of jet lag from our travel overseas, we got up and got started very late, had breakfast and decided to take it easy and just walk around to see some of the sites and return for a very late lunch/early super at the Wok Dao Japanese Buffet restaurant which as I mentioned in my last blog was highly recommended by Tony our B&B host and was closed the previous day (they close between 4:30 and 9:00 pm - this is Europe) when we tried to eat there .

Wok Dao Japanese Restaurant

The buffet

We weren't disappointed!  In addition to the standard oriental buffet with a great selection of all things oriental, in the back they had a good variety of seafood and meats that you could pick and choose from, bring it  to a Japanese teppan grill and watch the chef prepare your meal right in front of you.  The food was all you can eat, freshly prepared and succulent, an exceptional value for the money.  

After our meal, we continued strolling in the San Antoni District for a while, checked out a nunber of interesting boutiques along the way and headed for our home away from home for an early retirement, trying to recoup from the jet lag.

Day three we decided to take the hop-on hop-off bus tour which has three routes, the Blue, the Red and the Green route.  While we had already done this tour the first time we came to Barcelona with our friends Art and Ethel a few years ago, we wanted to do it again to refresh our memories. 

Although we were still in late November, many of the  streets were already decorated with Christmas lights and decorations.  However, we were told that they only turn on the city lights on December first so Rosella was very dissapointed that we would not be in town to view this spectacle.  However the lights were already on at night at El Corte Ingles, the great Spanish department store just down the street where we were staying.

Christmas lights on busy street

More lights
along side
streets



Lights on at El Corte Ingles Dept Store


It was a beautiful sunny day and started out doing the Blue route until early afternoon when we got off the bus and had a tappas (small portions of food somewhat like  appetisers or hors-d'oeuvres) lunch at another restaurant recommended by Tony, our host. 

It was a mild afternoon and we sat at an outside pattio table along the street.  We were invited inside to choose our lunch from a nice selection of tappas they had prepared fresh that morning.  We made about a half dozen choices from their selection and thoroughly enjoyed each one.

Tappas on the
outside pattio

After lunch, we went back to our tour and did the Red route which took us to a different district in the city.  We decided to skip the Green route which is very short, duplicates some of the sites in the Red route and takes us through the more modern part of Barcelona which to us, was not as interesting as the older areas in the city.

Every day while we were in Barcelona, we strolled at least once and sometimes up to three times on La Rambla, the closed off pedestrian street with all the street vendors, buxters and markets which is always crowded with folks from the city and visitors as well, and this, our third day here, was no exception.

Market on
La Rambla

Strolling along
La Ramble

Flower vendor on La Rambla

Ice cream time
in Sitge

Taking in the sun in Sitges

On our fourth day we had intended to rent a car and do an out of town excursion but Tony convinced us that a one hour train ride to the coastal town of Sitges would be a great alternative.  Since we had never traveled by train in Europe, we decided to take the train to this little beach town and we weren't dissapointed.  The train was quite a novelty for us. At first we traveled through the industrial part of Barcelona straight into bountyful vegetable farms and beautiful coastal country side.  We spent the remainder of this beautiful sunny 22 degree C day exploring the quaint little village of Sitges and its eight beaches and which, like Shediac at this time of the year, was very tranquille.  The late afternoon ride back to Barcelona was just as enjoyable as the the one in the morning.

Day 5 was a whirl-wind day of visiting some of Barcelona's hot spots.  After early breakfast we headed for the Basilica Sagrada Familia, (The Holy Family Basilica) Antoni Gaudí's unfinished masterpiece which is one of Barcelona's most popular tourist attractions. Construction on this church, a most important Barcelona landmark, has been continuous since 1882 and is expected to continue until the mid 2040's, that is over 160 years from start to completion

Unique pedestal
columns inside

Outside the
Basilica

The main alter

After having explored the outside and inside of this extraordinary church for almost two hours, we went to the museum downstairs where they have hundreds of displays and scale models developed prior to the actual construction of the various segments of the structure and explaining the hundreds of techniques developed specially for the erection of this intricate building.

Picture of workers
finishing stonework

Workshop where all the pieces
of the Basilica are produced in
 miniature to scale prior to actual
 construction 

1" to 25" scale model of the Basilica's Nave

After our visit to La Sagrada Familia, we made our way to Parc Guell, another Antoni Gaudi project.  However due to the economic conditions in the 1930's, the project was never completed but the amasing infra-structure still remains and is maintained as a municipal park by the City of Barcelona. 

Main entrance to Parc Guell

Walkways in the Park

Rosella sitting on a Gaudi designed, Guell Park bench

Planed market area in Park

We spent the remainder of the afternoon in Park Guell before heading for the Palau de la Musica (The Music Palace).  Built between 1905 and 1908 this majestic Concert Hall is known as one of the most unique Halls in the world and has been the privileged stage for the national and international concert life of the city of Barcelona for over one hundred years.

When we got there, the tours were closed for the day.  However, there was a Vivaldi concert scheduled for the evening so we bought two tickets for the 7:00 pm concert and hurried on to to an early supper at another tappas bar-restaurant about 15 minutes walk from the Palau that had also been recommended to us by Tony, another excellent choice.

The concert was excellent, the concert hall exceptional!!!

Inside the Palau de la Musica

Front of the
Palau de la Musica

Stained glass skylight in the middle of the Palau

After the concert, we made our way to La Rambla for one last stroll on our way home because on day 6, we were headed for the Port of Barcelona to embark on our 13 day trans-Atlantic cruise on Celebrity Solstice.

Stay tuned!

From Charleston SC to Barcelona Spain

We visited charming Charleston South Carolina for two days a city with about 750,000 people, slightly smaller than Ottawa.  We stayed in a hotel located in the middle if the historic downtown area, very close to where all the action is.  We took a tour of the historic area and the guide was focussed on the Civil war which after twenty minutes or so is a little much but we did travel through many interesting spots, the most interesting was the old market area which was about 5 minutes walk from our hotel.  

Old mansion in downtown
Charleston SC

The tour was dotted with old historic mansions which were interesting to look at.

Typical house in
historic district

Most of the regular houses in the area were built on long narrow lots and feature a big pillated porch running most of the length of the house, and the entrance on the street which you would think is the front door to the house is actually door that leads on to the porch which you cross to get to the actual entrance to the house (see the photo on the left of this texte).

Entrance to the
Old Market

Inside the
Market

The second day, we went to the market and spent a good portion of the day exploring this area of the downtown and then on to King Street where there are still many old style shops and boutiques.

On Saturday morning, after an early wake up and a small breakfast in our room, we left for Brunswick Georgia which for some reason my new GPS (which by the way I love even more than my old one because it has "lane assist" a feature that indicates which lane you must stay in when you approach a multi-lane intersection) had calculated a distance of 410 miles when in fact the distance was closser to 190 miles.  We were in Brunswick shortly before 10:00 am so I went to our booked hotel and asked to cancel our reservation which they did as courtesy and we decided to stop for a good breakfast and drive through to Miami, another 400 miles away.  With the speed limit at 70 mph most of the way and the traffic travelling at almost 80 mph, we arrived at our hotel in Miami by 5:00 pm, freshened up and had a nice supper at a pub just down the street from the hotel.

Front loby at
The Wave

The next morning we headed to The Wave in Fort Lauderdale where we will be staying when we return here for our three month stay on January 15th.   The building which was converted from apartments to condos in 2008 is very modern an really quite nice.  It has a very large heated pool in the back which is a few steps to the beautiful sandy beach.  After having seen the surroundings of this place, we are confident that we are in for a great three month stay here with our friends Art and Ethel in January. 

Beautiful
sandy beach
at The Wave

We had a few items we wanted to buy for our cruise so we spent the rest of the day shopping for these.   In the evening, in preparation for our flight the following day, we re-organised our luggage to take what we needed for our visit to Barcelona and the subsequent trans-Atlantic cruise and leave the rest in our car which we left in the hotel parking lot for the three weeks we will be gone before returning to Florida.

Monday morning and we were scheduled to fly out of Miami to Barcelona Spain at 6:30 pm.

so we slowly packed the car with the things we were leaving behind.  We had to vacate our room by noon so after a nice long lunch, we headed for Miami International airport.  Of course we arrived there way ahead of our departure time so after we checked in, we played three games of cards, the score, two for me, one for Rosella  ....  they were all close games.

We were flying with Luftansa.  Eight and a half hours to Dusseldorf Germany with a 90 minute stop for a one hour flight to Munich with a 55 minute stop amd then a two hour flight to Barcelona Spain, 16 hours later we were in our destimation city. 

While the flight out of Miami was about 95% full, we were assigned seats at the rear of the plane and both managed to move to seats that were adjacent to vacant seats so we had lots of room for this long 8 and a half hour flight.  Shortly after our departure they served complimentary drinks, even for the low-class flyers in the economy section, then a pretty nice meal followed by complimentary digestives.  Lots of room, free booze and half decent food!  What more could we ask for?

Unfortunately, I had coffee after the meal and as a result was not able to sleep very much during this leg of our travel.  The rest of the plane travel went off without a hitch.  We arrived in Barcelona, bags in tow as scheduled at 3:30 pm (10:30 local time in Miami).  Since we had not eaten anything substantial since early morning, we had a snack at the airport before taking a cab to our B&B downtown where we had stayed a few years ago when we came to visit with our traveling friends Art and Ethel.  Tony, our host was here to greet us upon arrival. 

The B&B is loated in the old section of the city just five minutes walk from Las Ramblas, a very wide, 3 km closed pedestrian steet lined with kiosks selling everything from live animals to artisan ice cream and featuring buxters, lots of boutiques and restaurants and a super large, encloses market area.  The Ramblas is busy from early morning to very late at night and is always bustling with people enjoying the tree lined market ambiance; a great place to do heavy duty people watching.

Rosella reading
by the balcony

Being the off season, when we arrived at the B and B which occupies three apartments in the building in which it is located.  For now, we were the only clients so Tony assigned us a nice large room in the back with a small balcony and gave us full access to the whole appartment including the kitchen so are in fact staying here in a three bedroom apartment for the whole duration of our stay here. 

Upon our arrival, after opening our bags and freshening up a bit, we headed for a little stroll down Las Ramblas.  What a great evening it was, though a little cool (probably between 12 - 15 degrees C) the place was humming with activity and lots and lots of people enjoying the sights and sounds of this amazing place. 

We stoped at a grocery store on the way back to our B and B, bought a baggette, cheeze, fruit, yogurt and bottled water and had a picnic in the kitchen of our appartment.  We were both in bed and sound asleep by 9:30 but because of the time-lag, were both wide awake by 1:30 am, and unabled to fall  back asleep so we got up, Rosella read for a while and I caught up on my email and we both went back to sleep.  Rosella was up by about 9:30 am. I slept past 11:30 am. 

Guell castle
off
Las Ramlas

Both pretty well rested, we took our time to get prepared and headed out to Las Ramblas again to go visit the Guell Castle which was designed by the famoud modern architect Antonio Gaudi and is inconspictuously located between other buildings on a street just off Las Ramblas.  This building was acquired by the Barcelona city administration.  and they took over 17 years to restore it to its original form and boy, what a superb job they did!  

Stairs to the
upper apartment



Main entrance

Decorative
ceiling

Bay window
outside

Hallway between
bedrooms

Restored pipeorgan

Restored pipes

Alter inside
castle

Decorative roof-top
chimneys

We thoroughly visited the castle  and while it is very difficult to demonstrate the extreme luxury and beauty of this structure with a few photos, Rosella and I both agree that this building, which was spared absolutely no expense when it was originally built, (they estimate that Guell's fortune today would be about 70 billion-yes that is a  "B" - over $100 billion Canadian) is probably the nicest building that we have ever visited.

We then proceeded with a twenty minute walk to find a restaurant that was recommended to us by Tony.  With lots of asking for directions from people on the street, we found the place but regrettably, this being Barcelona, the restaurant is closed between 4:30 and 8:00 pm so we headed back to las ramblas where restaurants do not close in the late afternoon and stoped at a really nice catalonian pub nad had paella and fish for supper.  The food was excellent and with window seats overlooking Las Ramblas, the ambiance was superb.  More strolling and people watching and we were back at the B&B by 10:00 pm. and in bed by eleven.

Tomorrow by 9:00 am, we take the hop-on, hop bus for a tour of the city.

Stay tuned for more! 

Our travel adventure continues!

On we go in NYC

Monday morning we were up bright and early, had breakfast and headed for the subway.  Today we were doing ''The best of Brooklyn Multicultural Food Tour'' which started on 4th St in Manhattan. 

The ''F Subway train was back in business so we arrived at our destination in Manhattan about fifteen minutes after boarding the train, so we were there very very early. 

Trying out the cannoli

After finding the exact spot from where our tour would depart, we got back on the subway and headed for La Bella Ferrara pastry shop in Little Italy to try out some of their famous cannoli with a cup of coffee.  This  pastry is made with a round folded waffle with the consistency much like a waffle cone and is filled with a vanilla flavoured creamy stuffing.  Rosella had heard about these on the cooking shows she watches on TV.  We were told by our guide yesterday that these were probably the best in NYC.  We both agrees that while they were very good, they were probably not worth the special effort we made to get to and from this place.  So you win some you lose some and some come out a tie.  This was a tie!

We took a cab back to 4th St to get on our Food Tour and Isaak was our guide.   Being born and raised in NYC, he was very knowledgeable about all aspects of the city.  We started by making two stops on the Lower East Side.  

The first stop was at Yonah Schimmel's Knish Bakery.  Knish is an eastern European  Jewish or yiddish snack food.  It is a dumpling covered with a dough shell that is either baked or fried.  I the most traditional version, the dumpling is made entirely of potato.   

Traditional knish

Early 20th century counters

This place was opened in 1903 and has not had any renovations inside since then, same counters, same ceiling, same dumb waiter to bring the pastries from the basement kitchen, same everything.  Being inside is really a step back into the the beginning of the twentieth century.

Sharing a cherry
cheese knish
on the sidewalk

We had a sampling of the traditional knish and Rosella and I bought a cheese stuffed cherry knish to try out.  The traditional knish was really excellent with a special delicatessen mustard but the cherry/cheese knish which we ate on the sidewalk outside was to die for!

Appetizers galore!

Isaak then took us to "Russ and Daughters Appetizers" where they specialise in hundreds and hundreds of , you guessed it, appetizers.  There we tasted pastry type appetizer which was very similar to balaclava.  It to was very very good. 

Lots of Polish goodies

The bus then took us across the river to Brooklyn via the Jewish district and we proceeded to a Polish restaurant where we sampled a whole bunch of authentic Polish food, like perogies, kielbasas sausage, pickled beets just to mention a few.  This sampling was almost a meal in itself. 

Yummy chocolate

Then we proceeded to visit The Jacques Torres Chocolate factory where we samples some of the best chocolate the we both ever had, truly a very special treat. 

Cubana sandwiches
in the park

The last stop was at a Cuban deli where Isaak had us try Cubana sandwiches, a Cuban specialty made with a crusty bun filled with pulled pork, cheese, ham, pickle, and tomatoes with a special sauce.  It to was an excellent choice.  





Rosella and I both agreed that this was a very worthwhile tour and we gave it a score of 4.9 out of 5, well worth the effort.  The bus dropped us at about 3:30 pm at the same spot we began the tour in the morning.

Billboard in
front of MSG

The next stop, Madison Square Gardens (MSG) for the highlight of this NYC visit for Rosella, The Josh Groban Concert.  We were there by 4:15 pm, the doors opened at 6:30.

Macy's all decorated
for Christmas

So we decided to walk around and went into Macy's on 34th St.  I ended up buying a tie for our forthcoming cruise.  After killing the time away and a bit of a rest at the Macy's cafeteria, we headed back to The MSG for the long awaited moment. 

Elew - Jazz pianist

The opening act, Elew a Jazz pianist started right on time.  This very talented guy really knows how to shake up a piano, he was amasing. 

Josh's opening songs
 in the middle of the arena

After he was finished, they turned the house lights on and took about 25 minutes to prepare two stages for the Josh Groban segment of the concert.  Finally, the lights were dimmed and out came Josh on a small stage in the centre of the Gardens, directly in front of where we were seated. 

Josh on the
main stage

From there he sang a few songs after which he was escorted through the crowd to the main stage where his orchestra had been accompanying him for his opening songs.

He sang many of Rosella's favourites and a few that we had not heard before.  We both agreed that a hockey rink with over 15,000 people in it is not a very intimate setting for such a beautiful voice.  However we thoroughly enjoyed our evening with Josh.  We took the "F Train back to the hotel, got home past 11:00 pm, way past Rosella's bed time.






Tuesday morning we were up very early, getting ready for our departure from NYC.  We were on the road by 8:15 am but our journey through Manhattan to take the Lincoln Tunnel to take us to the outskirts of the city took the best part of two hours.

We then made our way to the entrance of the Shenandoah National Park, about 250 miles from NYC where we drove the Skyline Drive through this magnificent winding, mountainous forest with a maximum speed limit of 35 mph, filled with lookouts and vistas and lots of wild life along the way. It was a very special ride! 

Admiring the scenery in the park

Hmmmm - checking out
the tourists!

Mama bear and her cub
alongside the road

It was pouring rain when we got up this morning.  We had planned to drive a good portion of the 200 or so mile Blue Ridge Parkway but to no avail, with the rain and the fog, it was useless to continue on that journey.  So we took the Interstate highways and made our way to Charleston North Carolina where we will visit this historic town for the next two days.

Stay tuned!