May 9, 2008

Beautiful Barcelona

Above: on the roof of La Pedrera

Living in France during the month of May is a great thing, really. There are so many national day-offs and so many 3 or 4 day weekends. So that means I could do a quick escape to a nearby European city, and last week I was in Barcelona. Wow, did I fall in love with that city! I didn’t even see half of it but I had already fell under it’s charm. Everyone told me that visiting Barcelona is a must, and now I understand why. Having only been to Madrid, I had really seen very little of Spain…and Barcelona was a complete wonderful surprise! I really do have to visit it again (plus it’s only 1h30mins away by plane from Paris!)- it is so inspiring, so vibrant, colourful, different and most importantly: interesting! I truly enjoyed my trip there, didn’t get to focus so much on Spanish cuisine (a good excuse to go back) but did take many photos, and wanted to share some here on my blog. The full set is on my Flickr stream.

Above: walking towards La Pedrera.
The lines are always very long to get in, but the wait is well worth it!

Snapshots from the very busy and iconic street La Rambla filled with street mimes & clowns, and I even noticed a lot of birds & chickens being sold here (??).
Apparently an average 150 000 people walk past it everyday!



Park Guell, by Gaudi, had to be one of my favourite places. It seemed completely out of this world, very dream like! One of a kind and tremendously inspiring!

Above (left) snap of the "emotional center" Placa de Catalunya,
and on the right view of the Sagrada Familia

Above: people walk under a smiling-lobster sculpture called "la gamba de Mariscal".

Above: the absolutely stunning Palau Nacional, with view of the city (below)

Above: bunyols (left) and Coca de Sant Joan (right)

Above: absolutely delicious to-die-for candied oranges covered in chocolate

Above: colourful and beautifully named "fruita satinada"

Above: I brought back some turron blando, a softer variation of the maybe more popular turron (the white one with almonds in it). Turron blando is principally made of almonds (65%) and honey- it is delicious and very difficult to resist!

1 comment:

Peter G | Souvlaki For The Soul said...

What beautiful pictures Marianna. Sounds like you had quite an adventure in Barcelona. That turron blando looks absolutely divine!