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Graham & Jane
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- Barcelona
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Location Date Fri, 14 October 2016 1476427680 Thu, 13 October 2016 1476338580 Wed, 12 October 2016 1476256020 Tue, 11 October 2016 
1476217860
After the long day of travel, which ended with at taxi cab ride only rivaled by a cab ride once taken in Xian with Bruce and Anne, we decided to follow our norm for a new city by taking an open top bus tour.
We are lucky as there is a bus stop for one of the open top bus companies a couple of hundred meters from the hotel. The bus has 2 routes labelled the Green and Orange, we hopped on and as our bus stop is on the Green route decided to do that one today. This took us past Basilica de la Sagrada Familia, the Hospital de la Sta Creu i Sant Pau, and many other sites.
We did a whole circuit of this and then determined we would get off at La Familia have lunch and walk to the Hospital, we will visit La Familia properly later in the week. On arriving at the Hospital which is where Gaudi passed away there was a large exhibition going on together with lots of people so we jumped (well one of us) back on the bus and determined to go to the top of the mountain overlooking Barcelona, as you can see from some of the photos it was a glorious view from up there.
Of course being a weekday the historic trams were not working to take us halfway up there, but no problem, as the 2nd half is by a historic funicular railway, yes more trains. Once up to the top we were surprised to see there is a fun fair surrounding the basilica, not quite what we expected, and we expect this would be very hectic during holiday periods. You could climb right to the top of the basilica, not that we did as there were tooo many steps. Given how high we were i doubt the 5m or so would have made that much difference.
Our first impressions of Barcelona are all good, the architecture is a real mixture and quite different from almost every other European cities we have been to, with almost all the architecture being from the mid 19th century or later, as this was when the city fathers decided to rip out the medieval city walls and expand the city.
The part of the city we are staying in all appears to have been built for the 92 Olympics or later and although being very modern some of the architecture is quite stunning.
We are lucky as there is a bus stop for one of the open top bus companies a couple of hundred meters from the hotel. The bus has 2 routes labelled the Green and Orange, we hopped on and as our bus stop is on the Green route decided to do that one today. This took us past Basilica de la Sagrada Familia, the Hospital de la Sta Creu i Sant Pau, and many other sites.
We did a whole circuit of this and then determined we would get off at La Familia have lunch and walk to the Hospital, we will visit La Familia properly later in the week. On arriving at the Hospital which is where Gaudi passed away there was a large exhibition going on together with lots of people so we jumped (well one of us) back on the bus and determined to go to the top of the mountain overlooking Barcelona, as you can see from some of the photos it was a glorious view from up there.
Of course being a weekday the historic trams were not working to take us halfway up there, but no problem, as the 2nd half is by a historic funicular railway, yes more trains. Once up to the top we were surprised to see there is a fun fair surrounding the basilica, not quite what we expected, and we expect this would be very hectic during holiday periods. You could climb right to the top of the basilica, not that we did as there were tooo many steps. Given how high we were i doubt the 5m or so would have made that much difference.
Our first impressions of Barcelona are all good, the architecture is a real mixture and quite different from almost every other European cities we have been to, with almost all the architecture being from the mid 19th century or later, as this was when the city fathers decided to rip out the medieval city walls and expand the city.
The part of the city we are staying in all appears to have been built for the 92 Olympics or later and although being very modern some of the architecture is quite stunning.
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