Archive for March, 2009

Sagrada Famillia and I

Travelers: Cate, Susana, Synnøve, Geir, Kristian, Juha, Kristofer and me.
Travel budget: 101€ for transport and housing (incl. breakfast)
Time in Barcelona: 44 hours
Weather in Barcelona: 20 degrees centigrade and blue skies(!)

When we planned this trip we had trouble finding transportation back and forth to Barcelona. Luckily, Juha knew about a convenient way to get from Toulouse to Barcelona: Mike.

Who is Mike?

Mike is a English/Spanish guy who owns a minibus. We payed him 65€ each to bring us to and from Barcelona. Driving with Mike is the ONLY way to get to Barcelona – and have time to see the city in one weekend (when you don’t have a car of course).

Bus Mike, Cate and Synnøve

We got to the hostel around 23h Friday night, paid 36€ each and got out on La Rambla, the big tourist street in Barcelona. Since I was still on antibiotics, I had a good orange juice in one of the outdoor cafés.

We were back home around 00h30, we were all pretty exhausted.

Saturday:
Saturday we ate crackers and jam for “breakfast” – could have been better.

Hostel breakfast: Synnøve, Kristian, Juha, Kristofer, Susana, Geir and Cate

We left the hostel around 9h and strolled along La Rambla towards Casa Milà. Casa Milà, also known as La Pedrera is a building drawn by Antonio Gaudi (Catalonia’s big architect). We visited the museum and learned a lot about the architect Gaudi.

Casa Milà (aka. La Pedrera)

The roof of La Pedrera

We then walked to Sagrada Familla, Gaudi’s church project (he wanted to build the biggest church in Europe). The building started at the end of the 19th century and is still ongoing (some voices whisper 2015).

We hadn’t had enough of Gaudi, so we visited Parc Güell, a Gaudi designed park, where we ate great home made sandwhiches. We had walked quite a few kilometers already, so we had a long siesta on the park lawn.

No walking on the gras, so we sat down.

We finally figured out that the Metro was a good idea and went to the beach where Juha, Susana, Cate and I tried the water. Freezing!

Trying to get out of the water: Juha, Cate and Susana

In the evening, we found the only restaurant in the Barcelona with fresh tapas. If not the case, the tapas was really good! We then went on our own little pub crawl. 6 good pubs in total, good fun!

Sunday:
Sunday we got up late, around 11 and were out of the hostel by noon. We tried to find Starbucks, didn’t and got so hungry that we ended up eating MacDonald’s take-away in a park. We then went to the Olympic stadium, a spectacular set of buildings. On the way we accidentally passed the Catalonian National museum, an incredible building (and an incredible view of the city)!

Everyone in ONE photo!

We found Starbucks and had a well deserved break there before we saw Casa Battlo (Gaudi again), got our luggage from the hostel and were picked up by Mike.

We were back home in Toulouse at 23 o’clock. A great weekend was over!