Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Room service for breakfast -- on time.

Today we had a tour that began at 8:30 am.  As soon as we were off the ship we met up with our guide Ellie and driver Nelson.  Ellie was great.  She was from California but had lived in Barcelona for the past 15 years.   She has family in Spain and the US.  We were with her for 8 hours and she showed us so many things.  We drove by all the places used in the 1992 Olympics that were held in Barcelona.  We drove down Las Ramblas but it was early in the morning and there wasn't much going on yet but we were able to get an idea of what it was all about.  After a quick tour in Barcelona, we drove out to the Monastery at Monserrat.  There were lots of people there but we still got to see a lot and she was good to explain to us in detail what we were seeing.  We got to go in the Basilica and look around.  This is where the Boys Choir sings daily at 1:00 and we were able to hear part of their concert.  I think they only sing 15 minutes but it was standing room only so we left after 1 song.  We also stood in line to see the Black Madonna and I posted a picture of Terry with it.

After leaving Montserrat, we went back into Barcelona and drove through some neighborhoods and then she took us to look at some of Gaudi's works.  I knew nothing about Gaudi before this trip but he was really very interesting and his works are amazing.  One of the main places she took us was Guell Park which he designed.  I think I put a few of pictures out there that I took there also.

We also went to La Familia Segrada.  We got to see the outside only and she took us to all sides to explain all of the sculptures on each side.  Tomorrow we are going on a ship's excursion and we will get to go inside La Familia Segrada for a brief tour.

We got back to the ship at about 4:45 pm which gave us just time to go back on the ship and grab a bite to eat (we hadn't eaten all day).  We had reservations to see a Flamenco Show at 7:30 pm.  The reservations were for the show and drinks only.  We could have opted for dinner but it was pretty pricey so we just chose the drinks.  The dancers were good and very passionate about what they were doing.

We are now back to the ship and have another full day tomorrow in Barcelona.