Barcelona

So Ginnie and I got in to Barcelona on Saturday night, and the views from the plane were pretty spectacular, especially of the mountains. On Sunday we did some walking around and saw the main part of the city, including the Placa Catalunya (the main square), La Rambla (a long pedestrian street with shops and performers), and the pier. We took lots of pictures, and soaked up the Spanish sun while we sat by the water. Unfortunately, I think we both soaked up a little too much sun though, because we were both a little sunburned that night.

Then on Monday we did one of those tourist bus tour thingies, which I personally think is a great way to see large areas of the city. We saw tons of great architecture, Montjuic (a really pretty mountain/hill), and had great views of the water. Oh, and we also saw the Barcelona Cathedral, which had an especially pretty cloister area. With swans!

And that brings us to today, which...was not great. Well, the first half was alright, as we visited La Sagrada Familia, which is the absolutely enormous cathedral in Barcelona that was designed by Gaudi. It's going to be an even more amazing place once construction is finished--they've been working on it off and on since 1882. I got lots of pictures of it, but unfortunately you won't get to see them because I no longer have my camera. Which brings me to the second half of my day. My bag was stolen. We were having lunch at an outside table, and my bag was sitting right by my foot, touching it. One minute the waiter is pouring our drinks, and the next I look down and my bag is gone. It couldn't have been out of my sight for longer than 60 seconds. My current theory is that someone came up from behind and reached through a row of hedges to take it, because no one in front of me came close enough. So that sort of threw me into a panic for the rest of the day, as my bag had tons of important things in it like my passport, camera, wallet, and phone. Very luckily, the police found my passport discarded in the street some hours later, so at least I can still make my flight back to England tomorrow.

All in all, a not-so-pleasant end to what was otherwise a very pleasant holiday. But even then I suppose there was a bright side. And suffice it to say that from now on I'll be keeping one hand very firmly attached to my purse at all times!

(Here are the pictures from our first day in Barcelona, which I copied to my computer before my camera was stolen.)

Barcelona