2 posts tagged “barcelona”
This morning we went up to Montserrat, a mountain where a Benedictine monastery was built on top of it. Montserrat has some unique rock formations near the top of the mountain. Some of them look like fingers, some of them look like animals. However, most people come here not just for the rock formations, but to see the Black Madonna statue inside the monastery. It is not unusual for pilgrims to queue up for three hours to see and touch the Black Madonna statue that, according to legend, was found in a cave nearby under supernatural guidance. The view of the Catalonia region in the morning from the top of the mountain was breathtaking, especially with the morning fog still hanging in the valley.
When you drive around the city of Barcelona, there are several buildings that are so unique in style you just can't miss them. Modern buildings usual give people the feeling of cold, inflexible, repetitive and unimaginative. The buildings I saw in Barcelona are very different. They are organic, full of curves and full of inspirations from the nature. They look so good I had hard time believing they were actually built with concrete and metal. Of course I am taking about buildings designed by the famous architect Antoni Gaudi. One of his most famous project is the Sagrada Familia, a basilica that has been under construction since 1882 and still no where near its completion. When I first saw the Sagrada Familia in a photo, I honestly believed that the basilica was carved out from a giant rock because it doesn't look like any man-made building at all. Gaudi die in 1926 and the project was taken over by another architect. That gave the other side of the basilica a very different look and feel (some called it the "star wars" side of the church because of its futuristic look). I wish they can finish the basilica in my life time and I will have a chance to go back to Barcelona to admire the completed basilica once again.
We had a big Spanish buffet for dinner tonight but the best part of it was the after-dinner Flamenco show in the restaurant. Flamenco is usually performed by Spanish Gypsy dancers and it was a powerful and brilliant performance.
The major highlight of today was the six-hour long bus ride from Nice to Barcelona. The only thing that worth reporting was our lunch stop in an old, walled town called Aigues-Mortes. This is a town located near the French-Spanish border. Although we were still on the French soil, everything in the town seemed to suggest otherwise.
The town was preparing some kind of festival when we arrived. We had no idea what the festival was and all we cared was what food we could find there. We spent a short while walking around the town and finally we saw something we liked, something we really liked.
We ordered seafood paella and fish soup but it took a lot longer than we thought to come. At the end we had to wash down the paella with the soup within 10 minutes before we had to run back to our coach. That said, the seafood paella was excellent and was way better than the ones I had in Glen Waverley. The fish soup was thick and cooked with herbs and served with cheese and cracker. Needless to say it tasted great.
For the first time in our trip, we would be staying in a hotel that is in the middle of a modern town. A decent-sized shopping centre was only 10 minutes walk from our hotel. We decided that we would visit it after dinner. The shopping centre is big and full of people on this Saturday night. No one was as happy as our shopping-deprived wives. The boys went to have coffee while the girls had some great time in Zara.
