The Entrepreneur's Travel Log

First Stop: Barcelona, Spain

Barcelona, home of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, was our first stop, and the city where we would start our cruise of the Southern Ports of Italy and France. One of my first sights was in the taxi over to the apartment we rented -- beautiful monuments everywhere. This one monument was at the hub of the port and one of the big tourist areas -- La Rambla.

One of the decisions we made was to enjoy as much of the "real life" as possible. So we selected apartments in a couple of cities. Our apartment in Barcelona was really cool -- and really small. It amazed me how little space people lived in on a regular basis. Our place was in a little district across from the wharf and a major restaurant row. On the first day, we went out and investigated the local market. We are real big on eating vegetables and fresh food so we had a lot of in-home breakfasts. I loved going to the market and picking out our food, including our meat, in a big out door market.

We enjoyed much of the local architecture -- Gaudi has many amazing and quite bizarre sights. This is the Gaudi's Parc Guell -- on top of a hill that you have to climb. It spans quite a large area and includes many unique hallways, benches and stairways. I tried to capture with the camera but it was difficult to really do the view justice.

As you walk up the stairs, under the pillars, is a huge area with a beautiful mosaic inlaid ceiling. This picture to the left is a mosaic in the ceiling -- it was about 3 - 4 feet in diameter and there were many of them. I kept thinking "how long could it take to build something like this?"

There was another flight of stairs and then a huge park where you could see the whole valley. Very breathtaking. Thank goodness because we were about wiped out from all the stairs and needed a good rest!

There are many sites of architecture from Gaudi. We decided to take a bus tour and drive by most of them. The camera's just don't do them justice.

We learned a few interesting tidbits about Barcelona: 1) pickpockets are rampant. Our second day, someone tried to pick pocket our backpack on the bus. We were prepared though and had a bunch of my personals in the outside pocket-- lipstick, chapstick, etc. When it all fell out, we realized someone had tried and failed. We had our super-strength lock on the zipper -- no one was getting in! 2) restaurants in this area love iceberg lettuce. Ick. Hated the salads and never really got a fabulous meal there. This was also about the time I learned that ice-tea only comes in a bottle in Europe. After three failed drink orders produced water, a soda and a frustrated waiter, I gave up and went for hot "te". 3) Fashion is interesting -- or doesn't exist -- not sure which. We cruised a mall one afternoon at the port and found the clothes to be very bright, 80's-ish style. Wow.

The next area we enjoyed was the tree-lined walk of La Rambla. Many street magicians are there to entertain you as well as about 3 million people. This one "statue" really caught my eye. I was so impressed by the complexity of their costumes. Again, a big pick-pocket area, so we didn't linger much.


The entrance to the Barri Gotic (the oldest part of town) was found by these small streets filled with shops, cafes and even local American favorites like Gucci and Prada. Go figure. I could have shopped for hours -- enjoying the feeling of real cobblestone streets and knowing you were in the middle of centuries-old buildings.

The Cathedral was absolutely amazing. Breathtaking. I kept saying to myself how amazing it was that something so old was still standing (I we hadn't even experienced Rome yet.)

After a couple of days of running around we opted for our last day to be on the pebble-lined beach. Being as the beach was across the street, we rented chairs and spent a few luxurious hours melting into the beautiful beach sun. You will notice that there aren't many pictures of the beaches -- that's because we couldn't get any PG rated views. Yes, they are topless beaches and the sites weren't that pretty =-)

This is a picture of me as we walked to dinner -- notice it was a bit chilly in the evenings. I loved how peaceful it felt as the sun went down very late in the evening -- this is about 8:15 at night.

Next stop, a beautiful "locals" area an hour south of Barcelona -- Tarragona.

posted by Melanie Strick @ 3:50 PM