Barcelona

Parc Guell (the Gaudi park)

Parc Guell (the Gaudi park)

some of the crazy architecture

Human towers

cute little Mathius with our rock collection

fountain in the central park

Bug band in the park

Gaudis unfinished Sagrada Familia

Gaudis unfinished Sagrada Familia

Gaudis unfinished Sagrada Familia

The biggest port i have ever seen, 7 ships waiting outside

Tower in the Olympic Park

We were very keen to get into Barcelona and meet the very famed `Alex and Olivia,' family friends of Andrews parents who we had not met, but heard loads about... We arrived at our drop off point and Alex was there to pick us up. He instantly recognised Andrew as `he looks so much like Anne' and met a cute shy little 2 and a half year old boy named Damien who, when he was a baby had been dedicated by Philip in NZ. We squished our excessive amount of baggage into a small car and headed off to meet the rest of the famous family. After some speedy driving and a few wrong turns we arrived at the apartment building. We hopped out of the car and Damien, no longer shy ran around the car and attached himself around Andrews leg and did not let go of his hand before arriving at the apartment 8 floors up! They say he had never done this before and thought that maybe he remembered something of NZ?!

We then met Olivia and Mathias (the cutest 1 yr old with the biggest smile), and we begun to realise why they were so highly spoken of. Every night we enjoyed our eating and drinking till late into the evening with great company, conversation and food and french wine.

We were lucky enough to arrive in Barcelona on a festival weekend for their patron saint. There was a brilliant atmosphere and lots to see and do. We spent our days wandering the streets, seeing street artists, clowns, parades, crazy floats, fireworks, and everything from live lizards to tacky souvenirs for sale... Andrew was upset that we did not meet the famous so called `elephant man' who wears nothing accept a tattoo of leopard print underwear on his behind and elephant ears on each thighat the front... hmmm...

We walked around the crazy Gaudi Park, which the famous Gaudi architect designed with loads of weird and wonderful designs, he also designed many other buildings around Barcelona and is one of their biggest icons. We marveled at many buildings including the massive Olympic stadium and its impressive fountains and weird tower.

One of the days we were able to watch Olivia swim in an ocean race (none of this way too easy pool racing for her!) and then headed off to see the human pyramid competition famous for this festival... This was one of the most crazy and scary things we had seen. All the regions from around Barcelona enter a team of human pyramids. These teams compete by trying to make the most complicated as well as tallest pyramids. On the bottom are the strongest and biggest people and this progresses upwards with the top only having a small child... brave (or crazy) mothers! Mostly these towers are successful but we saw one which fell down at its highest point(we saw it go 8 high but it does get up to 10!!!) and the small child went flying, to be saved by the crowd below... so safe (ish) for the child...

We really enjoyed or stay in Barcelona and were sad to leave, we enjoyed the wee family who happily took us in, the great atmosphere, and all the amazing and different sights to be seen, along with some more great markets.