Monday, March 25, 2024

Barcelona Baby!!

 My hotel, the Petit Palace Boqueria Garden is a boutique hotel located only a couple of steps away from La Rambla, the most well-known street in Barcelona. La Rambla is a pedestrian street that is very popular with the tourists. There are restaurants, souvenir shops and those people who dress up as statues and do not move hoping for some Euros to be thrown their way. Turn your back on La Rambla and you are in the Gothic Quarter, with many small streets opening into squares. It is like a labyrinth, easy to get lost in. Ask me how I know!

I asked at the front desk, where they thought I should go to dinner. La Boqueria Mercado was the answer, right off of La Rambla. I thought it was a restaurant and wandered up and down the street looking for it. It was not a restaurant, it was a market, a very crowded market. I wandered up and down the aisles and found a stall that had a bar and lots of seafood displayed. I sat down and did not have a clue what I should have. The man next to me, who spoke no English, had a good looking plate so I asked for the same thing. Wine came, the meal was good and my new friend and I toasted my arrival in Barcelona. I stopped several times during my stay at the Bouqueria for a snack here and there.





Chocolate Covered Strawberries

My First Dinner in Barcelona -it was much tastier than it looks

I walked quite a bit in Barcelona but tourist that I am, some of the sights were far apart. The solution was to use one of those Hop-On, Hop-Off buses. They would drop me off close to whatever I wanted to see. It saved me a lot of time and energy to use them.

Barcelona is the city of Gaudi and his architectural works are all over the city. He had a really unique style and is considered one of the greats of Catalan Moderism. A definite must-see is the basilica that he started to build in 1883, the Sagrada Familia. He died in 1926 and work is still going on at the Sagrada. I showed up, expecting to be able to buy a ticket there only to find that you needed to buy a ticket online. When I looked, there were no tickets available during the time I was in Barcelona. I really have to try to plan a little bit better.

Even though I was early, you can see how long the lines are to go inside.


Sagrada Familia Interior 
Web Photo

At the end of La Rambla, there was a square. Situated all around the edges were places where you could buy bird seed to feed the pigeons. Occasionally, somebody would drop a bunch of feed on the ground and almost every pigeon would simultaneously rise into the air and descend in a crushing crowd onto the seed.

Before

After

 I was able to go inside one of Gaudi's creations, the Casa Batllo, also called the Dragon House. It was created for a family who basically told Gaudi to do what he wanted as he built it. As a result, Casa Batllo is over the top and quite the eye candy. Everywhere I looked, I was either smiling or my mouth had just dropped open in awe. I wish my pictures could have done this creation justice.




Hopping back onto my bus, I headed to the Joan Miro Museum. Miro was a painter and sculptor who ventured quite a bit into Surrealism. I find him to be very compelling.




March 8 is International Woman's Day.  There were several protests going on.  The news said that there were 40,000 protesters. I passed one pocket of protesters and they had an all-woman Drum Circle going on.  Drums always get the blood going.  

There is a mountain by Barcelona and they have gondolas which will take you to the top of the mountain and then down the other side to the port.  I thought this would be a grand idea, so I hopped off the bus near the gondola ticket office.  Turns out that there are two gondola companies.  This one that I was at, only went to the top of the mountain and then back down.  The ticket seller told me that I needed to go down the street to the other company.  I set off, got turned around and ended up pretty close to the top of the mountain.  I could not find the other ticket office.  After a couple of hours, I finally found a couple of guys who helped me get to the correct place.  Did I mention that it was rainy and rather dismal out.  

Oh well, no gondola ride for me.

It is not like I was missing much. 
Rain and fog do not make for good gondola pictures.


Wednesday, January 3, 2024

And Finally Nuremberg

 **** Note: Usually my blogs are, at the most, only about a week or two behind. This one is probably my personal best(worst?) blog slacker record. I mean what is a measly three months among friends?

The time has come to leave our ship. We have landed in Nuremberg. We were not only leaving the ship, but we were also leaving our new friends. After gathering our belongings and saying our goodbyes, we were shuttled to our VRBO in a suburb of Nuremberg where we spent a few days. 

Friday, November 24, 2023

Bam, Bam, Bamberg

 Bamberg, a town in Bavaria, is another town cited as one of Germany's most beautiful towns. In Bamberg's case and based on my rather limited knowledge of most of Germany's towns, I would say that Bamberg does live up to it's reputation. It doesn't hurt that the old town of Bamberg has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1993. Bamberg is known for it's medieval streets and buildings.

Friday, November 17, 2023

Do Something Every Day That Scares You!

 Another day, another German Medieval Town. Rothenburg ob der Tauber (hereafter called plain old Rothenburg) is one of Bavaria's top tourist destination. It is one of only three towns in Germany that still have completely intact city walls and many people consider it to be the best-preserved medieval town in Europe. The Nazis called Rothenburg “the most German of German towns” and when the Americans arrived, the order was given not to use artillery during the taking of the town because of it's history and beauty. It also has one of my personally most scariest times on this trip.

Friday, November 10, 2023

Wertheim

 

Traveling the three rivers, many sights are seen.  The rivers have been dammed (they have dams on them) and as a consequence the rivers have been tamed.  Instead of rapids and waterfalls, there are many different water levels.  Nowadays, to navigate these waters, a ship has to go thru an extensive lock system.  I'm not sure of the exact number of locks that we went thru but the number 52 sticks in my brain.  The locks are extremely narrow, and when we are in the locks, there are only a few inches on each side of the ship. For safety reasons, we were told that we should not touch the sides of the locks.

Monday, November 6, 2023

The Man Who Changed The World

 

While Michael and Marina decided to do the Gondola ride overlooking the vineyards and Rudesheim, I opted for the Mainz Walking Tour. Mainz is another ancient Roman city but it is also the birthplace of one of the most important men in our world's history.

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

ABC (Another Bloody Castle)

 

From the ship's dock, we had to take a 45-minute bus ride to get to the town of Cochem, another typical Medieval German town. The main reason to stop here was to visit Reichsburg Castle, a mighty castle located on a hill above the town. We will finally get to actually go inside a castle. Woohoo!