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| Port of Barcelona - Barcelona, Spain Copyright Andy Richards 2019 - All Rights Reserved |
BARCELONA! SURELY one of my favorite places in the world. Fun. Lots to do. Lots to see. On this cruise, we had an overnight stay there. Even better. In 2015, we spent several days in Barcelona. We got to see and do almost everything we wanted to. Our only negative on that visit was Parc Guell. We had tickets and on the day we went, within minutes of our entering the grounds, we got absolutely hammered with a rainstorm. Not just a short one. After attempting to wait it out for while, we gave up.
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| Parc Guell - Barcelona, Spain Copyright Andy Richards 2019 - All Rights Reserved |
SO, ONE of our primary planned events on this trip was a "re-do" of the Parc Guell excursion. This time, we booked a guide to take us around as part of a small group. Ironically, I took a few more "meaningful" shots of the park on the "rain-soaked" occasion than on this one. The "park" is kind of unique architecturally, but the parts that are remarkable and photogenic are somewhat limited - mainly to the buildings at the entrance. Eusebi Guell was a wealthy Catalan industrialist and patron of the arts in Barcelona. A contemporary of Antoni Gaudi, he contracted with Gaudi to develop a private housing development on a hill overlooking Barcelona. Originally, 60 housing lots were planned. Aside from a pre-existing home (which Guell purchased and moved into), only 2 other homes were ever completed. The idea (and rationale for calling it "Park") was the English Garden City urban planning movement, which included parks and gardens as part of the planned ("utopian"?) urban environment. Park Guell incorporated a library, park, sporting event facilities, interspersed with gardens and landscaping elements.
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| Architectural artistic elements in the design of one of the main building in Parc Guell - Barcelona, Spain Copyright Andy Richards 2019 - All Rights Reserved |
WHILE THE first glance reveals an almost "smurfish" look to the buildings, in my view, it is often in the fine details that Gaudi's genious comes out. All of Parc Guell - much like a substantial part of Barcelona - was designed and created in Gaudi's unique style incorporating the shapes and materials of nature, sprinkled with bold colors. It was only when I started looking more closely at some of those details, that an image like the one above revealed itself to me. Today, Parc Guell is a municipal park/garden and is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
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| Port of Barcelona Copyright Andy Richards 2019 - All Rights Reserved |
FOLLOWING OUR afternoon at Parc Guell, we headed back to the cities old Gothic Quarter, just a short walk from the cruise shuttle drop off point (all within easy view of the our cruise port/ship). We had scheduled a walking/food tour of the quarter, which involved our guide taking us through 500 years of history and ending at a couple local spots to try some of the local tapas foods. Lots of fun, and kind of cool to walk around the almost eerie lamplit narrow streets and alleyways. Being a night, walking event, I didn't really make many photographs of this one. I did, however, find some time to dig out the travel tripod, and make some night images of the Barcelona Cruise port from the deck of the ship after we returned from the day's events.
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| Magic Carpet - Celebrity Edge - Barcelona, Spain Copyright Andy Richards 2019 - All Rights Reserved |
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| Sunrise, Port of Barcelona Copyright Andy Richards 2019 - All Rights Reserved |
THINKING THAT we had seen an awful lot of the city, my wife found - and booked - an excursion that would take us out of the city some 30 miles north and into the mountains: Montserrat. Montserrat is a mountain range ("Montserrat" meaning "serrated mountain"). All by itself it is a popular climbing and hiking destination.
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| Montserrat - Barcelona, Spain Copyright Andy Richards 2019 - All Rights Reserved |
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| Basillica - Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey Copyright Andy Richards 2019 - All Rights Reserved |
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| Santa Maria de Montserrat Copyright Andy Richards 2019 - All Rights Reserved |
OUR EXCURSION that day was planned to include a visit to a nearby Catalan vineyard for some wine tasting. Unfortunately for us, that didn't happen. Spain is unofficially divided into several of what they denominate: "autonomous regions." A couple of them, for lack of a better word, I will call "ethnic" regions. The two perhaps best known are the Basques and the Catalonians. Barcelona is the main city of the Catalonian (once the separate kingdom of Catalan) region, probably the most economically powerful of them. Over the years they (like the Basques) have fiercely maintained their individualism, including having Catalonian one of two "official" languages of the region (the other being Spanish, of course). During the two-day period we were in Barcelona, as they do periodically, the Catalonians were staging a demonstration in the central part of Barcelona, which is also immediately adjacent to the cruise port. This demonstration involved Catalonian separarist supporters walking into the city from far and wide (in some cases a multiple day walk), and it was planned to culminate in the afternoon of our second day there. It was making our tour guide (understandably) nervous, as our ship was to leave the port that day and we had an all-aboard time. He had been watching traffic and communicating with his company and other guides all day. As we boarded our vehicle for the next stop, he informed us that he had made the difficult decision to cancel the rest of the tour and make our way back to the port as fast as possible. A lot of us thought he was being hasty. It turns out his judgment was spot on. We did get back - in heavy traffic - to the port in the early afternoon. These demonstrations have always been peaceful, so he had no concern for our saftey. His concern was that the roads and streets would eventually be so clogged with demonstrators that traffic would be at a standstill. His prediction was correct. We headed back to our favorite Sunset Bar smoking area and were joined by some of our new "friends." But not all of them. As we sat and watched, we saw the streets become mobbed with people and realized we were fortunate. A couple of folks who showed up much later, told us they had to abandon their transport and walk back to the ship - in some instances a couple miles or so. The ship was late to leave port that evening. For us - safely back aboard - it was fascinating and almost kind of a party. Certainly a memory.
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