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A side trip was made to Barcelona, Spain while visiting France in the Summer of 2002. It was actually quite hard to switch from being used to speaking French for a couple of weeks into Spanish, which really hadn't been used much since Ecuador three years ago. Barcelona is a popular vacation spot for UK travelers, so you can likely get by on just English if necessary.
Waiting for the train to Barcelona in southern FranceNarrow one way streets and packed buildings make interesting walksBeautiful house plants hang off balconies outside our hotel
Barcelona is filled with some really neat buildings. This is a zoological museumAn old limestone churchBarcelona's busy harbour and lots of tourist activities to do if you are into that sort of thing
Time to jump onto Barcelona's Metro. Anywhere in the city there is a metro station within 500 mGaudi's Famila Sangria, a huge temple that has been under construction for over a centuryGaudi has quite the influence over the architecture of many buildings in Barcelona, leading to some unique designs, such as seen in these towers
The western entrance to the temple features Christ's death, compared to the eastern entrance (above middle picture) which celebrates his birthAll figures are hand carved. Note the square of numbers on the left. Add them up in any direction and you'll always get 33You can climb up into some of the towers to get some pretty good views of Barcelona. The expected completion date is sometime around 2050, but don't hold your breath since there is still so much to do
More city views from one of the towersJust to give a view of how big this temple will be, the middle tower isn't even built yet, but its top will be at the top of the pictureOff to Parc Güell. This is the world's longest park bench. Gaudi designed it so that all of his construction workers had a place to sit for lunch
At the entrance of Parc Güell there is a big lizard that is a popular attractionTime for some geocaching. "Barcelona's Gecko" is located inside the park and is named after the lizard to the leftMore of Gaudi's architecture within the park. Looks like a gingerbread house to me!
Even more of Gaudi's work. You'll see it throughout the city. This roof is shaped like a reptile's backBarcelona is a popular designation for UK tourists. Internet cafés are popular in the tourist areasI always have a quest to seek out sweat and sour tofu (lower right plate) while in foreign cities. This particular one wasn't that great, but the beer was good

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