Barcelona and Montpellier

My first time in Europe was more than I expected. Sonia and I traveled to Barcelona, Spain and Montpellier, France for 11 days and did everything any traveler could wish for. Our trip consisted of 3 days in Barcelona, then we took the rail to Montpellier for the next 4 days, and back to Barcelona for the last 4 days.  During our trip we met many people, listened to many local musicians and ate all the goodies we could find locally.  Although it was easy to communicate most of time, once in France I was basically mute the whole time. My limited vocabulary consisted of  ‘merci’ and ‘bonjour’. Fortunately Sonia had taken some French lesson back in high school or we’d be completely lost. 

On day 1 we arrived at Barceloneta and stayed at an appartment about a block away from the Beach. This was our view from our tiny balcony. You can see the beach way back there. Although we didn’t get in the water, there were many people who did, some of them topless.

After catching up with the new timezone -9 hours ahead of pacific time and a 15 hour flight, the next day we were ready to go out and begin our adventure.  Here in Barceloneta there were always musicians performing in the street.

During our stay we were lucky the weather was very favorable. It was not hot or cold, just a bit cloudly. Little did we know we would be walking at least 5 hours a day, every day.

We stumbled upon a salsa club. Ok, Sonia did some research. It was fun. This photo was taken about 3am.

After a day of recouperating, we headed to Montpellier, France. We took the rail for a 5-hour train ride. The ride was nice, nothing elegant, just confortable enough, but there were nice views on the way.

France has a lot of historic buildings and old structures. This is not a tipical street, but its an area where people still live.

Here I am taking the ‘guided’ tour. Unfortunately for me, the tour was in French, so I had a little device to listen to the tour in English.

During our tour we saw many buidlings such as this. We took a little train ride that takes you all around the main parts of the city for a 30-minute trip.

Sonia doesn’t like to take photos, right…

The main tourist areas in Montepellier were taken care of nicely.  We headed to the top of the arch…

View from the top of the arch. This area was limited to guided tours.

After a long day, we relaxed with a little Ice Cream. Back in Spain, we had ‘gelato’ many times. If seemed like you could find a gelato vendor every other block.

There were many inmense buildings in Montpellier. These have been around for hundreds of years.

Makes you feel tiny with all these tall buildings around.

On our way back to Barcelona for the last part of our trip we looked out the window and saw many beautiful views.

Barcelona has many plazas, many of these have decorative statues in the center. Reminds me of Peru.

The world famous La Boqueria market. I wish we had a market like this in the states. In this market you can find a huge variety of fresh seafood, fruits, ham, candy, chocolate, olives and other goodies.

I love olives. Check out the huge variety of olives.. hmmmmm

On this day I met up with my cousin Goyo (middle) from Peru. He moved from Peru to Madrid about 9 years ago and now lives there with his family.  I hadn’t seen my cousin in about 20 years. It was very emotional to see him again, after so long. On the other side of the photo is his nephew.

Continuing our trip, we headed to one of Antoni Gaudi’s masterpieces, La Casa Mila. This is a view from the courtyard in the first floor.

On the rooftop at Casa Mila. Gaudi was a very creative modernist architech.

La Casa Mila, also known as La Pedrera contains many of these weird heads. They look like alien helmets. This house was built in 1912, thats almost 100 years ago.

Here’s a wider view of the rooftop. On the floors below there are other exhibitions about the construction of this and other buildings by Gaudi.

El Parque Guell, another creation of Antoni Gaudi is another Spanish Landmark.

Weird, but cool looking house. Many of these designs are based on patterns and styles found in nature.

A lot of tile work was put into the creation of these buildings. These buildings now serve as gift shops.

The park is fairly big, and it has many areas which look completely distinct. This is also Park Guell.

Sonia in the middle of the two houses at Park Guell.

Musicians at Park Guell. I’m not sure what style of music it was, it was very different from anything I had heard before.

Another landmark, this is La Sagrada Familia. It’s been in construction for about 100 years, and it’s schedule to complete in about 20 years. I should be back for the inauguration.

Antoni Gaudi created all the plans for this inmense cathedral. He passed away before it could be completed, but he left all the plans for its completion. Here you can see the nature pattern he uses for the stairs.

One side of the window inside the Church. A lot of work is still head as there are many unfinished windows .

Lots of statues on one side of the church

A view from the top of the Sagrada Familia.

And this concludes the trip to France and Spain. This is a photo taken on train station on our way to France.

Barcelona was exciting. There was so much to do and the city is full of energy. I really liked the underground metro system, where the longest wait time was 5 minutes, and it was fairly affordable as well. The week we arrived in Barcelona the local soccer team had just won a championship, so there was celebration everywhere. Soccer is a religion for many people there. Montpellier had its own charm. There were many things to do around the ‘Place de la Comédie’, with many fancy shops and lots of places to just sit and relax. Can’t wait for the next trip to Europe. Till next time.