Sunny Barcelona

The Weather

Leaving the rainy, cold weather of London to be embraced by the sunny, warm capital of Spain brings much relief to our ailing bodies. Months of snow and sub-zero temperatures can be depressing and Barcelona provided the break that we just needed!!



Not exactly the kind of warm that you experience in Singapore… far from it… but if I didn’t remember wrongly, the highest temperature I saw was close to 20 degrees…. Cool!! Jus nice…. cooling but yet you could feel the warmth of the sunlight shining upon your face…. Ahhhh… shiok…

The Beach

Well…. Before we embarked on our trip to Barca, everyone was full of anticipation for the beach… ok, I shall try to depict what I had imagined the beach to be… for one thing.. we were told that it would be a “nxxx” beach, wow!! I can feel all the blood pressures rising…. Wohohhoho…. So it would be a place where everyone would be topless and sunbathing, so does tt mean that we have to go n*** too?? Omg… I can’t fathom that… c’mon I’m still just a young, conservative asian boy can?? Of cos I wana see what’s there on the beach, but noooo, I’m just not prepared to undress in front of everybody…. No way!

Haha…. So as it turns out, as fantasies and reality often collide and contrasts…. The beach turns out to be far from what I had imagined…



Accomodation

Apart from the comfy beds in the Palace Court Hotel, I would rate the accommodation at Barca as the most homely one. I thought it would be like any other hostel around, but turns out that the company that we signed up for has a few landlords who rent out their apartments to tourists like us.

Coincidentally, our landlord has the same name as LC… Dave.. dude from Canada who had one yr ago been a tourist in Barcelona himself. Turns out that he likes the place so much that he decided to work and stay in Barcelona. So Dave and friends decided to pool together some money to lease some apartments which they in turn rent it out to people like us…. Haha… I guess such ideas would really work in places like Barcelona where u get so many tourists year in, year out, and the real estates ain’t tt expensive…

So we had one whole apartment to the 4/5 of us…. Adeline joined us a day later so it was 4 before and 5 after… Got a bedroom, kitchen, living room and balcony!!



I think ys bringing his lappie along, really helps contribute to the “chalet” atmosphere we had….. imagine us playing songs all day long while cooking, eating our breakfast… wow… everyone jus refuses to wake up early… just nua on bed till like really no time… “aye, xxx waiting for us lei…wake up lei”…. Or “aye faster la… later xxx close le, then no time to go xxx.. gin lei….”



Views from the balcony...



cool eh? And what's even better was that our place was near to the beach (5 mins walk).... so it's really convenient for us to hit the beach whenever we find the weather gd... tt is if we are still in our apartment... =p

Sight-seeing

Ahhh.... I can feel the innate me calling out towards the art pieces... The innate me?? what have i done all these yrs.... sigh... I have succumbed to the practicalities of life.... tt's wat i have done....



Took a pic with this road-side artist here (tho i din't buy anything from him).... there's another one jus a few steps away... nice.... i feel so at home when i see them.... dun ask me why.... ha.

All these years, I've been looking and searching for my true self... thinking that oh yar... maybe this is wat i want, maybe this is wat i wana become... but it turns out that after so many yrs of searching, I'm still unsure of who I am.... perhaps the thought of me becoming an artist is just another illusion for me to escape from reality... maybe I'm just nothing....

We were lucky enough to have a few spanish friends to show us around during our short stay... First night, it was Abel's friend Freddie who brought us to have our first spanish dinner... not exactly the comfy, restaurant type.... we were in fact just standing by some roadside stall having our tortilla... toasted bread with potatoe/omelette fillings..... nice nice... but the portion is quite small... gotta eat at least 2 servings to be full...

The next day, our amiable SY contacted his spanish fren Sergi who was in the same intro grp as him. Very nice guy, he even brought us bread from his father's bakery shop... how nice!!! and he jio-ed 2 of his spanish frens along as well.... so we were a rather huge grp(3 spanish, 9 sporeans)... majiam like some sch excursion... I must admit they(spanish frens) took great pains to bring us ard the main areas of Barcelona, and more importantly introduced us to the 8 euros intestine-bursting buffet!!!


Sagrada Familia

Our first stop was Sagrada Familia, the famous uncompleted cathedral in spain... Think it first sprouted from an idea to build a very grand church, but was carried out in many small phases because the intricate details of the architecture calls for very delicate work which cannot be completed in one single project. So as the years pass by, people start to hear of this church as an uncompleted but yet intriguing building, started to visit it, word spreads and it soon become a tourist attraction. As of today, the building is still in the progress of construction and i seem to hear/read that it would never be completed because this is part of the reason why it is so famous..... farnie rite.... imagine if it was in Spore, i bet the government would finish it either in 2 yrs or jus demolish it.... lol

The tall sphires of Sagrada Familia... notice the scaffolds and evidences of construction in progress......

Instead of the lift (which costs 2 euros), we decided to climb the tower by foot.... oooo... looks damn scary when u peep down into the middle gap.... imagine my camera falling thru the stairway... gg.... *touch wood*

view from the top.... pretty... could almost see the entire barcelona....

Journey to the top

After we finish our gruelling climb to the top of Sagrada Familia, we decided that the next best thing to do was to go even higher..... to the north where the terrain is more hilly..... So, under the leadership of Sergi and frens, we begin our journey to the top....

Took pics with this hospital cos it looks kinda grand from the outside... i bet you wouldn't guess that it's a hospital when you first look at it. pic on right.... DANISH BEYOND !!! 大家好！

Halfway to mountain-top..... and......

Tada!!

Mission Accomplished!!

Nou Camp

How can we say that we've been to barcelona until we pay the Nou Camp a visit.... and esp when the 3 of us are all soccer fans!! Welcome to the largest soccer stadium in Europe... the Nou Camp...

the last grp pic reminds me of the "camera-snatching" incident.... We asked a female passer-by (looks like a spaniard) to help us take a photo... she was counting "1,2,3....." and suddenly turned away from us as if she was abt to run away.... She then turned back to say "Gotcha!!" waHAHAHAHHAHA..... nahbei... dio faked... i bet LC's heart must have dropped at that instant..... the irony of it all was tt there were a few police cars right behind.... lol

The sun, sand and the sea....

We were blessed with gd weather throughout our entire stay in Barcelona.... real lucky.... and here's a few snapshots of the dock near our apartment.... a few hundred metres away....

Olympic stadium

This was our last day cum last trip... decided to hit out towards the lower stretch of barcelona, which was a patch of green on our map... turned out that the greens actually meant high altitudes.... kaoz..... well done lor.... i bet SY must be swearing when he first saw the steps.... we were wondering... cannot be wat.... maybe its further down.... but there was no other way right in front except to go up....

Inviting views from the top.....felt great to take some nice, slow, deep breadths...

The european way of relaxing.... sunbathing in greenery...

The Stadium

Didn't get to enter the stadium.... just managed to squeeze my lens through the gaps of the fence... jus nice... heh....

Some church... which we dunno the name... but took pics anyway cos everyone was doing so.... ahhaahhahhhahahh

Makan


Dinner at an authentic spanish restaurant.... followed by sangria at a small pub along a street jus inside of the Plaza Catalunya station....



Look at the plate of Paella...... simply marvellous..... haha.... but wait.... is it rite to call it Paella?? or is it Papaya rice?? oopsie..... i hope i din get it wrong.... a few wks liao, so now a bit forgetful. and nooooo.... hou ger pls don bribe me!! nooooooo........

I got strong feeling I'm going to kena jing gu bang from hou ger...... *hides*

Next up:: Berlin