End of Madrid and All of Barcelona

Hola...

(Yes that is probobly the only word that we know in Spanish as we are about to depart Spain for good tommorrow morning). Well, we probobly know a few more. But I am rambling...

So we left off at our visit to the Prado museum, well Im going to attempt to give a good summary of happenings between then and now.

Our final (full) day in Madrid we decided to head to the Royal Palace. Now no one of royalty lives there anymore, its just used as a place to hold big functions, etc. This was one of the first times on the trip that both of us could safely say that we were awestuck by what was inside the palace. All of the ceilings were painted amazingly, the rooms were massive, and we counted a 60+ person table in the dining room. Now, you were forbidden to take pictures, but we managed to sneak a few. If anyone is curious to see what it actually looks like right now, just google Madrid Royal Palace and do an image search. I would post a picture from google in here, but all the menu items on the computer are in Spanish...

On Sunday we travelled to Barcelona. We were able to activate our rail passes and reserve our seats the morning of our departure with relative ease. The train ride itself was somthing else. We were able to take a high speed train from Madrid to Barcelona, which reached a top speed of 302 km/h from what I saw on the display they had in each car for the trains speed. It took us around 2.5 hours to reach Barcelona. Now if Canada had some way of adopting some sort of high speed train service, it would likely go along way to alleviating traffic congestion on major highways, but I am rambling again....

Anyway, we arrived in Barcelona, and made our reservation for our next train to Nice, France on Wednesday in advance, on advice from friends who have travelled before. We found our hostel which is pretty nice. The rooms are fairly small with bunk beds, but they are set up apartment style so at least we have our own kitchen to share with 3 other rooms. The hostel also has a big screen satellite TV so we were able to watch some Olympic coverage (in Spanish......ski jumping.....tape delayed....) on Sunday night.

Our first day in Barcelona we got quite a bit of sight seeing in. We saw the famous "Sagrada Familia" church/cathedral which is about a 10 minute walk from our hostel. Again, if your interested just google it, construction on it started in 1882 and is still not projected to be completed for another 30+ years. We walked through a traditional outdoor market, which was unlike anything we had seen back home, and ventured down the famous "Las Ramblas" road towards the Mediterranean Sea. We passed numerous street vendors again, and many restaurants and bars, and of course many shops. We decided to go to the Barcelona aquarium since the weather was a bit cold and rainy. We both agreed that the aquarium was a great visit. There were fish from all parts of the world, even some sharks. The highlight was the "oceanarium" which was a tunnel right through one of the main large tanks which was home to numerous sharks and fish. We did manage to take some pretty good pictures.

We then went to the old gothic area of town and took in some of the very old areas of Barcelona. We went inside another church called Gaudi´s cathedral (again, google image search). and sat for about 10 minutes listening to a choir sing, which was a pretty cool experience.

Today, which was our final full day in Barcelona we made the trek to the Barcelona Olympic park (hey, if you cant be in Canada for the Olympics, why not go to a place that had them 18 years ago?.........) In all seriousness, it was a very cool experience. We were allowed to walk inside the main Olympic stadium and look around. They are preparing for the European track championships this summer, so it is undergoing some construction. We walked to the front of the stadium to the main plaza of the Olympic park. The plaza was amazing since it looks over the entire city. It was also a great place to take a photo of the stadium. The interesting thing about it was that in the entire front plaza, which seemed to be over an acre of area, there were only about 4 people taking photos. It was an extremelly empty place, and it was interesting to think back 18 years that this plaza had the eyes of the world on it. Still, it was a great experience to see it.

We went to the sports/Olympic museum next door to the stadium. Some hilights include torches from all the Olympic games from 1936-2008, shoes worn by Michael Jordan in the Olympics, and a replica F1 race car.


With our early train tommorrow and a long day of travelling, we are going to call it an early night tonight. Train leaves Barcelona at 8:40 and we arrive in Montpelier, France at 1:50. We then have to catch a train from Montpelier to Nice. If all goes well we should arrive around 6 at night.

Until next time

- Tyler