Barcelona - quirks and beauty

I'm excited that another trans friend, Gina, will be visiting me this weekend. We've met up a few times in England over the years, and I last saw her and Jo in London just before I left for Italy. So it'll be nice to see here again. She's timed her visit well as she'll be staying in Sanremo, "the City of Flowers", during their annual flower festival when the town should have flowers everywhere. I look forward to reporting back on an English rose amid the Mediterranean blooms! 

But first, I thought I'd put up some photos from my recent trip to Barcelona. As I mentioned in my earlier post, I found some of the entry fees outrageous, so I stuck to doing stuff that was free or cheaper, and I still had a perfectly good time. 

Here are just a few of the extraordinary buildings in the city centre:

Casa Battlò

Fundaciò Antoni Tàpies, a museum devoted to the artist. The weird stuff on the roof is a sculpture, "Cloud and Chair".

La Pedrera

Concert Hall

There's plenty of curious street furniture, too:

There's a model of a lamppost fountain like this one in the Chocolate Museum, made out of chocolate:

 I loved the chocolate museum, especially the sculptures of cartoon characters like Asterix and Tintin, all made of chocolate. St George and the Dragon was my favourite, though.

The chocolate museum gives you a bar of chocolate as your entry ticket, which you swipe on the turnstile to get in. I then ate my ticket. 

I have never come across any city which has so many places to eat, drink or buy food in. In the run-up to easter, instead of buying a boring chocolate egg or bunny, you could have the easter dinosaur instead, or even a chocolate Mr Potato Head!

Other curiosities include this pavement clock where the two lights tell the time. 

And for some reason this Swedish tall ship was in the harbour. It was beautiful.

It's not all pretty, though. Residues of the Civil War abound, such as the bomb damage that can still be seen around the door of this church:

 My favourite place, though, was something of an afterthought in the guide books and was right on the edge of town so I had to take the metro quite far to get there. The Parc del Laberint d'Horta is a series of gardens, many of which are mazes. It's full of fountains, statues, temples, follies and cascades and was a delight. The main maze is hard to get through and has two focal points, a statue of Eros and a grotto of Diana:

Above is a nymph by her pool ...

... where some art students did a nude tableau with fruit. Note that Sue's News and Views remains a resolutely family-friendly site and there are no close-ups!

I took so many photos of this beautiful spot but I'll just post a handful more:

Similarly, I took a huge number of photos in Barcelona itself but this blog is not a travel blog and you may be getting bored so I'll leave you with a cheerful date palm soaring upwards from the peaceful courtyard of the archdeaconry, like the spire of the old cathedral behind:

 

 

Sue x