Valencia and Barcelona continued

So, after my morning bike trip through the park, I ran quickly over to the Mercado a grocery store to buy a little something for the trip because we were to leave at noon and wouldn’t stop until about two. I’ve never had such a great chocolate muffin. It I Had a white cream in the center and it tasteded delicious. I even ate it BEFORE I got on the bus. We took off on time and stopped at two for lunch. I sat in a nice sunny spot for an hour, drank a coffee, ate my snack and read. (And I want you to keep in mind, that I wore shorts and a t-shirt all day yesterday. There’s a reason I’m telling you this.) I started noticing a lot of out-of-country license plates the closer we got to Barcelona. Lithuania, Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. It seems a lot of Northern Europeans were on vacation. We got to the outskirts of Barcelona at 5 or so and it took us another half an hour to get to the hotel. Since I knew the big parade for Three Kings day was going to start at about 6:30, I just left everything in my room and took the subway downtown. I found the parad rout by following the crowd. There were already people sitting on the curb. I was standing right behind them and by the time the parade started, they were standing 7 deep behind me. I’m glad I got there when I did. It was a rally interesting spectacle. It was like carnival and Mardi Gras and macy’s Thanksgiving day parade all rolled into one. There was nobody who was noticeably drunk and that was pleasant. The floats were pushed or pulled by people, not by trucks or tractors. Each group was illuminated by a fork lift with spotlights on it driving in front of the group. It’s obvious that the groups practice a long time for this be a use their dances and acts were well synchronized. And while some of the group did the dancing, others in the group walked along the sides of the street and collected the kids letters to the three wisemen. Costumes were colorful and hard candy was only thrown right at the end of the parade. Everyone had a great time. I stayed in town after it was over and had a pizza then took the subway back to the hotel. This morning we had a bus tour and walking tour of the city. Barcelona is a very metropolitan area which has gained a lot of touristic prominence since the olympics were held here in 1992. It’s pretty politically divided at the moment. It is the head of the region of Catalonia, whic hwants to secede from Spain. That is, it’s about 50-50. A referendum will be held on the 17th of this month to decide. It’s a really touchy situation here. Also interesting is that Catalonia is the only region in Spain that forbids bullfighting. The bullfighting ring has. Ow bee turned into a shopping mall. After the tour with the guide, the two couples from Australia and I stayed in the city to look more carefully at the beautiful modern architecture created by Gaudi. Check out the pictures I posted. He’s not frank Lloyd Wright in any sense of the work. It’s not the simple stuff with straight lines. It’s all wiggly and opulent. It reminds me a lot of the work of the Austrian Friedrich Hundertwasser. It’s very interesting and very flamboyant. After taking all our pictures, we stopped at a little bar/restaurant near our hotel outside the tourist zone. Rafael speaks Spanish so he ordered all sorts of tapas and other food stuff. I had mussels and prawns. Really tasty! We had just started to eat when our bus driver came in. W3 invited him to join us and learned a lot about the area from him. And, as we’re sitting there enjoying our lunch, we look up at the TV and see that it is snowing in every city in Spain that we just came from! Remember, I told you that I wore shorts yesterday. Yikes. We slowly made our way back to the hotel where I figured I’d better write everything down now before I forget. Tomorrow and Monday will be traveling. Tuesday I will have a chance to rest before I have to go back to school on Wednesday. All in all, it was a great vacation. Lots of good experiences and nice people.