More on Barcelona

I figured that I should give a little more information on my trip to Barcelona with Ilana and Courtney since I kind of brushed over it before. When we first arrived in Barcelona, we were able to find our hostel fairly easily. We realized that we were only about a five minute walk from Las Ramblas so we decided to walk over and get some food. On the way there, a homeless man flashed us!! Not the best way to start our weekend. The next day, we decided to go sightseeing. Two of my favorite places I went were Temple de la Sagrada Família and Parc Güell. The Temple has been a work in progress since 1882! It was amazing to see such an enormous place that generations of families had worked on. Most of the design for the church was done by Antoni Gaudí. There are very vibrant colors used for sculptures and mosaics. This is contrasted by very detailed concrete facades where the entrances to the temple are. One of my favorite features about the interior of the temple was the support columns were modeled after the sycamore trees outside of the temple. Small details like that make the temple an overall masterpiece. Another amazing spot in Barcelona was The Parc Güell. It was originally designed as a housing complex, but failed. It contains mosaics and buildings designed by Gaudí and was built between 1900-1914. The entire park sprawls across a mountaintop where you are able to see the whole city. There is a large stone monument at the peak of the mountain that you are able to climb to the top of (at your own risk!) to see the city. Everything at this park is beautiful and peaceful and the Gaudí element is obvious because the buildings made the place look like Candyland!

Mopeds in Barcelona

I saw a lot of great things while I was in Barcelona this past weekend. I noticed that the drivers there are a lot more considerate than the ones that are in Rome. They actually yield to pedestrians, which reminds me of good old State College where you can walk out into traffic and 9 times out of 10, the driver is going to stop. (They won't be happy, but they'll stop!) In Barcelona, I noticed that there were MUCH fewer mopeds than in Rome. I'm not sure if it is because Barcelona had a bigger and more efficient metro system than Rome or what, but there definitely weren't mopeds whizzing passed you constantly or driving up on to the sidewalks just to get around traffic. I was, however, able to get a picture of a large row of parked mopeds that reminded me of the way they park mopeds by the capitol in Rome. Enjoy : )

Police in Barcelona

On my trip to Barcelona this past week, I noticed that they have a great deal of police officers constantly patrolling the streets. Although they don't have posted guard points like in Rome, there is a constant patrol on the streets of Barcelona. Although there are a lot of police officers patrolling, things like prostitution and drug dealing are a very large epidemic plaguing this beautiful city. I happened to be able to get a picture of two police officers right before they started yelling at me in Spanish to stop taking their picture. The police officers in this picture are the Mossos d'Esquadra which according to wikipedia.com is "the police force of Catalonia" and is "one of the oldest civil police forces in Europe. Some of their duties are "to handle terrorism, identity documents, immigration and other limited matters which the central government retains competences on."