Every minute of everyday seems to be filled with something to do, whether its work, cooking dinner, entertaining visitors or simply just enjoying the city ourselves. When I first arrived, I felt as though I was going to be spending a long time in this city, and took a while to get to know it. And now I can count down the weekends I have left on two hands before I have to come home. The time just seems to be running away. We have counted that until we leave, we only have one weekend free until we leave for Christmas, and then only three weekends after that. So we are trying to make the most of our time here, with or without visitors. Not last weekend, but the weekend before that, mum and dads best friends came out to visit me. Which meant that I had someone familiar from home here with me half way through the time being here by myself. Regularly seeing familiarities from home makes you not miss it, and allows you to enjoy everything without feeling lost or as if you don’t belong here. The time spent with them, gave me a quick reality check. It reminds you of the fact that you are no longer living at ‘home’, and that you have created a new home. It reminds you of how lucky you are to be here.
The first day my family friends arrived, we went to have a drink on Ramblas. La rambla is somewhere I would never go unless I was here with a visitor. It is literally tourist central. They say Barcelona is bad for pick pocketing, but wait until you go to ramblas, and you have to chain your bag to your body. Nevertheless, we had a drink on Ramblas…..a litre of Sangria – each! The size of the drinks here are unbelievable! I’m not sure you would be able to buy a drink that large at home. You get ID’d in Sainsburys to buy a red bull, somehow I don’t think a restaurant would sell you a litre of Sangria in one glass! It was an experience and a half, and you definitely have to like Sangria to finish it off. Ramblas being Ramblas charged us 51€ for our three litres, but the experience helped get over the cost!
Having visitors takes you back to places that you almost forget about when you are wandering around on a daily basis. I went back to the Sagrada Familia, otherwise known as the Jelly Tot Church. I forgot actually how impressive it was! It’s a little bit like being in London, when you walk past the HOP and Big Ben about 20 times, you forget how impressive they actually are. Jelly Tot has become the same for me here. You can see it from the rooftop of our building. Every time we walk to the metro, it is there on the right. At first, you think WOW, this building is amazing, and then after a while, you just forget it is there! However, when I came up the metro by the famous Gaudi Cathedral, the word wow came straight back to mind. Its not until you get up close to it that you really realise how impressive it is. Sadly, on this day, I didn’t get a chance to go around the inside, and therefore I have set an aim, for before I leave Barca, I must go to see the inside of the Jelly Tot, and I am not going to leave the city until I do!
Another one of our Gaudi trips took us to the Casa Batllo in Passeig de Gracia, also known as “The Dragon House”. This was probably one of the most impressive Gaudi buildings I have ever seen, or just buildings in general. The overly ornate front doesn’t really do that much for me, even though still impressive, but when listening to the audio guide, actually why everything is curved in the way it is, and the architectural form of why it has been designed that way is far more impressive to me. One of the most impressive pieces was that he used the light to form part of his architecture, and depending on which direction you stood in which particular room changed the whole layout and feel of the space that you were in, all by using light and glass. The tour told us that the house was built purely from drawing and a plaster model. The drawings were actually on display and not as impressive as I thought they must have to be. To see that someone had built the house from the drawings displayed was very remarkable!!
The time I got to spend with Penny and Bob will be memorable and I am so glad that they were able to come out, visit me, and share some of my experience here.
Two things that I will never forget - Bobs hatred for the shop Desigual, on every corner, and Penny trying to order her food from the Window Box!!
No comments:
Post a Comment