Something worth doing, Sara and I found, was just strolling along Port Vell, the old port at the bottom of La Rambla and watch the evening go by. It can be a bit chilly, when the wind comes during the cooler months, but it is still very enjoyable. There are benches to sit down and just watch the world go by.

When doing research for Barcelona, one name kept repeating itself over and over again, “La Rambla”. It came to a point where Sara actually shouted to me in protest , “Don’t mention la Rambla”. When we finally came to visit this famed street, its reputation did not fail. It was very packed and filled with tourist the world around.

La Rambla can be considered a series of shorter streets, each differently named, hence the plural forms Las Ramblas (Spanish and les Rambles (Catalan). From the Plaça de Catalunya toward the harbor, the street is successively the Rambla de Canaletes, the Rambla dels Estudis, the Rambla de Sant Josep, the Rambla dels Caputxins, and the Rambla de Santa Monica. Construction of the Maremàgnum in the early 1990s resulted in a continuation of La Rambla on a wooden walkway into the harbor, the Rambla de Mar.

La Rambla can be crowded, especially during prime time tourist season. Most of the time, there are many more tourists than locals occupying las Ramblas — this has changed the shopping selection, as well as the character of the street in general. For this reason also, it has become a prime target for pickpocketing. Lots of unwary tourists have had their wallets stolen on this street. Most recently robbery has also become an issue, even during daylight hours.

The name rambla means, in Catalan, but also in Spanish, an intermittent water flow, and is derived from the Arabic ‘ramla’ which means ’sandy riverbed’.

We saw street performers dressing up in all sorts of creatures and characters from the devil himself to the Hindu god Veshnu. There were predetors, goblins and a few angels amoung the crowd. There were shops selling flowers, food, tickets to all sorts of stuff. Not lacking were the usual con arist with the gambling game trying to con the non street smart tourist or local. The road lead all the way to the beautiful Port Vell at the end, and during our stay there we came to this street a few times.

Next stop on our 3rd day’s journey was a ride on “Teleferic de Montjuic”, a very short and expensive ride on a cable car that brings you up Mount Montjuïc, which means Mount of the Jews. Costing us a total of 4 Euro’s after discount, we were disappointed on how short the ride was, but once we got up the hill and saw the old Castle, it made up for it.

Montjuïc is translated as Hill of the Jews in the medieval Catalan language, or perhaps as a corruption of Latin Mons Jovicus (that is, hill of Jupiter). The name is found in several locations in the Catalan Countries: the Catalan cities of Girona and Barcelona have a Montjuïc, as does the island of Minorca. When written in a Spanish rather than Catalan context it is generally spelled Montjuich (in the old Catalan spelling before Pompeu Fabra’s orthography). Barcelona’s Montjuïc is a broad shallow hill with a relatively flat top overlooking the harbour, to the southeast of the city centre. The eastern side of the hill is almost a sheer cliff, giving it a commanding view over the city’s harbour immediately below. The top of the hill (a height of 173 metres) was the site of several fortifications, the latest of which (the Castell de Montjuïc) remains today. The fortress largely dates from the 17th century, with 18th century additions. In 1842 the garrison (loyal to the Madrid government) shelled parts of the city following disturbances. It served as a prison, often holding political prisoners, until the time of General Franco. The castle was the site of numerous executions.

This place boasts the best view of Barcelona and also a view of the Mediterranean sea. We sat up on the wall, took photo’s had an ice cream and basically just enjoyed the breeze and view.

After we got back to our hotel on the second day, we decided on which of the attractions Barcelona had to offer which were available on the Bus Touristic path interested us. First stop was this place called El Poble Espanyol, which was described bellow on Wikitravel :-

A fake village with replicas of characteristic buildings in Spain (like the Avila walls, the Vall-de-roures town hall, etc). The village hosts the Fondation Fran Daurel, where you can enjoy an interesting Modern Art collection boasting Miró, Picasso, Tapiès and other, mostly Spanish and Catalan, nowaday’s artists. The audio tour is very worthwhile here

The tickets for the bus ride came with discount vouchers for this place, and thus only costing 6 Euro’s each, we decided to give it a try.

We loved this place. From the above album (located here), you can see how beautifuly done this village was. There were tight alleys, great worksmen selling thier marvelous works of art. There is even a glass making factory you can visit and watch them blow glass bottles! There is a small museum featuring some spanish art and a few cafes to just sit down and relax. This place is worth it.

Early in the morning we got up and decided to head down town, which we were told was just a short train ride. Finding the train station however was the hard part. We were given very simple directions which we followed but found no station. We wanted to walk back to the hotel when we say this old man half way to the journey. I used the little Spanish I remembered from University and managed to ask him ,”Donde Esta la Train station?”, while pointing to the station on a Map of the rail network. This started a long conversation in Spanish where Sara and I tried our best to understand. He brought us to the Train station which was exactly where we were before, only nobody would realize it was a train station. I was surprised how hard it was to remember my spanish and we bought 2 tickets to the centre of Barcelona costing us EURO1.30 each.

We arrived and saw a magnificent building designed by Antony Gaudi called Casa Balto just in front of the Metro station. After taking a few photos we decided we were hungry and entered McDonalds to eat a heavy breakfast. The menu there was very different from the ones we had in Malaysia and also England. I had the El Mac, which was a premier version of the Big Mac served on awesome bread, great tasing chedar cheese and a thick beef patty, it was very fresh and tasty but Sara’s burger was much better. Called the CBO, which stood for Chicken Bacon Onion, it was this amazing tasting burger on a special bread which had peices of Onion and Bacon baked into its chrust, a peice of chicken breast and bacon. The vegetables used was very fresh and the chips tasty We saw and old lady enter McDonalds as we ate and she was served by the staff a beer and some bread. She sat down her corner and then had a espresso. Beer for breakfast, we thought, wow.

As we left McDonalds we saw the Bus Touristic, which was a open top double Decker bus which went to all the major sites of Barcelona. It had 3 lines, the Red, Blue and Green, but the green line only ran during summer. Tickets cost EURO 20 for 1 day and 26 for 2 days, so we bought the one day ticket, but later upgraded to a two day one. Included in the ticket price was a coupon booklet which gave us discounts to many many things, including meals and attractions.

We took the Red line first, which brought us to North Barcelona seeing many Gaudi buildings including the famous Famalia Church, which is still under construction! It also passed monuments, a small village called Garcia which rumour has it served the best desserts in town and Barcelona Stadium the home of FC Barcelona. We then changed to the Blue line which took us along the hills and down to the beach front. After we had a chance to see what Barcelona had to offer we walked along the famed La Rambla where we ate the best Paella we ever had, which also cost us EURO 15 including one drink.

At the end of La Rambla, there was this tall monument to Christopher Columbus and apparently people could go up the monument. As our coupons gave us a discount, we decided to go for it. At first we tought it would be stairs we would have to climb up like we did in Vong Tau, Vietnam, but to our joy it was a very small elavator inside! It could fit a maximum of 5 people in one journey, one of them the lift conductor. The lift conductors job is to travel up and down, ensuring that there is always just the right amount of people up there. Once you reach the top of the monument, you realize there is space only for like 8 people at a time, and you have to walk around the circle. We were enjoying the view at first, and then we felt alittle disorientated like we were about to fall off the monument, like it was tilting. We asked the elevator conductor and he told us that back when the monument was designed, it was not covered with glass windows and so the rain would manage to enter the monument. They hence made it tilt alittle so the rain water would naturally flow out. Hehe. Mystery resolved.

After coming down the monument, we were already tired and decided  to head back to our hotel, skipping dinner and planned what we wanted to see the next day.