Welcome to Barcelona,  city of speciality shops

I spotted four of these shops and only two McDonald’s. The Spanish are obviously more enlightened consumers than the rest of the world. Five female shoppers and one male who appeared to be window shopping.

Jen was unsure of the services supplied at this Salon, it appeared well patronised.

 

A place where people with acute coulrophobia can live secure in the knowledge that they are safe from predators, no smiles here and balloons confiscated. Definitely no public clowning without a licence. You can’t run from the law in Barcelona (not in clown shoes anyway).

 

On the city tour bus yesterday we narrowly missed a large explosion in the main street followed by a cloud of smoke and automatic weapon fire. Presumably this is a  normal occurrence  as there was no news on the net about it.

If that wasn’t enough on the way home from the gay pride festival (walking past not attending) we witnessed about twenty police including the riot squad arresting a side walk Rebok/Nike salesperson, there was a good crowd just like football, split about fifty fifty in their support. The police,using their batons to great advantage, won the match   when the salesman kicked an own goal by falling backward down the nearby subway stairs……Shoes everywhere what a match!

 

Spanish facts.

The first “modern’ novel came from Spain, Miguel de Cervantes. wrote “Don Quixote”  in 1605.

Chocolate. During the fifteenth century Spaniards traded with the American continent and North Africa, and introduced oranges, avocados, cacao, potatoes and sugar to Europe.

Spanish is the second most used language in the world, just after Chinese and ahead of  English. Despite this Spain has four other spoken languages, Catalan, Basque, Galician and Aranese.

The Pacific Ocean was once called “The Spanish Lake”

By the way seventy percent are catholic and about thirteen percent of the total population go to church. God will be happy about the seventy percent but a bit miffed about the thirteen percent.

And most importante:

Gaudi. Antoni Guadi, Spanish architect best known practitioner of Catalan Modernism. Gaudí’s works have a highly individualised, and one-of-a-kind style. Most are located in Barcelona including his the magnum opus The Church of the Sagrada Familia, due to be finished for the 100th anniversary of Gaudi’s death in 2026. If you think that’s a long time to build a church, forget it! The Ulm Cathedral in Germany took over 500 years.

Gaudi’s work is a absolute artistico and ingenieria delight, blending surreal imaginings with engineering genius, they are mathematically precise and aesthetically alluring……………..

Sagrada Familia

I think Gaudi deserves a separate page maybe later.