Barcelona

A couple of weeks ago I went on a weekend trip to Barcelona with the choir. It was 36 hours, from 9am on Saturday to 9pm on Sunday, with a concert in the middle.
What with one thing and another, the concert was a minor part as the order and even content was changed at the last moment; we were cut short to make way for the mass and anyway there were only about thirty people in the audience!
However, we did have a good time! First of all we stopped for a few hours in Sitges, a beach resort which is quite famous. That weekend was Gay Pride, though we didn't see the parade.

In the foreground, five of ours drinking cocktails with rude names

After dinner we got back on the coach and headed for Barcelona. It started to rain; one of those violent spring storms which lasted about an hour. Found the Casa de Aragón, changed and walked to the church where the concert was to be held. It's a rather impressive modern one.

Unfortunately, the concert had been put before the mass, so we didn't have very long, couldn't sing the whole programme for our tiny audience!

Well, following that we returned to the Casa de Aragón and ate some nibbles of ham and cheese while people sang Aragonese jotas.

Our hotel was another coach ride away , on an industrial estate; I know some people wanted to go out and eat and have fun-it took them a long walk to find a Burger King.

Sunday morning was the fun bit. We had a morning out in the centre of Barcelona. The coach left us at Plaza Colón. 

Geese in a cathedral courtyard

The wonderful Modernist Palau de la Musica

Cathedral of Santa María del Mar

Chapel of Saint Eloy-patron of blacksmiths. The statue is on an anvil.

Barcelona is full of tourists. Foreigners everywhere! The other thing you really notice is the maniac cyclists. They are not supposed to ride on the pavements, but they do, rather aggressively weaving round the pedestrians. I'm sure accidents happen quite often. There were some really brilliant buskers.