Barcelona

We've spent 2 days in Barcelona going around the city and visiting the sites. Yesterday, we purchased a 2-day bus ticket on the Barcelona Bus Turistic which allows us to hop on and hop off the bus. There are three bus routes with this tour company; green, blue,and red. There is a stop right beside our hotel which is really convenient; our hotel is on the green line - Forum stop. So after spending a fortune on a buffet breakfast we headed to the bus stop. We got on the bus and boarded the upper deck; plugged in our headphones so we could hear what we were looking at. We got off the first transfer point to the blue line and boarded another bus to take us to Placa de la Catalunya which is where Las Ramblas is (the street where there are tons of touristy things - souvenir shops, human statues, etc). We took tons of pictures and stopped for a spanish beer; ok my parents did, I chose to go with Stella. After a couple of hours we boarded the red bus line to see the northern part of the city. The first stop on this line was the Sagrada Familia. This is the church that has been under construction for hundreds of years and is still under construction; this church was started by Gaudi. After this we boarded the bus again and stopped at the Park Guell; which was up 2km from the bus stop uphill in 32 degree weather. Needed to stop for another beverage before actually viewing the park; which it turned out was really worth it. It was a really nice park; lots of beautiful architechture. After a couple of hours it was back on the bus and basically back to the hotel.
Today back on the bus after eating breakfast at the mall beside our hotel. This time we weren't going back to the red line we'd stick to the middle line (blue). We rode the bus for a hour or so until we stopped at the Museu nacionale d'art... where there was a really nice view of the entire city; you could see everything from there. It took about 6 busses to go by before we could actually board one; the tours were definately busier today and we found out it was because there was 4 or 5 cruise ships in port. So once back on the bus we stopped at the marina/pier where we spent a few hours wandering around. There was some cool kids activities. These things that looked like giant hamster balls that kids were rolling/running around in. After spending several hours at the pier it was time to head back to the hotel. Time in Barcelona was awesome, obviously didn't get to see everything but saw quite a bit and learned quite a bit about its history.

Barcelona, Spain