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Cities in Spain

Barcelona City Trip

Barcelona City Trip

Sagrada Familia Church in Barcelona Spain
The La Pedrera, Antoni Gaudi, Barcelona, Spain.
Panorama of Ancient Roman Gate and Placa Nova in the Morning, Barri Gothic Quarter, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Monument to Christopher Columbus at the lower end of La Rambla, Barcelona, Spain.
La Rambla, Barcelona, Spain

These days Barcelona is named together with Paris, London and Berlin as being one of Europe’s great cities. It is no mystery that so many travel agents spend a lot of attention to it and that a city trip to this trendy and fancy city is much appreciated.

Vitality is its middle name, it has a pleasant Mediterranean climate and is thoroughly saturated with culture, art of living and joy of living.

Barcelona is THE city of modernism, a very special kind of art nouveau which is been treasured here. One can access the old and new city of Barcelona walking distance from its biggest boulevard: La Rambla. Barcelona City Trip is a surprise.

It is very easy to get your bearings in Barcelona: just imagine that the city is a piece of paper. In the middle of that piece of paper you draw a circle, that is the “Plaça de Catalunya” and an upright line to the bottom is “La Rambla”.

All the way down you draw a horizontal: that is the waterfront: old docks have been remodelled into cosy marinas, beaches and an Olympic yacht-basin. Remember this little drawing, we will use it often.

Barcelona ‘s Classics

La Rambla

La Rambla is the main artery of the city, 1.5 km long and bordered with ancient trees providing cool shadow in the summertime. La Rambla is the biggest meeting place of Barcelona and in the summertime you can rent one of the hundreds of chairs and watch the street performers, buskers, musicians, artists, painters and the never ending parade of people walking over the big boulevard.

La Rambla is so popular that two new words were derived from it: ramblejar and ramblista. The first is a verb which means walking on La Rambla and the second is the person doing the walking: if you are one day soon walking on La Rambla, you will be a ramblista too!
La Rambla used to be the bed of a river coming from the mountains and flowing towards the sea. When the city expanded towards the north it was reclaimed. Today is has been paved according to a design by Miro: a wavy and flowing pattern.

Columbus

At one end, the end near the sea, there is the statue of Columbus on a 50 m high iron column. He points to … the wrong side. The intention of the architect was to show the people the direction of the New World, but for some reason they lost their sense of direction and poor Columbus is now pointing towards Malaga!

At the other end of La Rambla you will find Plaça de Catalunya: the most important traffic intersection. If you ever get lost in Barcelona: just ask for Plaça Catalunya and from this central point you can take a cab, a bus or the metro or even go on foot in any direction. Many of Barcelona ‘s hotels are situated here and the neighbouring streets and boulevards make one great shopping centre.

Barri Gotic

On both sides of the Rambla you can now draw two more strips: in a couple of hundred meters lie plenty points of interest, musea and monuments to keep you busy for the best part of an entire week!The Barri Gotic or the Gothic district is a labyrinth of small and tattered alleys situated on the left side of La Rambla.In the Barri Gotic you can find plenty of palaces and musea and historic buildings. Best thing to do is to buy a decent guide book to help you explore the early history of this Barcelona City Trip

El Eixample

Back to our mental map: starting from Plaça de Catalunya and on the right coming from La Rambla, the checker board design of El Eixample ( the extension) is starting to emerge. Somewhere in the 19th century the affluent citizens chose to develop a new district with a new pattern of geometric blocks: an example of progressive urbanisation. El Eixample is art nouveau at its best. The whole region is sort of a Disney park for architects and enthusiasts.

There is a city walk that is not to be missed: start off at the Plaça de Catalunya and ending at the Plaça de la Universitat. (any tourist office in Barcelona will be pleased to provide you with maps) Hundreds of fascinating modernistic houses from world renowned architects such as Gaudí, Montaner en Josep Puig I Cadalfach are waiting for you to discover on this route. And for the less architectural inclined: there are also loads of very expensive shops on the route. Window shopping here is great, buying even better…As it is unthinkable to visit Paris and not the Eiffel tower, it is evenly unthinkable to leave Barcelona without having a stroll on this Eixample neighbourhood  and feast on the more than 2000 registered and protected houses in modernistic style.

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