Do you realize Barcelona has 5 million people and is the 16th most visited city in the World! And we are supposed to do it in a day??   “Ya’ gotta be kidding me?” And then how will we show all the pictures?  In order to attempt to make this happen we bought a tour bus ticket (you know the double decker kind) to see the seventh largest city in Europe and THE largest European Union city on the Mediterranean.

Barcelona is an incredible city filled with a lot of whatever it is you may be looking for.  We’ll try to highlight a few, but most of the pictures will be included in the gallery below.  We will first note that most of the streets are lined with beautiful trees, so as fabulous as the architecture is, it is often tough to see because of them, not that we did not enjoy their shade.

The largest monument in the world to Christopher Columbus is in Barcelona.We were told how many gazillion statues and monuments there are here, can’t remember the number, but do remember this one is by Lichtenstein.

The La Rambla stroll (pedestrian mall to see and be seen) is a must here, this is the extension over the water. The Barcelona Cathedral built primarily in the 14th century.Incredible interior, this is the choir seating, sorry to have missed the actual singing in this church.The National Art Museum of Catalunyaand the view from it’s steps.The 1992 Summer Olympics were held here and naturally there are a lot of notable structures attributed to it, not to mention the renaissance of the city.  This is the torch tower.We post this next picture as we were taken aback as we turned the corner on our bus, thought this was an office building; it was on of six cruise ships in port today.Barcelona also boasts an incredible botanical garden filled with incredible sub-tropical plants.But by far the MOST iconic structure in Barcelona, and we dare say, anywhere, is the Sagrada Família, This is the creation of Gaudí two centuries ago; he dedicated more than 40 years of his life to this “church” knowing it would not be completed for several generations.This ‘structure’s’ scheduled completion is 2026 (which is hard to believe, given the time it has taken them to get this far).  It is difficult to politely describe this church, so we will quote:  “It’s breathtaking and grotesque.”  The pictures below should tell the story.

Not exactly a tough day’s workout, but we were exhausted nonetheless; time to carbo-load, Bolognese and calzone.