{"id":318,"date":"2008-09-17T00:15:33","date_gmt":"2008-09-17T06:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/codyreport.com\/blog\/?p=318"},"modified":"2008-09-17T04:46:30","modified_gmt":"2008-09-17T10:46:30","slug":"vacation-recap-part-1-barcelona-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/codyreport.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/17\/vacation-recap-part-1-barcelona-spain\/","title":{"rendered":"Vacation Recap: Part 1- Barcelona, Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is the first of several posts to recap our vacation to Europe and our western Mediterranean Cruise. Because we saw so much, it is easier to break it up into several posts instead of making one extremely long one. I am going to try to use various links to pictures and websites to help tell the story (the links can be followed by clicking on any of the words in green).<\/p>\n

First of all, we need to thank William’s parents<\/a> for inviting us on the trip. William’s mom planned the entire trip and did a great job, so we really can’t thank them enough for allowing us to be a part of it.<\/p>\n

We began our trip by meeting each other in the Newark airport on Thursday, September 4th and made the 8 hour trip to Barcelona, Spain. We arrived in Barcelona on Friday morning and stayed there until our cruise ship departed on Sunday evening, so we had plenty of time to explore the city. We stayed at the Eurostars Grand Marina Hotel<\/a>, which was conveniently located on the Barcelona Port. The accommodations were very nice and larger than most you would find in Europe. After a brief nap to recover from the jet lag, we started our exploration of the city, which took us through the Mall de la Fusta and the Mall d’Espanya. Along the way, we passed the Columbus Monument<\/a>. We took a recommendation from the hotel concierge to go to La Gavina<\/a>, and it turned out to be a good one. William’s mom and I enjoyed the traditional Spanish dish, paella, while William and his dad enjoyed one of many lamb dishes they would try during our trip. On the way back from dinner, we were able to get a closer look at some of the ships docked around the hotel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The next day, Saturday, was exploration day. After enjoying a wonderful breakfast buffet<\/a>, we hopped on the Barcelona Bus Tur\u00edstic, a double decker tour bus<\/a> (similar to those you would think of seeing in London), that took us on a guided tour of the city with stops at all of the tourist destinations. We used headphones to plug into the seat jack that corresponded with our preferred language.<\/p>\n

We passed several notable stops during our tour. One of the stops along the passeig de Gr\u00e0cia (a major boulevard in Barcelona that is apparently the most expensive street in Barcelona and in Spain in terms of renting or buying property) was La Pedrera<\/a>, a famous stone building built by Gaud\u00ed in the early 1900s. Another stop was a trip to the top of Tibidabo, a mountain in Barcelona offering great views of the city below<\/a>. There was also an amusement park<\/a> at the top of Tibidabo where we found people on stilts<\/a> who entertained the crowd. There was also a beautiful cathedral<\/a> at the top of Tibidabo.<\/p>\n

Our next stop was to perhaps the most famous building in Barcelona, La Sagrada Fam\u00edlia<\/a> (Temple of the Holy Family), a building that was a dream of Gaud\u00ed’s that he began constructing in the late 19th century and worked on for 40 years but never completed. At the time of Gaud\u00ed’s death in 1926, only 2 towers had been completed. The work continued through the donations of churchgoers and ticket revenue from tourists who visit. The Christian symbolism of this building is simply AMAZING!!! I was in awe at this building because it really is a beautiful thing to behold. The church has three main facades, the Nativity<\/a>, the Glory facade (not yet completed) and the Passion facade<\/a> (death, burial and resurrection of Christ). The detail<\/a> of each of these events are carved in the stone and the detail is incredible. There is so much symbolism<\/a> that it would be too lengthy for me to get into it all, but let me know if you have questions.<\/p>\n

After stopping for a snack at McDonald’s (a happy meal for William and I<\/a>), we headed back to the hotel to relax<\/a>, eat dinner<\/a>, check e-mail<\/a> (including an update on Hurricane Ike’s path and the Wake Forest football game) and prepare to set sail the next day. On Sunday, we made a brief visit to the Barcelona Aquarium<\/a> before boarding the ship.<\/p>\n

We were now ready to set sail!<\/p>\n

Feel free to see more pictures from Barcelona<\/a> on William’s flickr page<\/a>. We have not added captions to all of them yet, so bear with us.<\/p>\n

Part 2 to come soon…………<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the first of several posts to recap our vacation to Europe and our western Mediterranean Cruise. Because we saw so much, it is easier to break it up into several posts instead of making one extremely long one. I am going to try to use various links to pictures and websites to help […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trips"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pmOjo-58","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/codyreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/codyreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/codyreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/codyreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/codyreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/codyreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":325,"href":"https:\/\/codyreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions\/325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/codyreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/codyreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/codyreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}