Las Ramblas- June 1, 2010

Another leisurely morning and then Dana and I met our friends Kyle and Bevan at Placa Catalunya to go to Las Ramblas, a famous street in Barcelona. At the placa, while we were waiting for our other friends to catch up with us, we decided we would feed the pigeons with some feed we bought at a stand. It was surprisingly funny to sprinkle the food and watch hundreds of pigeons come flocking. We even fed them from our palms which was slightly scary. Although I must say, those pigeons are very accurate with their aim. Once we caught up with everyone we head for Las Ramblas. It was basically this market street with fruit stands, clothing stands, and even pet stands. You know you are in another country when: you can by a bunny of the street. There were also plenty of street performers which were entertaining to see. One particularly impressive one was painted with metallic paint and stood completely still to look like a bronze statue. He didn’t even blink. We went through an actually market towards the end which was interesting. There was food of every flavor and color in that tent, including skinned lambs heads, eyeballs and all. Before we left Las Ramblas we had some Gelato, my first since being here. Mine was menthe (mint) and it was quite lovely. After ice cream it was time to meet up with our program for a city bus tour. The tour took us to the port Olympic part of town where we got to see the old Olympic stadium and the main harbor. We stopped off at the famous Gaudi site called Parc Guell where we got out and walked around. It was a bit of a hike to get there but very cool. There were several buildings built in the traditional Gaudi style with colorful tiles and interesting designs. The buildings were built around the main center part of the park which had a beautiful view of Barcelona. After a while we got back on the bus and made our way back. The rest of the evening we relaxed and got ready for ur first day of class the next day.