April 20, 2007

A day in Barcelona…

After seeing the beautiful country side and spending the weekend in Europe union’s least populated region, Soria . Barcelona was big “crowd shock”, I have always enjoyed even the very crowded cities of India and Italy but this crowd of tourist in Barcelona was really suffocating. Barcelona does have some cute features such as its old city center with cathedrals and small stone paved paths etc. but after the 1992 Olympics and by over selling Gaudi’s architecture got more attention, ended up with overflowing tourists.

Spanish people are very friendly, infact even more than my favorite Italians. We can have lots of small talks as we meet people in shops or in a café. I ended up having such a small talk about the touristy nature of Barcelona, in the airport with a Barcelona lover. He said I don’t have rights to complain about Barcelona, when I am living in a touristy city like Paris. But I should say that Paris which is being a touristy city for many many centuries have facilities to handle its tourists in a very sophisticated way without much suffocation. Anyways, I liked the small streets of the Gothic and Born quarter and the small after noon nap in the beach and the over view of the city in a cable car from the beach to the near by mountain Montjuïc .

Some more of Barcelona...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

nice pictures of the city, and a very diplomatic way to say you didnt enjoy it as much as expected! I would say it more bluntly: Barcelona has become a playground for low-budget tourists and it needs to redirect its strategy urgently. With the current trend, this region can shut down all its Universities and Natural parks and build even more bars with terraces for drunken hooligans and italian girl-seekers.

Anonymous said...

you lucky bum
-U

Unknown said...

hope you took time to go day trip to near-by mountains for hiking, and island trips... atleast Ibiza??

Uma Maheswari said...

Did lot of hiking in Spain, near barcelona only in the near by hill called tagamanent! it was great!