Barceloneta

Last weekend was warm and sunny so I went to the beach: Barceloneta. Above is a shot of the street that leads there, a fairly long walk from the closest metro stop. Today isn't as hot so I may go to the park instead. The whole week was rather cold in fact, with early on in the week the cold accompanied by rain. Not nice. Today is a bit better but still on the cool side. Of course (as it seemed was often the case in Vancouver), weather underground reports a sunny day tomorrow (Monday). Well, hopefully that will hold out until next week, as I'd like to return to the beach.

When you get to the beach and look right, you see that large building—looks like a W hotel. At left you see Frank Gehry's gold fish sculpture that he created under commission for the Olympic Games in Barcelona in the 1990s. Reminds me of the dancing buildings we saw in Prague, also his design. The Czechs were somewhat divided on that piece as it doesn't quite fit in with the architecture. Is that the case with the fish? What do you think? Art or eye sore? Personally I guess I don't mind it. It's something to look at, it glitters, it gives the beach something distinctive, maybe in the sense of Sydney's opera house, Vancouver's sails (of the Pan Pacific hotel I mean), but perhaps not quite on that scale. I plunked my towel behind the thing you see below; I'm still not quite sure what it's supposed to be. I didn't go up to it so I don't know if you can enter the thing, are there stairs? Is it a public toilet? Changing rooms perhaps? I suppose it can serve as a landmark that people can use to meet at (I heard a group behind me use it that way, e.g., "we're behind the blocks"—they were speaking English). The beach was somewhat crowded so don't expect a lot of privacy here. In fact, one major annoyance are the masseuses and beer salesmen walking around pestering everyone. One is constantly asked "Massage?" or "Beer, cerveza?" Some of the pushier masseuses will stand there and bug you if you ignore them. Irritating...I wonder if they're all over the beach or just in the section I was at (I was close to restaurants and the pedestrian mall, so right in the touristy area).

After the beach, I grabbed an Italian-style gelatto and went to Port Vell, it's at the end of the wooden walk with the wavy iron bars you see in the pic. I've been there before, there are a couple of nice restaurants there and a shopping mall. I was looking for kitchen towels and other things for the apartment, but that mall mainly has clothes and not really worth going into.

Port Vell is right at the bottom of Las Ramblas, the main touristy boulevard I've written about before. (Btw, is it "La Rambla" or "Las Ramblas"? It's both: "La Rambla" refers to the actual street, e.g., similar to how one would use "the boulevard" for example. In this case, the whole length of the boulevard is a series of sections, each called differently, e.g., "La Rambla de Florets" which then changes to "La Ramble de something-else", and on down the street. So it's really a set of "Las Ramblas". I suppose technically it would therefore be incorrect to simply say "La Rambla" as then one could come back with "which one"?) At the top of Las Ramblas you have Plaza Catalunya, and the metro of the same name. I catch the metro there when I'm either going back to the apartment or to work, as Catalunya has both the TMB metro and the FGC surface trains I wrote about earlier.