211. Excelsis

Barcelona 

Roman about to depart photo

UPS & Giantavan are our cribs

With eleven to cart, public transport was in order. Until Google Maps I never attempted busses in another country. Trains were doable using the www but busses a mystery. So easy now with the Transit option in Google Maps which lays out every route including the bits needing to be walked.

Nativity façade

This traveller surprised & delighted
when we all clapped

Walked the nine hundred metres and the bus appeared as per the map. As we didn't have prepay cards we were charged €2.2 per person. Fellow passengers put us wise on that one so we purchased ten ride tickets two and three at a time for the eleven of us which worked out at €1 per ride. Bus then Metro got us to our destination Sagrada Família.

Jenny & Nikki

We ate our lunch looking at the fantastic Nativity façade then we walked around the cathedral till we came to the playground across the road. By this time, the children were cathedraled out as we had been looking at it for about twenty minutes! We then sat in the playground, backs to the Passion façade, for an age waiting for the children. Jacqueline took the opportunity for a quick dash around the cathedral on her own.

Next was the Metro and Vernacular to the Montjuïc Castle. Roman was gutted when we refused to pay for the short cablecar ride to the top.

Fyfe & Onno pushing Tjelle

Roman drinks 

Roman & Fyfe

Impressive kick by Onno

The English fluent MacKenzie 

From Wiki: In the last 350 years Montjuïc Castle has played a decisive role in the history of Barcelona, becoming a symbol after the Catalan defeat to Spain in 1714, date that has become of significant importance. Since then the Montjuïc cannons have bombarded the city and its citizens on various occasions, and Montjuïc has been used as a prison and torture centre repeatedly for three centuries. The castle is infamous in Catalan history books because of its role in the civil war from 1936 to 1939 when both sides of the conflict imprisoned, tortured and shot political prisoners at Montjuïc,[citation needed] among them Lluís Companys, who was the president of the Generalitat of Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. Companys was executed upon orders from the Franco regime at Montjuïc Castle in 1940.

Another lovely combined dinner