Barcelona

The weekend of October 10-12 we visited Barcelona with Pat and Roger Bonnicksen. We were unaware that it was a holiday weekend in Spain. Monday October 12th was Columbus Day (those of you over 40 may remember when we used to celebrate that day). Barcelona was where the king and queen of Spain met Columbus on his return from the new world. Needless to say, it was a very busy place.


Barcelona is a big city. It has 3 million inhabitants and there is not a house to be found anywhere in the city. There are many, many high rise apartment buildings.

Barcelona is home to the "mondernista" architect Gaudi. These pictures are examples of his buildings. The first picture is one of the most famous buildings in Barcelona, the Familia Sagrada, one of Gaudi's buildings, a church that is still incomplete. They continue to work on it even after his death.

I can't say I'm a big fan of this type of architecture.


My favorite spot in Barcelona was "the Ramblas" which is a long pedestrain street that works it's way down the hill and ends at the waterfront, where a statue of Columbus stands guard. This street is home to many vendors including street artists. The cowboy was just one of many of these artists working for handouts.


We took a speedboat tour of the harbor which was a lot of fun. Mentioned on one of our tours, "Barcelona was a city with its back turned on the ocean." The 1992 Olympics changed that and it now has a vibrant waterfront.

French lessons

I am just about to finish my second french language class. It's an intense class, 5 days a week for 3.5 hours every morning. Never having studied a foreign language before, I'm finding this challenging, but enjoyable. It will take a lot more studying and practice to become semi-fluent.


These pictures are of my first class in Sept. The other "etudiants" came from China, Russia, Germany, Canada, Singapore, Mexico, Turkey and the Philippines. Most of the guys in the class and the shorter gal in the front are enrolled in a Master's program in Economics at a university here and this class was required.

The woman in pink and the woman you can see just over my right shoulder in the back have become friends of mine. Lala, in pink, is from Russia and she has remarried a french man and is learning French so she can speak well enough to go back to work. The other woman, Monika, is from Germany and she has also resettled here to be with her fiance. She is currently looking for work in an office that speaks English. With Airbus being a dominant employer here, there are many businesses that speak English, much like Larry's office.

The woman in the gray sweater was my instructor, Elisabeth (pronounced Elizabet, the French language doesn't have the "th" sound). We liked her a lot. She had a good sense of humor but kept us on our "toes." You can tell by this picture that we had a relaxed atmosphere in class.

Stade Toulousain

We experienced our first Rugby match. My french language school offered student tickets for a "trés, trés, trés importante jeu" (very, very very important game). It was against Stade Français (Paris).


I can't say that the game itself was all that exciting, it ended in a low scoring tie but the whole experience was great. We learned that there are 3 teams in France that are always battling for first place, Toulouse, Paris and Perpignan (on the Mediterranean coast).



The Toulouse team is in red and black and the Paris team is in the pink (What professional team wears pink?). We rode public transportation to the stade and were part of the excitement. It had the "feel" of a college game with the flags flying and the cheers.


We enjoyed the Toulouse version of the Dome dog. One of Toulouse's specialties is sausage, and of course it's served on a french baguette.

Shopping (La faire de cours)

Do you notice anything unusual about my cupboard? Can you see the milk and orange juice sitting next to the popcorn and crackers. This is truly one of those sights that we just do not see at home in the USA. They process their milk and juices with UHT (Ultra High Temperature) which gives these products a shelf life like everything else in your cupboards. It took some getting used to looking for these items in the dry goods section of the "supermarche."