Barcelona x 2

I´m in Barcelona currently, visiting some friends. I had some free time this morning so decided to spend it rambling around downtown. I think I covered the two canonical tourist attractions in Barcelona:

• Las Ramblas - this was a bit of a letdown. It´s obviously a great place to come if you´re after buying a chicken for a pet or some tourist tat, but apart from that the street´s full of tourists looking at not much. Seems to be very much Barcelona´s Oxford Street. Having said that, there is a superb food market to one side - beautifully presented, with the an astonishing amount of colour and liveliness. It felt like a London East-End food market transported to an impossibly posh Indian city centre. That made the ramble a little more worthwhile.

• Sagrada Família - OK, so it´s not technically Barcelona´s cathedral, as I was told. It is, nevertheless, a most astonishing building, and if the cathedral looks better than this, I´ll be impressed. I haven´t been inside yet, but I hope to do so sometime later in the weekend. The building was famously architected by Gaudi, and gaudy it indeed is. But it somehow also has dignity and beauty. It just defies description. Photos to follow when I return home.