Same Shirt, Different day-2012 Adventures of the "Devonport Wonder Babes"

Sunday 16 September 2012 Barcelona, Spain

Following Liz’s recommendation we  walked down the road this morning and got onto one of the Hop on Hop off Barcelona Bus  tours which was a great thing to do to orientate yourself to a city. We had planned to buy a 2 day ticket but discovered the buses were going on strike on Monday

Once again the 4 New Zealanders were the only people sitting in the sun on on the top of the bus who wore hats, just the same as in Paris.

 

We took the Red route first which took in much of the centre of the city and port including the 1992 Olympic venue and passed by Sagrada Familia.

 

Hire bikes on trailer

 

 

 

 

 

 

We then changed to the Blue route and got off at the stop for Tibidabo, then took another bus up the hill followed by the funicular right to the top of this  512 metres high mountain. This amazing place is a sort of amusement park /fun fair, established in the early 1900’s and with many of the original rides still functioning.
 

There is a Museum of Automatons ( mechanical music boxes and puppets) that Rod was very keen to see so he and Helen went off there whilst Lyndsay and I just wandered around and watched children and grown ups having fun.

One of the original rides from 1926 is an aeroplane that circles around hanging over the edge of the mountain plus a very slow moving sort of ferris wheel with just one car at each end of the single arm. Plus there was a roller coaster, dodgems and other terrifying swinging things. 

 The church at the top is the “Temple of the Sagrat Cor”, a very beautiful church with very high steeples and the three women in our party all climbed right to the top of this structure from where we had a great view all over Barcelona. Most exhilarating thing to do.

Back down the hill to Blue route bus and continued back to our starting point via the Barcelona Football Club stadium exhausted after a fantastic day out.

Slightly chaotic Italian dinner  at local restaurant “Capriciosa”, another of Liz’s recommendations  where we were joined by Jackie who had been with us at Paziols.