Day 203 - Olympic Stadium/Museum and Monjuvic

Another day of wandering around Barcelona, except I really wanted to check out the Olympic stadium since we passed by it on our Hop On Hop Off bus tour a couple of days ago. I used the Metro to get to the Espanya stop and upon heading up the stairs to the Placa d'Espanya, I immediately saw the Arenas de Barcelona, which was a old bullfighting ring that was converted into a shopping center. What was cool was that you could take a lift up to the top and get some great views of the city, including the Venetian Towers, MNAC, and the Parc de Joan Miro.

Afterwards, I headed north towards the MNAC museum, taking in more incredible views of Barcelona. I was in the "Monjuvic" district of the city which is higher in altitude than much of the rest of the city. I went up further up until I found the old 1992 Olympic stadium. I don't remember too much of the '92 olympics, but I've always been a fan of the spirit and excitement of being an Olympic spectator, even if it's just through a television screen. It was cool to actually see the stadium where athletes from around the world marched during opening and closing ceremonies and won gold medals. Next to the stadium was an Olympic Museum, which had a good collection of Olympic memorabilia and video and photo archives.

Next to the Olympic Stadium/Museum was the Fundacion Miro and some well-maintained park space at the Park de Montjuvic where I took a stroll for a while. I was waiting for the sun to go down before heading to the Magic Fountains, where they had light and sound shows to Christmas tracks even 30 minutes. Not as powerful and eye-catching as the Bellagio fountains in Vegas or World of Color at Disney's California Adventure, but still fun to watch and remind myself that Christmas is coming!

Arenas de Barcelona

The View from the Top

Parc de Joan Miro

1992 Olympic Stadium

Olympic Museum

Magic Fountains

Day 201 - Hop On Hop Off Barcelona

EJ and I decided to take the Hop On Hop Off bus today since it would be his last full day here and it would be the best way to see the whole city, even if we couldn't really visit any specific sight for too long

This bus was so much better than Rome for a couple reasons. One, the buses constantly ran the route, and it would only take from 1 to 15 minutes to wait for the next bus if you got off at one stop and waited for the next. In Rome, it would take around 30 minutes! Two, the coverage of the city was so much greater than Rome. They both had a couple routes, but in Rome, there was a lot of overlapping of sights. In Barcelona, there were two districtly separate routes, without a couple places where you could switch from one route to another.

It really was a great way to see the entire city of Barcelona and all the possible tourist sights you could ever possibly want to visit. Barcelona isn't too big, but all the sights are spread out throughout the city, and unless you wanted to take the time to really research all the possibly sights and take the metro to each sight, you should just book this bus tour to get an oversight of everything there is to see! Each route took about 2 hours, so you could spend 4 hours just seeing the whole city in one day, before deciding what you really want to focus your attention on!

MNAC

Lichtenstein

Arc de Triomphe