Barcelona

Columbus monument with the giant cable car in the background at the entrance to the pier.

Customs building or something. I thought it looked like the Haunted Mansion.

City view from the top of a big hill we climbed on our way to Olympic Park. It was a nice walk away from the tourist areas. We had a Coke at a picnic table here.

Olympic Park

We found a little league field and couldn't resist.

Art Museum (we didn't go in, they're all the same).

Every city in Europe has one of these but they all spell it different, Arc de Triomf.

Gaudi cathedral. It is huge. You can see it in the city picture above.

Apartment building known for its architecture.

Cool buildings along La Rambla (also saw it called Las Ramblas). This wasn't the highlight of our walk down La Ramble though, that was the completely naked, body painted/tattooed/pierced old dude (probably about 70) walking right through the crowd. Barcelona was nice and much cleaner than Cadiz. It was also a lot busier with people and traffic all over. The Metro (subway) was very clean and efficient. I think Chicago may have the ugliest and noisiest subway in the world. Well, Paris may be uglier with all the graffiti. For how clean and efficient the subway system is there, the airport is the complete opposite. They just have monitors mounted on the walls and let the lines of people go wherever, usually intermingling with other lines for other flights. That was just check-in. I thought I was at a Euro soccer game when I got to the security mob. There was no line just a mob of people trying to get to the end of the rope where a "line" actually forms. And when people tried to go around the mob to see what was going on the mob would turn on them and start yelling and whistling. It was mayhem. It was like going through a toll on the tollway at rush hour and trying to get back into a lane. After a couple delayed and scary Aer Lingus flights I was back home safely. Ireland was everything I had imagined. I think there was fog, rain, and sun in the two hours I sat on the plane at the gate waiting to take off. It was a great trip and would recommend to anyone who has 2 weeks and a couple grand to kill. The boat comes back in mid-August and I'm sure there are rooms still available since ours wasn't full.