Postcards from Barcelona

Here are my postcards from Barcelona--or more accurately, some of the pictures I took while my husband and I walked around the city on Friday afternoon.  What I loved most about Barcelona--and what I love most about all of the European cities I've been fortunate enough to see in person thus far--is the way the Catholic Faith plays such a big part in the art and architecture.  There is so much faith-inspired beauty over in Europe!  And so many places where modern city structures have grown up around historical little churches.  There is nothing--I repeat NOTHING--so beautiful as the churches you'll find there.

Here's a relatively small Catholic church, tucked so tightly between
the buildings that sprang up around it that you could almost miss it entirely.

And here's a grand cathedral (La Seu, pride of the Gothic era), which it would be very hard indeed to miss!

The architecture in Barcelona is amazing...

...especially because it often includes details like this one, a lovely statue of  Madonna and Child--
and this building wasn't even a church.

Here's the main drag, a walking street known as "La Rambla."

And halfway down La Rambla you can stop in at the Placa de la Boqueria (a huge marketplace), where you can
get some really fine--and really expensive!--locally-made chocolates.

You may have noticed that some of the italicized words I'm using seem more French that Spanish, and that's because Barcelona is the capital of the province of Catalunya (Catalonia in English), and the Catalan language is a mixture of the two languages.  Ramon, the older gentleman who sat beside me on the trip over the ocean Thursday night, said that his first language was Catalan, although he was also fluent in French and Spanish and could speak passable English.

Well, I really hope mi amigo Ramon would be happy with the effort my husband and I made, during the one day we had available, to enjoy his beloved hometown, of which he was so obviously very proud.  I'm going to leave you with one final image, the statue of Christopher Columbus that overlooks the Port de Barcelona.  To me, it looks like he's saying, "That way to America!"