Barcelona Street Scenes

I was thinking that I should label this post as "Don't you just love jet lag..." or some such thing. I've been awake since 4 AM and finally got out of bed an hour later. I'm on my second cup of tea and feel much better. Speaking of tea, Lloyd has made a note to take tea bags with him next time--the Spanish tea is insipid at best, not the robust and hearty English Breakfast type of tea that we're used to. I enjoyed the coffee however, especially "con leche".

This was one of the more ornate door knockers we came across. We saw this type several times later but never this large nor as brassy.

This is the view from our balcony at the Gat Xino hotel. I never tired of looking at the different ways that people hung their laundry. Note the street sweeper dressed in lime green. There's an army of these folk.

Here's another street sweeper--I was entranced with her "dustpan" which is like a flexible bucket.

Grocery shopping--we saw men and women pulling these carts. This is the little square kitty-corner to the front door of our hotel. There were chairs permanently fixed to the pavement, always with people sitting and visiting.

In our neighbourhood, El Raval, there are many small fruit and vegetable shops that seem to be run by Pakistani or Indian families. According to our guide book, immigrants from North Africa and the Indian sub-continent have concentrated in this area and have opened specialty food stores such as this, "Halal" butchers, and bakeries.

These are two of Barcelona's "gegants" or giants being brought out in preparation for the June 24th holiday of Dia de Sant Joan (St. John the Baptist), a Catalan holiday. You can see that these giants are huge. They're being carried by men who are wearing those belts that weight lifters wear. We were so entranced by these moving statues that we followed them to their destination (city hall) and so saw the men trade off every 100 metres of so. We left just before this holiday which might have been a good thing because it is preceeded by fireworks and firecrackers all night long.