More from Barcelona, Cruise Starts Today

One of the things I have noticed is that people are the same the world over. Mannerisms, and many more things are so common in all cultures. Barcelona is a melting pot of European and some American people coming together for work, tourism, or whatever. It is always "moving". When we leave our hotel it seems like we are stepping into a carnival atmosphere. There are people on the street trying to sell you something, People singing and marching around like a parade. It is so odd. There was an announcement in a store the other night and i had no idea what was being said....and it didn't matter. 

Some Sort of Creature. Along the Ramblas

A woman angel. Along the Ramblas.

Same Angel Lady.

The Ramblas is the center of the tourist area. It is several blocks long and there is activity there all day and half the night. It is very interesting in terms of people-watching. 

Along the waterfront.

Along the waterfront.

We took a bus tour down to the waterfront. It is quite a ride from our hotel, but worth it. The palm trees are beautiful and the water is blue. It's so beautiful!!

A modern apartment building.

I will be off-line for the next 7 days because I 'll be on a cruise ship. After that I'll be in Paris for a week and promise to upload more beautiful pictures.

Janie

Hello from Spain!!

It's been a while since I wrote anything here and I have a few minutes so thought I would get started. This is a typical "ally" or walkway where people and cars share the same space. There are millions of people here so this picture is unusual because usually it is filled with people. Basically, the city seems quite clean, but there are people who don't care and throw paper or whatever on the ground. There are people who go around with brooms and dust pans cleaning up. 

There is graffitti everywhere, and it is sometimes hard to tell from the "street art". This woman's face was particularly interesting to me. It and the graffitti are on a metal door that the shops close at night. When they reopen in the morning, up goes the door (like a garage door) and that makes the entrance to the shop. 

This is a typical license plate in Barcelona. There are a lot of smart cars here....some just tiny!!!! 

Barcelona may be a city of 4 million people and maybe 1 million tourists, but there is a lot of greenery all  around. There are lots of trees and parks, with a statue or water fountain in the park-like settings too. This particular photo was taken from the bus tour we took. It is beautiful here when you get away from the downtown core.

Some things are the same as the states, such as movie posters! There were several on a huge movie theater we passed. I took this photo. We almost went to see Conan, the Barbarian but thought the theater would not be air conditioned. This is a country with very little air conditioning, no ice, the lights in the public restrooms are on a timer and shut off after 3 minutes. Then you have to hit a special switch for more light. The toilets are water-saver ones and everything seems to be on saving energy. It rather makes me wonder why we don't have these in our country.

 

Today is our last day in Spain. Tomorrow morning we board our Cruise Ship, The Norwegian Epic. We are more than excited about this. I promise to do more writing and putting up of pictures. 

Janie

A Stranger in a Strange Land

That's me: A Stranger in a Strange Land. Life has thrown me around quite a bit lately. It's very painful and hard to understand sometimes. When I was growing up I believed that there would be the one and only man who would ride into my life on a beautiful white stallion and we would fall deeply and passionately in love, and that my world would forever be happy and perfect. Well, there is no such thing as "happy" and no such thing as "Perfect" that lasts forever.  I look back on the last 7 months and in that time my life has totally been changed forever. Is this the first time that this has happened to me? Absolutely not. I have come to believe that the only happiness we can count on is the one that we create for ourselves and are living at this very moment, not the one before it or even the one after it, just this singular time in existence. 

The stranger is ME. The strange land is SEATTLE. With the GPS telling me where to go I do a pretty good job of "getting there". I'm a people-watcher and there are few places with the mix that Seattle has. As I write this I think that Alaska must be getting colder, and lots of rain or maybe even feeling like snow. Here it is still beautiful and has been since I arrived! No coat weather....ahhhhh.

So I decided today that I would restart my blog...which I have shamelessly pushed aside. One of the reasons is that I want to share my trip to Europe with my two daughters, with all of you. So there is no place better to do that than here on my blog, don't you think? 

I really hope you value each day as the ONLY  day you have, and that if you are granted the time here tomorrow that you not waste any of it being sad or negative or unhappy. There is too much of those things going on in the world without adding to it.