Wednesday February 23, 2000
Barcelona, Spain
You can click on any picture to see it larger
Ciutadella Park
We were just down the street from Plaça (Platha) Catalunya and guess what they had there? Yep, more darn birds to feed. The girls with the little cart selling bird food got to know us right away and even got to the point that when they saw Mackenzie coming they opened a bag for her before she even got there.
These are some kids that we met in the Plaça while feeding the birds Wednesday morning, we gave them some of our food, then bought them a bag to share and we talked for about 15-20 minutes with them using all their English and us using all our Spanish. We both said a lot of "What?" and "Huh?" It was funny, and they were really interested in why Mackenzie wasn't in school. They also knew a lot of animal names in English, so one by one they asked if she had a dog, cat, bird, rabbit, pig, parrot...
We headed off to Ciutadella Park which was built for the Universal Exhibition in 1888 (it's on the land that used to be the military fortress or citadel).
A block away from the park is the Arc de Triomf that was used as an entrance into the Universal Exhibition.
The park is huge, there are museums, lots of statues, lots of benches and grass and this the huge Cascada.
The Cascada was created in 1875-81 by Josep Fontsère with the help of Antoni Guadí (then a student of architecture).
The statue at the top is Aurora's Chariot and was made by Rossend Nobus in 1899.
Just more of the Cascada from different places and a better view of Aurora's Chariot.
This Mammoth was in the park near the Cascada. It was made in 1907 when the scientist Sagúe decided that there should be stone reproductions of all the species that were extinct (guess there weren't too many things extinct we didn't see anything else anywhere).
This sculpture is El Desconsol (Grief) and was crafted by Josep Llimona in 1903, is in the middle of a pond surrounded by gardens and is in front of the Parliment building and the Museum of Modern Art (that's the one you can see behind us).
More Wednesday and we're still in the park.