A last one…
Back from too short holidays in the french countryside, sigh.
So, what about a last (kind of) bicycle, for the fun of it, before passing onto something else?
Theme day: bicycle
Sexy beaches of Barcelona… How could I not take this photo… Click on the photo to see her…tattoo.
More bikes here!
The bike-house
Saw him all the time, for several years, a seemingly homeless guy with his house on his bike.Good luck to you, dude.
The bike tours
Quite a lot of tours of any kind in Barcelona, even bike tours. No need to BYO!
More bikes in their natural environment soon to come, getting ready for the great worldwide City Daily Photos one and unique Theme Day, on August 1st! Don’t you miss it!!!!!
CDP theme day: upside down
Upside down… When I read about this coming theme, a few weeks ago, I drew a blank. But fortunately, we had in BCN the festa al cel, the festival in the sky.
Click here to see what other participants did.
Motorheads are coming!
Can’t wait for the Harley Days to be back! Lots of weird and wonderful people, with their glorious machines!
No airshow.
An airshow, a while back. The city hall, in it’s immense wisdom, decided to save some money, on this most popular entertainment. So, you’ll only have this photo, no more airshows I’m afraid.
HOGs
A HOG meeting during the annual Harley Days in Montjuic. What’s HOG? It stand for Harley Owners Group. Nice people!
Unbearably slow
Can I touch the horsey? Yet another festivity on the Rambla. The Rambla (which has several names, depending on which section of it you are) is one of the 3 main thoroughfares through the old town, together with Paralel and Laietana. It is actually a dried riverbed, recovered along the centuries with dirt and other stuff. Now, it is the promenade, always full of tourist and photographers watching people go by. A narrow passage through the old town, it is as best a very slow going, driving down the mile or so of its length. And well, whenever there is a festivity, the city closes it. But when it’s open, almost every taxi driver in town chooses to pass this way, doesn’t matter where you are going. The perfect tourist trap: it’s nice, it’s slow, and the meter is turning and turning… Even at 4 in the morning, when you have an early plane to catch, just on time for the slow moving street cleaning machines…
But hey, it’s a photographer’s paradise!
Trendy!
The lazy way to go around town… For the people in front, anyway. It is quite trendy now, green, non polluting. And for the rickshaw-wallah… He wont need a gym to stay fit.
Where is the rickshaw-wallah???
He shouldn’t let his ride on the street like this!
There are a lot of cycle rickshaws in Barcelona, but this is the first of this kind I’ve seen this side of Asia.
Traveling back in time…
Look who traveled through our area yesterday morning! Yes, it is the 2013 Barcelona to Sitges classic car rally! Enjoy these few photos, and don’t you just think that cars were so much more beautiful in those times?
Estació de França
This is by far the most beautiful train station in Barcelona, the Estació de França. Here is what Wikipedia says about it in English:
Estació de França (Catalan pronunciation: [É™stasiˈo ðə ˈfɾansÉ™]; Spanish: Estación de Francia; “France Station”) is a major railway station in Barcelona.
Estació de França is the second busiest railway station of the city after Barcelona-Sants in terms of regional and long-distance ridership. It may lose this status, however, with the arrival of the AVE high-speed train in Sants and the construction of Estació de la Sagrera, planned for completion in 2012, that will concentrate most of the traffic.
A railway station was first built here in the 19th century as the main terminus for trains arriving from France (as its name still suggests), but also for services to North East Catalonia and the Costa Brava.
Re-built and re-opened for the 1929 International Exhibition, the two monumental buildings that make up the station were designed by the architect Pedro Muguruza and inaugurated by King Alfonso XIII. They surround the railway tracks in the shape of a ‘U’. In total, the station’s structure is 29m tall and 195m long. The station was closed for renovation between from 1988 and 1992, reopening for the Olympic Games of 1992.
It is generally seen as the city’s most beautiful station. It is worth seeing in its own right for the restrained mix of classical and more modern styles – complete with decoration in marble, bronze and crystal, and modernista and art déco motifs. Over the last three decades it has been eclipsed as Barcelona’s main station by the subterranean sprawl of Sants. Indeed, the other stations of Barcelona are all at least partly underground, França being the only exception.
Part of the original building now belongs to Pompeu Fabra University, serving as its “França building”.
Welcome to Monte Carlo!
Well, not quite… Barcelona is one of the concentration legs of the 16th Historical Monte Carlo Rally. Historical meaning in this case that the cars are from between the 50es and the 80es. Here are some of them.
Some more info about the Rally here. And you might be able to see them arriving in Monte Carlo, 684.5 km away, on Jilly’s Monte Carlo Daily Photo Blog, if she can make it of course.
She’s big!!!
The Liberty of the Seas, the largest passenger ship ever built! That thing is so huge that I could not get her on one photo, even though I was several hundred meters away, with a 24mm lens. You’ll find some more information about her here.
Just one thing… You want one? You’ll need to fork out 800 million dollars, 550 million euros. Crisis, what crisis???
Anyway, big and beautiful, but not our cup of tea, as we prefer something much smaller.
3 men on a ….
… kind of boat. Taken large, of course.
Once again, I apologize for not visiting your blogs and commenting. The problem is:Â most days only have 24 hours, and they’re very very busy right now.
And if you’re not there it, please join the CDP Facebook page, temporary replacement of the portal!
An interesting visitor
The MS Hamburg, on her maiden voyage. Well, not quite, really… Formerly known as the MS Columbus, it was built 15 years ago, but has just changed owner. Right now, it is coming from Nice in France and is on it’s way to Malaga, Lisbon and Hamburg, where it will be officially christened ‘MS Hamburg’ on June 7th. It is a small ship, which allows it to go to smaller places than her giant cousin in the back of the photo the Norwegian Epic. I’d rather go with the smaller one…Or even better, steering my own sailing boat.
 On the menu today? Hamburgers, I suppose.
Holidays, the end
I’ve been on holidays (a very busy time!) for the last week and a half. Today, back to the grind. And I will have to use this again: the metro. Oh well, it will be a short week. My world, on Tuesday.
Montpellier 1
We went up north, to the beautiful french city of Montpellier, and this is one of the first things we saw… This was to celebrate the opening of some new tramway lines. Montpellier’s tramways are the sexiest on earth, according to the New York Times!
Will show you much more!
Watery Wednesday
Leaving Barcelona…. for about 90 minutes.
This is for the Watery Wednesday meme. Click here to see more fabulous watery photos!
Lolita y Encarnacion…
… are 2 of the Golondrinas (swallows) taking tourists around the port and along the coast. It is a very nice thing to do when you’re visiting Barcelona… and the sea is not too choppy!
Wild HOGs!
 
Message to Dave in Costa Rica/Arizona: don’t touch these bikes! lol
And yes, once again, this is My World Tuesday!
HOG days: the ones for sale
 
You gonna get the blues with that one!
HOG time? High time!
The HOGs are back! It is the yearly Barcelona Harley weekend,complete with bikes, beards, uniforms, and biker chicks. And, of course, the usual decorations, such as this one:
 Yeah, why not.
A novelty way for tourists to move around town, in herds. Would love to have one to go to work!
53rd Barcelona to Sitges Old Car Rally
Together with at least a hundred more photographers, most of them with much more impressive and expensive equipment than mine, I went to see the cars participating at this year’s Barcelona to Sitges rally. Some beauties! Judge for yourselves. Hard to choose among the 80 or 90 cars which one to post, so here is a small sample… Which one would you want to be yours?
Weren’t they so much nicer than today’s cars??!!!
Skywatch Friday
Over the clouds, once again…
Do us and yourself a favor, and click here to see the wonderful pictures posted on Skywatch Friday. You wont regret it, believe you me!
The Harley girl
Busy texting, busy listening to music… We will never know. Everybody seems to have the latest gizmo, be it some phone which also makes coffee, or some music device with the latest pirated music… Pickpockets in the metro are obviously very happy about it! Furthermore as they are usually not arrested if caught, just held for a few hours, listed somewhere and then released. Read in the local paper yesterday about one of them being held 37 times by the police, for theft, often only hours after the last time… Visitors, be safe! Common sense will help you, more than anything else!
And hasn’t she got a nice bike!!!
Oldtimers
No, not a taxi: this is one of the first buses here, in Catalunya. With his fellow old timers. We came across them last Saturday, there was some kind of old bus rally. A few more of them…
 This one be came from Paris…
 Not only in London…
 And they came from Belgium.
That’s our world on Tuesday! Click right here to see more!
Weekend Reflections 77
One evening, flying back to Barcelona… The sun reflecting from the W Hotel’s glass front onto the sea.
James, master and commander of the Weekend Reflection meme, will be very happy if you visit him, here!
Our thoughts are in Japan today.
GoCar Barcelona!
‘Met’ those 2 guys at a traffic light, 2 weeks ago. They seem very happy to be using a GoCar. Little yellow cars with GPS and some funny comments that you can rent to go around town.
And here they go… Hope you had fun, mates!
Skywatch Friday
One of my greatest pleasures when taking a plane are… clouds. Or rather: photos of the sky up there, at 30 or 35.000 feet. It is an enchanted world.
This is, of course, for Skywatch Friday. Please click here to see many more enchanted and enchanting photos.
And thanks to all of you who posted something on yesterday’s Food for Thoughts meme. You can still do it, as it remains open till Saturday night.
Thursday’s Food for Thoughts, episode 4
I posted a couple of photos earlier about the Barcelona World Race, around the world non stop. There was a red boat in the lot, and here is it’s sponsor, La Vache qui rit, the Laughing Cow (famous french cheese). This is my contribution to Thursday’s Food for Thoughts. You’re next, please feel free to post any food related photo below, in 3 or 4 clicks. It’s very easy, try it!
Few facts about the Laughing Cow: The Laughing Cow is red and jovial, and is almost always depicted wearing earrings that look like the round boxes the cheese comes in. On April 16, 1921, Alexander Baxter trademarked his brand, called “La Vache qui rit,” in France. In the trademark, the cow is said to have a hilarious expression. Bel had made the original drawing himself, after seeing a traveling meat wagon during World War I called “La Wachkyrie,” a play on the word for Valkyrie. In the beginning she wasn’t laughing, she wasn’t red and she didn’t wear earrings. This patent was the very first branded cheese product registered in France. In 1924, Benjamin Rabier, a famous illustrator, edited the drawing into something more like the image that prevails today. The blue and white stripes around the box date from 1955. Since 1976 both earring-boxes have been shown with the top-side visible. Before that year consumers were shown a top and bottom side.
And also… Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is often jokingly referred to as ‘La Vache qui Rit’ because of his supposed resemblance to the cheese’s logo.
Estacion de Francia
Of all train stations in town, this is by far the prettiest.
You might have seen it in the news, but if you haven’t: there have been violent clashes between 700 or so ‘anti system people’, as they call them on TV, and several hundreds riot police yesterday afternoon, less than 100 meters from where we live. Burned car, burned and upturned bins,tear gas, 59 people arrested, 58 injured. A lot of violence.
A trendy spanish rickshaw
Friends in India and other rickshaw or tuktuk countries, here is what a trendy 3-wheeler looks like in Spain. You can see quite a lot of them, mostly around tourist attractions.
The logo, Desigual, is a Barcelona-based fashion house, very trendy, very hip.
Quoting Wikipedia:
The brand was founded in 1984 by Swiss national Thomas Meyer, founder and creative director that wanted to provide different clothes to people. Under the leadership of Manel Adell since 2002, the brand is driven by a global concern and maintains head offices in Barcelona. Desigual’s founding philosophy was based on positivism, tolerance, commitment, fun and un-levelling.
Desigual is a brand which has achieved sustained, sustainable, profitable growth in all sales channels throughout its history.
Each season the Desigual design team, comprising 25 designers, prepares a collection of over 1,000 items, counting clothes and accessories, built around one single concept, one common thread that makes the line whole resonate to the same philosophy. Real Life, Magic Stories, Luxury Feelings, Me&You, Better&Better, Wow, Life is Cool, All Together and Handmade are some of the leitmotifs that Desigual has brought to the fore.
The name Desigual means unequal, by the way.
Estacio del Nord
This beautiful neoclassical building is one of the 2 big bus terminals in town. Formerly a train station, it was built in 1861 (100 years older than me, therefore). And it isn’t just a bus terminal, no no no! There is also a police station, a gym, a nice park, and the station hosted table tennis during the 1992 Olympics.
Where can you go from here? Well, pretty much everywhere in Spain and Europe and further away, from Portugal to Ukraine, from Paris to Morocco, from Dublin to Moscow.
Sorry for not being able to visit your blogs at the moment, as my computer has a bad case of trojan-itis, and is at the hospital for the moment. Will bring him oranges and a book later. The book? The Odyssey, of course.
Theme day: wood
Today is CDP theme day, with the theme: wood.
This is replica of the submarine Ictineo 1, launched in the port of Barcelona on September 23rd, 1859.
More info here.
MMB
One of my favorite places in Barcelona is the MMB, Museu Maritim de Barcelona. Actually, mainly for the museum shop, a fantastic place for a photographer. I just love what can be done with a maritime theme. And I could buy the whole shop! OK, I confess, I was a fanatic model boat builder as a kid, and I feel suddenly much younger in this shop!
Cow-cycle?
Don’t know about you guys, but we would call this magnificent creature, obviously female (lipstick, the eyes) a cow-cycle. What do you think, how would you call it/her?
Just trying to imagine someone riding it, with a would be torero facing it, proudly holding the red cape, or muleta! Ole!
A street car named Tibidabo
This is the 107 years old little street car going up the hill, to Tibidabo.
I will be away for a couple of days, taking my wife to one of the most romantic and beautiful places on earth, Venice, Italy. Therefore, this is an automatic posting. Back on wednesday. And yes, we decided against taking our laptops!
Waiting…
Waiting… Ignoring each other…
There are people from over 100 countries living in Barcelona, many Chinese, Pakistanis, several thousands French, Indians, Moroccans, and so on. Integration is still a problem, despite of the efforts of the local gouvernment (the Generalitat). Immigrants are offered free Catalan classes, free access to culture, but still, the divide is great. Also, we are in Spain, but it’s hard to get a job here if you don’t speak Catalan. But then, Catalan doesn’t help you very much in the rest of Spain…It’s hard to get a job anyway, with or without Catalan, as the unemployment rate in Spain is the highest in Europe, with 19.3%. Over 3.8 million people are unemployed here.
The mayor of Barcelona, Jordi Hereu, recently blew a fuse about the “anti-publicity”, the bad name of the city in the news lately. Corruption, grand theft, prostitution, drugs. So, not all is fair in our fair city. So what? Welcome to the real Barcelona, a place finally like any other place, with a good side, and a bad one!
The Santa Eulà lia
The Santa Eulalia. This gorgeous schooner was built in Torrevieja, near Alicante in 1918, and launched one year later. Under different names, it was active for almost 80 years, until it was auctioned off, and bought by Barcelona’s Maritime Museum.
That purchase saw the museum posed with one of the most significant and difficult challenges it had ever faced, namely the recovery and restoration of a historical vessel, adhering to the strictest criteria in terms of the protection of cultural heritage.
You can now visit it on it’s mooring, in the Port Vell.
Here is some technical data:
| Previous names: | Carmen Flores (1919-1931) Puerto de Palma (1931-1936) Cala San Vicenç (1936-1975) Sayremar Uno (1975-2000) Santa Eulà lia (2001) |
| Year of construction: | 1918 Probably launched on 14 January 1919 |
| Shipyard: | Astilleros MarÃ, in Torrevieja (Alicante) |
| Dead weight (maximum load): | 190 tons |
| Displacement in service: | 215 tons |
| Gross / net tonnage: | 156 tons / 116 tons |
| Material of hull: | Wood |
| Overall length: | 34.6 m (47 m including the bowsprit and the boom) |
| Length between perpendiculars: | 29.3 m |
| Maximum breadth: | 8.5 m |
| Depth: | 3,8 m |
| Maximum draught: | 4.05 m |
| Surface area of sails: | 526,4 m2 |
| Number of sails: | 12 |
| Height of masts above deck: | 27 m |
| Engine: | Volvo Penta 367 CV (291.9 kW) |
| Current crew: | 7 (captain plus 6 sailors) |
| Maximum no. of passengers: | 30 people |
Theme day: BIG!!!
Based in Barcelona, this is the MS Voyager of the Seas, a Royal Caribbean International cruise ship. It became the world’s largest cruise ship when it entered service in 1999 (for a while, anyway).
The numbers are amazing:
| Tonnage: | 137,276 GT (gross tonnage) |
| Length: | 1,020 ft (310.90 m) |
| Beam: | 156 ft (47.55 m) |
| Height: | 63 m (206.69 ft) |
| Draft: | 29 ft (8.84 m) |
| Decks: | 15 |
| Propulsion: | 3 x 14 MW Azipod propulsion, two azimuthing, one fixed |
| Speed: | 23.7-knot (44 km/h; 27 mph) |
| Capacity: | 3,138 passengers[1] |
| Crew: | 1,181 crew |
There is pretty much everything you can think of on that ship, even an ice skating rink and a wedding chapel! Cost half a billion dollars, after all!
Just behind, you can make up Montjuic Hill, and Barcelona Castle.
Should you want to know more, click here.
This post is part of the September theme day.
Click here to view thumbnails for all participants
Grandi Navi Veloci
Grandi Navi Veloci, big fast boats to Italy. Barcelona is an important ferry hub, boats to the Balearic Islands (Ibiza, Mallorca, Minorca), to Italy (Genoa, Livorno, Sardegna, Civitavecchia, near Rome). Many cruise-ships stop here as well. And they are in fact really affordable, almost (but not quite) cheap. I will hopefully do the trip to Italy quite soon to eate la pizza, will show you the pictures, promised!
This picture was taken on Montjuic Hill, from Barcelona Castle. The guy at the canon is not me, and nobody shot anything or anyone from here for a long time. Ciao!
Barcelona Daily Photo 
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