Day Trip: Sant Sadurni

As I´ve mentioned before, the train system in Barcelona province is well-run and cheap. For 2.80 euros each, we went an hour out of town on the Renfe train to Sant Sadurni, the home of Cava (Spanish sparkling wine). Here you can find so many different wineries, including the famous Freixenet. We didn´t have time to go to that one, but we went to another famous one: Codorniu. They have the largest cellar in the world and claim to be the home of Cavas.

site, with video: http://www.codorniu.com/home.html?wlang=en

Lucky for us it was a really nice day.

Here is the inside of the winery. It was designed by Josep Puig i Cadafalch, a famous Catalan Modernist architect. He also had a large influence on the modernist designs of Barcelona.

Holy crap they weren´t kidding about having a massive underground cellar. 30 Kilometers of cellars! You could definitely get lost. They even had ´street signs´for each hall and branch. I think there were something like 4 floors underground and all with so many cavas being stored.

Here´s the bar in the tasting room. They´re really proud of their bottles.

A bit of architecture

Barcelona is a city filled with diverse architecture. Since it´s got thousands of years of history and multiple cultures contributing, there are some interesting things to see. Here´s just a bit of what you can see in a day.

Detail of a church in the Born district.

and again

Hm I think I was about to say something.. oh wait this isn´t about me!

Arc de Triomf in Barcelona. Better picture next time..

blech. new and very expensive apartment complex called the Windsor. It overlooks the med sea. At least it has a cool cafe in the bottom floor.

These apartments are NEW and so nice looking. This picture doesn´t do them justice.

As you can see, most of the pictures we have have been very overcast. It´s been raining almost every day we´ve been here and is supposed to continue for another half a week or so. :(

Hopefully we will get to use our Eurail train passes to go to northern Italy or southern France very soon. It´s raining in these places too for another week!

Barcelona is filled with firecracker explosions right now. I think what is happening is that a festival is coming up at the end of the month, so they´re already selling explosives for that day. Since there is no school today, all the kids are out blowing things up! The problem is that they aren´t the fancy 4th of July style ones with fun colors and movements, they´re just... explosives. Being in a big city where it´s all apartments, the sounds echo and amplify off of the cement and brick walls. punk kids. I should throw my leftover cooking oil out the window and onto them.

FYI: if you want to see more of Barcelona in photos, here´s a link: http://barcelona.photobloggers.org/2007/05/26/shoot-barcelona/