Sorry for the Sudden Influx of Stuff :)

Some more to tell. One of the first days we got here, Friday, Xavier gave us a brief walking tour of the city. We walked past two Gaudi apartment buildings that we will hafta tour later, and could see Sagrada Familia, the most famous Gaudi here in the city- the big cathedral that is still under construction and has been basically since he started it in the 20s or 30s. Pictures of all that business when I actually go visit them for real, with either Jenny Stahl or Chris, my two confirmed Barcelona visitors for the rest of the semester.

We then walked what feels like South, in this city, which means towards the water (the shoreline is actually Southeast from the city- everything is on a 45 degree angle grid off of the cardinal directions). We got out of the grid of the city into more compact streets at random angles, that apparently is the old city center. Here, there are ruins of the original walls of the city when it belonged to the Roman Empire! Pretty cool. There are a few other old Roman ruins (of course nothing like what we'll see in Rome) and there's a museum built over some of them, so you can descend to the level of the original city (since built up to the modern level, like Rome).

This is a cool market where they sell tons of seafood and like ever part of the cow to eat. Yknow, tongue, stomach, etc... It was built by Enric Miralles, a well-known Catalan architect. Cool roof.

This is some kind of eternal flame that burns in a small placa/plaza/piazza/square (depending on your language) that burns for all the Catalans killed when they lost the war to the Castellans.

This is right near there, just a cool hallway/arch thing connecting two buildings.

This was apparently built by Toyo Ito (famous Japanese architect, who I think built John Cusack's house in Chicago but I can't remember at the moment), who usually works in concrete, but not today. I forget, but I think this was like a Prada or Gucci or something, in the main shopping district, across the street from one of the Gaudi apartments.

My roommate Todd was having a great time walking over these posts that are everywhere, to divide the driving lane from the walking/biking lane, and probably to keep people from pulling over and parking there as well.

This is the church next to the eternal flame, and my roommate Dave taking a picture.

Some Roman ruins, into which a museum has been inserted not-so-attractively, and the church on the left that we were in, under construction.

This is some guy. A real guy. Dressed up as a slave/statue, I dunno, but he doesn't move, stands next to the ruins. People take pictures. Like me.

Here was our little lunch stop where Xavier treated us to some bottles of Cava, which is basically really dry Spanish (or Catalan?) champagne. We had a couple glasses like midday and stumbled back out into the city........