Barcelona Harbour Cruise: A City Teaser

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As I said in a previous post about sightseeing in Barcelona harbour and along the coast, a cruise on board of Las Golondrinas boats is a good teaser or appetizer before visiting the city. Of course you can plan your vacation trip in whatever order you wish!. Remember I told you about big and small boats covering a full route including harbor and coast or just harbour respectively, well, today in my blog I wanted to show you the old Golondrinas (see the one next to the steps?). This photograph I took on departure on board of one of the modern ships. It was great to take pictures as the landing docks grew tinier in the distance. The wooden platforms and stairs were full of tourists as you can see. To the left the Columbus Monument and a little to the right of the Golondrina, the Harbor Authority building, featuring an impressive architecture which I intend to cover in a different post soon. The next days I may be publishing irregularly because I will be in Madrid until next Tuesday. I suppose I can publish from the hotel. In case I can't, you will get your daily dose of images in a row on Wednesday.
Feed Issue: I am tampering with blogger labels again so feed subscribers may have noticed the service broken. It is a well known blogger issue that, upon changing old labels or typos, the feed shows old posts as newly published. This inconvenience has been fixed now. In case anyone is interested you can find the workaround here.
Note: From here I would like to thank Conny of Saabrücken Daily Photo, for choosing me as the winner in her Haiku competition and recommending my link too.

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Catalan Sculpture: Satyr Riding on Top of Dolphin

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This is a satyr riding on top of a dolphin blowing a seashell. A clear allegory of a Triton, the merman son of Poseidon, half man half dolphin. There are four of them, being restored at Duke of Medinacelli Square next to Passeig de Colom and Moll de la Fusta (see Google Earth map picture). There are four satyrs in all, surrounding the first iron monument built in Barcelona (Damia Campeny, 1851), a big column holding the statue of Admiral Galcerà Marquet, Counselor of Barcelona in times of King Alphons the Magnanimous of Aragon. The place takes its name after Luis Francisco de la Cerda, Duke of Medinacelli who was the Spanish viceroy of Naples who yielded a part of the estate to the city town hall to build a square after the old Sant Francesc convent was demolished in this area of the city waterfront. The mythological creatures are being restored now but it will surely be a nice place to stay when water springs out of the seashells again. It is a recommended square to sit and relax under the shade of big palm trees on your way from Columbus monument to Maremagnum going along Passeig de Colom. By the way, did you know, that when this square was built the sea used to hit directly upon a high wall or malecon right across the road and all you see nowadays beyond Passeig de Colom is land gained from the sea? But that is part of another story.
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Sightseeing Along Barcelona City Coast

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Sightseeing Barcelona city harbour and coast is one of the most gratifying experiences in our Mediterranean urbis. As in some other major cities like Paris, London or New York, taking a boat to navigate along the river or the coast in this case helps you to take visual shortcuts throughout the territory you are going to explore in the most pure discoverer or pioneer style. Sightseeing boats in Barcelona port are called Golondrinas (swallows). You get tickets and depart from Moll de la Fusta in front of the Columbus column monument and prices are not expensive considering today standards. You should know that there are the classic smaller ships which were the original vessels seafaring inside the harbour for about half an hour and more modern boats doing just that plus a cruise out of the port mouth and along the coast till the Forum area on the other side of the city and return to departure point. Last weekend I travelled on one of these and believe me the one hour and a half journey really was worth the 10 Euros I paid. I thought my fellow photo bloggers would love to take a peek too as an appetizer for a future visit. I hope you like this waterscape and the reflections on the intense blue sea.

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