Winding Down in Barcelona

We have a few more days, but I have seen what I came to see and this may be my last post. We are in Barcelona for a few days and it holds little interest for me. It is a very modern city, the home of modern artists and modern architecture. Picasso, Dali, Gaudi are outside my area of interest. Not to mention that Rick Steves say this is the place you are most likely to be pick pocketed in all of Europe.  Dang!

That said, the weather is sunny and about 75 degrees.

We did take a high speed train from Madrid to Barcelona today and the high speed train experience in Europe is almost always wonderful. The Madrid train station is filled with trees and - believe it for not - hundreds of turtles. The trains are sleek and comfortable. And speeds, at times, were running at 300 kph; that's 185 mph. Makes me wish we could come up with something like this in the USA.

PS- My daughter Ariana was the winner in yesterday's question. Spain has few oil or gas resources and has made extensive investments in renewable energy. Of course, the high cost of this is one of the reasons why Spain has huge debt, 25% unemployment, and a messed up economy.

Windmills, solar panels, and -in this case - hundreds of mirrors that focus their reflected beams of sunlight on a tower that transfers the light to heat to hot water and, finally, a steam turbine that creates electricity. It was a very amazing sight.