Went to Barcelona a couple of weekend’s ago. It’s a beautiful city and I loved it. There are great juxtapositions of old and new, techy and artsy. As soon as I stepped out from the plane at Barcelona airport, I immediately sensed a different pace to that of London. Even the airport itself had a sense of newness and space. I have never seen marble floors in an airport before! The city feels very stylish. There are statues everywhere and many buildings have ornate decorations.

In many ways it reminded me of Sydney (my home town) - though perhaps there was a lot more depth. Sydney obviously can’t compete with the amount of history (and arguably culture) in these old European cities… Well I am assuming that Barcelona is old.. I really should look up a little bit of history about the place. And maybe the people are more stylish in Melbourne than Sydney… But there was definately a familiar feel about the place.

Interestingly, some of the similarity extended to things like the airport and tourist areas.. I wonder how many of these similarities are byproducts of Olympic development. The summer Olympics was in Barcelona in 1992, Sydney 2000. Maybe one day i’ll visit Atlanta (1996) to see if the trend holds.