Day three on Facebook – that was 1st March… In 2017 We travelled to Barcelona for a holiday a few days after terrorists drove down La Rambla… I felt it was important to go there despite that tragic situation. It was the second time that my Wife and I had visited that fine city and we had a very nice time. However some things had changed and, probably because we tend to wing it, we found that visits to the Sagrada Familia and Parque Guell should have been booked in advance. I understand the moves to protect the past from too many tourists – it’s now the norm in a lot of cities. Hey-ho… We just wandered around the larger gardens outside of Gaudi’s section instead and I took this photo looking across the rooftops of the city with the ships leaving harbour or travelling down the coast…
…Did we miss the attractions that we couldn’t visit? For Epi and I, probably not as we had seen them before, but I would have liked my Son to have seen inside the Sagrada Familia. Instead we travelled up to the abbey at Montserrat and learned that he is very scared of heights 😦 Then, on another day, we visited the old Barcelona França Station – he had no problem with that or the many churches we visited within the city 🙂
I thought long about this challenge from Nancy. I don’t often stumble upon ‘unexpected’ images. However, there is this shot from our visit to Barcelona back in 2017. Taken through the locked gates of the Mercado de la Boqueria, the normally busy stalls are closed with only the pigeons for company…
Then I remembered this from back in 2009……This is a view through one of the wrecked turnstiles into the abandoned Claremont Road football ground, once home of Hendon FC. It tells a tale of falling attendance and the need for investment to maintain league position. There’s an old saying – Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. In modern non-league football that can be paraphrased to ‘Beware of Property Developers offering to help your club’. Hendon were ousted from their home and now groundshare with Edgware. The ground was demolished in 2012 if I remember correctly and is now a housing estate. Hendon were not the first, but hopefully will be one of the last to suffer this fate after a battle last season to save Dulwich Hamlet which saw them return home to their ground mid-season this year after questions were asked in Parliament and the local council stepped in to protect what is a community resource. A set of my shots of the dilapidated Claremont Road ground can be seen here.
I have used many different frames in the past. Signal gantries and bridges are a favourite ploy with railway images. Here are three, more ‘architectural’, shots for Nancy’s Challenge – though there is a railway connection in the first 😉
A gateway to Europe – Estació de França, Barcelona…
Images from Finchley 