Diagonal Mar and Parc del Forum

Thursday September 24th, 2015

One of my favourite places to take this kids is Parc del Forum in the Diagonal Mar section of the city.  It's a part of Barcelona that reminds me a little of downtown Vancouver with lots of tall glass skyscrapers, wide open spaces and interesting modern architecture.  September the 24th was a holiday for the kids and the rest of Barcelona for La Mercè, celebration of the patron saint of Barcelona.  Most of the museums in Barcelona are free during La Mercè so I decided to take the kids to the Museu Blau (museum of natural science) in Diagonal Mar.   

The Museu Blau is pretty interesting, although there is a lot of reading required.  I would recommend a visit, even on a day when you have to pay  http://museuciencies.cat/en/.  It was a beautiful sunny day, so we brought our rollerblades as Parc del Forum is an excellent place to rollerblade with lots of smooth concrete surfaces. 

Museu Blau

Parc del Forum is a huge park right on the edge of the beach with lots of cool playgrounds, and it's never very crowded.  We have come on various occasions and always find something new.  Last april, the kids enjoyed climbing on the wave breakers, hundreds of giant concrete blocks.  This time, we also discovered a really different playground next to the Diagonal Mar shopping centre and the kids enjoyed climbing around a play structure that looked kind of like a giant hamster cage. 

Climbing the wave breakers

Nathan and Aryan on the wave breakers

Like a disorganized parkour park

Fun playground near Diagonal Mar shopping centre

Giant hamster cage climbing structure

Week 3, Wednesday

No school today because it is La Mercè, the festa major de Barcelona.  The kids have been in school for less than 3 weeks, and they have already had two holidays.  We didn't do much today as the weather was iffy, and Bob had to work as usual because his office is outside of Barcelona in Rubi.

We did watch the fireworks and huge audio-visual presentation highlighting some of the important event in the past 300 years since Catalunya became a part of Spain.

Since we didn't venture into Barcelona this year, here are some photos from last year's La Mercè when we did go downtown and witnessed first hand how crazy busy it was.

Video presentation in Plaça Sant Jaume

Watching the dragon procession

One of the many dragons that danced down La Rambla

It was also a free museum day, so we went to Cosmo Caixa - science museum

The sunken rainforest was amazing

The kids also decided to play in the water