The ferris wheel at Tibidabo theme park, Barcelona.

At the top of a mountain in Barcelona sits a church and a theme park — Tibidabo. We’d not planned to visit but overheard a few others discussing the place after they’d been there a previous day. We decided to head up on a whim and after walking to a bus stop we waited for the bus to arrive.

A bus pulled up to another stop and we realised we — along with several others — were waiting at the wrong stop. We finished our icy poles and climbed aboard.

After we disembarked from the bus, we still required a long and steep funicular ride. It offered some good views and when we arrived at the park, realised it was about to close in only 45 or so minutes. Since entry is free it wasn’t a big deal. Some of the rides go out over the mountain so you have a large drop below but we didn’t bother going on any of the rides.

Though the park is in a much more interesting location, the size reminded me of Luna Park.

While Justine isn’t one for ferris wheels, she was brave enough to join me and ride the Riesenrad, a 100+ year-old example in the heart of Vienna.

Each gondola had a lot of movement and I enjoyed trying to rock ours, much to Justine’s dissatisfaction.

Day Twenty-One
Vienna
28 August 2007 22:06

This morning we took an underground train, with most of our souvenirs in tow, to the central Vienna post office. We spent the next hour and a half there. After packing our souvenirs tighthly into a box we approached the desk to find the clerk didn’t speak any English.

We filled out part of a customs form but couldn’t understand much of it. The man pointed to another clerk and told us he spoke English. As we approached his desk he walked off. It took him 15 minutes to return and when he did he was rather grumpy. Eventually we were able to fill out the forms and send our packages back home (hopefully!).

Since we had all day public transport tickets we took a train to Schloß Schönbrunn where we checked out the outside of the castle and it’s expansive grounds. There is a large fountain with a large column filled with heiroglyphs but apparently they are meaningless. Not wanting to tour the innards of yet another castle we left and took more trains to what seem to be persistent fairgrounds.

There is a ferris wheel which was created in 1897 so we rode the very large wheel. Each large cabin rocks back and forth when people move to one side or another and feels quite unstable which is rather a funny feeling.

It took three trains to get back to our hotel, we went out and got some Chinese take away — chicken, vegetables and rice — which had heaps of chicken and tasted like it also had a large dose of MSG.

The blurriness of this shot is intentional; it is almost exactly as I’d envisaged it, though I would have liked a nicer sky and overall brighter colours.

To me, it feels like looking into my mind and seeing an image of what may have once been a holiday somewhere.