August Rambles

Summer in the city can be a sweat.  Literally.  The thermometer keeps going up and your ability to think and to act is steadily diminished.  Thankfully you can drop down to the beach and cool off for a few hours.  
In the evening the heat continues and you wish it wouldn't.  
However, in the third week of August you can take to the streets of Gracia and shake yourself out of your heat induced lethargy.  This is when the Gracia festival starts up, with local streets decorated in wildly imaginative ways, with themed street sculptures and a huge variety of decorations made out of recycled materials.
It's a truly Barcelona festival, and most of the tourists don't get to hear of it because it's a good 30 minutes' walk from the centre of the city.  If you're around in the city in August, it's something that's really worth seeing.