One of the most impressive testimonials to sea life anywhere opened in 1996, in Barcelona's Port Vell, a 10-minute walk from the bottom of La Rambla. The largest aquarium in Europe, it contains 21 glass tanks positioned along either side of a wide, curving corridor. Each tank depicts a different marine habitat, with emphasis on everything from multicolored fish and corals to seagoing worms to sharks. The highlight is a huge \"oceanarium\" representative of the Mediterranean as a self-sustaining ecosystem. You view it from the inside of a glass-roofed, glass-sided tunnel that runs along its entire length, making fish, eels, and sharks appear to swim around you. Kids can let off some steam in the Explora section, a collection of touchy-feely educational exhibits on Catalonia's Costa Brava and Ebro Delta.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Barcelona, 2nd Edition, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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