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Columbus is the most obvious landmark down at Barcelona's HARBOUR , an area spruced up considerably over recent years. A harbourside passeig, the Moll de la Fusta - the city's old timber wharf - has been landscaped with benches and trees from the Colom monument as far as the Post Office building to the north. Cross on the little bridges which span the ring road built to link Montjuic with the Olympic Village to the east, and you'll find seats from where you can look out over the marina. While some of the buildings along the promenade provide pricey meals with views, others become trendy clubs on summer evenings. To the east of Columbus is the Moll de Barcelona , a stretch of the port leading to the cable-car station (Jaume I) and the newly refurbished Estacio Maritima where the ferries leave for the Balearics. The large bulbous building perched in the centre of this harbour is the city's new World Trade Center, a complex of offices, and convention halls. On the other side of the harbour's swing bridge you'll see moored the Pailebot (Mon-Sat 10am-6pm; free) of the Museu de Maritim an early twentieth-century vessel which once made the run between Barcelona and Cuba. The Pailebot is only the first in a series of ships which the museum intends to moor here as permanent annexes to its main hall. From Moll de la Fusta, a series of walkways and a swing bridge (La Rambla del Mar) lead across the harbour to another new development known as PORT VELL (old port), whose main component is the leisure complex known as Maremagnum - jammed with fast-food joints, shops and pricey restaurants and bars. It's a typically bold piece of Catalan design, the soaring glass lines of the complex tempered by the undulating wooden walkways; bars, benches and park areas provide scintillating views back across the harbour to the city. In the early evening, the cross-harbour promenade provides an extension for the slow saunter down the Ramblas that most locals make once a day. Other attractions here include a multiscreen cinema as well as the IMAX Port Vell, three screens showing films in 3D or in giant format. You may want to make time too for L'Aquarium (daily 9.30am-8pm, closes 9.30pm July & Aug; 8.70, children 6), the largest aquarium in Europe. Beautifully laid out, with 21 tanks representing Mediterranean marine life, its best feature is the walk-through glass tunnel that brings you face to face with a wide variety of subaquatic life. The four sharks may be the stars of the show, but no less interesting are the colourful tropical fish or the spooky and blind deep sea denizens. It's worth knowing that Barcelona's most traditional tapas bars ( tasques ) are found in the old harbour neighbourhood. If you find what's on offer at Maremagnum out of your league, then head back across to the mainland and search the streets leading off Placa Duc de Medinaceli - c/la Merce particularly - which are lined with likely-looking places. It was in this area, too, that Picasso and his family first lived when they arrived in the city in the 1890s.
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