Barcelona - Day 1

Number of steps: over 20,000

Number of drinks consumed: 1 cava, 24oz of sangria, one fanta, water

Number of tapas consumed: 1- burger

On a scale of 1-10 how great was it? 10+

 

After what, I swear, was the longest flight ever, we touched down in Barcelona at 6:30 am. Now what? I thought our plane had us landing way later and  therefore I thought we had less time to waste before we could check in. Nope…now we had extra time.

 

We cabbed it to the hotel and left our luggage. It was grey and dreary outside, but it wouldn't rain on us, no way. Turns out…we were wrong. We stepped out into the alley way - that they call a street - and walked to the Columbus monument. In that time, we were drenched. And we didn't bring any coats - I mean what's a little rain to us Seattle-lites.

 

Back to the hotel…the desk guy was laughing at us…back to get our coats and then we were off. Not very many people on La Rambla at that time of the morning. It was peaceful and wet.

 

What's La Rambla?

 

La Rambla is this walking avenue lined with restaurants and vendors selling their stuff…lots of souveniers and what not. It’s a beautiful walk and starts at Placa Catalunya - the center of Catalonia - they say - and travels all the way down to the water front. Probably a good half of a mile walk. We ended up making that walk a number of times during the week.

 

It eventually got very crowded (especially on Saturday - but more on that later). The maddening crowd consisted of so many different types of people speaking a plethora of languages. It seemed extremely clean for as many people as there were. Turned out that every night a crew in bright green would clear the street of debris.

 

In fact, I found Barcelona quite clean all the way around. There was graffiti everywhere, like Rome, but you kinda begin to look past it - as if it's not even there or it blends into the building.

 

We walked up the way quite a bit and found La Boqueria. La Boqueria is an open air market. The moment you step inside you are met with so many smells, not all good I might add. The senses are overloaded with all there is to see and witness. It's clear it's actually a working market where the locals all buy their fresh fish, veggies and meats. In fact you could see them get a bit irritated with the tourists in their way. One old lady exclaimed, "Que Horror!" as we were all pressed together and she couldn't pass. It appears Spaniards eat anything and everything. Some of the things I saw there I wish I hadn't seen. And doubt I'll ever get out of my mind.

 

Anyhow, it's the kind of place that's a photographer's dream. So many textures. So many little goodies to shoot.  It was hard to not just keep the shutter button engaged non-stop.

 

 

 

 

Janet and I wandered through and experienced as much as we could. I'm thrilled we went in today as we discovered when we went back on Saturday just how busy and crazy that place could become.

 

As we walked through experiencing the sights and smells, we decided we should stop for a bite. It was getting near 10am and we were hungry.  After all we hadn't eaten in like 3 hours. We plopped ourselves on two rickety corner stools at a bar and ordered two cavas and a ham and cheese to split.

 

 

Cava is as Barcelona as it gets. It's basically a sparkling white wine…that they drink at breakfast. I mean, what's not to like? Wine at breakfast? Yes please! The old guy sitting down from us had a glass of red wine with his tortilla…so we felt like we were "fitting in".

 

After the snack at La Boqueria bar we decided we'd better get on our way to La Sagrada Familia. We had a tour scheduled and had about 2 hours. Instead of hopping in a cab, we decided (I'll reserve my opinion about whether this was smart or not.) to walk from where we were to the church. It looked like it was a bit of a ways, but we'd see a lot of the city and, what the heck? We were somewhat fresh off the plane, so we did. Later the hotel staff would laugh and look at us in amazement when we told them we walked there.

 

Turns out, as we should have known, the church was farther than we thought. I was pooped.

 

Speaking of pooped…once there we were now early, so Janet and I found a park bench and sat for a moment. We hadn't been seated for 10 seconds when we heard this splat.  All on the front of Janet was a massive, and I mean massive, amount of bird poop. A pigeon seated directly above us had let loose. He had nothing left in him I'm sure.

 

I, naturally, giggled a bit, but did the best I could to help her clean up. Which really meant just handing her kleenex to wipe up with. It was everywhere. Gross.

 

Deciding that we had had enough of nature, we walked back to where our tour would begin. The wonderful Carlos was our tour guide. He had so much knowledge that it amazed me how he could answer just about any question about the basilica. He clearly had a passion for art history and loved his job. I love when we get lucky and get tour guides that I'll never forget.

 

La Sagrada Familia is the brain child of Antonio Gaudi. It started being built in 1882 and is still under construction. When we were there last year they said it would be done in 2021…now they were saying it is scheduled to be done for the 100 year celebration of Gaudi's death in 2026. I'll believe it when I see it. Gaudi realized that he'd not likely see the church finished - though I bet he meant living a natural life and not one ending tragically by being hit by a trolley.

 

The church is amazing. It sits in a none assuming neighborhood and is the symbol of Barcelona. The church is staggeringly beautiful. The Nativity façade - which is where we entered, looks a lot like melting sand to me. Carlos explained each scene to us and its significance. Then, just like last year, entering the church is jaw dropping.

 

Gaudi designed the inside to look like a forest, and it sure does. The gentle curves are all what you'd see in nature. There just aren't enough words to describe just how beautiful this place is.

 

After the church tour, we hopped in a cab back to la Rambla. No way in hell I was going to walk back. It was time to check in, so we found our room and took a little rest.

 

But before we did that we stopped off at a little tapas bar for some beer and a tapa or two. Luigi came out of hiding and had some beer too. The two bar tenders thought Luigi was funny and one even took a photo of him. We had a small burger tapa that was delicious, some yummy olives…and a huge glass of beer.

 

 

Feeling better, we walked down to our hotel.

 

Hotel Gaudi is where we stayed and it was quite the nice place. Just a couple yards off la Rambla and very centralized. In fact we commented a number of times just how perfect of a location it was. And we had a fantastic view of the Palau Guell - another Gaudi structure. The roof top had all sorts of fascinating arrow topped sculptures.

 

We then decided that we should go check out the rooftop terrace. Beautiful up there. We sat for a minute and just looked at the skyline. A waitress eventually came by and asked if we wanted any Sangria. Sure. Why not? So we drank the first of many pitchers of Sangria.

 

After a little rest, and well into the evening, because it turns out Spaniards eat really late, we walked down to a restaurant recommended by the hotel called 7 Portas. Once there they had an hour wait and we were just too hungry. On our way there, however, we had passed several restaurants. So we picked one called Sailor restaurant. I ordered chicken paella and Janet got adventurous and ordered Valencia Paella - which had chicken, rabbit and snails…though the waiter called them fish.

 

Both plates were delicious and we were glad, in a weird way, that the other restaurant was full.

 

Back to the hotel and we crashed. We'd been up for a very long time and we were pooped. We walked over 20,000 steps that day and even Janet -the energizer bunny - said we may have over did it.