It was Disembarkation Day. We had put our luggage outside our door last night. We, unfortunately, had to set our alarms for 6:30 AM, because everybody had to leave their staterooms before eight. We had a nice, leisurely breakfast in the buffet and then disembarked the Azamara Onward.
We took a taxi to our hotel, one we had stayed in the last time we were in Barcelona. Luckily they had a room ready, which is unusual in Europe. Usually if you arrive before three in the afternoon you have to leave your bags and go out and come back later to check in. The room was nice but a little small - not as small as the stateroom on the ship, though. It's a very attractive hotel which has the advantage of being right on La Rambla and very close to the Mercat Boqueria and the Gothic quarter, two places we love to visit. It also boasts a very nice rooftop bar/spa/terrace which is fun in nice weather. We hope we can use it this time. The building was erected in 1891 and was the headquarters of a tobacco company.
We left the hotel and took the metro to a place that I had found on the internet, the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau. It’s a hospital complex built between 1901 and 1930 in the Catalan Art Nouveau style. It’s an architectural knockout. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was huge, beautifully decorated, mostly beautifully restored and a photographer’s dream. We did the self-guided tour and sat for a while outside in one of the courtyards and enjoyed the calm and peaceful beauty. This place hasn’t yet made it onto the tourist radar so it wasn’t crowded at all.
We went to lunch at a little bar across the street from the Hospital. I had Patatas Bravas. They’re fried potatoes with two sauces, a spicy sauce and a garlic aioli, and they’re a classic Spanish tapa. We’ve had them before many times but the best are in Barcelona. There probably aren't many places in Barcelona where they aren't on the menu. Curiously, they're a little different in every place.
One of us, I can’t remember which one, but Donnie insists it wasn’t her, suggested walking back past the Sagrada Familia, and then walking back to the hotel, about an hour’s walk. We foolishly followed that suggestion. It was more than an hour’s walk but it was interesting. If you don't know what the Sagrada Familia is, I won't try to explain - ask Doctor Google. Alright - a quick explanation - it's a cathedral designed by the world famous architect Antoni Gaudi which is still under construction after one hundred years and is the biggest (in terms of size and in terms of crowds) tourist attraction in Barcelona. We had seen it during our previous visit to Barcelona. Getting tickets now is very hard. We just looked at the outside this time and noticed the long lines and crowds.
For the unitiated, Antoni Gaudi was an architect in Spain who lived from 1852 to 1926. He was almost unique and an exponent of Catalan Modernism, an offshoot of Art Nouveau. Between 1984 and 2005, seven of his works were declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. His work is popular everywhere and enjoys continuing admiration and study by architects. Many buildings in Barcelona were either designed by him or influenced by him.
We walked through the Plaça de Catalonia, a big plaza at the Northern end of La Rambla, which had several hundred people and several thousand pigeons. After the hour-long walk we finally stumbled back to our hotel room and collapsed.
In the early evening we went out for dinner. We had to go back to Taverna Basqua Irati, a little place not far from our hotel which we had frequented before. In fact the last time we were in Barcelona we probably ate there at least four or five times.
Their main attraction is Pinxto’s (pronounced like Pinchos), a Basque delicacy best described as slices of French baguette bread topped with all kinds of amazing toppings. Each one has a toothpick in it. This is important. They sit on shelves on the bar. You order a drink, we always choose Cava, grab a plate, and pick as many as you want. After you are done, they count the toothpicks and charge you appropriately. They were as good as we remembered.
This time we each chose four. I had one which was some kind of creamy cheese with a slice of chorizo on top. Another was smoked salmon with some chopped onion on top. A third was Iberian ham the fourth was a little sandwich containing tuna salad. Every one was fantastic! We thought we had had enough but the young woman hostess came out with a small tray containing the hot Pinxto’s that they serve as they come from the kitchen. She told us that they were shrimp with bacon and cheese. We couldn’t resist. They were messy to eat but wonderful.
After stuffing our faces, we wandered around the gothic quarter amazed at the huge number of people walking around, eating in restaurants and tapas bars, shopping, etc. The area was hopping. La Rambla was even more crowded. When we were here before, around the same time of year, there were many fewer people around.
We also noticed, to our regret, that there was a lot more graffiti around than last time, or at least that's our recollection. Most of it was very ugly but some of it though was quite artistic,
Finally, exhausted from our adventures today (we walked almost seven miles), we went back to the hotel to crash.
We had a buffet breakfast in the hotel. It was good but not as good as when we were here last time. Back then, in addition to the large selection of continental breakfast items like cold cuts, cheeses, breads, fruits, yogurt, etc., they had Catalonian specialties like Pa Amb Tomàquet, bread rubbed with olive oil, garlic, and tomato , and Spanish tortilla, a sort of frittata with potato and onion. They didn’t have them this time. We were really looking forward to them. They did have Iberian ham, a very popular Catalan delicacy.
We guessed that, it being early Sunday morning, that perhaps we might be able to get into the Casa Batlló, another one of Antoni Gaudi’s masterpieces, without waiting on long lines.
So we took the metro to the stop right near the Casa and saw that there was a line but not very long. We got on the line and it moved fairly quickly. Then we noticed that there were three different lines. We were waiting on the line for Blue ticket holders We didn't have Blue tickets. We didn't have tickets. Fortunately, we saw what looked like a much shorter line to buy tickets. Donnie waited on the Blue ticket holder’s line while I waited on the line to buy tickets. It turned out that the ticket holders line moved much faster than the ticket buyers line so Donnie reached the head of her line before I could buy tickets. She let people go by her while she waited for me.
Then we found out that there were different classes of tickets, Blue tickets only got you into some parts of the building, and Gold tickets got to you into everything, but Donnie had gotten to the head of the Blue line. So we chose to get Gold tickets and Donnie left the Blue line and joined me on the ticket buyer’s line. When we finally got to the head of the slow moving line we were told that the tickets would be for one o’clock entry, three hours later. We shrugged our shoulders and bought them anyway. We should have bought them online at the hotel.
So we needed to kill some time. What did we do? We wandered, of course, but this time in a much more upscale neighborhood. Then we came up with an idea. We’ll have a light tapas snack before going into Casa Batlló. We found a highly recommended Tapas bar nearby, called Vinitus where we shared four small, delicious tapas.
We got to Casa Batlló about a half hour before our time to get in and waited for a few minutes. The line of people snaking their way through the exhibit was slow and crowded.
First you had to go through some kind of Disneyesque pre-tour light show that had nothing to do with Antoni Gaudi. It was a dark, circular room with sea-creature-like little circular images projected on the walls and other weird projected effects and a dummy in the middle of the room that seemed to be Gaudi’s corpse. It was too weird. The line moving through the light show was excruciatingly slow because just after the light show they handed out Virtual Reality tablets and headphones and people had to struggle to put them on and then the staff had to explain how to use them, plus, the tablets had straps you needed to put around your neck and the headphones had cords and they both kept getting tangled in each other. Then, finally you were allowed to start climbing up the stairs to see Gaudi’s magnificent designs, but the place was very overcrowded.
Our Gold tickets had gotten us several benefits. First, the VR tablets and headphones, which were merely a burden to carry and deal with, especially since we were juggling our phones and backpacks and cameras and trying to take pictures - we could have done without them. Second, the Light Show - we could definitely have skipped that. Third, we got something they called a "fast pass". We didn’t get in any faster than the people who bought the cheaper tickets. The final thing we got was worthwhile. We got access to the Batlló family apartments with all the furnishings intact. Also, the apartments were the one place that wasn’t crowded.
We snaked through the building among the crowds, going up six flights of stairs in the process and then down again.
Gaudi’s architecture and interior design was magnificent and the craftsmanship of the interior was superb. The experience was much less fun than our previous visit, because of the crowds and the emphasis on electronic "experiences". People were holding up the VR tablets which showed you a picture of the room in front of the tablet without other people in it. In my opinion, if you just wanted to look at pictures of the room, why not just do it somewhere else and avoid the high ticket price, the lines, the crowds, etc. I'd rather see the real thing, thank you.
But, I don't want to give the wrong impression - Casa Batlló is a masterpiece of architecture and design, even the Gaudi designed chairs are wonderful. It's a must-see in Barcelona, as are the other Gaudi projects, even with the crowds.
Finally, when we thought we had gotten all the way down we were directed down again where we had to wait outside an electronic sliding door while a digital clock counted down. When the clock reached zero the door slid open and we and around fifty others entered this seemingly empty room. Eventually the door slid closed and the ceiling, walls and floor became an uninterrupted video display which showed a CG video "experience" with lots of moving graphic imagery that had nothing to do with Gaudi or the house. The technology was impressive and the CG work was fun, but it was hot and humid in the room and we were sweaty and tired and it was an unnecessary distraction.
Eventually we got to turn in the headphones and tablets and after walking up more stairs we were at the actual exit.
We took the metro back to the hotel and were about to go back to our room but the housekeeping staff were making up the room so we went up to the rooftop bar and relaxed on the huge couches and had great drinks. Mine was a G&T that must have been a quart in size. Donnie had a Cava Sangria which she said was delicious. We relaxed and drank the afternoon away.
We went for dinner at a little tapas bar called Tosca del Carme. As always in Barcelona the food was great.
After dinner - we wandered, and then - we had gelato!
Today we planned to go to Montserrat, so we had set our alarms last night for six AM. We had breakfast in the hotel as soon as the breakfast room opened and then headed out to the metro to go to the railroad station for the train to Montserrat. Montserrat is a very, very popular day trip destination from Barcelona. It’s a strangely shaped mountainous area where they built a monastery. The monastery was founded in the 11th century and rebuilt between the 19th and 20th centuries. There’s also a large Basilica.
The monastery and church are such popular destinations now that they have restaurants, an underground parking garage, a hotel, gift shops, a cafeteria, funiculars to go further up the mountain, a museum and a daily concert by a boy’s choir. There’s even a cable car and a rack railway train to take people from the nearby train station up the mountain.
I found it strange that a church and a monastery would be so popular that they needed this huge infrastructure. Then, later I realized that this was a very important religious pilgrimage place. They have a statue called The Black Madonna, which many, many pilgrims come to pray to.
We negotiated the metro with no problem. The Espanya railroad station was a little more problematic. The signs telling you how to get from the metro to the station were a little subtle. Then, after some anxious moments there were big signs saying "Montserrat" and some ticket machines.
A nice attendant helped us with the ticket machine but something was wrong. Another attendant came over and tried again and then told us that our credit card wouldn’t work in the machine and we had to go to a nearby ticket sales window. We did. Then we had to find the right platform. Again it was a little tricky but we did it.
Unfortunately we had to wait almost an hour for the next train. After a while, more and more people started arriving on the platform. About five minutes before the scheduled departure time a train arrived. We, and a hundred or more other people got on and we just managed to grab some seats before they were all gone. We never had a chance to check that we were getting on the right train. At exactly the correct time the train departed.
The ride took about an hour and then we changed to the rack railway train. We had been on other rack railway trains and so we expected an older wooden train. This was a modern, very clean, new looking system.
When we got to Montserrat we - yes, you guessed it - wandered. Unhappily the sky was completely overcast and everything was grey. We wandered around and found the bus parking area, the cafeteria, the buffet restaurant, the hotel, the gift shop, the little museum which we didn’t visit, and finally found the line to go into the Basilica. Eventually, after waiting in line for quite a while, we got to the interior of the basilica, which was impressive.
Inside you could just see a small alcove way in the back up above the altar which had the Black Madonna statue and every few seconds someone would stand in front of it and most would cross themselves or kneel briefly. The little room was completely covered with gold decorations.
After seeing what we wanted to see in Montserrat, we took the rack railway back down the mountain and when it got to the station at the bottom we got off with almost everyone else - wrong. We got off one stop too soon. Fortunately the station staff understood our problem and let us back onto the platform to wait for the next train, which wasn’t due for an hour.
The train finally came, but not on the track that they had said it would. We got on and just barely got seats. Some people had to stand for the hour long ride. We eventually got back to the hotel.
It was about six o’clock. Donnie was hungry since we had just tea and bad pastries for lunch so she suggested we go out for an early tapas dinner. She had read about a place called Bodega Biarritz 1881. It was a little unusual. They didn’t take reservations. They didn’t have a menu, or, more correctly, they had what they called a Surprise menu.
You basically had two choices. You got a set menu consisting of one appetizer to share, a platter containing Pa Amb Tomiquet, some chorizo, some manchego cheese, and some Iberian ham, followed by eight surprise tapas (they choose the tapas) for two people to share. The other choice was the same except without the ham and cheese platter. All of this was followed by some shots.
When we got to the place there was already a line of people waiting. Someone on the line told us that later on the line would be much longer, even late into the evening. When we got to the head of the line the owner came out and said that the tables were all full but we could either eat at one of the outside tables nearby or inside at the bar. Donnie thought that the inside of the restaurant looked cool so we opted for sitting at the bar. It was a very tight squeeze.
In summary, the food was very good, but there was too much of it. We had elected to get the bread, ham and cheese platter option which was a mistake. The food came out on large wooden platters which barely fit on the bar top, so juggling the food, plates, utensils, napkins, and drinks was difficult, but we managed. It was fun. We had to squeeze our way out of the bar. Being stuffed from all that food didn't help.
Afterwards we wandered. Even on a Monday night, the little streets in the old gothic quarter were packed with people. There were hundreds of little shops open selling everything you could imagine and thousands of little restaurants and tapas bars. We loved wandering the Barri Gotic. We’ll probably do it again.
We deliberately chose to have a late start today. After breakfast we went to a place I found online, Casa Vicens, a house that was Antoni Gaudi’s first commission. It had only been opened to the public in 2017 so we hadn’t seen it on our last visit. Also it’s not yet on the tourist radar so we were able to buy a ticket and walk right in. It, like all the Gaudi works, was fantastic. It was built as a summer home for the Vicens family. It was so beautiful and light-filled and comfortable that I would have loved to have lived there.
Then we walked to another building I read about online, La Casa de les Punxes, which was yet another example of Catalan modernist architecture but was not designed by Gaudi. It looked like a fairytale castle, almost like out of Disneyland.
Just before we got there we felt it was time to stop for a quick snack so we found a tiny place where we had soft drinks and shared a Spanish Tortilla, which was very good. As we were sitting, relaxed, enjoying our snack, Donnie was looking directly at La Casa de les Punxes and she said that it didn’t look like it was open, so I checked online and it was closed because it was a national holiday - oops.
We looked at iPhone maps and saw that Gaudi’s Casa Milà, also known as La Pedrera, was very close. This is another Gaudi masterpiece, but I had assumed, after the huge crowds at Casa Batlló that this one would also have long lines.
We decided to walk over to it just to see how long the lines were. There was no line. We walked into the ticket office and bought tickets and walked right into the building - amazing! The building is an apartment building designed by Gaudi. It’s yet another modernist wonder. It's still has some apartments as well as offices and exhibition spaces. We had a wonderful afternoon.
We walked back to the metro station which was directly in front of Casa Batlló. Ironically, now there was almost no line. We had picked the wrong day to go.
Right next door to Casa Batlló is Casa Amatller, another beautiful building, not designed by Gaudi and only open for timed guided tours, but the ground floor has a coffee/chocolate shop which sells chocolate made by the Amatller company which was founded by the Amatller family in 1797 and is still in business. We stopped and had strawberry lemonades, and, most importantly, bought chocolate.
We went to dinner at a restaurant called Colom, after Christopher Columbus. We chose to try their Paella. We also ordered Pa Amb Tomàquet to nibble on since the Paella required twenty minutes to prepare. Oh, and a liter of Sangria to wash it down.
The Pa Amb Tomàquet was good. The Sangria was great. I wasn’t so pleased with the Paella but Donnie liked it. After dinner - more wandering.
At breakfast, the staff knew that we were checking out today so they placed a nice note on our table and two glasses of champagne - nice.
We have to check out today because we hadn’t booked the hotel for the entire week. When we originally booked we weren’t sure if we were going to spend a few days elsewhere in Spain, but since then we chose to stay in Barcelona and maybe do day trips, and when we made that choice the hotel was completely booked. So we have to check out of this nice, four star hotel and walk across the street to check into the five star hotel we booked for the next four nights. What a terrible inconvenience.
We checked out of one hotel and checked into the other and went wandering along La Rambla. On the spur of the moment we chose to go to another tourist mecca, La Boqueria market just down the street from the hotel. We had lots of fun wandering around in the market, drooling and taking pictures. We even bought a sandwich to share later. We spent a lot of time in the market and went out and wandered the gothic quarter, but this time during the day.
We sat on a bench in the plaza in front of the Barcelona cathedral and ate our market sandwich and then went into the cathedral. The interior of the cathedral was impressive.
We then saw that we weren’t very far from Palau Guell, yet another Gaudi building. This was another one that we had been to before but we didn’t mind seeing it again. There was absolutely no line and it wasn’t a bit crowded.
The style of this building is very different from the other Gaudi buildings. It’s very dark and almost gothic. The roof, on the other hand has the typical Gaudi playful colored tile covered chimneys like the ones on Casa Batlló and Casa Milà.
We went to an early dinner at a place only a few feet from the Palau Guell, a tapas bar, also called Guell. An old place that looked tiny from the outside but went way back.
Now for a brief digression - unlike when we were here seven years ago, there are now a gazillion tapas places, or at least places that sell something they call tapas. In addition, if you search for "the best tapas bars in Barcelona" online, you get a million different recommendations, except for a common few which are impossible to get into without an advance reservation. So basically picking a decent place to eat is a crapshoot.
We lucked out. The food at Tapas Guell was the best we’ve had so far in Barcelona. We ordered five tapas and a pitcher of Cava Sangria. We really enjoyed the tapas. Possibly due to the pitcher of Sangria, we were a little wobbly walking back to the hotel. We are definitely going back to Tapas Guell if possible.
After wobbling back to the hotel, for dessert we tried a small bar of the Amatller chocolate I had bought for us to taste. It was very good. We May need to visit Casa Amatller again.
The iPhone weather app said cloudy all day today. This time it was actually correct. Because of that, and because we had exhausted all of the Gaudi sites that had available tickets, we chose to go to The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. I don’t think I need to translate that. We hadn’t even heard of it before.
Donnie wanted to get some coffee from the little coffee bar in the hotel lobby so she threw on some clothes and went down. She discovered a madhouse down there. A group of about one hundred sixty people were leaving and the staff were dealing with over two hundred pieces of luggage.
The coffee bar was closed so she went into the hotel restaurant which was packed. She asked about getting a cappuccino to go and they made her one. When she asked about paying for it they were so busy they just said it was on the house.
Later we took a taxi to the museum which was way up on Montjuic, the mountain in the heart of Barcelona. The terrace in front of the museum had an amazing view of Barcelona below. We went in and got tickets. The lady told us that we were entitled to the senior discount. It was one hundred percent - free, gratis - nice! Of course since no tourists, certainly no American tourists, had ever heard of it, the museum was extremely not crowded.
The museum was a beautiful building and by accident we wandered into a huge room set up as an amphitheater with a giant pipe organ. Inside there was a little cafe so we paused our Art visit and had coffee and a croissant. It was very civilized.
We went into the Romanesque Art section. It was much more interesting than we had expected. They had taken whole parts of medieval buildings that were covered in frescoes and installed them in an area of the museum designed to look like ancient Romanesque architecture. The section was much larger than we thought it would be. It took us quite a while to see it but we enjoyed it.
Then we wandered upstairs to a section for Modern Art. I was a little skeptical because in many instances "modern" means contemporary and I don’t like contemporary art. I needn’t have worried. This section too was larger than we expected and filled with many beautiful things. I was amazed at how many really beautiful art pieces were created by Catalan artists whom we have never heard of. I told Donnie that this museum was one of the nicest we had been to in a while.
After we had seen what we wanted to see in the museum, which was most of it, we started the steep uphill walk to The Fundació Joan Miró, a large museum dedicated to the works of the famous Spanish artist Joan Miró, who despite what the name connotes in English, was male. We had been there before but it was fun to see again. We spent some time there also.
We were unsure how to go back down to the city from the mountain. There were no taxis outside the museum. There was a cable car station on the mountain but the map on the phone said it was a thirty minute walk uphill to get there. Finally we discovered that there was a Funicular down the mountain and the station was only a six minute walk and it was part of the metro system so we already had our tickets. It was a modern subway like train but built as a funicular where the cars had multiple levels because they went down at an angle. We took it down.
We could have taken the metro at the bottom to go back to the hotel, but we walked around instead in a different neighborhood, which was a little run down compared to the others we had been to. Finally we got to La Rambla and we walked to Placa Reial and had some drinks and a snack. One again we had Pa Amb Tomàquet, and a Spritz for Donnie and I finally got to try a Vermut, Catalan for Vermouth. I liked it. It was sweet, but not too sweet, and spiced, and not bitter. Drinking Vermouth is a big thing in Barcelona, it's supposed to be very popular among the locals. There are Vermouth bars all over the city.
Then we went back to the hotel to freshen up. On the way back we passed a little shop that we had passed many times before and had ignored but I had recently looked it up online and was surprised at what it was. It’s called Casa Beethoven and it sells sheet music and has been doing so since 1880! We had to go in and take pictures. What a cool place.
In the evening our granddaughter Hannah and two of her friends came to Barcelona from a little town called Xativa where they are living and, after checking in to the same hotel we were staying at, they joined us for dinner. We all walked to the Tapas Guell restaurant but they didn’t have a table for five people so we all walked to the Colom restaurant and had dinner there.
It was cooler this morning, only in the fifties. We thought maybe today would be a good day to go to Park Guell, another Gaudi masterpiece. We had trouble booking tickets using our phone so we went to the hotel business center where they had Mac computers - yay! We bought tickets for the early afternoon. Then we walked down towards the waterfront because we wanted to see more of that part of the city and because I had discovered yet another little known place to visit.
It turned out that the tall monument to Columbus that we had passed several times and seen several times had a tiny elevator inside that took you up to a tiny observation deck - cool. We had to find the little door in the base of the monument and go down some steps to the ticket desk. We bought our tickets and were directed to the elevator. The elevator was big enough to hold three people, one of whom had to be the elevator operator. He whisked us up to the observation deck, which was probably big enough to hold four or maybe five people. We were alone. We took lots of pictures of the city of Barcelona from above. We had to push a call button on the wall to call down to the ticket desk to ask the elevator operator to come up and take us down. I should also mention that it was a windy day in Barcelona and while we were at the top of the monument we could definitely feel it swaying - scary!
After the fun experience in Columbus’s monument we walked to Barceloneta, the part of town near the sea, where we had drinks and Patatas Bravas as a snack.
It was getting close to the time when we needed to start going to the Park Guell to get there in time for our timed tickets We took the metro towards the park but after we exited the train it was still a fifteen minute walk to the Park, according to the phone. What the phone neglected to say was that the walk was all uphill - steeply uphill. It took a lot longer than fifteen minutes. We barely made it in time.
The weather was cool in the shade and warm in the sun. Donnie thought that the park was crowded but it was was less crowded than when we were here last time. We wandered around the park, taking pictures and enjoying the views and the fun Gaudi architecture. We found the little cafe in the park and had an afternoon snack.
We wandered through the park more and then went out by a different entrance than we came in to. There were no taxis waiting outside so we started the long hike to the nearest metro station. Happily, a few blocks later a taxi pulled up to drop someone off and we grabbed it. It was a long ride back to the hotel but much more pleasant than walking and the metro.
In the evening we met Hannah and her friends again and left the hotel to go to dinner and almost immediately we saw a large contingent of armed police. Walking a little further down La Rambla towards the restaurant we saw a number of police cars and vans. There were a lot of police everywhere. As we got closer to the Liceu Opera House there were barricades and lots of police vehicles and a crowd of people. The street in front of the Opera House was blocked off completely. We asked someone in the crowd what was happening and they told us that the King of Spain was there. That didn’t impress me much.
We tried to get into Tapas Guell again, but It was completely full so we chose instead to go to Tosca where we had eaten the other night. This involved going back towards the hotel but this time the street was completely blocked off by the police. We almost gave up but we saw a bunch of people walking along a very narrow street parallel to La Rambla so we followed them and got past the barricades.
When we got to the restaurant it looked like it was packed but they said that we could wait at the bar for five or ten minutes at most and a table would be available. Luckily a group left almost immediately and we got a table without waiting. The food at Tosca was very good and we had a great evening talking with Hannah and her friends and eating good tapas and drinking good sangria.
We had bad coffee from the coffee maker in our room. Then, later after washing, dressing, etc. we went to have real coffee at a little bar across the street from the hotel. Hannah joined us and we had a very nice, long talk.
It was very cool weather, the high temperature being only in the mid sixties. We finally got to use some of the warm clothing we filled our suitcases with.
We walked up La Rambla to the Catalunya metro station and took the train to Mercat dels Encants, a huge outdoor flea market covered by a large mirrored roof.
They had people selling everything - cloth, new clothes, used clothes, hardware, tools, electronics, appliances, antiques, junk, handbags, furniture, bathroom fixtures, luggage, underwear, sneakers, shoes, collectibles, leather goods, etc.
We spent quite some time there. We made two major purchases. I bought two little leather pouches for my earbuds and my iPhone spare battery, for three euros each. Donnie bought a small leather handbag which was priced at 3.95 but she handed the seller three euros and he took it.
Hannah and one of her friends were going to see a football game tonight so we were on our own for dinner. That’s Spanish football, not American football. You know, soccer.
For dinner we went to our old haunt, Taverna Basca Irati where we stuffed ourselves with Pinxto’s again. Afterwards we wandered around a little and then finished up the night with Xocolate at Granja Dulcinea Xocolateria, a hot chocolate shop that’s only been around since 1941. We had two cups of chocolate. They were dark and so thick that you could almost stand your spoon up in one. Note the Catalan spelling of Chocolate.
We spent the entire morning having breakfast and chatting with Hannah and her friends. Then we had to say goodbye. They had to catch a train back to Xativa, which would take over four hours. Note the spelling of Xativa, which is pronounced Chah-teeva.
We took the metro to the funicular up to the Jardins de Laribal on Montjuïc. I, once again, learned about the garden by searching online for interesting places in Barcelona. The web sites that talked about it mentioned that it was a beautiful garden with many water features and even waterfalls. It sounded like a very relaxing way to spend our last day in Barcelona. However, what all the websites neglected to mention was that the garden was vertical. It was built on the side of the mountain. It had many levels and stone steps between them. Fortunately, we entered the garden at the top, so we were going down.
The garden was very pretty and tranquil and we did have a somewhat relaxing afternoon. Looking at the map on our phone we saw that we were approaching another area called Jardins del Teatre Grec, which was a rose garden, a pavilion, and a greek-style theatre, all created for the 1929 International Exposition. We spent some time there. Finally we reached the bottom and realized we were no longer on Montjuïc.
We intended, at that point, to go to the nearest metro station and we found on our map that we were a few blocks from the Poble Sec station. I remembered something about that name from my research so I looked it up again and found that it was a very nice neighborhood and had shady squares and attractive nineteenth century buildings. It also had a street called Carrer de Blai which had a large number of tapas bars and Pinxto’s places. So we had to see it. Sure enough the street was several blocks of little tapas and Pinxto restaurants with outdoor umbrella covered tables. As we walked along we saw and smelled the Pinxto’s. We weren’t hungry or we definitely would have done some Pinxto bar hopping. We reached the end of the street and found a nearby metro station and took the train back to La Rambla.
It was now late afternoon and since we had skipped lunch we chose to have a late lunch/early dinner so instead of going back to the hotel we headed directly to Tapas Guell, which we had tried to get into the previous two nights with Hannah and her friends. In summary, the tapa we ordered, consisting of little cubes of marinated steak was scrumptious, the glasses of sangria were huge and excellent and the paella was delicious.
Finally we walked back along La Rambla to the hotel to start the dreaded packing. Tomorrow we say a sad farewell to Barcelona and fly home.
The trip was a lot of fun, as are all of our adventures. The cruises were interesting, but the part we enjoyed the most was our time in Bologna, Rome and especially Barcelona. Donnie is probably planning the next trip right now. No, actually she was probably planning it on the flight home.
Copyright © 2022 by Jeff Kravitz