Barcelona

October 16. 2009

We get up at 8:30 am even though we didn’t get to bed until 2 am. Understandably we are a bit tired but we are in Barcelona, pronounced Bar…the…lona if you want to sound cool, and excited to see the sights. Spaniards pronounce “c’s” as “th.” The first thing that we do is get our normal Spanish breakfast, desayuno, café con leche y tostada for Emi and Americano café y croissant for me. Breakfast over, we head for the tourist center to sign up for the Gothic walking tour. It is a zoo at the center, but somehow everything is arranged and around 35 of us tourist head out into Barcelona. The tour is OK, just OK. After all of Nancy’s talks we are quite knowledgeable and find the information somewhat repetitive. The most exciting part of the tour was the pickpocketers who attacked us like sharks.

We went to a museum that was an excavation of the old part of town. It was located beneath the bishop’s palace. It was quite a huge undertaking. It was like a city below the city. Remarkable, just remarkable.

After the tour we took the “underground,”aka subway, to the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s infamous cathedral. It is a wonder to see it…for about 5 minutes. After that, I’m ready to go, but Emi’s wants to see the inside and we pay the 11E each to get in. There really isn’t anything inside. The interior is empty except for all the construction they are doing. It’s been over 30 years of work and they don’t know when it’s going to be finished. There is a liftthat goes up into one of the spiers, but the wait is over 30 minutes. There is a nice display explaining Gaudi’s thoughts of architectural design and a museum of his design of the Familia Sagrada and his replacement designer. My only consolation is that our fees to get in will help to complete the monstrosity; oops, I mean cathedral.

Not satisfied with the Sangrada Familia we walk to Park Gruell, a park that Gaudi designed. The walk was more interesting than the park. The park is like a cross between Disneyland and gaudy. And then there are the throngs of tourists that are at Gaudi’s creations. His works attract tourist like ____ drawing flies. I am running out of patience and stamina to be with the crush of humanity.

After the torture of too many people we decide to walk back to the hotel. It is far but I have a plan to make it endurable. We will stop at several tapa bars on our way back. That way we will not suffer. We only make it through 2 bars before we reach our hotel’s district, which meant 2 beers and 2 wines, fuet (pork sausage tapa) and beef/croquettes/patata racione tapa. We were planning on more stops but our stomachs were satisfied. We were also tired, walking about 10 miles or more for the day. The fatigue must have dulled our brains more than normal because we could not find our hotel without calling for directions. Thank goodness for today’s technology.