Hola Muchachos.
Yesterday was our sight-seeing day in Barcelona. Caroline is a real task master, we saw everything.
There’s a Tourist Bus, callled “Bus Turistic” which was E17 each for unlimited hop-on, hop-offs on the 3 circular routes - Blue, Red and Green. Our hotel was a short walk from the Green route. We started out at the Parc Diagonal Mar stop, and got off at Port Olympic, for a quick look around, but mainly to switch to the much more interesting Blue line.
We caught the Blue line to Pla de Palau and checked out the architecture of the church of Santa Maria (really a cathedral) and the Museu Picasso, which is excellent. Caroline had heard good things about a cafe we stumbled into, Princessa 23, and we had a quick sangria before pushing onwards.
We then walked through the Gothic district to the famous La Ramba, which makes its way from the sea to the Placa de Catalunya. Here we got on the Red line and went out to Sagrada Familia. This was truly amazing. The Sagrada Familia is the only cathedral in the world which is still under construction. It was Gaudi’s - an influential architect from Barcelona - dream, to which he devoted much of his life. I forget how long it’s been being built for, but I do know that Gaudi died in 1926 and only one of the towers had been completed (out of eight major spires). Construction is estimated to take another 25 years. It was spectucular, and very beautiful. I couldn’t justify the E7 admission, and figured that there was no way I’d be fit enough to make it to the top of one of the spires anyway.
The Sangria Familia was probably the only thing on the Red line we wanted to see, but because it was circular, we had to go around the whole circle (almost) to get a connection back to the Blue line. Futbol Club Barcelona would’ve been a good stop, if we weren’t forced to be extremely picky by aching feet and dwindling supply of Euros. It took about an hour to get to Francesc Macia-Diagonal, where we changed to the Blue line. It was quite interesting, actually, to meander around a more residential-type area and just get some taste of how people here live.
We caught the Blue line to Placa d’Espanya, which was quite pretty, and then caught the bus through the Olympic area, on to the boat-shaped World Trade Centre on the pier. There was an impressive statue of Columbus near the maritime museum, and we walked along the pier from Port Vell to Museu de Catalunya. We were tired, and a bit over museums at this point, so we just got on the bus and went straight to Port Olympic, where the Green line intersected.
We walked along the beach for a while, and Caroline showed me these awesome concrete lounge chairs on the beach - I forget what they’re called, you know the ones you lie down on next to a pool or whatever? Very comfortable, with a beautiful view over the ocean. It was very hard to get moving again, but somehow we made our way to the stop and caught the Green bus back to Parc Diagonal Mar.
I was desperate for a shower. We went out for dinner at around 9pm - which is about normal here - and had stunning Paella, and got back home by 9:45pm. I was asleep from the moment my head hit the pillow.