- August 9 – Transit to Barcelona
This day we spent nearly the entire day driving to Barcelona. We arrived and checked in just around dinner time.
We went to a touristy place none of us cared for, but we drank a nice, reliable wine:
Turns out we’d need a day of doing very little when you see the list of things we’d do the next day…
- August 10 – Barcelona in a day tour
We felt the best way to quickly become acquainted with the city was to do a full day tour – Viator skip the line. The first half of the day the tour took us on a bus to a rapid fire set of sites:
-Through the Christopher Columbus circle with the famous statue (no picture, sorry)
-Montjuïc (site of the 1992 olympics)
-Catalunya National Art Museum … just for the views of….
-Plaça Espanya
Then a lengthy stop at Sagrada Famlia. The skip the line feature was awesome here. I’m not gonna put all our pictures or even more than 2 (click all pictures here at the end if you really want to see more… or google it). Nor will I write about it endlessly. But its a unique thing. If you can, go see it.
Then over to wander the Gothic Quarter’s Cathedral
and narrow streets through the Jewish Quarter, to the Royal Palace, the original 2,000-year-old Roman temple which left us by the commoner’s cathedral where we found a fantastic lunch spot – “Origens”. The food was locally sourced, mostly organic, blah blah, it was fantastic, this wine? Drinkable.
After lunch… back on the bus over to Park Güell. It was insanely overrun with tourists and street vendors. I guess this is one of the main stops for all the cruise line people. Yes it had some interesting features, but in only an hour and with hoards of people everywhere, I was not impressed.
Before ending at La Pedrera. Again, skipping the line saved us literally hours. Like Familia Sagrada, its a really unique building. Its interesting to stand around and ponder why something is one way and not the other. Some of the forward thinking aspects – like a parking garage when cars were NOT the norm are surprising. The furnishings of the rooms were relatively as expected, its the building itself that really shines.
This night we went to a touristy place right on the marina. The food was actually pretty decent, but because the seating was outdoors, it was full of smoke. I forgot my phone in the room and don’t have a picture of the wine – which was only Ok anyhow.
- Â AUGUST 11 – Museums!
We bought tickets online beforehand and got in early to the Picasso Museum.
No photos were allowed of course. Not sure I would have taken any! I can appreciate some art, but Picasso at some point relatively early in his career crossed the line for me. He no longer made art, he made garbage that rich snobs had to invent meaning for so they can say other people don’t understand it.
After lunch, which was non spectacular, we went to a museum in the gothic district touting artists it didn’t actually have. Instead it had artists loosely inspired by them… and overall it was a large disappointment.
Dinner in Gothic district at a Relais & Chateau hotel – The food was really hit or miss. Appetizers, side dishes and deserts were all fantastic. The main courses just used too many undesirable portions of the animals… without any warning of such on the menu. With the bread they served a volcanic salt and a special oil which when combined… tasted exactly like fried eggs.
We tried 2 different reds, neither was spectacular, but both were fine. The San Vicente was better.
- AUGUST 12 – Wandering and working.
Our final day in Barcelona, we slept in a bit – I had been up much of the night on some work issues.
We spent the mid morning again wandering the Gothic Quarter and ended up back at Origens for lunch – which was again fantastic. We had another soso wine there.
After lunch we wandered La Rambla all the way from the sea to where it kind of loses momentum. Then I headed back to the hotel to do some more work while Lethy and Magda went to do some shopping.
We ended the trip with a fantastic dinner at … I forget the name. The place was enormous and loud. But our server was very friendly and helpful and the seafood was great. We were recommended a white which we enjoyed quite a lot and the red was excellent – it’s one we’ve enjoyed before.
- August 13 – Fly home.