The Day We Did All the Free Things: Barcelona 27th May

This day was fairly epic! Breakfast was lovely and we met an Israeli couple we were sharing the B+B with us. Today the plan was simply to explore the old city and maybe check out the Picasso museum. To be honest we really didn't have clue what we were doing!

We went down to Catalunya Square and took a few pics. On the way we spotted some interesting looking buildings. The strangest one, which seemed to be scaled like a rainbow fish, Greg announced that it looked really "Gaudy". I had been reading up on Barcelona and I was like, oh, how did you know that that was by the architect Gaudi? So pretty easy to see where the word Gaudy comes from...

In front of the fountain at La Placa Cataluna

Then we thought we were heading down towards Las Ramblas (famous street) but after going down a nice street with expensive shops on it we found ourselves in a square with oh! An enormous beautiful gothic cathedral. Which of course turned out to be the main Barcelona Cathedral. 

I thought we were heading towards Las Ramblas but couldn't understand why we weren't there yet...

Then huh! This old thing appeared around the corner!

Outside a brass band played and a bunch of oldies were dancing in a circle holding hands. It was Sunday morning we realised. We wandered up to and of course being a church it was free to get in and Mass was in progress. Walked in and just wow! The choir singing was absolutely beautiful and the tourists were subdued out of respect for the service that was going on. It meant that we couldn't wander right around the whole church but we didn't really care. It just felt so right to be at a church on Sunday morning. There was a beautiful chapel off to the right for the use of prayer so in we went. All in all a bit unexpectedly emotional!

Inside the Cathedral.

When we eventually emerged back out into the bright sunlight an hour had passed. Now that we had our bearings from the Cathedral we figured out that we'd taken the wrong exit from the Placa de Cataluna. So we back tracked and this time actually went down Las Ramblas. Las Ramblas was worth a walk, but the stalls didn't interest me too much and it was basically full of tourists and hawkers. The People Standing Still were pretty amusing.. but mostly we were uncomfortable in the crowd after the reports about pick pockets and purse snatchers so it was almost a relief to get to the end.

Coming down actual Las Ramblas

The Christopher Columbus memorial was pretty cool and a walk down the waterfront had me comparing the place to Wellington.

Looking down one of the waterfront boulevards - going as far as the eye can see...

Intriguing modern sculpture abounded.

We decided to get to the Picasso museum next since we knew it was something we wanted to see. So we walked back into the old city – which was a bit of a rabbit warren and we kept getting turned around! On the way we found ourselves in another surprise cathedral!

A typical street in the old town.

Surprise! It's a Cathedral! #2

 But we found it eventually, with just a handful of people queuing up. By this time (it was after 1pm) we were getting a bit hangry and we figured we wouldn't last through the museum without lunch. So we found a place with a 'menu' (set entree, main and drink for a set price) and had some yummies. Over lunch I read the guidebook and discovered that the Picasso museum (and many others) were free after 3pm. It was already 2pm by the time we finished lunch so we decided to wait until it was free! So we headed over to a nearby park which was quite lovely and had a wee walked around and a rest. Don't ever underestimate how much the hot sun can sap your energy!!

Pretty park with apparently free Wifi hotspots!

Random old building in the park.

The Happy Trekkers

Closer to 3pm we wandered back to the museum. Hmm looked like everyone else in Spain had had the same idea as us! The queue was now ALL the way down the long street and not moving very fast. We reasoned that it was probably that long because it has only just gone 3pm. So we decided to head over the Barcelona History museum (also free) and come back a bit later. The history museum proved quite tricky to find for some reason but when we finally did we could walk straight in. It was kind of interesting – it was built inside an old castle and underneath they had excavated a bunch of Roman ruins which you walk though and take a look. Which probably would have been really amazing, but still after Ephesus we remained 'ruined' for ruins. So we breezed through pretty quickly, enjoying the coolness of being underground. On the way out you could look in the restored castle chapel and that was pretty nice.

An example of an oldish building in Barcelona. Photo taken as we searched for the dang history museum.

Fresco in the museum from Roman days.

Ugly old head.

The whole museum was cleverly built inside the old ?castle? (a lot of the details were in Spanish)

Holes in the ground were the large jars of stuff used to be.

Castle chapel. Very pretty and bit Spanish Medievil-esque

Crazy artwork over the alter.

Post the museum we looked at the map and the only thing we wanted to do around the old city now was the Picasso museum. So we resolved to by some gelato and wait in the line however long it took. Gelato was good. The line took an hour. 

Everyone in Barcelona liked the idea of a free Picasso museum...

The museum was really interesting. It mainly focusses on his early work with a smaller selection of actual 'Picasso-esque' paintings from his later years. Greg was interested while the paintings looked like their subjects but once they got all Picassoey he was confused I think. In hindsight we should have got the audioguides (because it's not like we paid anything else to get in...) so that we could have had some intelligent commentary, because my explanations as to why it was important and talented wasn't good enough for Greg... but as for me I really loved the visit!

We were fairly done in by then and it was close to 7pm (!) so we jumped on the metro to get back to the hotel. We rested up, drank some water, met the other people staying at the B+B, a nice Aussie couple (from Syndey).

Then we headed out to dinner. We wandered around for a bit feeling quite lost (we hadn't got a handle on the Tapas thing yet). Found a restaurant recommended by the LP but it was chocka block full. Then we found another nice looking place, went inside, sat down... blimmin heck it was another Lebanese place! Luckily we like lebanese and this place was even better than the one the night before. We both got Mojitos which were delicious and rather potent. We were both quite sozzled on that one drink (after a long hot day in the sun such as we'd had), so when they poured us this delicious peach vodka will the bill I was despairing a little bit. But dang that stuff was nice so it was so worth the blargh feeling I had the next morning!

Mojito gives Greg happy anime eyes!

Food was GOOD

Tipsycam shot of the peach vodka. Dang that stuff was yummy.

Tipsycam self portrait of "Holy carp now I have to drink this too?"

Greg wasn't as broken as me so he made sure I got back to the B+B safely!

After this day, conclusions are: Barcelona is fabulous and I could live here. It's like all the good things about ChCh and Wellington (apart from the cool people, obviously) rolled into one but with better weather, and beaches! I'm sure I could get good at Spanish eventually.... The 30 hour plane ride to visit all of you lot would be little bit prohibitive I guess... but you could come visit me! Of course you would! I'd be living in Barcelona!