First Full Day in Barcelona

 After really good sleep last night we took it easy this morning until  after 9 AM at which time we went to a nearby coffee shop for a delicious breakfast sandwich which we split between us.

We walked down to the sea (a couple of kilometres) via La Rambla street (which is a thing “to do”). Unfortunately the street was being ripped apart all the way along so not that great a walk. One stop we did make on this walk was the Mercat de la Boqueria, a fresh food market which was interesting to say the least.

Check out the dragon sticking out of the corner of the building

By the time we got down to the Med sea we had decided to buy tickets on the hop on hop off bus service.The first stop for us on the HOHO was Park Guell This is one of the numerous UNESCO sites in the area. The claim to fame is that the designer off the Sagrada Família church (Antoni Gaudi ) is super famous here in this city and much of his designed houses etc are “must see’s”. This park was designed by him.

 It was frustrating at first to get in because the park (which gets LOADS of visitors ) does not have a ticket office. You have to buy the tickets “on line” and afterwards present the QR code you received upon successful payment, to the staff at the gate for entry. You accomplish getting your code while standing outside the gate working your phone along with everyone else, also going through the same procedure.

After entering all the info into their ticket form my EQ card wanted verification so sent a code to my phone $#@T^%T! NO good when you don't have a phone number that works overseas. This has happened a couple of times on this trip and I thought I had set everything up with the card to send validation codes to my gmail.

With that not working we tried my ATB card. Went through all the BS again on their ticket form and the same #^#^$ thing happened again. So in desperation I tried my PC Mastercard (which I have not used at all on this trip) and it worked! It didn’t need a validation code. 

In the park we got looking at some of the weird buildings and structures Gaudi designed. I think the writers of the Flintstones TV show saw some of this guys designs and incorporated them into their animation!

We sort of looked at each other after walking around and said “Really?, this is a UNESCO World Heritage site?

We hopped on the HOHO bus again and finished the first of the two loops.

We then got on another HOHO bus at 3 PM for the second loop and spent the next 2 hours and 15 minutes driving around this huge city. We saw some pretty cool stuff up in the high areas of the south part of the city and it was pretty cool to drive right beside FC Barcelona stadium (Messi played there). We got off at Sagrada Família church and walked back to our hotel area 10 minutes away. We found a good seafood restaurant nearby and had different tapas, which were excellent. 

By 6 PM we were back at our room and Caro had a bath while I wrote this blogpost up.