Sunday in Barcelona

Our first full day in Barcelona we attempted to sleep in.  My sleep was assisted by Zquil since the beds here are just as hard as the ones at our hotel in Berlin.  The other bizarre sleeping situation is that we only have body length pillows!   Makes it hard to get comfy.  There are worse problems to have of course, but Ijust wanted to let everyone know that hotels are different all over the world.  We also have a bidet (sp???) In our bathroom here, a first.  I have not attempted to try it out yet, as I'm sure you are all curious!  I have less than 48 hours to give it a whirl though.

Our day started out with breakfast at the hotel.  It is 19 euros for the buffet from what I could tell; at that price they include mimosas and wine if you want!  Unfortunately we are not making use of that; it's hard to start drinking at 9 in the morning.  We finished our breakfast and coffee (yes, Nick has drank one or two cups of coffee every morning on this trip, he may finally be converted!!!!).  I saw that a tour started at 11, so off I went in search of the starting point.  I was in luck, as it began in the exact same plaza square where Nick and I had dinner the night before- I did not get lost!  I reserved my spot and then wandered around.  There was a fountain, and tons of people milling about.  There were mostly old men though; they had set up tables in the square of what looked like junk to sell, but it was mostly old coins and currency that is obviously no longer used or in circulation.  I was tempted to buy some for the kids, since they LOVE coins.  I could just see my grandfather (if he were still alive of course, and in Barcelona) picking through those coins with the other old men, likely finding a rare one.  It was quite a unique scene.

The tour started, and off we went to several important places in the Barri Gotic, which is the oldest part of town.  We saw a few churches (can't remember the names of course since my Spanish is horrible and a simple church name will consist of 6-8 words of course).  I learned why the Catalonian flag has four red stripes on it, saw an immigrant protest in front of the government buildings, saw the oldest buildings in the city, walked down insanely narrow 'streets' that were about 3 meters wide (that might be a generous estimate), and got turned around in circles yet again.  Oh, I also learned about a strange Barcelonian (or Catalonian?) Tradition of christmas time logs.  Apparently, you fill this log with treats/gifts, and on Christmas Eve, the kids unwrap it and take out the gifts.  Something about the log shitting?!?!?! I kid you not, our guide had the STRONGEST Spanish accent, so I could be wrong.  This shitting is an important symbol in Spanish culture, something about rebirth  or whatnot, so he showed us a figurine of a man taking a shit.  BUT, I just looked it up in Wikipedia and it is called a CAGANER.  Google it!  Sure enough, as I wandered around after the tour, there are figurines all over the souvenir shops of whomever (famous people are not spared) with pants pulled down, squatting and showing off the glory of their functioning bowels (with a pile of poop behind them!).  Bizarro!

A traditional caganer

13 geese to represent a female martyr of Barcelona

A government building (I didn't capture the protesters outside of it)

Traditional Catalonian dance, held on Sunday's only

Roman columns

Beautiful church, named after Maria and pine trees.  The name is long and in Spanish so I can't remember it!

After thetour was over, I asked for directions back to La Rambla and of course took a wrong turn and ended up walking down by the large avenue that runs along the marina.  I knew I would make it the bottom of La Rambla and from there I would just walk up it to the hotel.  I was in search of food though, and of course I turned off La Rambla onto a side street and became lost again.  I was famished and just sat down at a place called Hamburgs or something like that.  A German themed eatery in Barcelona.  I had a snitzel sandwich and a Spannish Hefeweizen beer- who would have thought??  It was quite a good sandwich, even with cheese and mayo on it.  All during lunch I studied my map to see how I would get to the hotel.  I knew I was close, but after eating and heading out I realized that I was only a block away.  Doh!  I made it back safely somehow, I really wish my phone worked here so I could use GPS!!!!!

At that point I had time to relax while Nick finished up with two meetings.  We then headed out for dinner after a ridiculous amount of research on Trip Advisor.  Lo and behold, we get to the restaurant and of course it is closed Sunday nights!  Back to the drawing board and we were both starving.  We decided to try a vegetarian restaurant we had spotted earlier- what a good decision!  We ordered  a bottle of wine, split a declious pesto salad and then Nick got a veggie burger while I had a pasta dish.  It was very good, reminded me of something Iwould have made at home!  After dinner (which ended at 9:45 pm), we met some of Nick's coworkers to play pool.  We met some other travelers and had a fun night talking with them.  It was nice to finally meet other people that spoke English!  We had not talked with anyone else the whole trip except for an older couple from Melbourne on our Sachsenhausen tour.  I love talking with my sweet husband, but it was definitely a lot of fun to socialize with new people and hear about their cultures! Roberto from Venezuela was part of the crew for the evening and so I made plans with him to hike to Park Guell the following afternoon after I swam.  Iwas looking forward to heading out with someone else instead of wandering around getting lost by myself!  Bonus points that Roberto is obviously fluent in Spanish too  :)