5 Octubre 2007, Viernes
TOURIST DAY…today we headed out to find a good breakfast place, which after asking some locals, we found this AMAZING bakery with a bunch of different pastries and coffees for dessert. I opted for a chocolate pastry filled with crème and Natalia chose a big croissant with jelly type thing. Afterwards, we wandered around Barrio Gotico for a bit, and found our way to the old cathedral. (All I remembered about that place was the gothic architecture in ducks in the courtyard). Outside of the cathedral is just beautiful as there are plenty of musicians making gorgeous music, little alleys leading to different parts of the gothic quarter, and little shops filled with mosaics emulating the style of Gaudi. I took some amazing pictures in the church with my new camera, and we passed through rather quickly, being somewhat acclimated to amazing church architecture by this point. After passing the ducks in the courtyard, we decided to walk to the Sagrada Familia, which was a looooong walk, but fun because the weather had cleared and was quite beautiful. By the time we got to the Sagrada Familia, it was midday and full of tourists. This was amazingly, my third visit to the church, and I can clearly report that it has not been completed yet. It is just as striking as ever, and this year marks the 125th anniversary of its beginnings. I think it is set to be finished in 2020… we walked around a bit, although I wouldn’t recommend going inside because there’s really not too much to see as it is covered by scaffolding.
Tourism is a booming industry in Barcelona, and one of the leading monopolies of sightseeing is this bus called Bus Touristic, which is somewhat of a common trend in Europe now, a bus that takes you to all of the main tourist attractions and lets you hop on or hop off whenever you want, and also has an audio option to listen to the history of the attractions you pass. In Barcelona, it is a RIP OFF, as it costs almost 2
0 euros, and only lasts a day, as opposed to the usual 24 hours which means you can use the pass for a couple of days.
After receiving free samples of Starbucks (as if we didn’t know what a double chocolate macchiato tastes like…) we got on the bus and toured the city. We saw EVERYTHING…and listened to the tour in Russian, English, and of course…Spanish. The Russian narrator was amazing, and we lovingly named him Andrusha. We got off and began what became known as the Great Restaurant Search…we didn’t want anything too touristy or expensive…which makes things a bit difficult. We headed in the direction of Park Guell, and finally, after much, much walking…decided on a little place not too far from the park. It was kind of gross…there is a trend in Spain of restaurants serving Schwan’s type (I suspect it comes frozen to them) food. It makes the restaurant do the least work possible as the companies already have menus, posters, and the food is delivered to them. There’s Paellado
r which we made the mistake of trying in Café de Indias once, and an Italian one too…it’s not bad, just not fresh, which is what you want when you go to a restaurant. By this point though, we were so hungry we didn’t care. We, or I should say me, have this bad habit of rejecting everything in sight for the possibility of their being something better….for hours at a time. The lasagna we ordered was really gross though, and didn’t feel like food. Oh well…
We went to Park Guell, which I must say was just crawling with tourists, and sat on the (rather sad that it’s so cliché by now because it really is beautiful) world’s longest bench by Gaudi. The weather began to get ugly, so we decided to hop on the bus otra vez and complete the guided tour. We saw the Plaza de Espana, Park Montjuic, Olympic park, Colon statue, basically everything…
Now it was dark, we were tired, and so we decided to find a place to eat. We sat down at this restaurant called…oh I don’t remember, something in Catalan because there were a lot of X’s in the name… we shared the menu del dia again, this time having salad and PAELLA…I looove paella….and it was fantastic. The only thing that wasn’t fantastic was that when we got the bill, the Coca-Cola lite’s we ordered were 3.85 euro each!!! That’s a 5 dollar glass of coke!!! Natalia took a picture of me making an obscene gesture at the glass, and right then, the waiter came up and was like “Que haces??” (what are you doing?) which was little embarrassing but quite funny. After dinner, we just walked down Las Ramblas, enjoying the many street performers, artwork, tourists, and general nightlife. We got ice cream at this little café (vowing this would be the last time until Paris).
TOURIST DAY…today we headed out to find a good breakfast place, which after asking some locals, we found this AMAZING bakery with a bunch of different pastries and coffees for dessert. I opted for a chocolate pastry filled with crème and Natalia chose a big croissant with jelly type thing. Afterwards, we wandered around Barrio Gotico for a bit, and found our way to the old cathedral. (All I remembered about that place was the gothic architecture in ducks in the courtyard). Outside of the cathedral is just beautiful as there are plenty of musicians making gorgeous music, little alleys leading to different parts of the gothic quarter, and little shops filled with mosaics emulating the style of Gaudi. I took some amazing pictures in the church with my new camera, and we passed through rather quickly, being somewhat acclimated to amazing church architecture by this point. After passing the ducks in the courtyard, we decided to walk to the Sagrada Familia, which was a looooong walk, but fun because the weather had cleared and was quite beautiful. By the time we got to the Sagrada Familia, it was midday and full of tourists. This was amazingly, my third visit to the church, and I can clearly report that it has not been completed yet. It is just as striking as ever, and this year marks the 125th anniversary of its beginnings. I think it is set to be finished in 2020… we walked around a bit, although I wouldn’t recommend going inside because there’s really not too much to see as it is covered by scaffolding.
Tourism is a booming industry in Barcelona, and one of the leading monopolies of sightseeing is this bus called Bus Touristic, which is somewhat of a common trend in Europe now, a bus that takes you to all of the main tourist attractions and lets you hop on or hop off whenever you want, and also has an audio option to listen to the history of the attractions you pass. In Barcelona, it is a RIP OFF, as it costs almost 2
0 euros, and only lasts a day, as opposed to the usual 24 hours which means you can use the pass for a couple of days.After receiving free samples of Starbucks (as if we didn’t know what a double chocolate macchiato tastes like…) we got on the bus and toured the city. We saw EVERYTHING…and listened to the tour in Russian, English, and of course…Spanish. The Russian narrator was amazing, and we lovingly named him Andrusha. We got off and began what became known as the Great Restaurant Search…we didn’t want anything too touristy or expensive…which makes things a bit difficult. We headed in the direction of Park Guell, and finally, after much, much walking…decided on a little place not too far from the park. It was kind of gross…there is a trend in Spain of restaurants serving Schwan’s type (I suspect it comes frozen to them) food. It makes the restaurant do the least work possible as the companies already have menus, posters, and the food is delivered to them. There’s Paellado
r which we made the mistake of trying in Café de Indias once, and an Italian one too…it’s not bad, just not fresh, which is what you want when you go to a restaurant. By this point though, we were so hungry we didn’t care. We, or I should say me, have this bad habit of rejecting everything in sight for the possibility of their being something better….for hours at a time. The lasagna we ordered was really gross though, and didn’t feel like food. Oh well…We went to Park Guell, which I must say was just crawling with tourists, and sat on the (rather sad that it’s so cliché by now because it really is beautiful) world’s longest bench by Gaudi. The weather began to get ugly, so we decided to hop on the bus otra vez and complete the guided tour. We saw the Plaza de Espana, Park Montjuic, Olympic park, Colon statue, basically everything…
Now it was dark, we were tired, and so we decided to find a place to eat. We sat down at this restaurant called…oh I don’t remember, something in Catalan because there were a lot of X’s in the name… we shared the menu del dia again, this time having salad and PAELLA…I looove paella….and it was fantastic. The only thing that wasn’t fantastic was that when we got the bill, the Coca-Cola lite’s we ordered were 3.85 euro each!!! That’s a 5 dollar glass of coke!!! Natalia took a picture of me making an obscene gesture at the glass, and right then, the waiter came up and was like “Que haces??” (what are you doing?) which was little embarrassing but quite funny. After dinner, we just walked down Las Ramblas, enjoying the many street performers, artwork, tourists, and general nightlife. We got ice cream at this little café (vowing this would be the last time until Paris).
2 comments:
aww fun!
well, except for the hungryness and yucky lasagna
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