Sunday March 8, 2009

Today we tackled the Barcelona tourist scene starting early in the morning so we wouldn’t miss anything. Our first stop was Gaudi’s Casa Batllo…if you don’t know Gaudi, you should…google it! The admission price came with a free audio guide that took us through the house. It was absolutely amazing. Tours like this get me more and more excited for a field in design.
After the house we walked to Barcelona’s cathedral. Sadly it was covered in scaffolding so we didn’t really get to see the façade. We were able to go inside, but Sunday mass was being held so it was a little weird wandering around with other tourists during a church service…most churches seems to close the doors to the public during mass.

With Cassie’s advice we decided to stick around outside the cathedral for a Sardana danced performed every Sunday at noon. We were expecting costumes and such but instead it was performed by the post-mass church goers. They strapped on their dance shoes, threw their coats into the middle of an ever growing circle and danced together to the tune of a band set up on the church steps. A very cool experience.

From there we wandered around the Gothic area of Barcelona and browsed though a few shops that happened to be open on Sunday. It was another gorgeous day so we enjoyed taking our time walking around. For lunch we went to Els Quatre Gats at Cassie’s suggestion once again. I’ll just go ahead and give her credit for our entire Barcelona itinerary right now (as well as a lot of the info about the sites in this post). The restaurant was Picasso’s hangout before the café was founded in 1897. We arrived on the very early side of lunch for Spainards, 1:30pm, so the place wasn’t busy at all. We shared a plate of croquettes, I had the shrimp and mushroom crepe, Erika had Salmon with a blue cheese sauce, and Mel had roasted chicken. We sampled each other’s dishes and they were all sooo good.

After lunch we walked towards the the Arc de Triof of Barcelona and from there took the Metro to Guadi’s Park Guell.

The metro didn’t exactly take us to the park…we had a very very steep hike to get there. Gaudi intended the 30-acre garden to be a 60 residence housing project atop a mountain, a kind of gated community, but it ended up flopping and is now a beautiful public park. We spend a few hours roaming the park, taking pics, and enjoying the sunshine.

The walk back to the metro was exhausting…our feet had about had it by then but we wanted to stop by another famous Gaudi house, Casa Mila, before we went back to the hostel. We considered touring this one as well but we were just too tired to do it.

At the hostel we napped for about an hour and resisted waking up to go out to eat and wander for the evening. After cleaning up, at Mel’s request, we did the unthinkable…went to McDonald’s. This was my first trip to a McD’s since I’ve been abroad. I was planning on turning my nose up to it for the entire semester but it’s simply the cheapest, tastiest, most filling food so we indulged. The fries were much saltier and the burger was very peppery...but the Coca light had ICE and that made my meal.