...while I ate scrambled eggs and accidently ordered a sausage sandwich as a side. I thought I was simply ordering a side of sausage. Thankfully, this was a tasty mistake.
After breakfast, we headed to Placa Catalunya and purchased 2 two-day Bus Turistica tickets. We felt a little cheesy at first but soon decided that this was an excellent way to ride a bus around town to all the sites without needing to walk and navigate them all on our own. Not to mention the nuggets of rich history the tour provided us with as well.
First stop = Paseig de Gracia en La Eixample. This barrio is full of modernist and Gaudí houses.
Our first Gaudí tour was at La Pedrera - the stone house. Gaudí often mimics figures from nature in his work. See if you can spot any influences.
After admiring La Pedrera we rode the bus over to La Sagrada Familia. The construction of which began in 1882, was taken over by Gaudí at the end of 1883 and is still under construction. Hoping to be completed sometime in the first third of the 21st century. The building is amazing. One side of the enormous structure looks to be melting...
After admiring the great many details of La Sagrada Famila we hopped back on the bus and headed to Park Güel. This is a giant park designed by Gaudí that sits atop a mountain and overlooks the entire city -- if you hike up far enough. I swear I climbed more stairs in my 2 weeks in Spain than I have my entire life until now.
However, our first stop was the cafe as we had quite a hike up to the park, not to mention the previous Gaudí sites. Thus, it was time - once again - to satiate our growing Spanish appetites. Kristen had a bikini, ham and cheese sandwich, and I ate a bocadillo de verduras (veggie sandwich) and had to purchase and try this awesome find:
Ham flavored Ruffles! How *%@# cool is that?! However, I couldn't eat many because it freaked me out. Artificial flavoring shouldn't be that accurate. Scary!
Moving on... the park was amazingly beautiful.
All the structures here are decorated with ceramic mosaics or stonework in nature motifs. Similar to some of the design work in La Sagrada Familia, there were walkways that looked like tree canopies and columns that resembled the trunks of palm trees.
Climbing up to the 2nd level now...
I think signs are funny:
On to level 3....
Almost there - just one.last.staircase.
Totally worth it
After descending the staircases winding back down through the park, we hopped back on the bus. We wound around Tibado (an old amusement park), a monastery/convent, FC Barcelona stadium:
As well as the Diagonal shopping area, among some other sites.
Our next hop off was at Poble Espanyol de Montjuïc. This is an exhibition that was built for a world expo in the 1900s. The architects toured mainland España, photographed buildings, and then reconstructed the styles from hundreds of Spanish pobles (towns). The effect was amazing and all of the buildings have little artisan shops inside and basically recreates the Spanish towns within one grand building.
Next we head to Barcelona's Olympic Stadium:
Once we were done looking at the stadium we continued with our tour of Montjuïc. We decided to take a cable car to the top of the mountain and visit the castle.
The views were amazing!
The photo is a little hazy due to the windows of the cable car, but you can see La Sagrada Famila on the right. This provides a great perspective of La Sagrada and its immenseness.
Barcelona's castille is a bourbon castle and overlooks the port on the top of a mountain. The castle is now a weapons museum.
After our tour of the castle and grounds we hopped back on the bus, stepped off at Las Ramblas and walked back through old town.
We headed to Taller de Tapas for dinner that evening. Luckily, we got right in. Cena (dinner) here was fabulous as well.
"Yay, ¡tapas!"
We started off with dos copas de sangria, pan con tomate, y un plato de jamón bellota.
Our next platos were equally delicious - pimientos de padrón y pulpo (octopus). ¡Muy excellente!
We finished our tapas meal with dos cafe cortados y postres: creme de catalan y tangerine sorbet over a pinapple carpaccio.
Overall, dinner was fabulous and filling. The desserts were the only miss, though the creme de catalan was very good. I assume this is why I focused on the café in the above dessert photo.
After dinner we walked home and promptly fell asleep. Jet lag officially defeated, in record time.
Oh yeah, did I mention the 5 flights of stairs we have to climb to reach our apartment?
More stairs = more tapas
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