Barcelona, Spain - Day 1

     We caught a taxi into Barcelona on Saturday morning to the Plaza España. The taxi driver was nice enough to point out that the Plaza de Toros(Bullring) had been turned into a shopping mall. What a middle finger to Spain from Catalunya and their ever continuing effort to not be Spanish. They also passed a law prohibiting bullfights. The mall also came equipped with a tower to go up and get a great view of the city. Instead, we had a coffee at a local cafe and ventured over to the gay pride festival to see what was going on. Saturday was the day for lots of sports activities for kids.

     Afterwards, we made our best investment of the trip and bought a 2 day pass for the bus and subway. We went to the Casa Batlló, designed by Antoní Gaudí. It's an old house that he was commissioned to renovate in a new and modern way. He took lots of inspiration from nature and designed the outside of the house to look like a dragon. The inside has many interesting touches that create the sense of being inside a living creature. The walls are designed to look like scales and the handrails of the staircases look like vertebrae. The most spectacular part is the roof, where he designed the chimneys to look like the back and tail of the dragon. The view of the city is nice too.

      We went in search of a non existent burger place for lunch we had heard about. It sounded amazing but in the end, we just went to a run of the mill Spanish restaurant. We took a long break from the heat and the girls went shopping for some clothes. Then, we tried the Sagrada Familia but the line was long and we only would have been able to go in for a half hour. This did not satisfy our time for price value so we decided to try the next day and go on to La Rambla. On our way, we passed the Arc de Triomphe.

     La Rambla is a long stretch of street that reaches from the Plaza Catalunya to Barceloneta, the small beach town. It's full of restaurants, tourist shops, and lots of pickpockets. If there is any place in Barcelona where you run the risk of being picked, its on La Rambla. There are also other clever games in which people appear to be participating in betting on which cup the ball is under. They go back and forth winning and losing but the trick is that they are part of the group trying to con people out of money. Another great place to visit on La Rambla is the famous Mercat de la Boquería. It seemed that every other stand offered an over priced fruit smoothie full of fruit seeds and no delicious juice. We tried one of course and it was not good. We also made the mistake of going to the first stall in the market and realized how much we overpaid after we saw them for half the price at other places. Oh well. We made up for it by buying some fruit for snacks later.

     From the market, we went down to the harbor near Barceloneta so Izzy's parents could see the boats. They love boats and all things boat related so it was like heaven for them. We took some pictures of them by the boats and wandered around the marina checking out the sites. There were a ton of people out doing the same thing and enjoying the end of the day. The old customs building is right by the harbor and is magnificent. There's also a statue of Christopher Columbus "pointing to the new world" or Italy and Greece in reality. Later, we met a friend of Izzy's for a while and had a drink to catch up. It was a great day.

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