I slept until after 11 am, and felt like I could have slept more but felt I was wasting precious sightseeing time. After a nice breakfast Michelle and I headed out to the streets, while Jen stayed in and worked.
We walked along the beachfront from the apartment to the city, and through the Barceloneta area. The weather is sunny and warm. It seems a winters day here is a bit like a summer day in Wellington. Along the walk we passed the olympic village built for the 1992 games, and this piece by Gehry.
From the waterfront headed up in to the city and started to wander through little alleys and streets. I needed coffee so we stopped at a small, yet very smart place for coffe and a "cake". It is called Bubo, and the patisseries were stunning. I had a "Big Mac", that is a macaroon bun, fondant cheese slice, chocolate covered ganache meat patty and caramel sauce.
We also had a lime tart that was multi layered. From there we walked more and more narrow streets and alleys and at came to one tiny enclosed square where the walls were all still pock marked form bullet and bomb schrapnel from Franco's reign. This square was used to assassinate people as it has only two tiny entrances so could be easily closed off.
From there walked along another alley, and through an archway which lead to some preserved columns from the Roman era.
From there our wanderings took us to a square which housed the city hall of Barcelona on one side, and the hall of Spain on the other. The City Hall of Spain was open which apparently was very unusual. It housed some exhibition of Asian pottery in the open areas, but we didn't look at it as everything else on view was far superior, for example a Miro sculpture.
Along the way we also passed Gaudi's first commission.
We then walked up La Rambla, and along the way went into a market. The market was just an overload of fabulous food of every variety, including cured hams at prices of up to 259 Euro per kilo. The mushroom stands were covered in these yellow and green ones.
A lot of places had these small cones of ham and cheese ready for you to take away and munch.
The seafood was also an overload of abundance, with much of it still kicking.
Today was all about Gaudi, but that is a story for another post.
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