Barcelona Day 5

Norm:

The day started by us going to have brunch at our last Tapas restaurant called Tossa. We caught an early brunch and the restaurant was quite empty when we arrived. We ordered a lot of mussels, seafood and meatballs. Everything was delicious. Afterwards, we headed to the beautiful Sagrada Familia, which was a church designed by the artist Gaudi. This Sagrada Familia is probably the most beautiful piece of architecture I've seen in Europe. High walls, architecture inspired by nature, intricate detail in its walls and windows and it's still not even 100% complete yet. We even opted to have the audio guide to truly appreciate the meaning behind the architecture and the design. It feels a little surreal to see the Sagrada Familia before it's complete, but  it would be cool to come back 20 years later when it is complete and see how much the building will have changed. 

"What should I eat first..?"

Passion Facade - simple, depicting the death of Jesus Christ

Entranceway to the church... looks like walking through the doorways to heaven

The support beams for the church branch out just like trees; Gaudi was inspired by nature 

The front alter

The Nativity Facade, much more intricate with high level of details,with sculptures of statues and animals

The white areas are the areas yet to be completed. Still have a long way to go!

Afterwards, we headed to the Picasso museum to take in our last dosage of European Art. The Picasso Museum as not as large as the Van Gogh museum, but it was one of the better art museums. I particularly enjoyed the cubism of Picasso, especially when he paints one subject over and over with differing perspectives and interpretations. Afterwards, Mandy had a pizza craving and we headed to a nearby pizza place for dinner. Pizza as not bad overall. Though Toronto may have Asian cuisine down pat, it is still so hard to find quality pizza. Hasta la vista Espana! Back to London tomorrow.

Me reading up on Picasso's life

Barcelona Day 4

Norm:


Today, we decided to spend the day hanging out at the beach and find a brunch place. Not surprisingly, we chose to go to La Boqueria market (so far, we've went there every day we've been in Barcelona!). There is a very popular and highly rated tapas restaurant in the market called Quin de la Boqueria. The highlight of the meals are the mussels and the very large shrimp. (The head juices are the most delicious).

Seafood platter sans mussels

From then we just decide to laze out on the beach and soak up some rays. I was hoping to even out the horrendous T-shirt tan I have. The weather today was actually perfect. Not too hot, not too cool, just perfect when it's just the sun on you. One important tip that I learnt from some of the locals hanging out on the beach. Before you lay down your beach towel, make a "sand pillow" underneath before it. Takes lying down in the sun much more enjoyable. After the sun started waning down and before it got chilly, we got dressed and headed back to the hotel for a must needed shower. After that, I was craving a burger, so went to a very popular burger joint right beside our hotel called Kiosko burger. Totally satisfied my burger craving. From then, we wanted more of the beach so we headed there to enjoy the nighttime ambience. Mandy had some ice cream and I had a pitcher of sangria and we chatted until it got dark and cold out. One more full day left in Barcelona!

What a beautiful day!

Open-faced burgers are very messy to eat

Sangria + Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream

Barcelona Day 3

Today was dedicated towards checking out the outlet shopping in Barcelona. We made plans to go to La Roca, which is an upscale shopping outlet similar to Bicester Village in Barcelona (though unfortunately the stores were not as good as the ones in Bicester). We woke up and headed to Catalunya Square and picked up tickets for the bus to La Roca. We then hurried to La Boqueria (again) to get some paninis and fruits to eat on the bus for lunch. Arriving 10 minutes before the bus left, there was already a crowd fighting to get onto the bus. Despite the fact that as advance ticket holders, we were supposed to have priority boarding onto the bus, the lady in charge had no control over the crowd and everyone was shoving their way to the front in hopes of buying discount designer clothing.

Mosh pit for the buses

A second bus eventually arrived, and even though we were near the front of the line, significant pushing and shoving was required to get on. 40 minutes later, we arrived at La Roca. First thing I realized when I first got off the bus was that today is blisteringly hot. Thank god that the bus was air conditioned and the majority of the stores had air conditioning. Mandy ended up buying a jacket from Burberry and I found a shirt to buy at Ralph Lauren. We also had tickets for 50% off a restaurant called OuYeah, which made Spanish omelettes. 50% off included drinks and beer, so I decided to have a few before I left. We decided to try and dodge the crowds and shoving and went to catch the 3pm bus back to Barcelona.

Small Spanish omelette

Slicing away at the poor pig's smoked leg

Picnic time!

Barcelona's Arc de Triomf

 Upon returning to Barcelona, we walked a nearby department store near Catalunya with no success and headed back to the hotel to drop off our goods. On our way back, we stopped by La Boqueria (again!), bought some bread, some expensive Spanish ham and some fruit to have a picnic at a nearby park. We stopped by the hotel, drop off our shopping purchases and headed to the park. We chilled for a little bit, enjoyed the nice weather and walked a little bit to see the Arc de Triomf. We walked around historical district to try and find a candy store and a place to eat dinner. We eventually ended up at El Xempanyet (sp?), a restaurant renown for it's authentic Catalonian tapas and Cavas (a type of sparkling wine). The tapas was quite good and I'm starting to realize that the Spanish love anchovies and charcuterie.

First round of food, with huge crowd behind me

We didn't end up finding the candy store in question, so we ended up going home and catching some Zzz. This vacation is fast coming to an end - only 2 more days in Barcelona! :(

Barcelona Day 2

Mandy:

We were hopeful that a room change further away from the elevator would result in better sleep. Unfortunately the cleaning ladies start cleaning the rooms at 7am and woke us up :(

Because of that we slept in a little later and left the hotel at 11am. We wanted to go back to La Boqueria for brunch but it's closed on Sunday's. Actually most things are closed such as stores, malls, grocery stores, etc. Knowing this we went to Monjuic Park. We had breakfast at one of the very touristy restaurants on La Rambla. BAD IDEA. The food was gross. This was our first and last time we are eating at a tourist trap restaurant.

After brunch we headed to the park. The park is massive and the attractions are all on the peak of mountains (Norm says they are only hills but they are mountains). So off we went to the top of the first mountain to see the Military Musuem. The walk reminded me of my walk to school in Siena - a long steep hill. I swear at one point I was trying to cross the street and I was falling backwards.

Unlike the lazy people taking the gondola up, we walked all the way!

Norm trying to cool down

  

Standing on the top wall, Barcelona's coast in the background

Consulting the useless map

Our next stop was the Olympic Musuem. It took about two hours to trek there. It felt like a nature hike and there were no tourists in sight. In fact no one was in sight. Just like at the Versaille Palace we got a little lost and took the long route. But it wasn't our fault... There were no road signs and the map we had didnt have enough details. We finally made it to the Olympic Stadium for the 2012 Juniors IAAAF Olympic Stadium. I believe it was first constructed in 1992 for the Summer Olympics. We took a few pictures and made our way to the next stop - the Art Musuem. On the way there, we stopped by a fountain near the Olympic Museum to cool off before continuing the journey. By the time we got there we were so exhausted we didn't even go inside. We noticed there was an event happening on the street and went there instead. Turns out it was a Harley Davidson Biker event. We had some ribs, sausages, and a litre of mojito for Norm.

Canadian Flag!

Super refreshing water

Harley Davidson day in Barcelona

The cup looked larger in real life...

We wanted to stay at the park until 9pm for the light show at the Monjuic Magic Fountain so we went to the mall across the street. Like I said malls are closed on Sundays so no shopping for us :( The food court was open so I had a bowl of udon from a fast food joint called Udon. It was definitely not even close to my mom's udon. The waitresses had shirts that said "I <3 Udon". I want one. 

Light and water show with music playing in the background

Barcelona Day 1

Norm:


Today we decided to walk down a major street in Barcelona called La Rambla as well as check out a popular tourist park called Park Guell. We stopped by at La Bouqueria, which is a food market similar but WAY BETTER than the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto. La Bouqueria had butchers, fish markets, fruit vendors and restaurants serving up fresh seafood and tapas. Mandy and I purchased a good deal of fruit and we had breakfast/lunch at a Tapas restaurant in La Bouqueria. The highlight of that meal: the razor clams! Delicious.

La Rambla - Usually way more packed

Extremely fresh seafood for sale

Our seafood sampler from La Boqueria Bar

Norm having his fave meat kebob

Mandy in fruit heaven

After that, we continued down Las Ramblas, walking by a number of souvenir shops and restaurants. We then took the nearest metro towards Park Guell to see the Barcelona's views from a higher elevation and also see Casa Gaudi, renown for its unique architecture. The walk proved arduous (thank god there were escalators for majority of the way up), but the map of the area was fairly useless and we ended up back tracking a number of times. In fact, we are not even sure we walked (or even fully saw) Casa Gaudi. But, the weather was cooperating the majority of the time, the walk was pleasant and we did see a lot of cool unique architectural structures in the park. 

Largest vending machine ever in a train station

Thank goodness for the escalators up to Park Guell. It was a very hot day and a big hill to climb.

View of the city 

Not sure what that's for but there were A LOT of people at the top with no railings

No escalator going down.. noooooo!

Antoni Gaudi's work - So unique!

Homeless(?) man with so many dogs that look so sick! Mandy gave him dirty looks.

More of Gaudi's work. TOO many people

After wandering more into the park we found more of Gaudi's work.

Mandy's Throne

Norm's Throne

Afterwards, we began to head to the area near our hotel. We walked around historical district for a little bit and got hungry after a while. We went into a restaurant for a quick bite (I had a hot dog, Mandy has some Shanghai-nese buns. Afterwards we headed back to the hotel to see if the room change that we requested was successful (it was). After chilling for a while, we decided that we wanted some authentic seafood paella for dinner and googled good restaurants near our area. I decided on a place along the seaside called Can Majo.

We headed there around 8 when the restaurant opened to avoid disappointment and was seated in the terrace. We ordered the gourmet shellfish paella and the razor clams to start (razor clams weren't as good as the ones in La Bouqueria. However, dinner was quite good and I left satisfied.

Razor clams (not as good as La Boqueria) and bread with tomato sauce. Mandy thought it was raw meat, lol - turns out it's a traditional bread dish in Barcelona.

Delicious and expensive (28 euros per person!) deluxe seafood paella.

Don't mind Norm's lazy eye, hehe. 

Excited to dig in.

Either baby lobster or giant shrimp, lol.

From then, we took a short walk along the beach at night and went back home to catch some Zzzz's. Buenos noches!

Hola Barcelona!

Norm:


Today is the day that we leave France and move onto the next country: Spain and specifically Barcelona!

We checked out of our hotel in Nice and took the bus to the airport. We arrived fairly early at the airport and had lunch. This was the first time I flew EasyJet, and didn't realize that this was the kind of flight without assigned seats. As a result, when we got to the airport, we took our sweet time, had lunch, spent time walking around the airport and by the time I realized we had to line up to get good spots, there was already a large queue to get onto the flight. Lucky for us, the gate changed at the last minute, and rather than being at the end of the queue, I ran towards the new gate and we were one of the first to get onto the flight and secure some prime real estate on the flight.

Upon arriving in Barcelona, I realized how little I remembered from my first year university Spanish class. Nevertheless, we found our way from the airport to the train station to the hotel with little difficulty. This hotel was definitely the best out of all the cities that we visited and was in a great location as well. As it was starting to get late, we decided to get dinner just at a restaurant nearby in the Historic District where there are numerous shops and restaurants. Though originally, we intended on going to a nearby Tapas restaurant, we opted at the last minute to go to a Mexican restaurant that had more people in it.

This proved to be a mistake - the food was very mediocre and I daresay that I would have preferred eating at Taco Bell. However, drinks were very reasonably priced and I had 2 Long Island Iced Teas priced at 5 Euros for each. Not too bad, but we'll never go there again for food. Lesson learnt! We also learned that food and most other things are much cheaper in Spain than France :):)

The not so delicious "sampler plate" that includes quesadillas, really gross tacos, chicken wings, etc. 

Smiling before tasting the food.

For 1 Euro you can fill the cone with as much candy as you want!

We went home to get showered and sleep. Tomorrow we begin exploring Barcelona! Hasta luego!