Well, after waking up at 3am (ahhh my comeuppance for going to bed at 7pm!) and not being able to get back to sleep, I read a book and let B sleep until 8:30am. Our hotel here (Hotel Catalona Sagrida Familia) includes complimentary continental brekkie and it was pretty tasty. Insanely huge selection as well.
This hotel is the meeting point for our Intrepid Travel part of the trip (15 days Barceolona to Rome) so we are staying here for an extra 4 nights at the start, before commencing the tour. I have to say, it’s a lot nicer than that frigging terrible contiki hotel in London! It’s self rated itself as 4 stars but we reckon it’s more like 3 given limited noise insulation and the fact our double bed is two singles put next to each other. With single bedding on them. Hmmm.
With our little backpacks ready for the day, including all the essentials like the map, raincoat, water bottle and stuffed toy platypus we set off to explore. Our hotel is a 2 min walk from a metro station and we caught that 6 stops to Paral-lel station which is adjacent to Montjuic, a beautiful park/mountain with a castle on top that overlooks the whole city and the Mediterranean Sea. After much aimless wandering up ridiculously steep and long paths we found…the second cable car station! Because we had missed the first and instead walked halfway up the damn mountain. The views were worth it though:
view out to the mediterranean from montjuic
Percy also enjoyed his first ever cable car ride (B says he is looking the wrong way!)
A quick train trip one stop over then saw us wandering up Les Ramblas which is the main tourist strip. Lots of street performers, buskers, pickpockets…the usual stuff you expect in a tourist area! Lunch was delicious at Cafe De L’Opera….mmmm tapas with beer and cava sangria, followed by real churros. We then visited the erotic museum which was…uh…not erotic and mostly traumatising haha.
Another quick train trip brought us to Basilica de la Sagrada Familia which is 133 years old and is one of Gaudi’s most famous projects, although it is still being built so was not complete in his time. The name basically means “church of the family” or “church of the holy family” but I think it should stand for “bloody great church with ridiculous fruit stacks on top”. Seriously. At the top of the spires on one side there were weird fruit statues. We opted not to go in as it was 20€ each and as B said…a church is a church! Even if it does have fruit statues.
the fruit stacks are on top of the pointy bits to the left of the pic
Kilometres walked today: 15.1km
Steps taken: 22106
Tomorrow: Montserrat for a day trip hopefully! Very excited.
Mel
P.S. These posts will get shorter once we lose wifi, pinky promise.
Mel's Travel Blog 