Spain Day 13
Barcelona, Spain
30th Birthday
April 25, 3011
Happy Birthday Me! Is it possible to physically age a few years in one day? I swear it’s not just in my head. I’m sure I just became fatter and more wrinkly overnight just in time to turn 30...
I was frustratingly determined to have a wonderful day today in spite of my subconscious depression. I’m in Barcelona for crying out loud, one of my favorite cities in the whole world! Full of exquisite modern architecture juxtaposed with great medieval and gothic alleyways and a culture as vibrant as a Gaudi Mosaic or a Miro Sculpture. Speaking of Culture, this country seems to a have an excess of Bank holidays and today happened to be one of them. Surprise Surprise, another holiday in Europe! The trouble with my planning was that Banks had been closed the past several days due to Easter Weekend and now this holiday, and we had run through all our Euro not realizing we had no way of replenishing today. PLUS, about 60% of all retail shops were closed, as were about half the restaurants. We decided to see the city via the ingenious Bus Touristic, a fleet of double decker buses that loop around Barcelona with a hop-on-hop off format and included audio guides available in all major languages that talk about everything you are seeing. These buses take credit card, which was a massive sigh of relief as we literally had no Euro, required by the regular buses, the metro, and taxis. We enjoyed views from Montjuic Mountain overlooking the densely pack city sprawl. We also took in many urban housing projects by the city’s famous architect, Gaudi. We were very much looking forward to entering Gaudi’s landmark cathedral Sagrada Fmailia, but unfortunately they take cash only for the entrance fee, so once again we had to take a deep breath and appreciate what we could see from the outside, which was indeed awe-inspiring anyway. We hopped off the bus at Plaza Catalunya, the convergence of La Rambla and Barcelona’s other major pedestrian streets. Here we pit-stopped for a late lunch which included a local Catalan wine, a nice pizza with much more cheese than our previous Italian pizzas (I mentioned before that Spaniards LOVE their cheese) along with a great salad with fried brie cheese and pistachios.
We meandered up and down a few streets after lunch, which were much less crowded than usual because the locals obviously knew that many of the more popular stores were closed due to the holiday. We were wishing we had gotten the memo. Mother Nature decided to gift me with clouds and rain for my birthday… or perhaps she was crying tears of joy that I was all grown up. We cuddled up to stay warm on the top of the double-decker site seeing bus to make our way through more of the city en route to the Modern neighborhood of our hotel.
Exhausted, we decided to order Tapas to go.
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