May 30 - Barcelona

What an amazing neighbourhood we are staying in.  The apartment is on Costa Joaquin which is in a working class neighbourhood of Barcelona.   The street is always filled with people who generate lots of excitement and passion.  Next door to us, someone has hung an Ottawa Senator's flag on their balcony. You have to love it.

Hockey fans in Barcelona

I just finished reading an article on Barcelona and its role in the Spanish Civil War.  We are not too far from where the first shots were fired.  Given the damage that city sustained during the war including a saturation bombing by the Italians in March 1938, it is incredible that city maintained its character and its turn of the 20^th century charm.

Today we took a walk to the Barri Gotic section of the city.  This is the old section of the city.  The layout of the streets dates back to the medieval period. The streets are very narrow and twisty and are filled with many different shops and restaurants.

The Barcelona Cathedral is an impressive church with Gothic style steeples that dominate the neighbourhood. The various crypts inside the church are amazing.  There is lots of gold in the statues and tombs. I would assume that this is as a result of the gold taken by the Spanish Conquistadors from the Inca’s of South America.

Barcelona Cathedral

We then took a stroll up the La Rambla. La Rambla is a pedestrian mall, flanked by two roadways in central Barcelona.  The tree-lined pedestrian mall stretches for 1.2 kilometres connecting Plaça de Catalunya in the centre with the Christopher Columbus Monument in the port.  Along La Rambla is an outstanding farmers market where you can get fresh vegetables, fruit, eggs, cheese and meat. It is also a great place to people watch.  Unfortunately it is also the pick pocket capital of the world.  

La Rambla

Farmers Market on the Rambla

The stonework on the mall is an optical illusion that makes you feel as if the walkway is uneven and wavy.  In fact it is flat and as long as you don’t look down, you will be fine.

A thunderstorm rolled into Barcelona late in the afternoon.  I'm finding it hilarious to check out all the various weather web sites.  There is not a weather forecasting service that is remotely close to predicting the weather that any other weather service is predicting.  I've configured the laptop to check on four distinct services, so one of them should be correct.  Tomorrow, in Barcelona, it will either have thunderstorms with 80% chance of rain or be sunny all day with some clouds or everything in between.  Never again will I criticize Environment Canada.

For dinner we went to El Jardin, which is just off the Rambla in a very secluded city square that is landscaped with a nice quite garden.  We ordered Tapis, which are a number of small plates of various dishes which you share with your dinner party.  It was a very tasty and relaxing experience.  Afterwards we went for a drink in a bar along the Rambla, to watch the night time crowd.  It is much younger and livelier than the daytime crowds.