Barcelona Baby!!

 My hotel, the Petit Palace Boqueria Garden is a boutique hotel located only a couple of steps away from La Rambla, the most well-known street in Barcelona. La Rambla is a pedestrian street that is very popular with the tourists. There are restaurants, souvenir shops and those people who dress up as statues and do not move hoping for some Euros to be thrown their way. Turn your back on La Rambla and you are in the Gothic Quarter, with many small streets opening into squares. It is like a labyrinth, easy to get lost in. Ask me how I know!

I asked at the front desk, where they thought I should go to dinner. La Boqueria Mercado was the answer, right off of La Rambla. I thought it was a restaurant and wandered up and down the street looking for it. It was not a restaurant, it was a market, a very crowded market. I wandered up and down the aisles and found a stall that had a bar and lots of seafood displayed. I sat down and did not have a clue what I should have. The man next to me, who spoke no English, had a good looking plate so I asked for the same thing. Wine came, the meal was good and my new friend and I toasted my arrival in Barcelona. I stopped several times during my stay at the Bouqueria for a snack here and there.

Chocolate Covered Strawberries

My First Dinner in Barcelona -it was much tastier than it looks

I walked quite a bit in Barcelona but tourist that I am, some of the sights were far apart. The solution was to use one of those Hop-On, Hop-Off buses. They would drop me off close to whatever I wanted to see. It saved me a lot of time and energy to use them.

Barcelona is the city of Gaudi and his architectural works are all over the city. He had a really unique style and is considered one of the greats of Catalan Moderism. A definite must-see is the basilica that he started to build in 1883, the Sagrada Familia. He died in 1926 and work is still going on at the Sagrada. I showed up, expecting to be able to buy a ticket there only to find that you needed to buy a ticket online. When I looked, there were no tickets available during the time I was in Barcelona. I really have to try to plan a little bit better.

Even though I was early, you can see how long the lines are to go inside.

Sagrada Familia Interior 
Web Photo

At the end of La Rambla, there was a square. Situated all around the edges were places where you could buy bird seed to feed the pigeons. Occasionally, somebody would drop a bunch of feed on the ground and almost every pigeon would simultaneously rise into the air and descend in a crushing crowd onto the seed.

Before

After

 I was able to go inside one of Gaudi's creations, the Casa Batllo, also called the Dragon House. It was created for a family who basically told Gaudi to do what he wanted as he built it. As a result, Casa Batllo is over the top and quite the eye candy. Everywhere I looked, I was either smiling or my mouth had just dropped open in awe. I wish my pictures could have done this creation justice.

Hopping back onto my bus, I headed to the Joan Miro Museum. Miro was a painter and sculptor who ventured quite a bit into Surrealism. I find him to be very compelling.

March 8 is International Woman's Day.  There were several protests going on.  The news said that there were 40,000 protesters. I passed one pocket of protesters and they had an all-woman Drum Circle going on.  Drums always get the blood going.  

There is a mountain by Barcelona and they have gondolas which will take you to the top of the mountain and then down the other side to the port.  I thought this would be a grand idea, so I hopped off the bus near the gondola ticket office.  Turns out that there are two gondola companies.  This one that I was at, only went to the top of the mountain and then back down.  The ticket seller told me that I needed to go down the street to the other company.  I set off, got turned around and ended up pretty close to the top of the mountain.  I could not find the other ticket office.  After a couple of hours, I finally found a couple of guys who helped me get to the correct place.  Did I mention that it was rainy and rather dismal out.  

Oh well, no gondola ride for me.

It is not like I was missing much. 
Rain and fog do not make for good gondola pictures.