Today was a day of touring around the Barri Gòtica (gothic neighborhood/quarter).
We started off walking down La Rambla. This is a large semi-pedestrain street which has sections of vendors: artists, souvenirs, pets and flowers. From there we went to La Boqueria (Mercat St Joseph La Boqueria in full). This is a semi-covered market which has every fresh food item you could possibly need. There were sections of fruit, veggies, meat, fish, bread, candy and anything else they could think of. It was all very colorful and had many many options. A lot of the fruit was bigger than what you would get in the States or UK. After that we wandered around a bit checking out all the small streets and buildings throughout the gothic area.
Then we went to Parc de la Ciutadella. This is a really beautiful park down near the port. There are a lot of palm trees and other semi-tropical plants that remind me a lot of Florida. There is this gorgeous fountain called La Font Monumental (although it is commonly known as La Cascada). It is beautiful. It has many levels of stairs to walk up and around it and the main central waterfall area has moss and stuff growing on it. It is really nice to see the manmade elements combined with nature. While we were walking up the stairs next to the fountain these women came up to us soliciting for something. We said no and carried on but one of them kept following me, pulling me back and poked me hard in the back and yelled "for handicap!" I just pretended to not know english or spanish, said no repeatedly and we finally got away from them. We saw them accosting other people throughout the park too. They were so rude and obnoxious. That is not the way to promote your cause, whatever it is.
After we escaped them we walked along the water towards the Columbus Column and Mont Juic. We took a train up the hill but by the time we made it up there it was getting dark so we hopped on a bus that we thought brought you around the whole hill/park. Apparently we got on at the end of its circuit so we got off at Plaça Espanya then made our way back to the Gothic area to get some churros and do some shopping. The churros were so so so delicious. After devouring them in seconds we went to a couple stores, mainly looking at books. I did got my spanish harry potter so I was pretty happy about that. Now I just need to brush up on my magical vocabulary.
Then we went to dinner with Stacy's parents at this restaurant that was a combination of traditional spanish and catalan food but also had some american/international staples. It was delicious nonetheless.
Afterwards Stacy and I went back to the apartment and did research for Collioure before crashing for the night.