Thursday 19 July - Barcelona 30C

We caught the metro north to Lesseps which is near Park Guell. This is a large park on the side of a hill where Gaudi's house and garden is. Unfortunately when we arrived at the metro, we realised we didn’t have the Museum entry tickets with us so it was back to the apartment and another 92 step to climb to pick them up, an exhausting start to the day.

Second time around, when we got out of Lesseps station, it was a long walk up hill to the park (i.e. Climb every Mountain). My advice for future travelers is to catch a taxi and get them to take you to the school at the top of the park where you can enter, get the best views across Barcelona, and then spend the morning wandering down-hill through all the Gaudi construction bits. The views from the top of the park were great and you could pick out all the places we have visited over the last few days. The entry to the park is free but we had purchased an extended ticket from our visit to his Cathedral which gave us entry into the Gaudi House Museum (that was the ticket I had left at the apartment). The house contained furniture he had designed, a lot of carved wood and other ornate pieces that looked very uncomfortable – not the "lounge around on" type of sofa. His garden is quite unique with a lot of rock work and mosaics and we enjoyed the morning but were grateful we arrived early as the crowds were thick by 11:30am.

The metro system is very efficient in Barcelona and for 2 euro you can go anywhere on the system. There is a 10 trip or 2-day pass option, but as most of the places we have visited have been within walking distance, we didn't bother with either of those.

This afternoon I went back to the Picasso Museum to see if the queues were any shorter than yesterday – not by much. I waited in line for ½ hour before entering. The permanent exhibition takes you through his different periods from his first drawings at age 11 then onto his portraits, through his blue period and a lot of his sketches and drawings and finally as we all know Picasso now. It was good to see, but obviously, a lot of his most important and well known works are held in other museums and galleries worldwide.

This evening, we jumped a train up to the top of Passeig de Gracia (one of the two main north/South shopping streets in Barcelona and where we took photos of the Gaudi houses last night). We had dinner at a restaurant we had spotted on last night's travels and enjoyed the meal.

Strolled back down to the Ramblas after dinner, stopping for a little dessert on the way and safely tucked up in our apartment by 11.30 p.m.

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