Barcelona diary
Monday 22nd June around 30 Celsius
Today we challenged ourselves and decided to try a cycling tour of Barcelona.
The tour took us to some places we would not have discovered by ourselves little lane sways and squares as well as the main tourist areas. We were in a group of 20 and it was a little tricky trying to keep together especially when crossing a large road.
Luckily most of the way was flat so it was an easy ride. We also rode down to the beach which was packed as it was such a hot day. The sand was like builders sand dark and clumpy. Makes you really appreciate our beaches at home. A great place for viewing all the beautiful bodies scantily clad. Not us. We just enjoyed a cold beer in the shade.
Parc de Le Ciutdella is a large park with fountains and shaded areas to enjoy on a hot day. Next stop Arc de Triomf and onto Sagrada Familia an amazing architectural highlight in this city of so many beautiful buildings. The cathedral is still being built after 150 years in the style of Gaudi and looks like it could take another 150 years to complete. La Pedrera is another much visited Gaudi building that we viewed on our ride back through the busy city streets. In places the bike lane was in the centre of the road between the two roadways. Even though there is a lot of traffic it seems to move smoothly due to the divided carriageways and the one way streets throughout the city.
We were pleased to make it safely back to our starting point. Time for a sangria and a rest to cool down.
We are now experts at using the metro and love the HERE maps app thanks to Matt Collins. I have the maps downloaded with all the places we are going to and we just use the maps offline without needing a wifi connection. It puts in easy to follow steps and tells which metro line to go on, how many stops and brings up a map of walking.
This evening we headed out to the Barrio Gothic area to visit Catedral and enjoyed walking through the area with the narrow winding streets, Placas (squares), shops cafes and tapas bars. We enjoyed another sangria In one of the cafes. We were given a loud greeting by Berger (of turkish descent from Melbourne) who we had met on the plane from Singapore and had spent an hour together lining up to get out through customs. He is a real character and was so pleased to see us. We had laughingly said see you in the city never thinking it would happen.
Tonight we enjoyed our first paella at a cafe off La Rambla we are into Spanish time as we were eating about 11pm. We took the metro back to our hotel, something we would never do in Melbourne at that time of night except maybe if we were in a group
doing the 12 pubs of Christmas on the Sandringham train line.