Barcelona--Our Only Full Day

Today was our only full day in Barcelona. We woke up and headed toward the main station to get tickets for our trip to Montpellier because the owner of the place we are staying will pick us up and we have to tell him when we will arrive. So we headed down to the Sagrada Familia and took a right to go to the Sants station. Elena felt like a coffee and so did I. We were thinking we might find a Starbucks because then we knew we'd get good coffee and not Nescafe.

When we were almost to the station, we passed a prison. How odd to have a prison in prime real estate. Maybe it's supposed to be a reminder to the citizens of Barcelona. It looks like an old facility. Only the guard tower tops looked sort of high tech.

We made it to the station and got a couple of tickets. 54 Euros each. The bus would have been 30 Euros but the bus leaves at 9:30 am and the train leaves at 4:42pm. So we opted for the train. Then we decided to head to La Rambla which a guy at Tourist Information recommended.

We went down the Avenue Roma and headed toward La Rambla. Elena had noticed a bunch of people carrying flowers all over. I didn't notice them myself. I guess because I was looking for Starbucks and pretty women. When we got to the top of La Rambla, we still we thirsty and a tad hungry. We hadn't seen a Starbucks, but there was a nice looking little cafe that we entered. So we went in. Elena ordered a cafe au lait (cafe con leche) and croissant and I ordered a coffee and toast, I think (cafe i tostada). I got a croissant. Oh well. Both breakfasts were supposed to be 1,70 Euros according to the chalk board outside, but the bill was a la carte and the total was 4,82. We left 5 Euros. I told Elena later and she said I should have told her then so she could point it out to the guy. OK, next time.

We walked one more block and, voila, Starbucks! We just had coffee, but Elena wanted more. SO we went in and got two tall coffees. A tall coffee at Starbucks on La Rambla is 2,10 euros! It's $1.73 in canada and right around there in the United States. But it's $3.15 in Europe! That's almost twice as much. Crimeny! Anyway, we sat there and Elena brought over a local newspaper.

It was fun looking through the paper. The language in Barcelona is not SPanish, but a Spanish/French hybrid. 'and' is not 'y' but 'i'. 'with' is not 'con' but 'amb'. 'I' is not 'yo' butt 'jo'. There are many words that are more French than Spanish as I know Spanish--'the weather' wasn't 'el tiempo' but 'el temps'. There are also many words that are Spanish but with different letters. Like 'beach' and 'travel' are not 'playa' and 'viaje' but 'platje' and 'viatge'. There are also a lot of letter 'X' than can be found in Spanish. The cedilla is also found along with both types of accent over the e.

(A realtime OMFG!!!: The Brady Bunch just came on the TV. But not the one with Florence Henderson. It's apparently called La Tarda. It's got the same theme and opening sequence with the Hollywood Squares layout-not no Alice equivalent. The song has the "all of them have hair of gold, just like their mother/the youngest one in curls" but they are all brunettes. ROFLMAO! Back to the blog.)

So anyway, we looked through the paper noting all the neat differences from Spanish and similarities to French. Then we headed down La Rambla.

It was crowded! Wow! When we left in the morning, the city was dead. But La Rambla was crowded. It was divided into sections according to the commerce on the boulevard in the median. There was a jewelry section, portait section, art section, clothing section, food section. But there were several copies of a souvenir store called alternately 'Hola' and 'Hello'. We saw the start of a parade. There were two gendarmish looking men on horses followed by 2 broom sweepers, followed by a street sweeper car (under which I briefly considered tossing my now empty Starbucks cup), and then a set of a boy and 2 girls in robes carrying religious looking stuff. I figured it was a preparation for Semana Santa (Holy Week). Here it's called Semantya Santa, I think--another deviation from Spanish. Elena took a couple of pictures, but the parade stalled there--I think they were waiting for a starting time. We go bored and left.

There were many people disguised as statues. Elena took some pictures of them until I admonished her that we need to pay them to take their picture. She noted that you only need to pay them if you take a picture with them. We worked our way down to a large column. We took more pictures. Down by the sea, we took some pictures at a building with mirrors mounted on the upper floors. Then we walked along the water. Barcelona has many sections of beach. Nobody was sunbathing yet but people were laying and playing on the beach. Cafes were packed. We passed the nude beach section, but there was only one naked guy. Two girls layed out a blanket, but Elena didn't want to stick around to see if they would take off their clothes.

We found a place to eat. Elena was excited about paella, so we got a seafood paella. It's a large round iron pan maybe a foot in diameter with handles on both ends. We also got a patates bravas which is like baked potato sections with a slightly spicy mayonnaise. I had 2 canyas and Elena had one. A canya is just a small glass of the house beer. The paella had 4 shrimps and 4 mussells and cubes of some fish on a large bed of rice cooked in some sort of savory sauce. I peeled the first shrimp, but decided that it's OK to eat the shell as well. I did cut off the heads, though. We weren't sure how the paella was priced. It is about 9 euros but requires a minumum of 2 people. So is it 9 per person or 9 for the dish? After a few attempts to ask for la cuenta (the check) we got it and found out. Yep, 9 per person. So the total was $25.18 or something like that. I wasn't sure how to tip, so I rounded up to $26. I hope that's OK.

We walked back with all that paella in us. We found several more nice little areas of Barcelona. I stopped at a machine and got more money. Elena thinks I'm taking out too much, but we'll need it. It's not like we'll be stuck with a bunch of left over euros.

We got a chance to see La Sagrada Familia from the other side on our way back. There is scaffolding all over it. I'm not sure if it is still under construction or already being restored. I think the former. It costs 8 euros to get in and I only pay to go into gothic, high gothic, neogothic, and romanesque churches. Not art deco churches.

Back in our rooms, we are logging onto the internet with somebody's unsecure connection called 'zoom'. I hope we aren't cyber-trespassing too bad. I'll add pictures when we have a legitimate connection and aren't cyber trespassing.

It's 6:30pm now. The next blog will have anything we do if I can awaken the siesta girl laying in bed.