Barcelona Part 3

Our last two days in Barcelona.

Monday:
We were done with the tourist bus now. Not sure how I feel about it overall, it has good and bad aspects I suppose. Now we had a two day unlimited pass on the public transportation. Monday morning we set out to see Park Guell. The journey included a walk to a metro station, the underground train, several outdoor escalators, and enough uphill walking to suit me for a long time.

During our trip we saw several street performers all over. The most memorable one so far came on the train that morning. There was a guy walking around on the train playing a melodica, a wind piano if you please. It looks like a horn with piano keys on it. Consistent readers of our blog might remember that our kids are not that tolerant of things they do not like. This was another case. The melodica was loud and in a confined space. David was just griping and at one point both kids covered their ears right in front of this guy. Our conversation about this situation eventually led us to reminding the kids that this guy is trying to make money by getting "tips" for playing. Not missing a beat, David said "I got a tip for him, don't play that thing on the train". After the song was finished the guy went up and down the train car person to person with his hand out, we did not contribute, David already gave him his tip.

After getting off of the metro it was a short walk to get to another street that took you up the hill to the park. As you turned the corner we say several escalators lined up, this is my kind of hiking. After the first wave of escalators we came to this road above........uummmm, where are the escalators? If this is not steep enough for escalators then how about a moving sidewalk? Here we go up the hill. Eventually it did become steep enough for another batch of those great electric powered stairs, they could not have come at a better time. 

We eventually got to this view. Park Guell is on a large hill and has public areas like this as well as a Gaudi designed facility with monuments and other views that you have to pay for to get. We saw it in the distance, but at this point we were done with views. Yesterday at the amusement park, the day before at the fort, and now this. We made our way down the hill and decided to spend some time shopping. The camera battery had also died after taking the above picture, so we held off on other tourist destinations for a while. For shopping we went back into the central part of the city at La Rambla. This is a very busy area with shops and restaurants. The kids are outgrowing everything and we needed to stock up for summer. Barcelona is supposed to be less expensive then Germany for clothing, so we gave it a shot.

Princess Katherine was wearing out quickly with all of the walking and amusement park stuff of the last few days. Neither kid really wanted to shop, but they did okay. We came across a large fresh food market along the way. It was CRAZY nuts with people everywhere. The only thing we bought was a fresh fruit smoothie. Some of the booths were complete madness and I am not sure how they can tell what is happening or who wants what, and how much to pay. It got to the point that we could not move around so we got the heck out of there. 

We spent a long while shopping and we found a few things for the kids. We could not get too much since we were already packed pretty tightly for the airplane. Late in the afternoon we stopped off at the apartment to drop off our loot and head back out. This time we headed towards a regular park area, not on a hill, just an open green area. It was right next to the Arc de Triomf (their spelling) in Barcelona. Who knew Barcelona had an Arc de Triomf?

This was a very nice area with wide open spaces. There were some kids showing off their roller blade skills, musicians, and other street performers.

The building behind the trees is the Palace of Justice.

There were a couple of guys releasing large quantities of bubbles and our kids were running all over trying to pop them. Below you can see some crowds watching some of the dancers performing. We did not take their picture, because Cindy thinks you should pay them if you do.

These are some images after we made it to Ciutadella Park. Above is the Cascada Monumental.

Next we came across this little lake in the middle of the park. The kids really wanted to get on the row boat. Once I got on, I sat in the middle and did not move from that spot. No way was I going in to this water. The kids really wanted to row, so they had to sit on my lap, the rows were attached and could not be moved.

It was pretty fun navigating around the water on a nice evening.

Our planning for the late afternoon at the park was partly to put us close to a restaurant in this area. It was one that was suggested to us by a friend. We walked to it only to find it closed. It is unclear if it was closed for good or just for this day. A lot of restaurants are closed on Monday, but the website and Google maps both showed that is was open. It was already past 8:30 pm, so I don't think that we were too early. We settled on another restaurant close by. On the menu outside they showed to have chicken nuggets, that is what brought us in, for the kids. It turns out they did not, nor did they have about three other things that we tried to order. It was our first really bad dinner of the trip. We did get to sit outside in a open courtyard, and the weather was great, so not a total loss.

Tuesday:
We had a charged camera battery and one full day left in Barcelona. Our first stop is the famous La Sagrada Familia church designed by Antoni Gaudi. Barcelona is very proud of everything Gaudi. Most of the landmark tourist attractions have something to do with Gaudi. This church is the most gaudy of the Gaudi works in my opinion. We debated if the origin of the word gaudy came from his style. This church began construction in 1882 and it is still being built today. It has never been finished.

We made sure to get a picture with the kids in case they ever come back here, and if it is actually completed. Above is the older side, so I am not sure how much it will change. 

Below is the newer side. 

We did not go inside. We looked the night before at pictures and decided it was not worth the cost compared to all of the other amazing places that we have seen. This was not my favorite place, I think it is just too overdone. This is from someone who really likes the Gothic style architecture. 

This is a closeup of the carvings above the entrance.

After that we headed back to the main part of town again with plans for another suggested restaurant. Once again my planning failed as this restaurant did not open until 1pm, it was 11:45. We decided to head towards the beach. On the way us Americans, living in Germany, stopped at a restaurant in Barcelona, that served Turkish food. It was a good inexpensive quick lunch so we could head to the beach.

I had packed the kids swim suits just in case, there were no plans to swim or go to the beach. Today the sun was out and it was only about 72 degrees. For me, perfect beach weather.

We found a cheap blanket to sit on, some sunscreen, and even a bucket with tools for playing in the sand. Even a little after noon the beach was really crowded. We found a patch of sand pretty far away from the water. The closer you got the more people were there and it became more rocky. We found a nice patch with good sand. 

There were a ton of street vendors, I guess beach vendors, going around selling items. Several of them were pushing mojitos. They were carrying their bottle of rum around. Cindy and I broke down the sales strategy, we are convinced they never actually use any of the run. People see the bottle and assume the drinks are strong, or actually have alcohol in them. Maybe the consumer thinks they are going to pour after they ask for one, them the guy tells them it is already in there. Well, we never found out for sure as we did not partake and never really saw them sell one. 

There were others selling thin blankets, hair braids, messages, water and beer in a plastic sack claiming to be cold. We really got tired of telling these people no over and over again. 

We had to do the buried alive thing with at least one of the kids. Katherine had fun and got really dirty.

David was very serious about a sand castle. He started right away upon arrival and worked on it until we left. The kids were filling up the bucket with water and wetting the sand for building purposes.

We decided that Katherine is a beach girl. More than any of the rest of us she was in her element. She helped David with the sand castle but she played a lot too. She was in and out of the water, even though it was really cold. She never got completely in but got a lot deeper than any of us. When I put my feet in I got pins and needles up my leg it was still so cold. She got cold too, but loved it.

My sweet girl. I loved the colors in this pic with Katherine in her element.

Here is the completed sand castle. I had to leave the girls in the picture for a blog topic. The girls, while scantily clad, were still much more dressed than many others. I definitely saw much more than I was expecting to when the day started. The mojito guys would linger over certain individuals tanning on the beach, if you know what I mean. David still doesn't care or notice, he was too focused on his sand castle. Katherine only noticed the little German boys running around with no clothes on. This must be a German thing to let your kids run around buck naked. After seeing the beach and thinking back over the past few days we decided that, more than any other place so far, Barcelona is made up of mostly very young and skinny kids.

David really liked this angle of the castle. We hung around most of the afternoon and had a nice relaxing day. As we were leaving another English speaking family was arriving. We gave them our blanket and the kids showed their little boy the castle and gave him the building tools for him to use. They got a kick out of giving that stuff away to let someone else use.

We had big plans for dinner on our last night. We wanted to go get cleaned up at the apartment first. Up until this point we had done really well at navigating the mass transit system in Barcelona. In fact we were pretty impressed with it. It was very clear how to get around and the metro trains would arrive every three minutes. This journey started with a pretty long walk back to the metro station. Once there were had to get on for a few stops and transfer to another metro line to get us close to the apartment. We got off at the first stop and started to walk to make the transfer. This turned out to be a long walk too. A couple in front of us was doing their best to block the entire walkway. The lady kept stopping and starting, walking wide then back close to her husband. I finally had enough, the next time she walked wide I tried to get past them. She actually tried to stop me from passing her, them started griping at me in some language. Cindy started giving her the business as I kept walking. We all managed to get past them and continued on to our transfer train. As we arrived at the track it was clear something was wrong. People were everywhere and there was no place to go. This metro line had a problem and it did not look promising. We came up above ground to make a plan B. It was 1.5 miles back to our apartment and everyone needed a restroom. After finding one we started to just walk, and after a pretty good distance we ended up at the station that we had just walked from to get to the other metro line. Frustrated and tired we just got back on that train since it took us pretty close to the apartment. Much further than the other train would have been, but closer than the walk we had left at this point. 90 minutes later we finally made it back to our apartment. With the prospect of showers, packing, and getting up at 4:30 the next morning to catch our flight we were done. No going away dinner tonight. Cindy made a trip to the store for some dinner that we could prepare at the apartment, pack, and go to bed.

The early wake up and flight all went as planned. We were back home by 10am the next morning and Cindy was back at work.

Overall I was really happy with our trip to Barcelona. We had a few hits and a few misses with restaurants, but the weather was great. There was a lot of walking, but this was a little more relaxing than some of our previous trips. I am still amazed at the crowds that we saw every day. For travel in early April I was not expecting it to be that busy. I would not like to be here when it is hot and there are even more people. I think that we did good to come when we did.