Day 3: Sight seeing like it's our job!

Day 3 of our Barcelona adventure found us sight seeing like it was our job! We decided that since we’d been in Barcelona for a day and a half and still hadn’t seen much it was time to get ourselves in the tourist mindset and see some cool sights in Barcelona....the hope was to make it to the beach in the afternoon but sadly it didn’t happen; however, we did get to see lots of cool stuff that day so it all worked out in the end!

We started with some breakfast at our favorite little cafe place again and this time tried some pastries. (No croissants today!) No fear though, the pastries were just as awesome. :) With full stomachs we headed to the metro for our first stop the Montjuic area. Our mission in this area was to see 3 things, the Magic fountain show which is suppose to be every 1/2 hour Thursday to Sunday during the day, the Olympic area and this place called Pablo Esponyol. We got off the metro and headed towards the fountain which sits in front of one of the art museums. But much to our (ok really my) dismay the fountain was closed for repairs so no Magic Fountain show for us! (I was really disappointed by this!) Instead we climbed up all the stairs to get to the top of the museum and got an amazing view of Barcelona (Ok, so we didn’t climb all the stairs, they did have escalators in some parts that we took advantage of!)

The art museum, we went all the way to the top of those stairs!

And this was the view we had at the top.

So after checking out the view we wandered over to the Olympic area. It was really awesome to be in a place where they had the Olympics. Interesting side note, during all my visits to see Joe we’ve been in several places where they’ve had the Olympics or will be having them, London, Munich, Barcelona and Rome. Pretty cool in my opinion! Joe and I aren’t too sure how London is going to handle having the Olympics though, they’re so paranoid about EVERYTHING! So after enjoying the view, seeing the sights and getting a good look at the Torre de Calatrava (A communication tower designed by Santiago Calatrava) we headed over to the Pablo Esponyol. We didn’t actually go in because it didn’t seem to be worth the money and time (It’s suppose to be a place where there’s mini versions of the cities in Spain) so we kept moving on to our next adventures!

Olympic monument

Olympic Ring

Next up the Passeig de Gracia. This street has all kinds of designer shops which unfortunately because it was Sunday were closed but there’s two main attractions on this road including the Manzana de la Discordia or “Block of Discord” and the Casa Mila. The Manzana de la Discordia has three different houses designed by three different architects the Casa Lleó-Morera, degisned by Lluís Doménech i Montaner, the Casa Amatller, designed by Josep Puig i Cadafalch, and the Casa Batlló designed by Antoni Gaudí. My favorite was the Casa Batlló. We actually got to see a lot of architecture done by Gaudí and I must admit that ever though some people say his work is in fact gaudy, I actually really liked it. I think his designs are very interesting and I think Joe used a good word to describe them by saying they’re organic. The houses were a very cool part of the street.

Casa Amatller

Casa Batlló

After that we walked a little farther up to see another Gaudí work. The Casa Mila. This building looks like it has ocean waves crashing along the sides of it, which is really cool. Again, since I enjoyed his work I really appreciated this building though maybe some of you won’t agree.

Casa Mila

The final Gaudí stop was the famous Sagrada Familia. This building was started by Gaudí in 1882 and is still not done! The book that we had describes it as looking like a drippy sand castle and I’d say that’s pretty accurate. It was really a beautiful building in its own interesting ways. We didn’t actually go into the building and I later over heard some girls at the beach say that a good bit of it was closed because of the continuing construction but we got a good view of it and were able to walk around and see most of the outside.

Sagrada Familia

Sagrada Familia

Our final stop for the afternoon was the St. Paul hospital. This is a very old hospital that I read had cool architecture so we decided to check it out. It was very beautiful and a cool thing to see.

St. Paul Hospital

We headed back to the hotel for a bit before adventuring out again in the evening. (Just when you thought we’d already done enough there’s still more!!!!) Our plan for the evening didn’t work out exactly as we hoped. We wanted to ride the sky cars over to the mountain and see the view of the city but they were closed due to the wind. Instead we happened upon the Tony Hawk and Friends skateboard event happening on the beach and watched for a few minutes. We then headed back to Las Ramblas area in search of some dinner.

Skating

As we walked along we noticed people getting ready for a big sailboat competition. I took a picture of the USA boat. The competition wasn’t starting until the 21st which was the day we were leaving so we didn’t get to see any of it but it was fun to see them getting ready.

Go USA!!!!!

We also saw the Monument a Colom which is the Columbus monument. It was pretty cool and I’m guessing he’s pointing to America. We also saw the Barcelona Cathedral which is very beautiful but like most of the things we saw on this trip under construction so the scaffolding was in the way. They did have some flamenco dancers outside the church which was fun to see. We wandered around the shops and I finally found a hat! YAY! (This would prove to be one of the best purchases from the trip since I used it almost every day for the rest of our travels) We grabbed a croissant for me because I was starving and kept searching for a good restaurant to have dinner.

Monument a Colom

We finally happened upon this tiny restaurant tucked way back on a little narrow street called Melicde Gothic. It was delicious. We noticed that while we were there the restaurant wasn’t very busy. That’s because in Spain people eat dinner around 9 or 10pm! That’s what you get for taking 3 hour siestas in the middle of the day! When we left around 9pm the restaurant was packed. Eating so late doesn’t work out so well for me since I typically need to eat every few hours, so I would have a hard time with that on a long term basis I think but we did manage to enjoy some good food in Barcelona! :) We got some ice cream for dessert and headed back to the hotel! It was an extremely busy day but lots of fun. It was great to see so many of the sights and enjoy