Barcelona - episode 2

It's a beautiful day

I've started writing this between classes on a very beautiful winter morning. A frost lay on the ground and ice was on the cars which had spent the night outside and now the air is crisp and clean, the sky is blue and the sun is shining down on Azpeitia - I just love this kind of weather. This morning the teacher I work with in 2 classes every 2nd Wednesday morning told me that I do very well in her classes, she is very happy with me. It's a good boost to my confidence and it was very nice of her to tell me this, and of course, very nice to hear. It is indeed beautiful day!

Now - Barcelona. 

There is so much to say about our time there I could probably write pages and pages of stuff and then there's the hundreds of photos that I could post as well. However, I'll try to do quite a bit of weeding as I go. Is there such a thing as 'too many photos?"

After some deliberation and procrastination and browsing through all the photos, again, I've decided that I will do this as a day by day account. So here goes.

Day 1 - woke up  rather  late due to not getting to sleep until the early hours of the morning to a bright and sunny morning. After our breakfast of croissants and coffee/tea at a little cafe just around the corner from the apartment we set off to find Plaza de Cataluña and then wander down La Rambla. With the help of maps we found the plaza no problem at all and it was great to be wandering along taking in the sights, sounds and colours along the way. We felt very excited - our first foray into this exotic city and we hadn't got lost. 

La Rambla - can't say that we all that impressed with what we saw although we were mindful that we were well outside the tourist season so we reckoned there were a lot of things missing but, on the other hand there weren't masses of people either. Given that we'd been warned many times about  this area being rife with pick-pockets there were probably less of them as well. I have to say that we had no problems of this kind during our stay. For those that don't know, La Rambla is a wide street which has shops and what-not along both sides plus a wide pedestrian walk-way down the middle of it with stalls etc on either side and big trees along it as well. It is 1.2 kms long and runs from the plaza down to the harbour and the enormous Christopher Columbus Monument.  It's divided into sections, 3 I think - souvenier shops, florists then food and drink. We did certainly enjoy the walk.

   Plaza de Cataluña

   La Rambla, well, a little part of it.

The Boqueria Market is off to the side, part of the way down La Rambla, and we had a great time in there. It was AMAZING!!! Such a huge, incredible variety of food.  We bought a couple of apples and felt very 'local like' but then I gave into temptation and bought some caramelised nuts and paid top dollar, should that be euro, that's for freakin' sure. I didn't want to take them but, as the seller quite rightly pointed out, I'd asked to buy them. By 'pointing out' I mean he just kept shrugging his shoulders and flapping his hands about. Lesson learnt - be sure of the price BEFORE saying I'll buy. We made sure to enjoy every last crumb of them., laughing about being so foolish as we wandered down to the Christopher Columbus Monument and the harbour.

  

  The entrance to Boqueria Market - there were a lot of people in here.

    mushrooms

   many different kinds of nuts. This isn't where we bought the 'gold plated'ones

   

an impressive deli

    Shellfish, prawns and such like

  

    Cod comes in many different ways, shapes and sizes.

   so many varieties of meat, ham, salamis, chorizo etc 

    Dessert

    followed by sweet stuff - in any and every shape and taste too, I imagine.

    The,above photos so just a very small selection of the whole thing - it was well worth the visit.

   Christopher Columbus Monument standing in the middle of a very wide open area.

   the harbour with the gondolier - the ride we missed out on

we went under the monument to the tourist center and then, armed with info re tourist bus rides etc we ambled along the harbour to find somewhere to have lunch, conscious of the fact that anywhere here would cost us tourist prices. Around the further aide of the harbour we came to a string of eating places but they all have touts outside so every time we stopped to peruse the menu we got talked at by some guy telling us "go in, go in blah blah and blinky blah". we hate this so unfortunately for them the only affect they had on us was to move us along to the next place to,have the same thing happen again.

Finally we came to a place where the young women outside was very friendly and chatted rather than try to get us to go in. Barry had time to spot 'rare steak sandwich' on the menu so in we went. We also spotted this beside the entrance

Slowly we became aware that we were in fact in an Irish pub!!! It's named after the boat race 'Fastnet!' I think that Irish pubs  are like Mc Donald's - they're everywhere! I can't remember what I had to eat but I do remember that Barry's rare steak was anything but, more like overcooked schnitzel. It wasn't overpriced so we were happy about that.

Happy with food, and of course the compulsory lunchtime beer, in our stomachs off we went again. This time to find the beach ...