Barcelona - episode 3

... to get to the beach we wandered through typical narrow streets (photo below) in old part of the city called Barceloneta

It wasn't a very long walk and before long we got to the other side of Barceloneta and then across a very wide street onto the sand. This fabulous building sits on the point between the harbour and the beach dwarfing some would be surfers if only the surf would arrive.

What a wonderful beach - long with a good decent width of sand between the road and the sea and not many people on it. We wandered along in no hurry to get to the end. It was hard to believe that over the road lies the great metropolis of Barcelona. I'm certain that it will be very different in the summer and that probably it is one vast stretch of people both in and out of the water. Here's some of what we saw

  More would be surfers. There were many more people sitting on surfboards, on a very flat sea, than  there were on the beach

   

More people sitting about. These chairs are built onto the sand. Wonder if there's a queue for them in the summer

    and  then for those for whom the need to 'workout' is too much there's the seaside mini-gym  

   

eventually looked up and away from the water this is what we saw ahead of us.

We did get up close to  the whale thing, we never did decide what it represents nor did we find any info about it. It's made from copper mesh (I think) and looks much better from a distance than up-close.

We were totally happy ambling along enjoying where we were and the beautiful day when we suddenly realised, duh, that we were in fact walking beside THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA woop woop yahoooooo - what else was there to do but go and put our feet into it. A young lady coming along the beach obligingly agreed to take the photo so in we went - she took more than1 and more than the 2 we thought she'd taken - I reckon she did a perfect job.

    here we are waiting ...

    

    .... and here we are in the Medeterranean Sea for the 1st time EVER. Well, up to our ankles,   anyway

    

 'one more photo' the young lady said so we stayed, unaware of the bigger wavelet ( is there such a word) coming up behind us.

  

and now we are up to our knees in The Mediterranean Sea. ha, what fun!

 It was fun and the 3 of us were laughing and laughing, just quietly I think she was very happy to have got the last picture. When I got my camera and  said thanks to the young lady she told us that she doesn't understand Spanish because she's German and that her parents were, right at that time, enjoying a great holiday in good ol' NZ. We had a laugh about that - what were the chances, eh!

For those of you wondering why 'only up to our knees' I tell you that it has to be a much hotter day before I get my togs on and get all wet. 19/6/2010 was THE EXCEPTION

We eventually got to the end of the beach and I just had to take one more photo

  I don't have any idea how long we spent strolling along here but as you can see, by the time I took this photo the daylight was on its way out.

We had arranged to meet Sumir, Sergio's friend who we meet in Zaragoza, later in the evening so after our wander along the beach we found our way to the metro and back to the apartment, just love the metro, because Barry had to get some work done and I was feeling the lack of sleep the previous night. Barry worked while I dozed on the couch. Such arrangements must be enjoyed when the opportunity arises. Work done by Barry and renewing doze had by me we set off to find the bar where we'd find Sumil. Not so easy this time but with the help of a few text messages back and forth got to the right place and had a really nice time with Sumil. I can't remember exactly what the muddle up was but we ended up at the wrong end of the street waiting at a 'restautant' which has the same name as the bar which Sumil had told us to,go to. We thought we'd got something wrong because we were definitely at a restaurant and not a bar. We must have looked a bit odd walking around in circles looking at street signs and then peering into places but in the end we got to the right place, thanks to cell phones. Unfortunately for us, maybe fortunately for Sumil, he had another thing to go to so he went off to that after we'd had a beer and walked around the little streets while he pointed out various places of interest. Another totally enjoyable couple of hours thanks to Sumil's  hospitality and generosity. 

We were in part of the old town and therefore 'tourist city' so we headed back to the area where our apartment was so we could eat for local prices rather than tourist prices. Then home to bed.

For the unbelievers - here he is - working