Epic Journey

Today we logged an epic trek through Barcelona.

We ate breakfast in the hotel (included with the room): bread, cheese, Spanish ham and sausage, fruit, yogurt, coffee. There were pastries but we didn't eat those.

We started out at Casa Milà, aka La Pedrera, and I think it's the Gaudi building we throughout we'd like best. It was a great introduction to the organic wildness that is Gaudi design, but the thing that we really loved wa the next stop on the tout Casa Batllò. The lettering on the doors of the apartments, the light wells with the blue tiles, the swooping wooden frames of doors, windows, and mirrors, and the roof with the crazy tiled chimneys and the dragon scale roof, all the bright colors, the ventilating arches...that was the big winner of the
day.

We'd originally planned to grab a bite at Mercat La Boqueria, but we weren't hungry yet. (The free breakfast at the hotel was pretty good.) So we decided to go to the Palau de Musica Catalana, where we really only wanted to poke our noses in to see the concert hall with its big, sun-like chandelier/skylight, but it turned out we had to take a tour to even get in there. So we bought tickets for the 3 pm tour and walked down to the Cathedral, where we looked at the crypt, cloisters, and choir stalls. It was interesting to see stairs down to a crypt right in the middle of the cathedral, and the stalls in the middle too, instead of off to the sides. The cloisters were charming, filled with geese and a fountain.

On our way out of the cathedral, we noticed the Mercat Santa Caterina, so we decided to stop in there and grab a bite of something to eat before our Palau de Musica tour. Santa Caterina is noted for its waving, colorful tile roofs. We ended up getting a bowl of mixed fruit (Macedonia) for 2.5 euros and a couple of tiny sausages for about 1 euro. (Lady who sold them to us thought we were crazy for just buying two.) We sat outside and munched on those before our Palau tour.

The art in the Palau de Musica is totally over the top. Makes Gaudi look like a guy who knew where to stop. The hall felt intimate and small, but it holds 2000 people on three levels, so it's bigger than it seems. It was probably our least favorite thing we did -- going to a concert there would have been more fun and a better use of time - but time is not something we have a lot of.

We walked down La Rambla to Palau Guell (which we had a hard time finding). It's one of Gaudi's earlier buildings, and you can really see the seeds of his later work, though the Palau is more serious, heavy, and dark than the later Casa Batllò and La Pedrera.

We walked back up La Rambla to La Boqueria and got some chorizo picante on a skewer, for 2 euros, which was really good, and then a huge dried peach for less than 1 euro. Between the two markets, and the 1.5 liter bottle of water we bought at the beginning of the day, we spent about 4.5 euros each on food.

Which is why we're going out right now to spoil ourselves with a prix fixe dinner. We'll see where we end up -- we have a plan and three fallbacks.