Day 4 - Oct 21, 2017 Last updated: 11/25/17 12:00pm PT
Our first full day in Barcelona. Chrissy came in to Barcelona this morning to show us some of her favorite places. We walked La Rambla, the main tourist street. We stopped in some little place for churros y chocolate. Churros are basically fried dough, and you dip it in melted chocolate. It was not as good as I’d hoped. I was expecting the chocolate to be thicker.
La Boqueria, a farmer’s (tourist) market.
We walked to the marina and Barceloneta. Along the marina was a giant bin filled with orange balls, and they were letting people jump into the ball pool. Chrissy, being young and adventurous, took a dive. I’m still not sure what the purpose was. They didn’t charge or give away any money.
Near the end of the marina was a cable car over the city. At the end of the first cable car, we took a different cable car up to Montjuïc.
After lunch we were back on La Rambla where we went to ARTiSA for gelato. We ate it in Plaça Reial.
The Romans were everywhere. Here are some old Roman columns that still stand. These pillars are what is left of the Roman Temple of Augustus.
We were headed to the ‘Block of Discord’, early 1900’s houses in the modernista style, when we ran into the start of a protest. The Catalan region of Spain has been trying to become an independent nation. They even declared independence, but no other country recognized them, so that failed. Today the Spanish government declared direct rule over the previously autonomous region, so there was an evening protest.
First rule of travel, if you see a crowd of protesters gathering, walk the other way. We didn’t do that (at first). We walked into the crowd. Since the protest was just beginning, we thought we’d be able to get through to see the houses. The crowd grew quickly, and although it was peaceful, we didn’t want to be stuck in the middle of their independence movement. So we ducked down into the subway and left. The TV news that night said 450,000 people gathered, although it wasn’t that crowded when we were there.
Dinner was at La Fonda Paisa for some very good Colombian food. I had pork milanesa, Denise had grilled pork. It was a very filling meal with soup, salad, rice, and plantains. We also ordered some empanadas as an appetizer which were very good.