Our tickets for Park Guëll were for 9:30 AM, so we left the hotel around 9, grabbed a pastry on the way to the metro station, went one stop north, and then walked the remaining ¾ of a mile or so to the nearest park entrance. We weren't planning to go out for the whole day yet, so we brought nothing with us; it was nice to be unencumbered, even though it wasn't (yet) hot out.
There's enough of a hill along the walking route that they have installed an escalator, which was an interesting twist. I remarked that we just don't see that many of those outdoors, but then recalled that there were a handful of them between the national art museum and Plaça d'Espanya.
We were hoping to beat the crowds by going early in the morning, and the short line at the gate was a promising indicator that we may have been successful.
The brick building is Casa Larrard, the former farmhouse residence of Count Guëll designed by Gaudí, that was converted into a school around the time the park opened.
The square also affords a nice view over the buildings at the park entrance, originally built as a porter's residence and/or guard house (now a gift shop and museum?).
We toured around the monumental area for a while in the bright morning sun. This is one of the highlights that I remember well from the first time I was here, many years ago.
There were already three or four musicians setting up for the day (or already playing) at various little plazas along the tree-covered pathways, adding some gentle music to the cacophony of birds greeting the day. The palm trees, in particular, are home to many parrots.
The area under the Nature Square is the Hypostyle, originally intended to accommodate a weekly market.
As usual, there wasn't a single cloud in the sky.
Miniature versions of this iconic trencadís reptile are available in the gift shop at every Gaudí attraction we've visited. In fact, it's also the example photo in the Wikipedia article about the mosaic tiling technique.
After the main attraction, we began a lap around the perimeter, up the hillside and over the viaducts.
The city views were splendid, and the masses of tourists had not yet made their way into the park.
As with everywhere else in Barcelona, it's possible to see Sagrada Familia from various lookouts on the hillside.
Also making an appearance: Tibidabo. This is the closest we'd get to it all week, and it still looked rather far away.
By the time we finished our circuit, the area around the bathrooms and gift shop at the main entrance was absolutely mobbed. It seems that our (relatively) early approach paid off.
We detoured through some more of the neighborhood on the walk back, in no rush to get back to the Lesseps metro station, just one stop up from the one by our hotel.
Several people had suggested it was worth visiting (or at least seeing) Casa Vicens, the first house that Gaudí built (his "first significant work", apparently). It happened to be only a block from our hotel, and we hadn't gone that way to see it yet, so we took the opportunity to do so.
Just in front of the hotel, we were amused to see this team of construction workers who were jackhammering out concrete tiles from the sidewalk... during red lights. The drivers were beyond confused.
Back at the hotel, we geared up for the day and then headed downtown, to the neighborhood colloquially know as El Born (officially in La Ribera).
To get there, we returned to the area where we'd started the bike tour, on Saturday, in the Gothic quarter, and detoured around the Barcelona cathedral. We finally went under the Pont del Bisbe that we passed last time we were here, on the bike tour. It's one of those attractions that lots of tourists take a photo in front of, but we didn't understand all of the excitement. After reading more about it, I understand it even less.
Despite being a similar (if slightly smaller and much calmer) concept to La Boqueria market, it turned out to be mostly the staples of local cuisine (meat, cheese, fish, and fruit), and didn't have the street food vendors that we (at least "I") was looking for.
If you need a lamb's head, though, they've got you covered.
Side note: I don't think I've ever seen so many oranges and fresh-squeezed orange juice, anywhere. Every little corner market has piles of fresh fruit, and many had a juicer like this one just inside the door. Maybe I haven't spent much time around the Mediterranean in the last decade, and this is common now? I could certainly get used to the ability to just get a cup of fresh OJ for about 2€, anywhere in the city.
With our next scheduled tour at 1:30, we didn't have much time to sit for a large lunch, so we shared a ham-and-cheese sandwich over coffee/tea at whatever cafe was next to the market (Vivari, a local chain).
See? Another fresh OJ juicer.
... but that was too quick, which left us 20 minutes or so until our appointment at the Picasso Museum; we opted to continue the tour of El Born a little bit, rather than sit around the coffee shop.
I briefly debated if we could fit a paella pan in our carry-on luggage, but my heart just wasn't in it.
Throughout the day, we often paused to admire the flora-covered balconies.
The neighborhood is a charming maze of shops and tree-lined boulevards, anchored by its namesake building, formerly a large market, currently a cultural center and/or museum that protects Roman/medieval ruins from the elements.
The former market sits at the end of Passeig del Born, just outside the Citadel Park (see Day 1).
We had just enough time to do a lap around the walkway and ingest some of the curatorial material before heading back up the street a few blocks to find the museum.
It's possible to go down and walk among the stone ruins, but only as part of a ticketed/guided tour.
Around 1:30 PM, we legged it a few blocks back into the neighborhood to find the entrance to the Picasso Museum.
The museum is a showcase of his life's work, arranged chronologically, starting when he was under 10 years old.
There was a detour through a few rooms showing his work in ceramic. I mostly liked the plates with the faces on them ;-)
His famous work is apparently elsewhere, in other museums, as there's about a 40 year gap in the timeline.
Some of the popular pieces from this museum were temporarily moved, for an upcoming joint exhibit on Picasso and Miró, starting next week.
The building itself could've been its own attraction, in my humble opinion.
Both the guidebook and our bike tour guide (Day 1) had recommended a few places within a block or two of the museum, so we simply had to sample their offerings.
First up, we enjoyed a glass of cava, a glass of their house-made xampanyet (great loophole to avoid the ire of the French?) and a chorizo/potato omelet tapa at El Xampanyet. The setting might be described as "hectic counter service in a busy tapas restaurant", of which Sabrina was not a huge fan. The snack was delicious, though.
Resuming our walking tour, we next stopped to the admire the monument at Fossar de les Moreres, a war memorial from the war of Spanish succession in 1714.
Around the other side of that giant church was yet another place (El Chigre, "the winch"?) that was recommended by both Rick Steves and our bike tour guide, and we happened to need a brief respite from the sun to do some quick planning, so we stopped for a beer and a bacon-wrapped date stuffed with cheese. There were more words on the menu that probably described the additional things in this photo, but I'd stopped reading by then and already ordered it.
(We decided to take a look at El Raval (neighborhood) later, after finishing the walk in El Born.)
I had just managed to squeeze in the date/beer order before their kitchen closed for a few hours between lunch and dinner. While I was finishing the beer, an electric-assisted delivery... cargo tricycle? pulled up to drop off some fresh ingredients (for the dinner menu, presumably).
Coincidentally, there was also a Caganer store in that same area, so I was able to persuade Sabrina that we needed one of these charming defecators as a souvenir.
That church that we'd just done a lap around is the magnificent Basilica de Santa Maria Del Mar. It wasn't expensive to go in and take a look around, but we were already at quota for basilicas, so we passed on that opportunity.
We finished our tour with a shortcut through the Pla de Palau over to the waterfront, back at the edge of Barceloneta.
Passing the aquarium, we paused for a few minutes on a pier-side bench to enjoy the ocean breeze. The view is of the inside of a working port, so there isn't much to admire aside from the horde of sailboats adjacent to Las Ramblas Del Mar (an extension to the famous boulevard built out into the harbor to connect Las Rambles with the waterfront).
Just past Las Ramblas, we strayed into El Raval for a few blocks. The guidebook describes is as "up-and-coming", but it didn't seem to have much to offer, at least at face value. Our observations were more in line with what's in Wikipedia article...
Leaving that neighborhood, we found ourselves grazing the back side of La Boqueria, so we popped in for a coconut/blackberry zumo and an empanada (pollo picante).
I was under the impression that sea urchin is expensive, perhaps because of the amount of labor required to process them? These looked quite affordable, but that's the extent of my knowledge about them.
We weren't especially interested in fighting the crowds on Las Ramblas again, especially as it was a very busy night; later, it occurred to us that tomorrow is a national holiday (essentially Columbus Day), so many/most people had the day off from work/school. (Yet it turns out that the holiday isn't really observed in any meaningful way in Catalunya, perhaps luckily for us—we've been caught unaware on national holidays in other countries, and it can be difficult to travel/eat/anything.)
Instead, we cut over to the bottom of Avinguda del Portal de l'Àngel, a popular shopping street, and followed that up to Plaça de Catalunya, where we hopped on the metro back to the hotel.
We've seen plenty of McDonald's locations, a few Burger Kings, definitely a KFC or two, and I think even a Popeyes, but this was the only Dunkin we saw, underground in a metro station. Google Maps suggests there are two more of them in the city: one in the middle of La Rambla, and one in the shopping mall out by the aquarium. It's mind-boggling that anyone would want this, in a city full of coffee shops.
For dinner tonight, we again debated our options but ultimately returned to the recommendation list from the bike tour guy (how else does one choose from literally thousands of restaurants?); just after 8 PM, we returned to the neighborhood where we had paella/risotto last night, to a place just around the block called El Glop ("The Sip").
Thankfully, we just beat the 9 PM rush again, and were able to get a table without a reservation. We had come in just behind an Italian couple (wearing Harley-Davidson shirts), and managed to also get Italian menus, which confused us for a minute.
We split another paella, prefaced with a selection of cured meat offerings and more pa amb tomàquet.
We ended up with some leftovers, which works out well because we need something to eat tomorrow before heading back to the airport.
Check-out is at 11 AM, but we will find something to do after that for an hour or two, before beginning our journey to home. Our flight isn't until 3 PM, so we need to head to the metro station some time around 12:30. It might be nice to sleep in a bit, as we're going to have a long day tomorrow.
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