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| random park sculpture |
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| ancient Barcelona, Roman ruins |
moist…nice for wandering
Steps – 23,101 (15/9Km)
Somehow, I don’t wake up in the
middle of the night like I do at home - WHY? It’s not like I’m not drinking and
most days visit naptown, so what gives? I need to figure it out, so I can make
it happen at home.
Anyway…after a solid lie-in, we
headed downstairs for a hotel breakfast. This hotel and our last Barcelona
hotel (same chain) told us later rather than earlier
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| where to next?? |
was better…we go when it’s convenient for us, depending on our plans and until today didn’t notice a difference in business…until today…it presented no real problem, but was PACKED! This hotel and the first one we stayed in in Barcelona are Ibis Styles hotels, we’ve stayed at them before and know what they’re like…basic, nothing fancy, include breakfast (basic) and include a welcome drink.
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| music venue |
Everything is exactly as advertised and as expected, except for the AC. When we arrived it seemed like our room hadn’t been occupied for a while as it was
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| beer tasting |
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| afternoon sangria |
HOT! Hotels here require the power to be turned on in the room with your room card…actually any card will do…like an old Starbucks card. They intend for you to use your room key, so that when you are gone the power goes, because you need your key, I’m normally fine with this approach…not this time, good thing I still had my ship key card! It took a loooong time for the room to cool off and since then it’s been OK, not
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| fruity beer to start |
great, but fine. We’ve stayed in European hotels that ‘claim’ to have AC, but it’s minimal…this is
rare, but it happens. Most of the time the AC has to be turned down or off it’s so good. That was a looooong story about AC, but it’s important!
The day’s activity was shopping…Chris’
shopping at the Barcelona football club store. Our goal was to find the main
store (not at their stadium) which was about 20 minutes from the hotel, but it
took us longer once we stopped to check this monument out and that interesting
thing.
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| old beer boiler in a playground |
We took a detour through a park,
found Greek columns to look at, admired Barcelona’s cathedral, people watched,
stepped over something awful spilled (or barffed) on some stairs and finally
bought Chris a new shirt! Post-retail-therapy we wandered through the Santa
Catalina market…I love a market even though I never buy anything…I don’t think
I need any fresh fish…I marveled at the cheese and the low process compared to
our Canadian prices.
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| Sagrada Familia - again |
Behind the market was a tiny bar with 4 tables, and
random dogs milling about where we had to sit for a sangria. We’ve had our fair share of sangria in Spain this trip, they are all similar, but different…never super boozy which is good.
We headed back to the hotel for a
quick refresh before the Estrella Damm brewery tour. It wasn’t actually a
brewery tour because the actual brewing has been moved out of town – this was more
of a history of the brewery and tasting. It was super interesting and at the
end we tasted 5 beers – fun.
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| looking at the "grasshopper" |
Although it was only 6:30 at this point, but we found
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| Frankfurter |
a small place (this time 5 tables) for a “Frankfurt” and pedron peppers. We weren’t exactly sure what the Frankfurt would be like, but it was a hot dog…a very nice hot dog, but a hot dog. This is the first place we couldn’t speak English to the server. We managed, but despite trying in other places we’ve never really HAD to speak Spanish.
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| street art |
We finished the night at the hotel bar for our welcome drink 3
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| history of beer kegs |
days later.
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