This day included the highlight of the trip for Jason...and it's nothing against the rest of beautiful Barcelona...it's how wonderful this other place was. Stay tuned.
First things first, after breakfast, we walked up 'our' street to a bus stop. We hopped on a bus to take us on a 30 minute or so journey to Park Güell, another of Gaudí's masterpieces. Parts of the park are free to access, but they have "had" to start charging for access to other parts of the park. We decided not to pre-pay for access and just see if we felt like we had to see more of it once we were there.
It was another beautiful sunny morning and we wandered into the free parts, first stumbling upon what the kids called, "The world's smallest palm tree":
There was all sorts of stone work and vegetation creating little alcoves here and there:
One of the next things we hit was a playground. It was geared for much younger kids and Easton was like, "I know what I'll do so I don't feel stupid: I'll push my little sister on the swings." It was a win-win.
We walked along various paths and wound our way around much of the large park.
Looking up to this cactus, do you see what we saw?
Look closer: it's the Denver Broncos logo!
Except it said "Gallant Steeds". I have gathered that I believe it is in reference to a Russian football (soccer) club.
More (much more) of the park:
There's Mount Tibidabo again:
One of the last things we did was find our way over to these 3 stone crosses.
It was dangerous up there. Seriously, wouldn't be like that in the States...you'd have warning signs and a rail...but here, you just have to be smart enough to know it's dangerous and to be careful.
We opted against paying to see some of the more famous Gaudí works like the lizard or the fancy wall.
Instead we left the park in search of a restaurant we were determined to try. On our way down from the park, we came upon another of these human statues. Check out how this dude is balancing.
Because J and I had stopped to (try to) refer to the maps on our phones, we gave the kids a little change for the guy. And when you pay, you're 'allowed' to take pictures:
They had some other (better) human statues along La Rambla but we never paid those guys so I didn't snap my own pics but we had seen this cowboy guy and this gargoyle guy.
Eventually we made it to the tiny but oh-so-worth-it Quinoa Bar Vegetarià. Seriously tiny. There were two tables and a small bar with stools.
But the food was outstanding. I had an amazing amazing quiche.
Jason got "the best veggie burger he'd ever had" (it was good, even if I was offended because I make homemade veggie burgers too).
The kids shared some hummus and we got some fresh juice/smoothies. The boys downed this in about 4 seconds flat. No joke:
Jason had this adorable beer:
It was just one guy there cooking and waiting on the customers. He did such a good job with presentation and it was just so personable. Jason wanted to get a dessert and I was like, "Eew, vegan dessert?!" but oh my gosh. So delicious.
We befriended a group of about 6 college girls from California at the (only) other table who were studying abroad in Madrid. They were very complimentary of our children. Gotta love that. Even if they did have foul mouths and talk about things that made me embarrassed to have ever been a 20 year old girl myself. ;)
After our delicious I-would-go-back-to-Barcelona-just-to-eat-there lunch, we headed back down towards the coast. We were planning to surprise the kids with a ride on the Montjuïc Cable Car. "Cable car" to me is what is in San Fran. I would call what we did more of a gondola. That's what they're called in Colorado mountain towns. But not, obviously, like a gondola in Venice. English is hard. ;)
Anyway, we walked down towards there, Autumn saw this on the way and she wanted to stick her head in it. Um, she's not quite tall enough. ;)
From up in the tower:
The beach with crazy stand-up paddle boarders and surfers (crazy because of the chilly temps):
The W Hotel:
Barceloneta Beach:
Port Vell:
Columbus again.
We survived the journey to Montjuïc.
A lovely Dutch couple who rode over in the cable car with us offered to snap this. On our journey, I was trying my darndest to figure out where they were from. I was like, "It sort of sounds German but it's not..." so I just had to ask "What language are you speaking?!?!" But, they were friendly.
We didn't do much up there on the mount.
I wanted to see the Magic Fountains of Montjuïc while we were up there, but they do these shows with lights and music at night so we weren't going to see it just yet. Well, interestingly enough, when grabbing that link there for the Font Magica, I learned that it wouldn't have been running when we were there anyway. So, we walked just walked back down the mountain. Along the way, we found "Barcelona Blitz" a black cat that looks just like our Blitz we had to put down a few years ago. He even had a little notch in his ear like our scrappy kitty did.
Some strange bunker thing built into the mountain:
Interesting art as we made our way to the Metro:
And we made it to the train:
We went back to our flat and watched some more Disney channel. If the vegetarian restaurant above was the highlight of the trip for J, just sitting all together on Autumn's couch/bed relaxing and watching Disney Channel together may have been the highlight of mine. Here we're watching Lion King:
Our new family favorite became "Dog with a Blog". We watch it at home now when we can.
We decided we'd head out for dinner that night. We were tempted to go back to the Quinoa Bar but were afraid of not being able to get a seat so instead we picked a place online in a mall a bit of a walk away. It was near the Torre Agbar.
Pink sunset!
The restaurant we had headed there for wasn't open. Grrrr. We didn't find anything we really wanted in the food court area and eventually headed to some random place with tapas, sangria, and veggie paella.
That's my sangria, more patatas bravas, and some spinach croquettes this time.
Jason ordered a vegan paella. I mean...when in Spain, right? Took forever. We all had our food and poor Jason was just sitting there. Paella wasn't cheap either so eventually he was like, "I hope they forgot and I'll just eat back at the flat." Well, as the rest of us were wrapping up, his paella finally came out. He ate it, but was kind of bummed about it at that point:
Autumn got a little nauseous and I had to take her outside. She's looking in at the guys here:
Miraculous recovery!
One highlight of this outing was the Disney Store. We love the Disney Store but there's not one in Berlin. We checked it out for a bit:
Interestingly, this was at C&A, not the Disney Store. We do have C&A in Berlin and Jason had been looking for a coat on clearance so we had to check Barcelona's stock too.
The "bullet building" had some nifty nighttime light displays and then we walked 'home':
A few random bits from the day:
