We had breakfast at a little patisserie on Las Ramblas, the main thoroughfare for tourists. It's a lot like Harvard Square with street performers plus some tchotki stalls. The one thing everyone told us was to watch out for pickpockets. While Barcelona is safe (for a big city of 3m people), thieves apparently prey on naive tourists on Las Ramblas. Fortunately, we had no incidents.
The patisserie was excellent, and it was just one of many in the city. I have to agree with others in saying that California doesn't have anything to compare. Which is a shame since the apple pastry and pain au chocolat were amazing!
We finally saw the Barcelona Cathedral, already breaking my vow of not visiting another church. This was a large one again but different in style. In the cloister there were 13 swans, emblematic of the guardians of the patron saint of the church.
We came out in faint drizzle, but fortunately it didn't develop into anything worse. The weather has been cold and dry for the most part. I'm bundled up in 3 or 4 layers with hat and gloves on. Sudha says I look like a Gaudi work of art, bulging bulbuously! I can't understand how people here walk around without a hat or gloves -- it's been hovering around 40F. I'm glad I brought a thermal layer.
You can say today was El Dia de Güell (The Day of Güell). Güell was a rich count who commissioned work by Gaudi. His house, the Palau Güell, was just down the street from our hotel. Most of it was closed for renovation so we couldn't see the funky chimneys. They are very colorful and look like ceramic experiments out of a journeyman's kiln. Many of them are derived off of objects in nature.
Afterwards we headed up to Park Güell. We took our first subway ride. In retrospect, we should have taken it more. It was very effective, with clearly marked times to the next train (and usually marked in minutes). Again, California falls far behind when it comes to public transportation. You can see one metro train zooming away.
To get to the park, we had to climb up a large hill (with a few escalators in stretches), awarded with panaromic views of the city. It would have been excellent if it were sunny... The park featured more works by Gaudi and included the museum of his house. I've included a neat chair of his design here. You can also get a good idea of his ceramic style in the picture of me with a Gaudi lizard.
Since we didn't expect a real dinner, we had a fancy lunch, mingling with the businessmen and rich housewives that were shopping on the Barcelona equivalent of Fifth Avenue. We went Italian this time. We had an excellent
Margherita pizza. The house wine I had was a spectacular Catalonian red. Too bad it's hard to bring back bottles of wine nowadays...
Booking seats on the night train was something of a fiasco. We tried to book tickets at the metro stations a couple of times, but the system wouldn't let them do it. Actually, the second time we were told, "This is Europe, this is Spain.... the land of Dali, it's very surreal that we can't do this." Anyway, so we fell victim to Sudha's paranoia and got to the station 3.5 hours early. We couldn't actually book until an hour beforehand, but maybe it's a good thing since the train is full. I'm succumbing to fatigue here, so I'll sign off. Until Granada...
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