Day 8 - Barcelona

10.09.2024

A sleep in until 9am, and a call into the kids back home before a 10am booking with the Fat Tyre bicycle tour group, for a 3 hr tour of some of Barcelona highlights. We met up and got allocated our bikes - me a child's bike 😂. We were in a group of 9 - another 2 Aussies from Kew, 3 New Zealanders and 2 Yanks. Our guide is Alvaro. It's a lovely warm day. Our first stop is the Cathedral of Barcelona.

Then we stop to see Carmela. This statue was meant to be a temporary exhibit, but it was such a hit with the neighbours that they started a petition asking the organisers and Barcelona city council to keep it there indefinitely. It's been there since 2016.

Then onto the beautiful ornate Palau de la Música Catalana.

To Gaudi's Segrada Familia Basilica- for which construction was commenced in 1884 and it is due for completion in 2026 - for the 100th anniversary for his death. It's going to be the biggest Cathedral in the world, and you could spend an hour or 2 just looking at the outside! We are booked for a tour of this on Thursday.

Other stops included an old disused bull fighting ring - bullfighting has been outlawed in Catalonia since 2010.

This very green fountain - Barcelona is experiencing a severe drought, so all of the fountains have been turned off.

The beach - which was made for the 1992 Olympics. They regularly have to dredge more sand to maintain it. Prior to that this area was a disused area of town and was a shanty town (homeless people). This statue on the beach references that. The America's Cup is currently being raced just off shore.

After the ride we sampled a couple of empanadas. Yum they were warm and full of cheese.

We headed home for a quick breather before going out for a 2pm lunch at Bar Del Pla - a recommendation of Jo and Anna's. It's about a 15 minute walk away and it didn't disappoint. We had croquettes, anchovies with tomato toast, meatballs with squid, suckling pig sandwich and patates bravas (potatoes), oh and a couple of glasses of wine.

And like the locals, we walked back home for a siesta 😂

Siesta over (2 hrs 🤭) it was time for a wake me up - Mojito.

Then a 45 min (3km) walk to another Jo recommended restaurant for tea - Gasterea. It was a long but pleasant walk

We arrived at about 7.30 to find it closed. The signage looked as if it had gone broke. That was a long walk for nothing 😂 and now how to decide where to eat? We'd decided we'd walked far enough away from our accommodation that we'd turn around and walk back and stop when we found something we liked the look of. There are hundreds of places to choose from, that's part of the problem. When we'd finally found one, we were turned away as we didn't have a booking. We ended up in Cafe de L'Arquitecte a modern Cafe and had a lovely tapas dinner and some cava (local champagne). We had ox tail croquettes, anchovies on Toast with smoked butter, Iberian Jamon (ham), salmon ceviche and Russian salad (fancy potato salad). The menus are all starting to look a bit the same!