Today we got up quite early (for the holiday, at least) and headed out the door to go line up at Sagrada Familia.\u00a0 We kept with the walking theme and hoofed it out there.\u00a0 When we arrived there were only ten people in line (compared to nearly a thousand the day before).\u00a0 Since it was still an hour before opening time we walked on to a nearby caf\u00c3\u00a9 to sit out front, drink coffee, and keep an eye on the line.\u00a0 As we drank coffee I noticed a couple of nearly naked men sitting up on the balcony above us.\u00a0 Not sure what the deal was, but I guess that if my apartment had a balcony facing the Sagrada Familia I might get up naked every morning and go take it in.\u00a0 The coffee hit the spot, and we went back and still had only 20 or so people in front of us.\u00a0 We had about 45 minutes to kill, but the line was the perfect place to watch people arrive and check out the situation, and then head to the tail end.\u00a0 I was perfectly content to people watch the whole time until we could enter.<\/p>\n
Once it opened and we got to the front to pay for our tickets, we found out that may credit card didn\u2019t work for them.\u00a0 Kuniko\u2019s did, so we were in.\u00a0 Credit cards overseas are seriously a crapshoot.\u00a0 About 30% of the time my credit card doesn\u2019t work, so we have to pull out another.\u00a0 This happens to us so often it is now completely normal.<\/p>\n
Kuniko was thrilled to finally get in to see the cathedral.\u00a0 Inside was much more modern than I expected, and more colorful, too.\u00a0 They had tours of the interior but we went out on our own and explored.\u00a0 As usual I took lots of pictures, but the feeling of churches and cathedrals are especially hard to capture.\u00a0 We spent a long time looking through, did a little shopping, and finally sat in the pews for a bit to take a rest.<\/p>\n
I looked at a map, and we were actually pretty close to the beach.\u00a0 Since it was still early and not unbearably hot, I suggested that we walk out there to dip our toes in the ocean.\u00a0 As we left Sagrada Familia the line was getting extremely long, and the tour buses were showing up.\u00a0 Good timing, today.<\/p>\n
The walk to the beach turned out to be about an hour long.\u00a0 We stayed on the shady side of the road where possible, and it was very cool.\u00a0 Since the humidity was so low, the only time we got hot was when we were in the direct sunlight.\u00a0 Again, it was nice to see some parts of Barcelona that the tours tend to miss.\u00a0 We walked right by a bullfighting ring (closed) and through some parks that were related to the Olympics somehow.\u00a0 We finally got near the beach and saw more and more people with towels and skimpy clothes.\u00a0 There were a lot of buildings and businesses nearby to attract beach-goers, and we had to weave through them to reach the sand and waves.\u00a0 The water was a very comfortable temperature, and I had to keep looking out over the water to avoid seeing the topless grandmothers who lounged all over the place.\u00a0 No supermodels in sight.<\/p>\n
After playing in the water a little bit we showered off our legs and then walked back into our \u201cneighborhood\u201d.\u00a0 On the way we found a nice wine shop and bought a good bottle of wine for our hotel room party we were planning.\u00a0 Lunch was pinxtos and cava, and then we scouted a department store to stock up on some omiyage, and supplies for dinner (Iberico ham, meatballs, black bread, and cheese).\u00a0 The supermarket was well-supplied, and I\u2019ve never seen so much ham in one place.\u00a0 People take their ham very seriously in Barcelona.<\/p>\n
I was feeling pretty dehydrated and overwhelmed with the crowds, so we stopped one more time for beer and water (in that order).\u00a0 Then we wandered back to our hotel, and laid out our spread for dinner.\u00a0 The wine turned out to be really nice (sorry that we drank it out of hotel water glasses), and we ate and drank to our heart\u2019s content.\u00a0 It was a nice, low pressure dinner that allowed us to write in our journal, organize all the photos that we had been taking, and decompress from the crowds.\u00a0 Every trip we try to have a hotel room party.<\/p>\n
The next day we were planning a day trip out of town, so we ended up hitting the sack a little earlier than usual.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today we got up quite early (for the holiday, at least) and headed out the door to go line up at Sagrada Familia.\u00a0 We kept with the walking theme and hoofed it out there.\u00a0 When we arrived there were only ten people in line (compared to nearly a thousand the day before).\u00a0 Since it was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-HS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}