When we drove into the city of Barcelona two days ago a couple of things stood out very clearly to us. Firstly, we felt like we were in Paris with the classical buildings and wide boulevards. Secondly, there were a lot of Plane Trees providing shade coverage on the pedestrian boulevards of which there were many.
On the agenda for today was a city guided tour commencing at 10.00am. We have done five of these altogether in our time in Portugal and Spain and found them informative and helpful in planning on what we want to see and do.
They are advertised as free but of course they are not as you are expected to make a donation to the guide for their time. They come in at about €20 each and so far, they have been money well spent.
Today our guide was Mick who was an Irishman – go figure. Have to say though that he was excellent and put the history of Spain into logical order in a concise format.
Mick’s tour lasted 2 ½ hours and took us through the gothic region of the city which meant lots of windy and narrow lane ways. Barcelona is in the Catalonian region of Spain and it is the capital. It is the largest city in this region as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. It has a population of 1.6 million people within the city limits and 4.8 million within the neighbouring municipalities.
Mick pointed out this Picasso street art. Picasso was Spanish but went into self exile when Franco came to power and swore, he would never return whilst there was a fascist government in power. He never returned as he died in 1973 and Franco died in 1975 whilst he was still in power. This Picasso piece stands very prominently in the gothic region of Barcelona depicting how he felt about what was happening in Spain under Franco’s rule.
Our other planned venture of the day was to go to the Banksy Museum. There are 130+ pieces of his art in the museum but none of them are original.
The collections include some of his best-known and most iconic works. Examples include Girl with Balloon, Love is in the Air, Flower Thrower and Napalm.
These works are known for their powerful messages, subversive style and visual impact. We spent an hour and more strolling through this very thought-provoking museum.
It was then time to find our way through the labyrinth of alleyways to La Boqueria markets.
To say they were colourful would be an understatement.
Fish featured predominantly as did dried and cured meats and in particular, pork.
Myriad of nut varieties along with dried fruits which looked ever so enticing but considering we are on a train for three hours tomorrow in a confined spot, not a smart move.
Everything was beautifully presented, and it was so very hard not to indulge.
The market opened in 1853 and offers a literal taste of what makes Catalina tick.
Today on our travels we used no public transportation and relied on our pins to get around. It was very pleasant to meander down the pedestrian boulevards though you needed to be on the lookout for bikes and scooters as this is also their thoroughfares.
We were very pleased when we finally reached our hotel as we were two very weary souls who only resurfaced briefly to get dinner at our favourite restaurant the K.ersol.
Barcelona is definitely worth another visit. We could have done with another day here.
Steps today – 18,416 though we think the Fitbit wasn’t reading all the steps as Di had her left arm hooked through Fraser’s which we think meant it wasn’t registering. We felt it was more like 26,000.
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