Barcelona, mi amor

I love Barcelona. I have from the first time I was here in 1984 and it's still as alluring to me today as it was then. We were here last in 2016 and I was able to compare and contrast some pics to see how la sagrada familia has matured in the last 7 years. For a city where the first human settlements date back to Neolithic times, it has changed a lot in 7 years. The city itself was founded by the Romans who set up a colony called Barcino at the end of the 1st century BC. But there are new buildings, new roads and new programs so the ancient can and does harmoniously coexist with the present. Here are some 2016 (top row) vs 2023 (bottom row) comparisons of sagrada familia. The tops of the spires now have colors embellishing them, but otherwise, we don't see much difference.

In 2016, we spent an afternoon at the park guell (Gaudi's park) but now (since 2020) you need tickets to enter the park and they were sold out. It's a UNESCO site now, not surprising. It deserves that distinction. But it's a shame they changed this free living art park to an admission-based attraction. We were excited to show it to Scott and Anita, so that was disappointing. If you're coming to Barcelona, order your tickets ahead. They are 16 euro each, which is a bit high but you can spend the entire day there. Perhaps it was a blessing it was sold out since it's not really an option to allocate even a 1/2 day there when you're docked in Barcelona for just 1 day.

Here are other pics from the morning tour. The top right is a Gaudi designed apartment complex.

In all, we spent about 4 hrs on both the orange and green lines of the HOHO and that was OK. 33 euro each. While we saw the entire city, it was too much continuous sitting and seeing, not enough doing. So we decided to walk the Rodeo Drive of Barcelona...Las Ramblas. We found a tapas bar and had lunch there. Here are some pics of a truly cultural tradition. We shared 2 tapas and 2 meals. It was awesome. Not pictured were the BBQ ribs and the chorizo. Devoured them too quickly. The last 2 are the before and after of the paella.

We continued to walk Las Ramblas and shop and people watch. We purchased some wonderful prints, 3 for 10 euro. And some castanets for our K-5 music teacher daughter. Her students will LOVE them. Then we went into the Ramblas market, an outdoor food mecca. It was culinary overload. Get a napkin before you look at these ......

seriously........I'll wait...........

At the end of Las Ramblas was the pier where we caught the shuttle back to the ship. But before that, we walked around the pier, got a geocache, enjoyed the warmest part of a day that started out quite cold and then blossomed into 70 degree weather.

I skipped dinner but got a drink before going to the early show, a folklorico performance, flamenco. It was wonderfully authentic. Flamenco, in its strictest sense, is an art form based on the various folkloric music traditions of southern Spain, developed within the gitano (gypsy) subculture of the region of Andalusia, and also having historical presence in Extremadura and Murcia.

It's not for everyone, but we enjoyed it.

And that's it for today. Tomorrow is a much needed sea day to rest, catch up on work, chat with friends we haven't seen for a few days, play cards and work out. It's a different kind of busy.