June 17 Day 4 Barcelona

What a wonder it is to have had a full night’s sleep in a bed, after having not much sleep in the airplane seat the night before. We woke up at 8:20 local time. We think getting it out yesterday and staying out in the sun the full day did the trick. Re-setting our clocks.  It was time to truly begin exploring Barcelona.

There was not enough time to get to the grocery store, so we started our way back to the downtown old city area of Barcelona. There, we would meet Mariano, our local guide for our first tour in Barcelona. We walked in 20 minutes, downhill. We were amazed at how much quicker the journey went then the day before with our having had a good night’s sleep, walking down rather than uphill, and not hauling our heavy suitcases. It was a very pleasant walk and we arrived with enough time to spare to go grab coffee, tea and croissants at a local Starbucks. Not super Spanish, but a little something in our tummy before the tour.

We were thrilled to find out our tour would be the two of us and two sisters from Fort Collins, Colorado. They are both college students and Natalia had just finished four months as an international student in Sweden, with her younger sister, Katrina, having joined her for over two months travel around Europe. A couple of fellow grand adventurers. They were excellent co-tour people to have on our private tour.

Mariano, our guide, was a wealth of information and highly prepared. He helped to put the city of Barcelona and the Modernistic architectural movement into political, economic, and social contexts. As we walked and talked, he showed us pictures and maps, and helped us to see the stories in many of the buildings on one of the most famous streets in Barcelona. There were many wonderful interesting tales to listen to. And all four of us learned a lot and asked many questions. We were pleased to see that a couple of the places that we stopped at, are on our list to tour more in depth later in the week. We feel like we already have a great head start. We had noticed some of the buildings on our walk down and we’re excited to now begin to understand more of what we are seeing. Barcelona is filled with some astoundingly interesting and sometimes strange buildings. Much more on this in the days to come.

In the tour, we began by studying some of the buildings that were fancy and modern-looking and gained some understanding about what would make a building “Modernist”. Then, we moved into understanding Antonio Gaudi and how he broke the rules and created some astounding buildings. He struggled with his formal architectural training, but possessed a wild and crazy imagination.

The fun surprise at the end of the tour was coffee and tea and croissants at La Padrera, the Quarry, coffee shop. This was inside one of the iconic buildings designed about Gaudi. We were able to sit inside with hardly anyone there and soak in the crazy design, with hardly a straight line in any of Gaudi’s buildings. Our tour continued way beyond the two hours that we were supposed to have. Mariano appeared to be enjoying our delighted questions and conversations. And after he left, the four of us lingered for another hour and a half swapping travel tales and talking about life choices and graduate school. We so enjoyed these two women who were off on an amazing adventure. We hope to stay in touch with them.

On our way back, we found a market with many fruit, vegetable, and meat stands.  Everything was so fresh!  We finally got to a grocery store and picked up some essentials: water, milk, breakfast cereal, pizza and salad. The challenge here was to choose which package of coffee to buy among the unfamiliar options.  Successful choice made.  We thought we would enjoy the Airbnb kitchen and make ourselves a delicious light lunch as we settled in to look at photos and work on the blog. Life on the road has some delicious times.