At the end of the day Monday, we did a long trek along the Barcelona waterfront. Got some ice cream at a little stand. The chick working the stand only let me have a taste of one kind of ice cream. I was pissed. I mean, how in the hell do you *choose* when you've only tasted one?! Our destination was the Frank Gehry fish. (Gehry is the same the architect who designed the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.) On the way there, we saw some funny things like a little kid climbing up a high rope ladder structure (like monkey bars with ropes) and yelling at his parents from the top. Also we were accosted by a beach salesman who wanted to sell me a beach towel thingy (sarong?) for like 2 euros. He started at 10 and I said "nah". He said "OK, how much?" (He knew plenty of English to sell stuff to Americans.) He said 5 euros and I got interested but still refused. He shadowed us for a few minutes basically begging me to buy it. I might have gotten it (we could've used a beach towel...) but Anita talked me out of it since she (and she says every other woman) has been given about 10 as a gift at one time or another. We made it to the fish and it started to rain and we retreated to the our hotel (the Atlas).
Carp are everywhere including the Mediterranean.
It was nice and sunny early in the afternoon.
Here is the kid perched high on the rope structure, yelling at his parents.
Anita on cool concrete lounge chairs with Gehry fish in background.
We went to an excellent restaurant this night. It was a French place called Les 15 Nits. Don't recall exactly what we had -- some tasty salads. Also had a good dose of tasty sangria, which was quite refreshing.
Day 7 -- Tuesday April 20
The next morning, we took the metro to the Universidad polytecnica de Catalunya. Adjacent to campus is the tennis club where the Barcelona Open was held. I'd been pretty stoked about this for a while and we planned to watch a half day before heading elsewhere. Nadal had backed out (worn out from winning too many tourneys), but plenty of the heavy hitters were there. This was one of the first days of action and the big players had byes. The most exciting match was Lleyton Hewitt who plays quality tennis and usually has some entertaining on-court antics. It was nice just to hang out in the nice weather and watch a few hours of tennis. He played a youngster from Turkey named Ilhan who seems to have potential...
Hewitt in characteristic stretch ... this is how he hurt his hip I suppose.
(See all pics at http://picasaweb.google.com/remierice/20100413SpainLoRes#)
Next, we headed to a place called Montjuic, a name derived from mountain of the Jews.
You take a tram halfway up. Then you can hike the rest of the way up to the Castle which has awesome views of Barcelona. We really enjoyed going to the upper deck of the castle.
On the hike to the castle on top of Montjuic, there were lots of parrots! (Or I guess they were some kind of parrot.)
View along castle walls.
Anita and I on top of the castle with clouds on the Mediterranean in the bg.
Me and Anita with Barcelona sprawling below.
The only funny thing about Montjuic was the smell. Once we topped the hill, we looked down and saw this smoking, steaming industrial shitpile. This explained the odor.
I'm sure we found some Spanish restaurant that stuffed us with bread and cheese, but I've forgotten... We hung it up. The next day, we'd spend the morning in Barcelona and then head to Madrid on their newly (as of 2008) installed high speed rail (nearly 200 mph!).
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3 comments:
Totally redonk that they wouldn't let you try more than one flavor. That's a really cool picture of you guys on the montjuic.
Interesting pic of you and Anita on the castle wall with clouds below you. Seeing parrots was cool.
Too bad the city smells bad from the huge industrial complex polluting the air.
i was tired just reading about all you did that day.
great shot of birds on the wing, hard for me to do.
i would have skipped the ice cream.
did they speak french at the french restaurant?
steve
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