Day Two!! Food! — Patti Part Two

In case you were worried that I would starve to death here - I will start this post with pictures of food! After a busy and interesting morning I was starving so found a great place for lunch. I say great because it was pretty busy, the menu was only in Spanish, and no one working there or eating there spoke English! After looking at the menu for about 10 minutes and having them send no less then 3 people over to try and communicate with me I just went with what waiter number 3 pointed to and said "good!" And he was correct - although I thought my first course was going to be a salad because it was in the section marked salade and they brought me a bottle of red wine vinegar and a bottle of olive oil. Wrong! It was some kind of soup in a tureen that was creamy and had some kind of seafood in it that at one time had a shell. I think it was escargot which I don't normally eat but I did and it was very good. Course number 2 was a spinach risotto with blue cheese and Parmesan cheese - and it was great! The restaurant was called Farga and located in the area they refer to as L'Eixample. It's considered to be the "new" city which is interesting because it's like 200 years old!

They brought great bread and a plate of olives too. Bread yes! Olives no for me but I did enjoy the wine!

Then later in the afternoon I treated myself to this little gem!

So what else did I do today? Started out seeing the Casa Batillo. This is considered to be Gaudi's perhaps craziest work. Locally it is referred to as the house of dragons" because the roof has scales and kind of a dragon on it. The term gaudy just had to come from Gaudi! I'm not a big fan of strange architecture but this house was actually beautiful although kind of reminded me of the Mickey Mouse house in Orlando but prettier!! I went on a tour so learned lots of interesting stuff like it was originally built for a rich man and his family. They lived on the first two floors and rented out the upper levels. Before the building opened for the public people rented apartments in it and there is still a tenant in one of the units that signed a life lease and she's 82 now. She must not mind 100's of people traipsing through the building every day!

Casa Batillo from the front. Check out the scaled roof!

Here are some pictures from the inside.

Here are pictures from the terrace in back and the roof.

The top left is the dragon on the roof. Bottom left is supposed to be a cross also on the roof and in the bottom right if you can see the shrubbery on the balcony - that's where the 82 year old still lives!

From there I went over to see the biggest attraction in Barcelona - La Sagrada Familia. It's the church designed by Gaudi that they have been building for 134 years - and it's not done!! They hope to complete it in 10 years but that's just tentative. It is being funded mainly by the entry fees so put it on your list and let's get this thing done!!

La Sagrada Familia means The Holy Family and there are carvings all over to depict the life of Jesus.

It is really a breathtaking site both outside but especially inside. My pictures won't do it justice - it's worth a trip to just see it!

Middle top shows that all the pillars inside are meant to be trees, top right is your average holy water fountain, bottom right is this huge Jesus on the cross hanging over the main alter.

After seeing La Sagrada Familia I stayed in that area and had lunch and wandered around. I say wandered because I finally accept that I have directional dyslexia. I can pinpoint on a map exactly where I am - and then 100% of the time I go in exactly the wrong direction to try and get somewhere!! There were a couple of stores I was trying to find and about 2 hours later after taking literally 50 wrong turns found them - thank God I'm traveling alone!! But the buildings are so beautiful here that I really didn't mind. The city is so pedestrian friendly - wide walking boulevards and tons of places to sit (and in my case look AGAIN at my map!) I also went to the biggest department store called El Corte Ingles and took the escalator up all 9 floors just to check what they had. Oh and 2 more levels below ground which housed a full grocery store and pharmacy! The kids department had Versace and Burberry for kids - thank goodness I have no grandchildren yet or it might have been more tempting.

Next stop for me was another museum - MACBA - Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona. It was a very cool new building which I enjoyed probably even more so then the art. It was a little too contemporary for me - lots of video art and newspapers stacked on the ground with rocks. I can appreciate it more when I read what the artist was trying to convey but it also kind of wears me out so I breezed through pretty fast.

Top left is the museum from the back. Bottom pic is the front complete with a skateboarding ramp right in the front which was busy! Beautiful building!!

My last stop of the day was the Mercat De La Boqueria which is a huge food market. There were amazing displays of produce, cheeses, meats, fish, chocolates, nuts and more. Everything looked super fresh and it was packed with people buying things to eat immediately or to take home and cook. There were a handful of bars that cooked the food right in front of you and I saw people eating lots of freshly cooked seafood.

I wasn't hungry but might stop in tomorrow for some of the amazing freshly cut fruit!!

So that was Day 2!!! The weather was beautiful again - just a bit cooler then yesterday which I much preferred. They said they usually get quite a bit of rain in April but so far I have been lucky. I have more on my list for tomorrow - so planning to start early and cover more ground. Mileage tracked today at 13 miles!!! Hopefully that burned off my chocolate triangle!!!

Thanks for coming along!!! Make it a great day!