Retirement Is Great: Barcelona, the rest of the story

Barcelona, the rest of the story

We’ve been in Barcelona for 5 days and have 3 days left before we leave for Narbonne, France on Monday morning. The weather continues to be ‘perfect’, in our opinion. They keep threatening thundershowers, but so far, nothing has materialized, and it’s been sunny and about 65-70 degrees!

Friday we caught the metro and then the funicular (cable car) to the Montjuic Castle. We wandered through the castle and took some photos, but otherwise, we felt it was one place we could have skipped. They did have a small display of photos and writings about Barcelona during WWII that was interesting, but really there was not a lot of information. There are some fabulous views of the city from the castle though.

The gardens in the 'moat' of the castle

Sagrada Familia from the castle

The port - note the cruise ships!

We walked out of the castle and decided we could walk to our next destination – Poble Espanyol. Along the way, we passed by the Olympic Stadium (from 1996).

Olympic Stadium

Along the way near the Olympic Village

Olympic Stadium

Poble Espanyol is an open-air architectural museum that was built in 1929 for the Barcelona International Exposition. It consists of 117 full-scale buildings, which form a village with streets, houses, parks, theater, school, restaurants and artisan workshops. It contains representative architecture from all the various regions of Spain.

Some of the architecture in Poble Espanyol

The white wash and the 'creek' in the center of the street served as 'air conditioning' back in the day!

One of the streets

Another street in Poble Espanyol

We had a nice lunch outside in Poble Espanyol and then walked downhill to the Font Magica and the Museum of Art of Catalunya. We saw it during the day, but we hear that at night, they put on a beautiful water display (I’m thinking like Bellagio in Vegas).

Font Magica

Looking away from Font Magica - you can see Mont Tibidabo in the far distance

The Museum

The Font Magica from the Museum

By the time we got back to the apartment – cocktail hour – we had logged almost 10 miles!

Saturday morning, my lower back seized up (probably from too much walking and not enough stretching). It was pretty bad – dropped me to my knees. We were planning a quiet day of exploring the immediate neighborhood and reading, fortunately, no big plans were on the agenda. Also, I brought muscle relaxers and hydrocodone and Advil on this trip! After a dose of Advil and a muscle relaxer, I was able to walk and we went to brunch a few blocks away at a place called ‘Milk’. Delicious! We then wandered up and down the streets of our ‘neighborhood’ – amazed at all the little shops and bakeries and bars. We came home and read our books… I just woke up from a 2-hour nap! My back is still very sore, but I made it to dinner tonight at one of our favorite places – Gilda, just around the corner. Hopefully, it will be better tomorrow...our last day in Barcelona.

Sunday morning dawned bright and sunny – our nicest day so far! Because my back was still causing me some issues, we decided to stick fairly close to the apartment today. We had not been to Barcelonetta (the beach area) yet, so we walked out along the ‘boardwalk’. There were some street performers and lots of people. There were also lots of very ‘white’ people on the beach getting burned to a crisp! We had a nice walk and stopped for tapas about 1:30PM before coming back and packing for our trip tomorrow. The Mediterranean is beautiful!