The day could not have been better. Some of this is in the Restaurants – Volume 2 post, but I will give a quick recap of that here anyhow.
First we walked down to Brunch and Cake By The Sea for, well, brunch. I went with my eggs benedict with salmon. It was perfect.
Then, since we were meeting Katy and her new puppy Julia in the park at 1pm, we walked the mile plus over to La Boqueria (by FAR the best of the three markets we went to during our time in Barcelona) to get some fruit, some chocolate, and some empanadas. By the way, just the act of walking through Barri Gotic to get to the market is huge fun for us.
After we got back, I went to my little Barceloneta wine shop and got a cold bottle of Cava for the picnic and a bottle of tinto Penedes for Sunday night. I’ve expanded our Spanish wine repertoire by two Catalan regions – Penedes and Montsant. Priorat is still the best, but those two are pretty good, and cheaper.
We headed over to Parc Ciutedella, where we met Katy and her pup. Julia was quite the charmer. They had already walked up to the top of Mount Tibidabo that morning, so this was Julia’s second adventure of the day.
The picnic lasted two hours, as we played with the dog, watched Julia interact with some local kids with their family, and just had an all around enjoyable time. Katy and Julia headed off, and we headed back to the apartment.
Our next act for the day was to head over to Santa Maria del Mar, our local church that was built in the Middle Ages. I had purchased tickets to go up on the roof of the church. Carol and I love that kind of stuff, and it was as cool as we expected.
Of course you have to go up with a guide, but it was not that large a group. We went 68 steps up the south tower, crossed the whole church on the outside a little below the rose window.
Then we went up 48 steps to the next level where we had magnificent views of much of the city. It was very cool as well, because the church bells rang as we were up there. Finally, we went up another 12-15 steps to the very top of the church. It’s pretty neat to be looking around to the views from the very top.
Santa Maria del Mar is our neighborhood church, so getting to go up to the top via the beautiful towers was extra special.
The final act was dinner at Dos Hermanos Torre, and it was the tops as far as we were concerned. The best set-up, and great food. No disrespect to Disfrutar, but wow! Dinner AND a show!
Santa Maria del Mar tower selfie.
Rose window, up close.
Gargoyle, with grass growing
out of its mouth!
Counting shadows on the wall.
Sagrada Familia from the roof
of Santa Maria del Mar.
Chapel window.
The Cathedral.
Another view of Torre Agbar.
Church downspout.
Montjuic from the roof.
The W Hotel and the Cable car.
One of my two beloved towers
on Santa Maria del Mar.
Our apartment building.
The water tower of Barceloneta.
Just a cool random thing on a building.
Afterwards, we went to the beach bar for the last time. That's our bar!
Even at dusk there are folks
hanging out on the beach.
Sometimes you want to go where
everybody knows your name.
This isn't it, but they knew our
drink order, and that's good enough!
Beach bar selfie.
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