The Daily Diary of a Wandering Restaurateur
Seeing the Sights ... Sorta
Two days left before we say adeu to Catalunya and start moving toward home. The day was sunny and quite pleasant -- not quite t-shirt weather but almost too warm for a jacket ... and no wind! All in all a great day to wander the city.
Ah, the Sagrada Familia: we came, we saw (the line), we left! It may be the off season and 2-3pm may be a slower time of day, but the line to get tickets still stretched for two blocks and probably represented at least an hour of waiting. I'll do what I should have done in the first place: buy the tickets online and just skip the line entirely tomorrow.
The lower end of La Rambla seems to be the home of the human statues ... at least on sunny days. There were four or five of these characters with elaborate costumes and the uncanny ability to freeze in place for long periods of time (or at least until enough people had tossed a euro or two into the hat and they could stretch!) I guess it's a living, but not a career path. Do small children in Barcelona aspire to a future as a human statue? Christopher Columbus did a great job of staying immobile for long periods on top of his pedestal, too, but then again, he was dead!
Margene wanted to see Barcelona's main cathedral so we set off through the back streets to find it. Surprisingly, it is not on a prominent traffic route, but once you find the old Roman main road, it will take you right out through the old gates and you're there. All that hiking and we never did go inside. I'm sure it was spectacular but with apologies to my Catholic friends, I have seen far too many spectacular gothic cathedrals and my tolerance for more religious art is very low.
So we found a couple of spots for late afternoon tapas, had a frosty beverage in a table on La Rambla and just became temporary city denizens waiting for it to get dark enough for the Christmas lights to come on. There was a nice little Christmas market going on in Piazza del Pi, quite a change of scene from our rainy day visit a few days ago. It seems that Barcelona is determined to live outside as long as possible. In the summer, al fresco dining is a no-brainer. In the winter, it involves lots of propane heaters!
Finally the lights came on along La Rambla. We soaked it up for a bit, got our pictures and our work for today was done! We were out for almost six hours -- twice our normal tolerance (and my legs and back feel it!)
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