Monday, 13 April, 2015 Barcelona
We started our day with a walking tour with Feel Free Walking tours of the old city or Bari Gotic. Our guide was a young man that was studying for the foreign service and gave us a historical perspective of the town since its founding in 3 AD by the Roman Empire. You get so much more out of a guided tour than you do wandering about by yourself reading out of a guidebook. After the tour we had a "scenic" beer with tapes (yes, this is Catalunya so not tapas) overlooking the marina where we met a French family from Geneva. The fellow was from Carcassonne originally and his wife had spent 3 months working in Toronto as a young woman. They taught us that you can just keep ordering tapes until you were full! You do not have to order the all at once!
After lunch we took a stroll along the beach. It is a very active area with segways, bikes, scooters on the promenade, and volleyball and sunbathing (some topless) on the beach! Did we say it was 18C?
Then it was back to the Bari Gotic to tour the Cathedral Santa Maria del Mar (the cathedral of the people), and the Barcelona Cathedral (of the rich) - both were spectacular. We then strolled up La Rambla (the famous pedestrian shopping street) then home for an early night.
A word about our neighbourhood. We are staying at a studio apartment in L'Eixample - a planned neighbourhood for the bourgoise. It is famous for its wide sidewalks and avenues - the widest we have seen anywhere, and for its amazing architecture. By contrast, in the Bari Gotic, there are streets barely wide enough for 2 people to pass.
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