We woke up Friday morning well rested and ready to see the city. First stop was Starbucks and McDonalds for breakfast. We were really looking forward to an Egg McMuffin since our hotel breakfast cost €18 a person. We got to the McDonalds counter to order breakfast and crazy thing was they do not serve hot breakfast items. Our only choices were donuts, croissants or pancakes with chocolate syrup. WHAT, no McDonalds breakfast? Surely this was a one off at this location only. Nope, no egg sandwiches at Burger King, Starbucks, KFC or any other fast food location within walking distance. Lesson learned, apparently breakfast is not an universal necessity. Everyone who knows me well, will understand what a travesty this was for me. I am a breakfast person. I cannot think of a day that I have skipped breakfast and a donut just doesn’t quite cut it. However, we would not let this spoil our day. We shared some pancakes and were on our way.
Plans for the day included a market, churches, plazas, a park and dinner at Christian and Missy’s house.
First stop was La Boqueria, which is the large market just off of Las Ramblas. La Boqueria had an amazing selection of fruits, vegetables, meat, seafood and any other kind of fresh food you can think of. We were not hungry when we walked through the market so didn’t have the urge to buy anything. I was intrigued by the big hanging pieces of meat. You could get yourself a nice pork leg for €50. I found it interesting that they were all the same price. If I were to buy one of those nice pork legs I would probably want to weigh each of them to ensure I was getting the most value for my purchase. We did stop back by the market on Saturday and had an excellent fruit smoothie so we can say that we experienced the market.
After the market we visited Santa Maria del Mar which is a Catalan Gothic style church built in the 1300s . We were able to go inside and take in the amazing architecture. No trip is complete without multiple church stops, so after Santa Maria we hit up the Cathedral with is also Gothic style and is the seat of the Archbishop. As we visited the churches we walked through numerous plazas which many had interesting fountains.
As we were walking we spotted a Hard Rock Café and decided to indulge in some Nachos. I’m not necessarily into collecting Hard Rock café items, but do remember always getting a t-shirt as a kid when my mom visited various places. Cory and I are more into Hard Rock for their predictable nachos and burgers.
We were in serious needs of a walk after our burger and nachos so set out to find the cable car from the beach to Montjuïc park. We could see the cable car, but couldn’t figure out exactly where to catch it at. It looked like you could catch it from the Port so we headed that direction. When we arrived at the port we couldn’t figure out where to get on and didn’t see any cars actually moving. Rather than spend all day trying to figure out the cable car thing, we decided we might as well just start heading the direction of Montjuïc. I love walking so how far or hard of a walk could it be. Silly us, the walk to Montjuïc was a steep incline and one of those walks where you get to the next level and then find out there is one more climb. This happened probably 5-6 times. We thought we were too the top, but then one more climb. I also think we took the unconventional route as we got to a point where there were about 100 rock stairs and no pavement. There is nothing like hoisting a stroller up 100 stairs. In the end we made it up to the top (or at least we’re going to call it the top, I think we could have climbed up a little further) and took in some beautiful views. Also, funny enough, we got to the cable car drop location and it was not running. Later that day we saw the cable cars running again so it may have just been bad timing on our part.
Friday evening, Christian and Missy, previous co-workers, invited us over for Tapas. They have been living in Barcelona for the past 1.5 years teaching English. They did it up with some tapas, bread, cheese, wine and even had entertainment for Brady.
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