I keep telling myself that I don’t need to stay up late to write these posts, but it never works. Our days are usually busy so only after we get in in the [late] evening, is there any time to work on the website.
Today was no exception.
We arrived in Barcelona yesterday (Tuesday, 10/20) after a long flight, a medium flight, a short flight, and two long layovers. All the flights were on time or close to it. Our luggage made the same trip as we did, which is a good thing. But by the time we got to our hotel, it was all we could do to stay awake long enough to get our unpacking done.
After a good breakfast at the Kimpton hotel this morning, I went out to re-familiarize myself with this part of Barcelona. We were here a couple of years ago so I was able to find my way around easily.
Patricia and I went out in the afternoon. When I walk around, I keep track of where I am going and how to get back to where we are staying, When Patricia walks aroundshe keeps track of the stores she has visited on previous trips and adds new stores to visit. Actually, she tell me to remember the stores because she thinks I will remember where they are. The problem is often that we (she) don’t know the name of the store but only remembers what was in the windows. That would be easy if there were only a few, for example, clothing stores, but Barcelona apparently has hundreds of stores which seem to sell exactly the same thing.
But we are both very good at remembering where the best ice cream and gelato stores are no matter which city we are in. We have at least 10 ice cream places on the list here in Barcelona. Even though the temperature was in the upper 60s, it was still a good day for ice cream. [What day isn’t?]
The sun was out and the streets were crowded. Lots of tourists. We explored a couple of new areas not too far from the hotel. We spent time in the square in front of the Barcelona Cathedral where the crowds were large and there were many buskers. One of them was singing opera arias, but she would get through a few phrases and then go completely flat for a couple of words before recovering.
In the evening we went on a food tasting walking tour. This kind of tour mixes local color and history with stops at various local restaurants where a specialty dish or two is sampled. Our group comprised 13 people, which is large for this kind of walk, but it turned out well. We stopped at 4 restaurants in our 3.5 hour walk and there was plenty of history in information while we were walking and good conversation while we were eating. W got back around 10 PM so I am keeping this first post short. My step tracker says I walked 13,912 steps today which means I will probably sleep well.
I will work on adding pictures to the pictures page tomorrow.
