Barcelona Day 3 Part 1

Continued from Barcelona Day 2.

We didn’t want to overpack our schedule here in Barcelona, so everyday, we only have two sightseeing events planned. Today, our first scheduled event isn’t until 2:15pm. We’ve been waking up really late anyway due to jet leg, but 2:15 is still late enough in the day to give us a slow leisurely morning.


RL out searching for coffee and a simple breakfast for us. I was slow to get up this morning, even slower than usual. I’ve been having some small residual cough from my illness, but was definitely almost 100%. Then all of a sudden, late last night, I started getting into a coughing fit. Pretty soon, it was evident that I was having a full on asthma attack. Good thing I had brought my inhaler with me, because it was ultimately what finally calmed it down. What a mess. Wonder what it is here that’s triggering my asthma so acutely.


Yes and yes. RL forgot to ask for no milk in her decaf, so I’m going to drink both coffees. But we didn’t know which was decaf, so I’ve decided to hedge my bet and drink half of each.


Fortunately, we had a little coffee machine in the hotel room and RL made herself an espresso.


Yes, love it.


RL does some blog reviewing. We’ve had enough down time on this trip where we are not too totally behind on blogging. Such a beautiful day with beautiful weather.


While chilling on the balcony, I noticed that we can actually see La Sagrada Familia from here. There, we’ve seen it and done that now.


Not actually napping, but it is indicative of how nice and chill it is over here right now.


But the show must go on, it’s time to hit the subway and go out and about.


Barcelona subway system is a lot more practical than the one in Madrid. It’s actually useful in getting to all the places we want to go. With that said, central Madrid is more compact and it’s compact enough that we could just walk everywhere instead of taking the subway at all.


Got out of the subway, turned around and immediate saw this. Wow, La Sagrada Familia has presence.

We both thought this street lamp was really cool.


Cool idea.


Perhaps the world’s most famous construction site. It’s been under construction since 1882 and it’ll keep on being under construction for a while longer.


Lots of people here.


Not quite our time for entry yet, so it’s time for a stroll around the park next to it.

This is a Rubber Tree! These are grown as house plants back home but here they just grow them in the ground and they can get to their actual tree size.


Pigeon foot prints.


Looks pretty amazing, even if under construction.


Found a very touristy cafe to sit down at and order a drink and some food.


Very expensive and very mediocre tasting jamon. But, guess it gets the job done.


I guess we are paying for the proximity to La Sagrada Familia.


So many little tiny details.


USA is representing hard over here.


I wonder what taco bell tastes like in Spain…


It’s all cool up to this point, then I had the “belt incident”. They had metal detectors at the security line here, and as I walked through, the power tripping security guard very rudely told me to back up again as he wasn’t ready. I went back, waited a little bit, and when I thought he was ready for me, I walked through again, he again got pissy with me. Then finally he motioned to me to come through, so I came through but my belt set off the machine. Then I went back, took off the belt and was going to put the belt through the xray machine. However, the xray machine only had widely spaced apart rollers and now conveyer belt, so I couldn’t just set my belt down. There were bins, but they were probably 10 people back and I was holding the line. I didn’t know what to do, and the pissy security guard was doing something else or just ignoring me in general.

At this point, I was pretty annoyed and pissed at this asshole, and since I was holding up the whole line, I just tossed my belt into the xray machine past all the rollers. The security guard saw this, looked at me and said, “now you broke it”. WTF, I didn’t break shit. I just gently tossed my belt into the x ray machine. Apparently another security guard behind me, who I couldn’t see was trying to get a bin to hand me, and when he saw me toss the belt, he just nonchalantly put the bin back without batting an eye. But Mr power tripping security guard on the other side had to give me a hard time. What an asshole. RL said I shouldn’t have thrown the belt no matter how big of an asshole he was.


Either way, I got through and I got in, fuckers.


By far the craziest cathedral I’ve ever seen.


Inside, it was smaller than I thought. Only like a medium sized cathedral really.


My favorite part is the way the stained glass throws off these rainbow lights. So awesome.


I mean, just look at it. It’s amazing! It’s is literally how it looks inside.


It’s just craziness inside. Feels like you are in the belly of some animal.


The crypt, Gaudi is buried in here.


They had a museum here giving some details and history regarding the cathedral.


And at the gift shop you can buy this, a flexible rubber. Why?


Well, La Sagrada Familia was fun, but now time to go to a different part of town and get some lunch.


Back in the gothic quarter.


Lunch spot…but it’s closed. I looked on my phone earlier and it says opens at 3pm. But then once I got here and looked again, it said opens at 6:30pm. Don’t know why it did that, but Doh!


No big deal, here’s another lunch spot.


And RL appreciate the restroom door handle in new lunch spot.

To be continued at Barcelona Day 3 Part 2.