Oh what a day. I walked over 16,000 steps and over 7 miles walked today. I am getting in shape! I walked over 25 flights of stairs according to my Fitbit.
We went to bed early last night – we both beat the sun to bed last night. We both slept fairly good and didn’t get going until after 9:00 this morning. We ate breakfast at our hotel as it is included in our room charge. I had scrambled eggs, a slice of cheese and some mini-oranges. The eggs had a funny taste to them and made my tummy rumble later in the morning.
After breakfast we headed out to go to Guell Park. We took two trains to get there and then hike up a huge hill. Thankfully there were several sets of escalators to help us get up the hill. We still had to walk lots of sets of steps too.
The park was beautiful but what Nicole wanted to see was under construction and we didn’t get to see it. There were lots of people there. I had to stop and rest several times this morning as I felt off all morning. We found a different way to come back to the hotel and didn’t have to walk down all those steps.
We ate a late lunch at a little restaurant near the hotel. Took over an hour to get waited on and get our food. It was worth waiting for though. I had a beautiful Parmesan salad.
Came back to the room and rested for a bit after lunch. We changed clothes and then headed out for the evening. Close to where our dinner reservation was is the Picasso Museum which is on most of the top ten lists of things to do while you are in Barcelona. Unfortunately the workers were on strike when we got there and it was closed.
This part of Barcelona is the Gothic District and reminded me of the bigger cities in Spain I saw while walking the Camino. Cute shops, narrow streets, flower boxes in the apartment windows and lots of cafes with sidewalk seating areas. We walked around for several hours. There is a place in this neighborhood that you can find one of the Camino trails but we didn’t find it today. I had found following the trail through big cities was the hardest part of the trail. Too many distractions to always be able to see the trail symbols.
For dinner we went to a Flamenco show and dinner place. It was interesting to say the least. Dinner was a buffet style and was OK but not impressive. They had a platter of roasted veggies but I scraped the bottom of it getting what they had. I had to add some other stuff to get enough to eat. I’m not sure if I stayed completely on plan but came as close as I could. At least I avoided flour and sugar.
The Flamenco dancers were good but am thinking they are not the best out there. I enjoyed the guitar players the most. We got all the free drinks we wanted with dinner and several in the audience must have indulged as they were rather loud during the performance. I must need some quiet space as they really irritated me!
We managed to get back to our hotel with no issues. Nicole is so good with figuring out the subway system and getting us on and off the right trains.
Walking this evening was much easier for me and I felt good tonight.
We are going out again tomorrow morning to a different district and may try to spend at least part of the afternoon down on the beach. It is only two blocks from our hotel and we have been enjoying looking at the water from our room. Our subway 48 hour pass expires tomorrow afternoon so we will have to buy individual tickets if we go out after that. We had made good use of our 48 hour pass.
Saturday is a travel day as we fly to Rome via Germany and then Rome. At least we won’t have an early morning as our arranged car doesn’t pick us up until 9:45.
Grateful for getting in some good exercise, grateful I felt much better this afternoon, and grateful for all the beautiful sights we saw today and the memories we are making.