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| A Gaudi-designed building which houses the city's premier Opera house |
| Erin's Barcelona Journals 5-29-02 To better orient ourselves in the city and prioritize the sights we wanted to see this week, we decided to take a Mike's Bike tour. We'd heard from our friends Andres & Sylvia that this was a wonderful way to get bearings here and a little more history on the sights, so we followed the instructions of the brochure we'd found and tried to locate the bike rental shop before the tour. Well, after wandering around for almost a half hour, we couldn't find any sign of it, nor did any of the shops in the neighborhood know what we were talking about when we asked for Mike's Bikes. Discouraged, we nonetheless headed down to the Columbus monument where the tour was supposed to start and waited to see if anyone showed up for the 11:30am scheduled start. Sure enough, two Mike's Bikes employees were there, waiting for a crowd to develop! Apparently the Barcelona outfit is only a few months old, and don't even have signs up on their garage yet, so they don't open the shop before the tour; we would pick up our bikes once the group was assembled. Reassured, we started talking to some of the other travelers waiting. One couple was from Georgia, Terry and Anna, and were only in Barcelona for the day on their way via cruise around the Mediterranean. There were some girls who'd just graduated from Notre Dame on a celebratory tour, as well as a variety of other travelers. The tour was in English, conducted by Jordan, who was originally from Minnesota and had been doing Mike's Bike tours in Munich before joining the Barcelona opening team. We started out by getting on our blue bikes, adjusting the seats, and introducing ourselves to other travelers while we waited. Then we took off. The drivers and streets around Barcelona are much more organized than in Italy or Greece, so the going was a bit safer except in the pedestrian areas. We all had bells on our bikes to warn people as we came up behind, but they NEVER MOVED!!! So we had an obstacle course moving around us all day, which made it more fun by the end of the day. We learned about the Cathedral and Gothic Quarter, the palaces and origins of Catalan (language of Catalunya, the region of Spain we're in), then moved on to Gaudi's famed architecture throughout the city. We saw the bullring and the Sagrada Familia, toured through the park which houses the zoo and several of the city's museums (reminded me of NY's Central Park), then went down to the waterfront. We found that the entire waterfront area had been reconstructed before the Olympic games were housed here in the 80's, which is hard to imagine now. There were no beaches here nor thriving restaurants & clubs; just a dirty port area that nobody went near if they didn't have to. So to enjoy the reformed area, we rode down the boardwalk a ways and pulled off at a beach cafe for some sangria in the shade before finishing off the tour. I didn't take any pictures that day, as the pace was pretty quick throughout the 4 hours we were on the tour. But we got some great ideas for the next few days, and made some friends to meet for dinner later. In fact, one of the other couples from the tour planned to see Star Wars that night too, so we arranged to meet them at the theater and possibly have dinner afterward. We grabbed a quick lunch and headed to the hostel for a shower & clean clothes. Then we took a Metro (smarter) most of the way to the theater, arriving in time to get pretty good seats and some popcorn & drinks. The movie was good enough that even Glenn liked it, and now he is curious to see all the previous films (which he'd earlier been heard to scoff at!). We found the other couple, Chris & Stephanie, and together went to dinner at a place Jordan had recommended on the tour, La Fonda. It was wonderful - we had our first paella and some good sangria for a very nice price, along with a very nice atmosphere. We were all thrilled with it and recommend it to others! After dinner we went to Glacier pub, which was where the bike tour crowd had planned to meet for a pub crawl that evening. We found a small group still there, and joined them for more sangria and conversation. At about 2am, we decided we were late enough and wished everyone well, before heading off to the hostel to ring the bell and be let in. |