Europe 2006 - Florence to Barcelona

We got up for an early breakfast and left the hotel before 9. One odd thing about the Bari Gotic is that the streets are so narrow that the sun only shines on the actual street for a very short portion of the day. When you look out a window at ground level it seems like it's gloomy out, you have to look straight up to get the real picture.

We first headed to Sagrada Familia, the Gaudi Church. It's been under construction for over a hundred years, and not slated to be finished for another 30! We took an elevator up into the towers and then walked down the spiral staircases inside.

Then we took the metro to La Pedrera, an apartment building designed by Gaudi. As with many of his structures, it has a very organic shape (he was one of the first big architects to use steel support structures with stone facades. We walked up through the building and up to the top where we got a good view of the city.

We had a snack and then continued walking around the Eixample neighborhood looking at all of the modernista buildings spread around the area. We stopped at Celler Tapas for a tasty lunch.

Then we went to the Museum of Modern Art, which had some fun exhibits (except the one that led you through a pitch black hallway with a wall in it which Randy walked into, ouch!) Then we headed back to the hotel for a short rest. Before sunset we took the metro and hiked up to Montanya de Montjuïc where a tram car goes over to the dock area. We had a quick snack and enjoyed the view of the city.

Back in the room we watched the first episode of Lost for this season (we loved being able to download it from iTunes!) At 9pm we took a cab to a nice restaurant, Roig Robi. Of course, being so early (!), there were only a couple of people there. Dinner was nice and things started to really fill up around 11 as we were leaving. We caught a cab back to the hotel and walked back into the Bari Gotic to head to bed at the hotel.