Barcelona

I have been meaning to post all week about our trip to Barcelona and just have not gotten a chance. We headed to Barcelona last weekend for Memorial Day because Davis had a 4 day weekend. We had heard great things about Barcelona and found pretty cheap flights on Ryan Air so off we went. It was the perfect mix of site seeing and relaxing. Our hotel was located in a great spot right off of Las Ramblas, which is the main street with all the shopping and very centrally located. When we first got to the city I was a little nervous because the cab driver couldn't drop us off at our hotel because of the road blocks for the protests that were going on over the government. Luckily, they were mostly peaceful as far as we could tell, but we didn't hang out long enough to find out. We had a great meal that night and set out Sat. for some sight seeing. We started out walking down Las Ramblas and went to the largest farmers market in Europe. I was in heaven!! Any fresh food you can think of...they had a stand for it.

Fruits

Veggies

Wine

Meats

Seafood



And this doesn't even begin to cover it. They had stands for fresh olives, nuts, fruit juices, candies, etc. And there were multiple stands for each item...so you had a choice of who to buy from. It was great!!


After that we headed to the cathedral. It was very pretty, but did not rival some of the ones we have already seen on our other trips. We rode an elevator to the roof and got some pictures there. It was very cloudy and windy that day as you can tell.

We walked around and saw a the rest of the city and then headed back to our hotel to change for dinner and for the big soccer game that was that night. I wish I had taken my camera with me to capture the crowd that we watched the game in. The game was between Barcelona and Manchester United. We went to the Arc de Triumph (I think that is how you spell it) and there was a huge projector screen set up and about 100,000 people there to watch it. It was very neat to see, but I was ready to go after about 10 min. Davis loved every second of it though. Finally I found a bench out of the way and let him battle the crowd. I could care less about soccer and being 8 months pregnant in a huge crowd of drunk people smoking just wasn't my scene. Barcelona ended up winning and we finally headed home on the subway with about 1000 drunk, smelly soccer fans. I won't go into the whole story, but it was miserably packed in the subway station and add that to no A/C and everyone trying to push their way into a crowd that is not moving and let's just say I may or may not have ended up crying. It was MISERABLE!!!

Sunday brought some beautiful weather and I was glad because that was our beach day. First, we headed to this fort on top of a hill that overlooks the city. We rode a cable car up there and it was really pretty. Then we headed on another cable car down to the area of Barceloneta and stayed there the rest of the day on the beach. It was quite humbling to get in a bathingsuit when you are as pregnant as I am and trying to cover up as much as possible, while laying out next to some skinny topless Spanish women. I tried to embrace it, however, not enough to have any pictures to show for it!