Hola, Barcelona!

Have I mentioned how much we loved our hotel in Barcelona?!  Well, again, we really loved it.  Slept great the first night and were up early for a short run.  I really wanted to run those steps that we had seen people the night before running so we did a quick 3 mile run in that area and back to the hotel to shower and get ready for our day.

We decided to purchase our train tickets to Pamplona first thing so we walked to the train station and found an information desk.  We told that lady that we needed 2 tickets to Pamplona for tomorrow (Friday).  She looked at us like we were crazy and shook her head saying no tickets available for direct to Pamplona.  Apparently, this festival is a big deal and many, many people go to it (sarcasm).  We had no backup plan, we didn't expect to not be able to purchase tickets.  She did suggest going to a row of ticket booths and asking them so we waited 20 panic filled minutes for our turn.  The man at the ticket window was very helpful and found us tickets for 8:15 am without any problem, whew!

Waiting for the ticket window with "Flat Mary", something my daughter made me to share in my pictures.

Fancy church with a  huge line!

So, first stop was Sagrada Familia, the famous church that has been under construction for over a hundred years.  It was very simple to find, right off the metro.  But...my God the line to enter wrapped around the building and the entrance fee was 15e.  Now, we can be cheap and thought that wasn't too bad but the potential 2 hour wait to get in killed it for us.  It would be another thing if we had a few days in Barcelona but we really just had today to do everything we wanted to do.  So, we snapped a selfie outside it and found a cafe/bar next to it for lunch.  Worked for us.

Well, this is about as good of a pic we could get.

Next up on my to-do list was to tour the Guell Park, a very famous park that featured mosaics designed by Guell.  It took a while for us to get there as it was on the outskirts of the city but we found it.  And then were told that you have to have a ticket to enter the mosaic area of the park and tickets were sold out until 3pm (it was about noon).  Talk about disappointed.  I had really, really wanted to see this park.  But I hadn't researched and had no clue that there were limited tickets available.  So, we walked around the free area, took some pics and bought some ice cream.  What else are you going to do??

We decided to take the metro back to our hotel and man, the air conditioning felt so good.  And the room was so comfortable and the Wi-fi was so fast.....we decided to stay in for the afternoon and made reservations for a very fancy dinner at the hotel's top floor restaurant for 9:30.  We had been running pretty non-stop for 7 days at this point and really needed some downtime. That evening we returned to the very excellent hotel bar that was playing VH1 videos, texted the kids a few times and enjoyed some yummy tapas and sangria.  I told Brett that I love goat cheese to which he replied "I love Kraft Singles."  You can take the man out of Indianapolis but you can't take the Indianapolis out of the man.

We had been told to check out the Magic Fountains which were near our hotel.  They light up and make a big display Thursday-Sunday, starting at 9:00.  Well, we weren't paying much attention to the time and suddenly realized that it was nearly 9:00 so we rushed out and down the road.  Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was my heels, maybe it was the sangria but when we got to the fountains, they didn't seem to magical.  So, we walked back to the hotel and went to dinner.

Wow.  The restaurant, named Visual was amazing.  360* view so we asked to be seated near a window, in view of the magic fountains.  We were sat in our own, private section.

  

I don't remember what we ordered but I know it was delicious (maybe duck?  or lamb?).  We enjoyed some wine, appetizers, main course and dessert as well.  It felt very nice to be fancy.  Back to the room for another good nights rest.  For tomorrow, we cross an item off Brett's bucket list!!!