MHS Travel Club: Day 6 recap

Well after a long day we are back at the hotel and I have enough juice to finish the blogging from this morning. So we started with our bus tour to see the city, stopping at Park Güell, Gaudi's beautiful masterpiece overlooking the city, the unfinished Cathedral of the Sagrada Familia, designed by Gaudi and where he is buried and finally a panoramic overview at Montjüic of the city and port.

We got off the bus in Plazs Cataluña and gave the kids time for lunch - many headed to Subway, a natural Spanish favorite :) Others shopped at H&M which has been the hit store of this trip. After lunch, Lotte walked us down the boulevard called Las Ramblas, which is a very wide street, with a metro running underneath it, lined with shops and cafés and vendors down the middle of the street. This area is known for pickpockets so we showed the kids how to carry their bags inside their boats and put on their mean faces. It seemed to work since no one had any trouble! The boulevard is beautiful with arching trees and flower vendors and balconied buildings on either side. We walked all the way down to the sea where we saw the Christopher Columbus statue. The kids continue to be delighted by the street performers and dropped coins into quite a few to see what movement it would cause. The favorite was this winged man who sang I like to move it and swept up the kids with his wings. I have a video that I will post separately of that!

From the sea we headed back up toward the city but this time inside the old city walls, dating from the 1100s. The streets here were very narrow, and the architecture was quite different in keeping with medieval era. We wound our way back up toward the old cathedral, which was actually finished much later than the rest of the quarter. Lotte also showed us the rounded stones at the corners that were used for "bumpers" in the days of horse and carriages.

After our walking tour, we gave the kids free time to shop. They immediately headed to H&M of course. I think they must have bought out the store. They were just excited to have a longer block of free time to finish up their souvenir shopping.

We met again at the Plaza to take the short walk to dinner, not far from the Plaza in a fairly posh neighborhood. We had an excellent dinner, starting with a large salad with olives, corn, carrots and onions. Next they brought out dishes of Paella, which the kids had tried at the Bon Voyage dinner. They agreed this version was much better though they were surprised to find the chicken had a bone in it :) After dinner we had crème brûlée for dessert, which was delicious. Troy had seen an Adidas store a few blocks back and so we let them take one more shopping run before heading home for the metro. This group does like to shop!

Tomorrow we are headed to the beach for two days of rest and relaxation. Not many activities scheduled though we are hoping to see a movie if we can arrange it.

So for now I will leave you from Barcelona with a few photos....I flagged nearly 70 photos just for today so this is not all of the highlights even - though I was able to post them in the Facebook album so if you're on there, check it out.