Advertisement
Published: March 9th 2011
Edit Blog Post
Biking around the city
In front of the Arenas de Barcelona (not where FCB plays) We started off the morning headed to this breakfast cafe,
Bracafe, which is apparently a chain because we saw one later on the other side town. We had an espresso and baguette.. nothing too impressive, although I had another chance to use my Spanish and it worked well.
Today, according to the forecast would be our nicest weather here in Barcelona. It got up to abotu 63 degrees and was sunny all day long. We decided to rent a couple bikes for a few hours and explore the city and hit the beach. Using a brochure from the lobby of our hotel, we followed the map to a bike rental shop about 1 mile from our hotel. We both rented
city bikes for 9€ each for 4 hours. The owners were a couple of Rastafarians. They wanted to take our passports as collateral, which we didn't have with us and we would not give it to them anyway. We saw they just throw it in a drawer full of other people's passports. Instead, we gave them our Illinois Driver's Licenses, which we were okay with.
On our map of the city in the brochure, it had marked bike paths
Smart Dog
Golden Retriever carrying the its own leash. around the city so we knew where to expect paths. It felt so great to be on a bike again, especially in the city. I was so happy and excited to be exploring on bike. Jake was off to a slow start getting used to his bike again. In our photography, Jake has been focusing on different graffeti art throughout the city. I've taken a couple pictures of ones I've found particularly interesting.
We headed out on bike to the
Plaça d'España. Every corner kinda looked the same, with an outdoor cafe full of people at one corner and some kinda shop or hair salon at another. As we approached the Plaça, it was a
massive site. We took a lot of photos (as usual). Then we saw another hilarious dog moment, a golden retriever was trotting along with its owner holding its own leash in its mouth. It was so funny. Then when they reached the street, the dog put the leash down and the owner took it to cross the street. The dogs sure are smart here 😉
After the Plaça, we headed down to the beach. First we came upon the harbor filled with docked
Delicious Belgian Waffle
That's a nutella/chocolate topping with whipped cream. boats. We stopped for a delicious
Belgian-style waffle with chocolate syrup and whipped cream. Yum. Then it was onwards towards the beach, passing all these little quick set-up shops along the harbor- the same old trinkets and jewelry you find elsewhere.
As we approached the beach finally, it was again crowded with people, but one thing we noticed was that the beach and the public area was so expansive leaving a lot of space opened up. There are a lot of rollerbladers in Barcelona. Also, we find many people walk their dogs in public without leashes and they seem to generally be obediant.
At the head of the beach, we parked our bikes and locked them up. There were many little cafes along the beachfront. We walked a bit to find one fairly central and in the sun. We tried sitting at one cafe, but there didn't seem to be any open tables. We moved on to the next one and gave the host our name and after 5 minutes or so we were seated. This place seemed to be another
tapas place. We ordered
gambas (shrimp), patatas braves, and
croquettes, along with a litro of
Sangria.
La Playa
Me gusta caminar a la playa It was really nice sitting outside there basking in the sun. I think I got a little sunburnt.
After we finished eating and.. basking, we walked along the beach.. or as I learned in high school,
camino a la playa. We saw some interesting sand sculptures being built- it looked like fun too! We decided to go back to our bikes and ride down the rest of the beach.
From the beach, we were headed to
Las Ramblas, which is a main strip of stores and restaurants/cafes. We mostly just cruised our bikes through and occasionally stopped to look at something. Our time limit on the bikes was getting close to finished, so we headed back to the bike shop.
It was about 5pm and wanted to rest up for a bit, so we headed back to hotel. All this walking and biking during the trip is really taking a toll on my body! I don't think I'm wearing the right shoes for this too.
After killing a bunch of time at the hotel, we decided to plan out what we wanted to do in the evening. We were going to either eat on the beachfront
Tapas Time!
Jake and I enjoying some tapas in the sun at a cafe on the beach at a nicer place or go nearby. We came up with what we thought was short route by train and then walking a little bit. It turned out to be probably a 2 mile walk after getting off the train. If we would have walked from the hotel to where we ended up eatting, it would have also been 2 miles or less. It was an adventure and nice to see another area of town.
Along the beachfront, a lot of places from earlier were closed and when we finally came to the ones we thought to eat at, they were pretty expensive (like 20€ per dish) and not very
Spanish-authentic. We eventually found a string of places along the pier that looked good, some were also quite expensive but chose one that was moderately priced.
One thing that bothers me is the way they constantly push things on you here. Like earlier a guy was putting a coconut piece in Jake's hand and he was just like,
No. but the guy still persisted. At dinner they first brough us this bread with tomato portion on it (similar to bruschetta), but we asked if it was free and
Beach and Marina
Biking around the beach and marina. he's like
No, you pay. We were pissed, but it looked good so we were just like,
Fine... Later when we wanted the bill, he brings two bottles of liquor and shot glasses and we were like
No, just the bill please. It's annoying.
Anyway, at dinner we had
Lobster Paella (16.95€). It was real good, but it is kinda a hassle to pick out the meat of the lobster, mussels and other seafood out from their shells while mixed in with the rice and veggies. It was quite delicious though. We were quite full. We finished dinner at about 11:40pm, which is kinda late for dinner. We wanted to take a cab back because we figured we had walked/biked enough today. Unfortunately, all I had was a 50€ bill and Jake had nothing.
So we walked off the food, about 1.5 miles at midnight 😉 When we got back we planned the next day and went to bed.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.104s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0413s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb