Did I mention that I just loved Barcelona?
Kate's still working on learning how to tie her own shoes. I'm not sure that she has even learned quite yet... I guess we should work on that.
We hopped on the metro to visit La Sagrada Familia. By the time we got there tickets to go inside the cathedral were only available after for times after 4:00 PM, which didn't work with our schedule.
The cathedral has been under construction since the 1880's. It is another work of the genius architect GaudÃ.
You can see the girls finishing their ice cream. Yes, we had ice cream for breakfast. It was my birthday. What can I say?
Ice cream wasn't quite enough, so we grabbed more chocolate muffins from a kiosk in the metro as we rode towards the old town of Barcelona.
Barcelona has their own Arc de Triomf. I guess everybody has won a war or two if your history goes back far enough.
We walked from the arch to the Parc de la Ciutadella.
The castle of the three dragons.
There was a guy in the park using a big stick contraption to blow bubbles. The kids loved them. We stayed and let them run around in the bubbles for a bit.
There are lots of ways to use your Euros on the streets and parks of Europe.
The Cascada Monumental.
The Mamut.
A small pond in the park. As you can see, it was really beautiful.
We didn't really have any plans for the rest of the day, so we wandered to the area west of the park, which was some of the older areas of Barcelona. It seemed like there were surprises and narrow streets and beautiful areas around every corner.
Near the Barcelona Cathedral there were a couple of puppeteers putting on a show. Look closely and you can see the old man puppet has a little walker.
Meanwhile, we were having a Fanta party (it was my birthday after all).
Alison is judging those of us with a Fanta obsession.
We couldn't go into the cathedral (no shorts allowed). But, we were able to admire the gargoyles on the outside.
At the doors.
Another awesome little street, with a little bridge.
We normally give the girls a set amount (usually $5 or $10) that they can spend on a trip for a souvenir of their choice. We were a little more lax on this trip and bought a few cheap trinkets from street vendors in the places that we visited.
We found an Italian restaurant on La Rambla for lunch. Aside from the expensive water everything was great.
Birthday pizza.
We walked through a lovely little market just off of La Rambla. Lots of lovely displays of fruit.
And meat.
One last ride on the Barcelona Metro to get back to the train station. We were really pleased with the metro, it was really convenient and easy to get to everywhere that we wanted to visit.
It was a nice ride back to Paris although we did get back in rather late. About 7 hours, with a max speed of 185 mph or so.
Sunset from the train.
If there are donuts, then we're going to find them.
It was sometime in the last day or two that I realized that we would be in Paris on the one day that the Louvre would be closed. Our original plan was to visit the Louvre on the same day that we visited Versailles, but we enjoyed our time there so much that we pushed it off until another day. We didn't realize that the only day we had left was on a Tuesday. PSA: The Louvre is closed on Tuesdays.
Tomorrow: Our last day in Paris.
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