Barcelona – Part One

So it’s Sunday morning and what better way to spend it than in a cemetery. Yikes! We fly all the way to Barcelona just to hang out in a graveyard! But, it’s not just any graveyard, It’s the Cementerio de Montjuic. Wow. Fantastic, Awe inspiring. Macabre. More on this later though.

We’ve spent the past couple of days walking. A lot. We’re still getting over some jet lag but we arrived in one (tired) piece late afternoon Wednesday. The apartment is quite nice and central (Sants) to a lot of what Barcelona has to offer the tourist. Which is what we are.

Barcelona, like a lot of big cities, can be impersonal and indifferent to the outsider. People are cordial, but they don’t go out of their way. The lack of Spanish doesn’t help. It is a very social city though and there are always large gatherings outside every bar and tapas joint from noon to midnight. Lots of young people here and hanging out with friends outside over beers and food seems to be the national pastime.

And while everyone else is partying, we have been walking. There is a lot to see here and we’ve walked on average about 10km a day, (gotta get those 10,000 steps in), but we’ve only scratched the surface. We did the usual Ramblas thing, a couple of markets, some interesting neighborhoods, castle Montjuic, stopped for some Menu del Dia eats. We’ve seen some pretty amazing architecture, really old and some very modern. We buy food, beer, and wine daily like the locals, grab a pastry and coffee when we feel like it. Life is tough. This coming week will be the Gaudi tour and hopefully Monserrat. We definitely will need to come back someday to see all the things we missed.

So as much as we’d like to blend in with the young’uns and nurse a beer or two, we’ve got things to do and graveyards to visit.