Category: Europe Fall 2021

Today is our first full day in Barcelona. We slept in a bit and then went out to find coffee and croissants.

Rick Steve’s does some wonderful, free audio tours. Today we decided to do his tour of the Barcelona Eixample district. The Eixample is an expansion area that was added to Barcelona in the mid 1800s. Eixample is the Catalan word for expansion. the neighborhood is very upscale. It includes many of Barcelona’s Modernista buildings. The first one we stopped at was La Pedrera (also known as Casa Milà) it was built around 1906 by Antoni Gaudi. We toured the building with our friends Ray and Linda on another trip to Barcelona.

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Further along we stopped at a block with three modernista buildings in a row. It’s called the Block of Discord. The first building is another Gaudy building, Casa Battló.

I love the detail in the carvings and balconies

The building next door, Casa Amatller , was the work of another Modernista architect, Josep Puig i Cadafalch.

Today is Catalonia Day. There are no big events because of covid but we did see lots of flags and T-shirts.

Another pretty stop on our walking tour was the Navarro Flower Shop. According to our tour it is open 24/7.

For dinner we ate at a restaurant on Las Ramblas, the pedestrian promenade that goes from Plaza Catalonia near our hotel down to the coast. The restaurant, Louro, is up some stairs and towards the back of a building. The approach is not propitious but the restaurant, the service and the food were excellent.

We started with scallops.

For our main course Duke had octopus and I had turbot.

For desert we had the house special cake.

The food and sangria were all excellent. The walk back to our hotel along the Ramblas was a perfect ending to a great day.

Duke and I are at the start of a two month European adventure. Wednesday we drove from Reno to my daughter’s house in Walnut Creek. Thursday afternoon Allison drove us to Bart and we headed to San Francisco airport. We had a very comfortable flight from San Francisco to Barcelona on Level Airlines.

Entry into Spain was easy. After they checked out passport we went through a check where we had to show our QR codes. A couple days before we left we had to go on a Spanish website and provide our vaccine details and flight information. It was reviewed and we were sent a QR code which proved we were good to enter Spain

We are staying at a very nice hotel a couple of blocks from the Plaza Catalana. After checking in we went up to the rooftop terrace. They have a wonderful view.

Although jet lag is definitely closing in, We were determined to stay up until at least 10. we went for a short walk. It is interesting to see that everyone here wears a mask inside. When people aren’t wearing their masks they have them pushed up on their upper arm. Given that we have only been in Spain about 6 hours this is a small sample size, but there don’t seem to be many Americans here.

This sign we saw outside a pharmacy advertises covid tests for €8.50 and 50 masks for €10.

We had great steaks for dinner at Patagonia restaurant. They started us off with three breads and three sauces. Yum!

Our steaks and wine were great too and the bill was about $90.