Carrera Espana Day -3

Las Sagrada Familia Church by Guadiana

Arrived home on April 14 from Route 66; turned around on April 20 to fly from LAX to Barcelona, Spain, to begin a 12 day competitive rally, mostly in the the Pyrenees Mountains dividing Spain from France. While at home, we had a lovely family Seder for Passover; got my nails done and my hair cut; and, of course, cleaned clothes. All in all, a pretty quick turn-around.

On April 20th, Brant and I flew to Barcelona via a connecting flight in Philadelphia. Good news: all planes on time and all of our luggage arrived with us. Bad news: it’s raining hard here and traffic slows to a crawl.

Spent our first day in Barcelona catching up on sleep and trying to shake off jet lag. As I’ve grown older, I need more and more days to get my body clock on local time.

We’re staying at the Hotel Miramar, a lovely place built to host guests in 1992 when Barcelona hosted the Summer Olympics. It is situated high on a hill overlooking Barcelona harbor and the western Mediterranean Sea; it is a very pleasant place.

After breakfast today (Friday), we hired a taxi and a guide to do a 3-4 hour tour of this lovely city. The rain stopped today; the locals and the tourists were about and walking. All the parks and historical sites were open and accepting guests.

A must in Barcelona: Visit the sites, churches, parks and assorted building designed by Antoni Gaudi, the famous local architect (1852-1926) that literally had a style of his own. We visited his most famous work, the Sagrada Familia, a grand church in the middle of Barcelona that has been under construction for over 125 years. Which will need another 10-20 years to be completed. Ilene and I first visited this project 50 years ago on our first visit to Barcelona…..lots of progress has been made, but it will take another few years to complete. I’ve tried to include some pictures of La Sagrada Familia because it is hard to describe the project in words. We also visited Park Guell (a children’s park made of broken pottery), Casa Mila, and several other buildings designed by Gaudi; all had hundreds of people enthralled with the sites.

We explored the small lanes of the old Gothic inter-city; streets conceived and built long before anyone thought about the automobile. We also motored down the grand streets, like the Las Ramblas, that were built for great parades, including the automobile. As Brant said during our tour, Barcelona reminds one of Paris….clean, pretty, outdoor cafes and lots of people going about there business. Being a city of 1.5 million people it is very manageable.

Finally, we ended our tour with a late lunch (in Barcelona lunch is 1-4pm; dinner is 8-11pm) at Las Caracoles (in English: the snails). The restaurant has been in service at the same location since 1835 and is popular with both the locals and tourists. I ate here 50 years ago and can report that nothing has changed. After lunch, we went back to the hotel for a siesta and to prepare for our late dinner.

Tomorrow our car will arrive from the UK, where our friend Andy Prill has prepared her for the Pyrenees. Although it is again scheduled to rain tomorrow, we’ll take the old gal for a trip through the streets of Barcelona to make sure she is ready to run 2,000+ miles over the next several weeks.

Casa Mila by Gaudi In Barcelona

The Museum of Art, Barcelona.

The old bullfighting arena in Barcelona.
Bullfighting is now illegal in Catalonia, so the
stadium has been converted into a supermarket.

The tops of the steeples at Sagrada Familia Church
 by Gaudi in Barcelona

The Var at the 200-year old Las Carcoles
Restaurant.

Typical walking street in Barcelona.

Wide boulevards of Barcelona. Note the
two towers; exact copies of towers in
San Marcos Square in Venice, Italy