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Today I decided to spend part of the day with Gaudi and end the night with Picasso. The Bus Turistic is a great way to travel around town and if you take the red route it takes you to Sagrada Familia. It is about 4 Euros to enter Sagrad Familia and get the museum pass. They have audio guides for another 4 Euros and it worth it because it tells you about the building, you hear the architects talk about the project they are undertaking and the history of the place. You can take an elevator to the top of one of the towers to get this amazing view of the city. It is a bit small and if you're claustrophobic you may not like it. But the view of the city is amazing! My battery to my camera began acting up and it was just the first stop of the day so I couldn't take as many pictures as I wanted too. (I forgot to bring the spare battery!) I spent about 2.5 hours walking around and listening to the auidio guide.
Then I hopped back on the bus and went to another Gaudi designed place...Parc Guell. This park was comissioned by Guell and Gaudi intended for it to be a kind of artist community. It wasn't a success but you will find that when it comes to Gaudi, he was very advanced for his time and the things he thought of were not acknowledge as great until long after Gaudi was dead. The park is a nice large area full of Gaudi's work. There is this long winding bench made out of tile mosaics that has an awesome view of the city and you can sit in the sun and rest. A "forest" of mosaic trees, the ceilings were bright and colorful mosaics, there is also the Gaudi musuem where you can see more Guadi things. A "dragon" or lizard is what greets you at the entrance way and you climb up some cool steps to get to the benches. I may have to return here with a nice picnic lunch to explore the park some more.
By this time I was getting hungry so I got back on the Bus and decided to eat where there is a good view. The best view of the city and its surrounding regions is up Tibidaldo. You have to take a bus to a lookout point and then hop on a funicular which is steep (but not as steep as the one in Hong Kong to get up to Victoria's Peak!) and takes about 5 minutes. The view at the top is amazing and there is a church there too. They say Franco built this church to "see" Barcelona. I saw a hotel restaurant at the top and my stomach was protesting so I had to eat! A meal with a view is what I got! For appetizers I had fried young squid that was delicious but you can still see the legs. My entree was Beef Entrecote and I had asked for well done meat. What I got was more like medium-rare...I think the cow was still mooing when they cooked it! So I just cut around the red protein muscle and blood. Dessert was good but then again how wrong can you go when you order creme brulee? Besides the view I didn't find anything else to see up at Tibidaldo though I heard that the Science Museum there was pretty cool. But I wanted to catch the Bus back to the main part of town, so I headed back down the mountain. I was tempted to hang around Montjuic but I needed more time and less than half a day is not enough..maybe tomorrow.
By the time I got down to the Las Ramblas area it was only 5pm and with Spanish time that is just the end of lunch. So I had to use time and figured why not check out the Magmare shopping area at the end of the Ramblas del Mar. They had some cool stores and a movie theater there. None of the movies were what I'd already seen and as my language skills are not up to par to understand Spanish I figured that is a "no" to the movie idea. However I found this great jacket at a store called "Lefties", thankfully it fit me too. I'm not sure what my size is in clothing here and come to find out that a 'Large' is still a bit tight on me when it comes to shirts anyways. The only thing I know is my shoe size!
I really wanted to eat at "4 Cats" this restaurant/cafe where Picasso used to hang out. Picasso designed the menu and actually did his first art exhibition inside the restaurant back in the day. I must say you are definitely paying the price for the ambience of the place. The food was good but the prices were a reflection of the ambience of the place and not necessarily of the food. I did meet two flipinos there of all places. The maitre de was filipino and I herd him talking to a waiter in Tagalog. Sadly there was no dessert menu there so I had to settle for a Cafe con Leche. Oh well, the nice thing was I got to eat at 7pm which is early to Spanish time but by the time I was done at 8pm there was a line to eat at the place. My friend, David, introduced me to FNAC in Paris and they have a store here at Paza Catalunya. This store is like Best Buy but more funky! I wanted to see if they had this Australian TV show on DVD there or if they had any English movies. Sadly my Aussie show was not found but I found this Nickelodeon show both season on DVD only it was in Spainsh. So I didn't get anything there and must settle for the two dvd's I did bring to help me sleep. However I did learn that "Mama Mia" and "Prince Caspian" is out on DVD. I was tempted to stop for dessert but then decided that I ate way too much today so I skipped dessert and just headed home.
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