May 18th Wed Barcelona

May 18^th Wed Barcelona

We again sleep in a little. These late night diners at 11:00pm make it hard to go right to sleep. Today we set off for three sites and made it to only one. We went to the Palau de la Musica Catalana. This is rated the world’s most extraordinary music hall that are a riot of color and form. From the polychrome ceramic ticket window with busts of Bach, Beethoven and Wagner.  The exterior is remarkable as is the interior. We were not allowed to take pictures. Everything made you feel you were in a forest with lots of light from the trees that were the support poles made of ceramic to the sky lights that let light in. They can seat 2000 and I think to pipe organ has 1500 pipes. They played some organ music for us and it filled the room with a rich sound. The hall was built in 1908 and it is very modern by today’s buildings. We arrived too late for the English morning tour so we had to come back for the 2:00PM tour. It was well worth the wait. We walked around an upscale shopping and apartment area. We stopped in a Star Bucks for our usual fare, which included internet access.

After the tour we found a small tapas place to eat. Geri had a chicken sandwich and I had a pepper/eggplant/tomato/cheese on flat bread. Outstanding. The beer also helped.

We then decided to wlk the entire Rambla. We wanted to see the other tourists and the attractions that bring people here. We looked and shopped and stared. At the end of the Ramblas is a monument to  Christopher Columbus at the harbor entrance. It is very tall at 150 feet. His 18 inch finger seems to be pointing to the new world but it really is pointing to Sicily. Erected in 1888 they still were confused about where we really were.

From here we decided to walk to the hotel along the harbor. IT was a long walk but we made it. It proved we did the right thing about getting and using the Metro passes for the 5 days.

In the evening around 9:30 pm we went out for dinner. We decided to go back to the Cerverses Catalana restaurant we had gone to for lunch a few days ago.  It was again an excellent choice. A little confused about finding the Metro station at night we did make it back to our hotel around 12:30am. We had walked just over 8 miles today.