Barcelona – Wow !!! Must see city!

I love Vancouver, and I don’t even want to entertain any idea that I will ever live anywhere else, but yet I am so impressed with Barcelona. I come to the conclusion that I could live in Barcelona for a year. This city has everything; Mediterranean Sea, beautiful beaches, mountains, parks, mountains, architectures, restaurants, coffee shops, shops, narrow streets, very large streets, old and modern, noisy and tranquil, old fashion and avant garde, traditional and trendy. There are bike lanes everywhere in the city, I do mean everywhere; one neat thing that we have noticed, there is a system in place for commuter biking: there are bikes at different points in the city, so one can take a bike to go somewhere in the city and drop off the bike at a different point (the bike doesn’t have to be returned to same spot). I wish we had this system in Vancouver! All over the city people are walking, running and biking, this is why is my kind of the city!

On Sunday we got up in the morning, and went out right away. What a beautiful morning, it is sunny and clear but not hot, just perfect temperature. The city is completely quite, very little traffic, very few coffee shops open. It is Sunday morning in Europe, also the beginning of Setmana Santa (Holy week, one week before Catholic Easter to Easter day); I remembered my days in Vienna when on Sunday most of the, city was closed down only churches, restaurants and movies theaters were open. A day when everyone is supposed to slow down and spend quality time with friends and family, no work, no shopping, no malls.
First we went to the rail station to buy train tickets for Montpellier; after we got the “normal” tickets which are 55 Euros, about 85 dollars, not very cheap, eh? We headed out to Explore the city. By this time I really needed my morning coffee and we kept walking by all these places serving Nescafe! what is up with Spanish people serving Nescafe??? Spain is supposed to have good coffee. Finally we found a coffee shop that had café au lait and croissant, so we had coffee and croissants and did a little bit of people watching. I felt a bit better after what I called the Mickey Mouse coffee, coffee was small, I am used to have a tall Starbucks coffee. As I was telling Mark that for sure I will need one more coffee, just a few meteres ahead, we came across a Starbucks----I was Happy! I know that back home sometimes I said – ‘there are toooo many Strabucks around’, but here in Barcelona I was very happy to find one. Sure we stopped to have a good coffee exactly like home. Strabucks in Barcelona is exactly same as in Vancouver, even the muffins and pastries are the same.

After 2 coffees we felt really good and we started exploring the city. We walked everywhere, first to the trendiest part of town which is called La Rambla. La Rambla is the very large street with 2 big statues at both ends. In the middle there is a pedestrian only median, and people are walking along and watching entertainers, artists of all kinds, singers, florists, painters, and many souvenirs shops.

We made it all the way to the old Barcelona port and we kept going all along the beaches. It is a nice day, but not beach weather yet. Still lots of people fully clothed lying on the beach or playing volleyball, baci, soccer. We came across la Playa Nudista, but except for one naked guy, no other nudists,…that was a bit of Marks’ disappointment.

It was fun to walk around and marvel, watch people, again lots of runners, bikers, family with kids, lots of tourists like us. I kept thinking that if I ever live in Barcelona I have lots of nice places to go running or biking, the beaches are almost as long as from English Bay to Spanish bank maybe even farther. We walked for hours, and took lots of pictures. We left home around 9am and by then it was 5pm, so we decided to head home for a siesta.

I slept for one hour, and then I was Ready for the evening stroll. We end up by walking on this street (I guess similar to Robson street, but much wider) with all most expensive designer names, Prada, Gucci, Chanel and many other names that I am not familiar with.

At the end of this street emerges a labyrinth of very narrow streets with tons of shops that one can imagine, from souvenir shops, to clothes, shoes, accessories, all kind of funky stuff, restaurants, bars, pubs, patisseries, coffee shops (very European area) and hoards of people, locals and tourists alike, all out to have fun. We wandered for a while and after we got tired of the crowds around we decided to explore an other area and we got the "Arabic” area of town. Lots of signs in Arabic, and people sitting around and chatting and having tea. It felt a bit unsettling to me, I think it was ok and safe, but I was a bit worried of our surroundings. By then was late anyway and we decided to head back to our hotel.
That was our first day in Barcelona, and full day of exploration, excitements, wonders.