Sometimes a Wander Beats a Destination

We hadn't even made it out onto the street from our apartment before Olivia (5) complained "I'm tired."  And so it went.  We walked and walked, and my kids complained.  And to add to the experience, it started to rain.  Hoping it would pass, we took refuge in a 3 story McDonald's on Las Ramblas.  The rain continued and intensified.  We relented to the street salesman pushing their cheap umbrellas, and we slogged on toward our destination -- the secret garden beach in Eixample I had read about online.

Consulting our maps numerous times and ignoring the twittering of complaining children, we finally reached it.  By this time, we knew there would be no swimming.  It was still raining and soggy.  But we had a plan, and we stuck to it.  When we finally arrived at Eixample "Beach," we were underwhelmed to say the least.  The splash pool was dirty, there were no other children (or people) to be seen, and the rain continued to fall.  They ran around anyway while Danilo and I studied the map again, looking for another destination so we wouldn't have to call the day a failure.

In the end, we decided to walk towards an old area of Barcelona called Barri Gotic.  The rain stopped somewhere along the way, and we had a great time.  We had gelato, chased pigeons in Placa de Catalunya, and then thoroughly enjoyed the Catedral de Barcelona and the old stone architecture of the Barri Gotic.

We made our way back to our apartment after miles of walking and made pasta and arepas for dinner (we're a long way from Venezuela, but Danilo found the Venezuelan arepa flour just down the street from where we're staying).  We tried to watch TV in our apartment, but the only thing we could find in English was a channel with music videos from the 1980s -- so we danced to "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" by Wham (difficult to believe that video isn't a joke).  After that got old, we watched some soccer (football).  It turned out to be a great day after all.  

Now it's bedtime, and I'm hoping and praying that the good people of Barcelona need to get some sleep for work tomorrow so that I can get some sleep tonight!  Tomorrow, we're taking a hop on hop off bus tour of the city and hope to see some great Gaudi sights.

Click here to see some photos from the day.