barri gotic

So today, after a nice restful 8 1/2 hours of sleep, I headed out to explore the gothic part of Barcelona. I started towards the bottom of Las Ramblas (a bunch of connected streets all with 'la rambla' in the name) and headed up. It was really interesting. Lots of crazy street performers, vendors - even a whole section of pets for sale! Mom - they were even selling roosters haha! This is all in the middle section of the street, which is for pedestrians, but on the outside edges of the street were lots of little tapas bars, shops, and other stores. I ventured away from Las Ramblas to go down several of the mini 10 foot wide side streets. I did some good small-store research for my thesis, saw some sights, and ate some lunch:

tapas (ibiza cured ham, goat cheese, herb mushrooms)...

plus a 1/2 litre of sangria. Yummm.

This building is pretty typical of Barri Gotic architecturally - though each is unique.


Check this building out - it looks like the building was completely gutted...completely meaning there is literally NOTHING left on the inside (you can see sky through it) and metal braces are holding everything together. Really curious as to what is going to be done with it.

After the gothic area I took the train up to Parc Guell. Lots of fun Gaudi-ness here and beautiful vegetation.

Definitely feeling the love from this city. Wish I had more time to just live the life here and hit the beach. Sadly I don't think tomorrow will give me enough time to do more than head out for a short while before I head to the train station. They couldn't give me a train reservation, so I need to just go a bit early and hope for the best!