Tuesday, July 12: Shopping and beach day

Charlotte wanted to do some clothes shopping and our family wanted to shop for souvenirs, so we decided to split up in the morning and go different places. It worked out nicely. We went back to the La Rambla shopping street, also passing by the famous cat statue, El Gato del Raval.

Yes, the cat has a really long thick tail, and yes, it also has testicles, which explains Ben's goofy
grin! :)

 We also stopped at the Placa Reial again, which was lovely during the day, too!

Then we visited the St. Josep De La Boqueria market, a fabulous fresh food market selling everything from candy fresh fruit smoothies to spices and herbs, to the most unusual seafood you have ever seen! It was very crowded and the smell of the fish and other seafood was quite unpleasant to me, so we did not stay long. It was a very impressive place, though!

 

On out way back to the apartment, we stopped at the corner street sign to take a photo to remember "our" street, Carrer Del Comte D'Urgell. Also a building just a block or so down the road on our walk to the metro station with a cool mural  of a balloon painted on it.

 Later in the day, after we all met back at the apartment, we all decided to go to the beach once more. Alex and I were a bit sunburned from the kayaking trip the day before, so we waited until later in the evening to go out into the sun. We took the metro to a different beach, hoping it would be a bit less crowded and maybe cleaner. It was a nice looking beach, but unfortunately there was a lot of trash floating in the water and it was still pretty crowded.
We hung out there for a while, walked along a rocky pier, and relaxed for a bit.

 Daryl smoked his obligatory one per Caribbean vacation cigar. Hey, it's a strange tradition, but he likes it!

After that, it was out intention to find a nice Spanish restaurant to eat some authentic Spanish food.

 For some reason, we had a difficult time finding something suitable. In hindsight, we should have looked up recommendations on TripAdvisor or something like that for the best places to eat.
We wound up at a restaurant called "Colom" (as in Christopher Colom) back in the Gothic district. We sat outside with a lovely view of this beautiful pink and blue apartment building with lovely balconies. 

 It was a pleasant place to sit and watch people. The food was mediocre. The paella that Daryl and I both ordered (his with seafood, mine vegetarian) looked pretty in the pan, but was nothing special to write home about.
I guess, that will be a good reason to come back to Barcelona another time, since we never really got to eat GREAT Spanish food while we were there!

When we got back, sadly, it was time to pack and clean up and get ready to leave in the morning. Daryl ordered a taxi online and 3 times in a row, after entering all the information and ordering it for 8 am  the confirmation e-mail said 3 pm! it was so frustrating, we eventually wound up using a different company!