It wasn’t the COD (crack-of-dawn) and we weren’t the first into the breakfast room, but we were pretty much alone, even until we had finished . . . I had no competition from pre-teens for the computers, as I usually did, to print marilyns puzzles, it was so early.
Today was one we’d been looking forward to, buying picnic-ables at the big market of La Rambla, then lunching at the big park designed by Gaudi. But first there were to be two stops I had picked out of marilyn’s books . . . she still had to find them – how to get to them – but she let me pick them out as activities. These were two shops over on the “good” side of La Ramba, in the tiny old-town streets & alleys
The first was a hat shop . . . I just like to look at hats, but I saw this broadbrim Tororeador’s chapeau that I had to have: it’s my combination tororeador / Frank Lloyd Wright / Franz Kafka look. The also had the bull-fighter’s hat that looks like mickey mouse ears, but I had no interest in that. Marilyn always looks, too, but she didn’t buy any hat.
The other place was a cutlery shop that has an amazing array of scissors, knives, trimmers, and shavers . . . I didn’t buy anything there, even tho’ I’d tho’t that I was more likely to buy something there than the hat shot before I’d seen either, but it was interesting. Since we had gotten an early start, we took our time wending our way back to the market, then leisurely made our choices, then took the train over to the park. We didn’t plan well, tho’, took the wrong route into the park, thru the back way, so we had to climb over a huge hill to get to the picnic tables, and we were already tired and hungry from walking all morning, so when we got there we just fell onto lunch like a pack of wolves.
We had these mini-bottles of wine we’d bought at the grocery store just for this picnic, some bread we’d taken from the breakfast buffet (just like Mom taught us . . . 8^D . . . ), some fresh squeezed exotic fruit juices, some fresh fruit, olives, foie gras, and green cheese (pesto/provolone) from the market.
Tho’ we were quite hot from our hike, by the time we’d finished eating we were almost cold – it was windy up there.
Down below us was the gaudi park, and we could hear the cacophony of the children and the street performers and vendors all while we ate. A very merry and chaotic sound.
There’s a large ovalular plaza where those people gather, surrounded by these odd gaudi balustrades, walkways, buttresses and vistas. I just don’t see how the wacko got permission to build stuff like this . . . it’s great that he did, but didn’t he have to get it approved by some parks commission or something? How did he get the financing to build this stuff this way?
This first picture is from the edge of the plaza looking down at the main gate. In the distance, on the left you can see the gaudi cathedral towers, and beyond that, some big towers at the beach, then the ocean. Gaudi wanted the sailors to be able to see the towers as they came into port . . . I guess he didn’t visualize that most people would fly in . . .
This is the other view, from the main gate looking back up. Those columns at the top of the stairs support one end of the plaza, at least a couple of acres, and that’s kinda surreal place in-and-of-itself , , ,
This area is so big, you don’t realize at first how many people are loitering around there . . . when you add in the pathways running around the plaza, out of site, back up onto the hill, in the trees, there is some serious space here, and all defined with this odd architecture.
It all sorta looks the same, but totally different, if you know what I mean . . .
This is almost half-way down this, verandah / hallway that leads away from the plaza. Behind us here, in the alcoves are several sidewalk vendors we didn’t want in the pictures.
I don’t know what the “nubs” on the wall on the right are: water basins? Flower pots?
Something else that amazes me are the columns on the outside here, incredibly intricate but I should think very susceptible to weather erosion, but the were all still perfect, either perfectly maintained, or else perfectly resistant.
We got home later afternoon. Totally exhausted. I think this must’ve been pizza night, since I have no pictures . . . while I am perfectly willing to admit that BCN may have excellent pizza, I would say that our sampling of “Telepizza” was not one of those excellencies . . . but it was very little effort, and we had our movies and sit-coms to entertain us.
We were content . . . Wednesday would be museum day . . . that would be enough culture to allow us a little mindless entertainment.
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