Barcelona! Multiple sunsets! Mosaic overdose!

Wednesday March 23
Wednesday was our second day in Barcelona. We woke up around 9am, refreshed and happy that we had beds to sleep on - a decided improvement over the outside of the Eindhoven airport.
The hostel offered breakfast for free, so we took them up on their offer, and grabbed a bunch of rolls and pears for later snackage.

The walk up El Carmel hill, on our way to Park Guell.

Our first sight of the day was El Carmel hill, an area overlooking much of barcelona, conveniently with escalators on half of the way up. A short walk away from the hill was the main area of Park Guell, a park built by Antoni Gaudi in the early 20th century. This park is famous for its mosaic art, which covers the entire plaza. "Giant mosaic art plaza" can be filed under things that Grand Rapids needs to have. Get on it, rick snyder.

Sagrada Familia

The next stop on our journey was another project of Gaudi - the Sagrada Familia, a huge basilica in the downtown of Barcelona which has been a work in progress for the past 100 years. We didn't feel like paying the entry fee, so we just walked around the building and took pictures for a few minutes.


Taking a break from famous architectural masterpieces, we grabbed cold cuts and baguettes at a supermarket for lunch and dinner, and walked down to the beach to picnic for a while. While eating, we were approached a few times by people trying to sell us stuff - one person trying to sell us coconuts, and another trying to sell asian massages. To the dismay of the vendors, I wasn't in the mood for coconut or sketchy massage offers. Later, we visited la rambla again, and stopped by La Boqueria (a large street market) to grab some more food for dinner and breakfast the next day.

Walking back to our hostel, we had the idea that it would be a cool idea to have on dinner on Monjuic, a large hill overlooking the city, as the sun set over Barcelona. Because Barcelona's such a large city, we had to race up the mountain to make it up in time. A cool side effect of our race against the sunset was that we would see the sun set over one cool vista, then head up the mountain a bit further and see it set again. We finally reached the top, and had sandwiches and a jug of bad sangria. It was a great way to end a day packed with awesomeness.