Barcelona Day 1: Olympic Park, the Gothic District and Placa Catalunya

We started off our first morning in Barcelona by hiking up Mountjuic Hill (which, if you're from flat Minnesota, feels much more like a mountain!) to see the Olympic Park. It's a nice walk from which you get a good view of the city, and the park itself is still pretty. It's still used as an athletic venue, with lots of people jogging or doing aerobics on the grounds. (Or ignoring the signs to let their dogs splash happily in the water of the defunct fountain!)

From there, we hiked up the rest of Mountjuic Hill, searching for the Botanical Gardens (which we didn't end up finding) and then taking the gondola back down. We took a quick walk back to the busier part of the city to eat yet more tapas for lunch, and then toured through the Gothic District. This is one of the oldest sections of the city, and still has some of the original, charming architecture.

We wound up in Placa Catalunya, one of the main metro and shopping centers and somewhere that we'd spend quite a lot of time in the next 2 days. After a little bit of shopping and looking over the fountains and HUGE numbers of pigeons, we met up with one of Patrick's friends who lives in Barcelona and another who was also travelling there for dinner (tapas again!) before turning in for the night.