Overlooking Barcelona

We spent most of our second Barcelona day overlooking the city from one place or another! Patrick and I woke up early and left Chris and Paige to catch up on sleep, and went back to the Olympic Park to find their Botanical Gardens. We found that we'd walked right past them the first day, thinking that the sign pointed up the road instead of across it! He and I spent our morning wandering through them. As it was late in the season there weren't a lot of flowers, but they have a very interesting layout that is grouped by region, and have plants native to everywhere from southern Africa to Australia and California.

We went back and collected Chris and Paige before lunch, then headed off to find our way to Tibidabo, which is one of the highest peaks around Barcelona and has an amusement park on the top. It took us awhile to find our way there, but once we made it we toured the Cathedral at the top of the mountain and climbed to the top for a great view. The cathedral itself was pretty, although quite a bit smaller than those that we'd seen before, with a lot of mosaics throughout. After that we wandered around the top of the peak for a little while, had some sangria and headed back down to Barcelona.

 

 

We did our best on this day to find an interesting restaurant that didn't have tapas--and it took a VERY long time! There were plenty of good restaurants, but most were either tapas restaurants or nothing very unique. After dinner, we took off exploring to find Bar Marsella. This was an absinthe bar that Chris remembered from his time here, where Van Gogh and Hemingway used to spend time while they were in Spain. We made it, although we discovered that the surrounding neighborhood had gone quite a bit downhill since Chris' time there--and for that matter, so had the bar! We found it just as we were on the verge of turning around and leaving, and each tried our obligatory absinthe. (It tasted like black licorice and was certainly strong, but nothing out of the ordinary.) I'm glad we stopped in -- drinking absinthe in what is rumored to be Hemingway's favorite absinthe bar isn't something you get to do every day -- but other than the novelty I can't say I would have made it through the sketchy street to get there or stayed when I saw the holes in the ceiling and bar that looked like it might have shut down last week.