-Barcelona! Street food, Sunscreen, and Sangria Galore!-

Bustled through the busy streets of beautiful Barcelona, I began my day on a bus tour.

My first walk down La Rambla actually showed me that the Spanish people start their days epically slower than the French (and since I didn't need coffee) this fact made me adore Barcelona.  La Rambla is a long street with a fat sidewalk down the center between the two lanes where - a bit later in the morning - there would be souvenir stands, street performers, restaurant seating, flower stalls, mini pet stores, and (brace yourself for this one) tourists.

Until that area got more exciting, I slathered my arms with sunscreen and perched myself on top of the double-decker Barcelona Bus Turístic.  Disclaimer: my historic information in this post comes from what I learned in the tour booklet.  I think we can assume it is at least as adequate as Wikipedia.

We started by the coast at the historic Port Vell and worked our way past L'Aquàrium, the Palau de Mar which houses the Museu d'Història de Catalunya, the Port Olímpic used in the 1992 Olympics, went around past the luscious Parc de la Ciutadella which includes a zoo, on to La Ribera district with the church of Santa Maria del Mar and Museu Picasso, and passing by the Plaça de Catalunya which is the starting point of La Rambla.  These, however, were not my favourite things.

Among my favourites in Barcelona were all things designed by Antoni Gaudi, La Rambla, and Boqueria Market.  The enormity and variety of Parc de Montjuic was incredible, but it would have taken me all day to hike around it.  I saw Gaudi's Casa Battló, the Casa Milà otherwise known as La Pedrera built between 1906 and 1910, the Casa Vicens, and of course, the Sagrada Familia which was begun in the late 19th-century but which is still under construction.

I got off the bus for a while to hike through Gaudi's Park Güell. 
His nature-inspired architecture is full of curves and tiled-mosaics, spires and a fountain with a giant mosaic-tiled chameleon!  People were picnic-ing and busking and basking in the sanctuaries of shade Gaudi's harmonious structures created.  I lured a tourist into taking a photo of me in this pavilion-structure.  In the park I also saw a pigeon (I assume) someone had painted in neon colours, until some English tourist woman exclaimed, "Look! The only gay pigeon in Europe!"

By this point I was hungry, so I got back on the bus and returned to La Rambla and the Boqueria Market.  The covered market area was like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory for adults.  Little restaurant booths, tapas, produce, meat, fresh fruits, vegetables, chocolates, wines, fish, eggs, and oodles of booths selling 1 euro cups of fresh fruit juice.  I had the cactus fruit juice, and came back later for coconut-pineapple, but I was tempted to just buy a dozen different flavours.  When I couldn't look at the candy booths any longer, I found somewhere to buy a heaping container of paella (a rice dish) and...a bunch of other stuff the guy heaped in there.  I just said I wanted paella, but I guess that comes with a spoonful of pasta, a bit of salad, some hummus, and a few other things heaped on top of and around my paella.  It was still tasty.

Stuffed, I clambered back on the bus for a few more sights, including the Futbol Club Barcelona (soccer stadium) and Tibidabo (it's a real word but fun to say!) which is the highest point in the area and must be reached by tram.  I will admit, being so hot and riding around on top of a tour bus all day was making me sleepy, and I may have been nodding off, so I decided to return to La Rambla where I could walk around and not fall asleep. 

So that's where I spent my evening, and among all of the street performers I saw: a man painted in white in a white suit sitting atop a big fake toilet, 2 Futbol Club Barcelona player impersonators, one man under a table with his head poked through a hole and a fake headless body in the chair next to it, 3 men variously dressed in fruit/as fruit stands with signs welcoming tourists to Barcelona, one old man dressed in traditional matador costume (see photo at top of post), 2 women dressed as faeries, a green and white speckles man riding a bicycle, a bronze cowboy with a spiky black haired wig, the guy with the green face from The Mask, Edward Scissorhands, and...more.