Above, you know I like this stuff on the walls but we have been seeing such gorgeous walls, I get it why it doesn’t appeal to everyone.
We walked in a bit of a daze from the bus station where the Monserrat tour dropped us, in search of the Gothic Quarter. We headed out in the direction our guide from the tour pointed – go that way to find the Gothic Quarter. We tried.
We tried to go in the correct direction but first we came upon the totally engaging Parc de la Ciutadella and wandered through losing our orientation but wow, right, quite the thing to stumble upon with their Arc de Triumph at one of the many exits. This isn’t the Arc btw, I got a picture from the HoHo on day two.
I was trying to guide us to the Catedral de Barcelona without much success although we did eventually spot it in the distance and were able to zigzag our way to the Placa de Sant Iu. Below you can see there was still some light on the walls, fast disappearing. The streets in the Gothic Quarter mostly look like this, without a clear turn anywhere.
The balconies and the floor to ceiling windows are so appealing.
Remember the churros and chocolate from before – it’s everywhere.
Still in search of the Catedral.
Here she is.
And then I tried to lead us to a particular restaurant. The gps kept changing her mind, go this way, no, turn around, no turn left not right, etc etc. I gave up so Lill and Marita both tried as we wandered back and forth through the Quarter until we all give up. If you look at the map above you can see how the gps was always trying to find a ‘better’ route.
Let me buy us a TAXI! So we found a real street and hopped in. Through this whole trip, once finding a street with cars, we never had to wait even one minute for a taxi. The taxi dropped us off at another pedestrian area but at least there was only a couple ways to get to the restaurant from there.
You can see the restaurant on the map – L’Antic Bocoi del Gótic. It specialized in Catalan cuisine and we enjoyed having something different and delicious. Here are a couple of the choices we shared and there were a couple more. It was delightful.
Lill took this picture as we were leaving.
Back on the street, we walked home and I went in the apartment to put up my feet (having topped 15,000 steps already…) while Lill and Marita went in search of another bottle of wine like the one we drank at the restaurant. In the course of the week we all became fans of the local Rioja.
This is how we drink wine at the apartment. We each have a favorite style of glass different from the others eliminating confusion.
This was our Bon Voyage evening as Lill and Marita would be heading back to Sweden in the next day, and that next day I would do absolutely nothing, then move on to Madrid.