gracecarmel: Barcelona

The curtains in the hotel blocked out all the sunlight making the room pitch black, and we didn't wake up until 3pm!! We must have been exhausted!

After finally making it out of the hotel, Quinn and I headed to La Rambla and had tapas for a late lunch at El Choquito. We had potatoes, more potatoes, chicken, and salt cod fritters. I was a happy camper with my potatoes :-)

Just across the street from where we had tapas was the St. Josep Le Boqueria Market. The place had tons of stalls filled with fruit, vegetables, candy, meat, seafood, and other goodies. My favorite was the 1 euro fresh fruit drinks that many of the stands sold. Quinn had the strawberry coconut, I had the mango coconut, and we were in heaven! They were amazing! Yummmmm!!!

From just outside the market, we saw gondolas high in the air. We asked around to see where to catch one and then ended up going to the castle at Parc Montjuic. It was a beautiful view!!!

With a couple of hours before dinner, we headed to Parc Guell to see some of Gaudi's work. It was a small hike up to the park where we saw the famous Gaudi iguana, colorful benches, and houses. From there, we also had a great view of the city. It was past 8pm when we were at the park so it was peaceful with not too many tourists - great for picture taking!

Barcelona's Arc of Triumph...

When we had dinner with Tracy and Matt the other night, they had recommended a restaurant called Commerc 24 so we made reservations for dinner there. They had 2 tasting menus, the grand festival and the festival. The boys all got the grand festival (10 courses), and I opted for the festival menu (7 courses). It was one of the best meals I've ever had. Each dish was carefully presented and showed the such creativity. We lost count of the number of courses during our meal (so many!). After 3 bottles of wine and closing the place down, we were all happy campers.