Spain Day 22 Barcelona 16 October 2025

Today was a free day for us to do, or not, whatever we wanted.
That automatically means a slow start to our day. Breakfast at some time after 9, then we sat in our Junior Suite and watched the 36’ers game live on a 100cm+ TV. They won, beat SE Melbourne 88-71.
We eventually made it out exploring on our own. We started walking down Pg devGracia past Casa Batlo ( a Gaudi creation) and then made out way across and onto Rambla de Catalunya. We came to a large open placa, Placa de Catalunya. The placa had two large circular fountains and lots of interesting classical statues on the top level, and a huge open oval paved area on the bottom side. There were pigeons everywhere, cooling off in the fountain ponds, roosting on all the statues, and much to their delight on the bottom area, getting fed by the people enjoying the plaza. The Rambla de Catalunya is somewhat famous for its statue buskers,the “artists” dress up in all sorts of weird and wonderful costumes hoping to get passers-by to give for the efforts.
We continued down the road past by the Reial Academia de Ciencies I Arts (another impressive old world building) and discovered Mercat de la Boqueria, a large undercover fresh produce market. I’ve said it before and I’m saying it again, we love fresh food markets. And this didn’t disappoint us, there were lots of different stalls, fresh fruit and vegetables, fish, meat, nuts, cheeses & preserved meats, Jamon and lots of ready to go food places. We decided to get lunch there, Deb had a small tray of Jamon and cheese, while I had a couple of empanadas (a spicy beef and a chorizo). We both enjoyed our lunch.
After lunch we walked down towards Barcelona’s waterfront. We past more very old churches, a grand looking theatre “Teatre Del Liceu”, and we past another theatre that had seen better days. At the waterfront we were greeted by a very high column, Mirador de Colom, a large ornate column with statue of Christopher Columbus standing at the top, 60m above the ground. Chris is pointing towards the sea. The base of the column has sculptures depicting his voyages and the Catalan Coat of Arms. (The Catalans are a very proud regional people, they seem to put all things Catalan before Spain).
Along the coastal seafront area there are many large grand old commercial buildings, a sign of the wealth that once flowed from the port. In the port itself there are 100’s of sailing vessels in the marina, some very large cruisers and mega yachts. The dry docks looked full of large private vessels and a few ferries. We came across a large statue, La Gamba (The Prawn) as we walked, it looked happy.
We then found the Barcelona Train Station, the place we should have arrived at on Tuesday. Like other train stations we have seen, it is undergoing significant renovations. But it still had that grand old world European feel to it with the vast amounts of ironwork.
A short way further along we came to Parc de la Ciutadella, the park was huge. It contained the Zoo of Barcelona, the Parlament de Catalunya, a line of botanical glass houses (now part of the Museu de Ciencies Naturals de Barcelona) and the Castell Dels Trees Dragons (an 1888 Modernisme building built as a cafe/restaurant for the World Fair of 1888), and a host of other parks, monuments, building and do much more. You could spend a few days there and not get bored. There was a large avenue on one side of the park that led up to Barcelona’s Arc de Triomf. The Arc was built as the main entrance to 1888 Barcelona World Fair. We enjoyed looking through the glass houses, spending some time in the gardens watching the world pass by and a couple )of what we thought were buskers) feeding wild parrots and encouraging other passers-by to join in.
On we went in search of drinking water fountains and a mural, The Kiss. We came along “Mural of the Kiss” first. It is the 2014 work of Joan Fontcuberta, as part of the Tercentenary of the fall of Barcelona. It is hidden away in the Gothic Quarter of the city. It is made up from 4000 pieces selected from 6000 donated images from the residents of Barcelona.
We found an illusive water fountain not too far away, filled our bottle and started walking back to our hotel. It was a slow walk back up the hill. We paused for a moment as we came to Casa Batlo, and got dragged into the small chocolate shop Deb had discovered. We bought some chocolate and then went out the back of the shop to have a look at the rear face of Casa Batlo, very Gaudi.
Our hotel was just up the road a little, so it didn’t take long to get back. Rather than going straight to our room we went up to the rooftop to take in the late afternoon views. The skies were clear and the views were great. Back to our room for a well learnt rest.
Tomorrow is a travel day, we say good bye to Spain as we fly to Dubai for a couple of days. We are both looking forward to something different.