Barcelona! A new city for us to explore. Not! That being said, we did find new and different things to do here today in what feels like our 2nd home, we’ve been here so often. We are docked at the World Trade Center today, which is great, we can just walk right into town, no need for the blue bus. The crew is hustling and bustling getting passengers out to the luggage and off the ship as we make our way down the pier a little after 9. Even walking slowly, past the statue of Columbus and the pretty Ports Building with the gargoyles wrapped in netting to keep the pigeons out, we still arrive too early at our first stop: El Born, the old city market.
The weather is gorgeous, so wandering around the large square out front is pleasant at least, as we wait to be admitted into the market building turned history museum. Opened in 1876 on the former grounds of the Citadel – which was demolished to build the Ciutadella Park and this building – the huge cast iron built market was in operation for almost 100 years, first as the main city market, but then as population shifted, as the central wholesale fruit and vegetable market. Used on and off for different events and community gatherings, the building was constantly in danger of being demolished for city expansion. Finally, the city took it over with plans to convert it into the provincial library, but in 2003 the project was abandoned as excavation uncovered 16th and 17th century city remains – right underneath the flooring of the main market!
This is what we are here to see today – it is really quite incredible that over 86,000 sq ft of 300 year old streets and building remains were buried underneath the Citadel and then market all this time. You can see entire streets and the outline of houses, wells, stairs, a whole section of city underneath our feet to be discovered.
In addition to the actual ruins, there is a museum containing finds from the excavations – pottery, china, tiles and the like – as well as tons of historical information regarding the market’s architecture, its set up and demise…plus some great old photos.
About 45 minutes is all we need here and we find ourselves outside heading toward the Ciutadella Park with tons of time left before we are in search of lunch. Passing this totally wild sculpture, Homenatge a Picasso (or Homage to Picasso), a cube with furniture, iron beams and water running on and through it, created to celebrate Picasso’s centenary.
Wandering around the park, we become totally absorbed in watching the Monk Parakeets scratch about for food, spending far too much time watching their antics. Then passing the abandoned looking (but not) Botanical garden building, and the really pretty Citadel Military church across from the Catalonia Parliament building.
We still have way too many hours to kill, so, well, we went to the zoo. Yep. The zoo! We figured what the heck? It was a beautiful day, we had nothing else to do (I mean how many times can you walk through the alleys and lanes of the Gothic quartier?) and the Barcelona Zoo was right there. It was really quite fun – every imaginable species and all the exhibits and animals were in very open natural environments, which was nice and actually very interesting for the birds alone! And the views across the city – surprisingly enough.
They have a huge aviary with all sorts of birds, a cute little meerkat, and then these totally scary vulture things that were, well, just frightening! We watched them forever, and while the natural environment thing was really nice, it was a little scary when one of the damn Vultures flew at me. It was behind heavy duty fencing, but still. Nasty scary thing! Eek! Always an adventure.
Zoo done, we hit the streets, looking for lunch. Surprising as it might sound, we ended up at Tapeo, the same place we ate in May. While we normally eschew going to the same place, we loved this tapas restaurant. It is teeny and narrow with great staff and the most amazing food. And it was nowhere near as crowded today as in May. Grabbing a table, we ordered our beer and fab Albarino wine, then dove into some incredible smoked Jamon croquettas and an Iber-burger that was meat with Iberico ham sliced on top. We finished off our “starters” with the main event: the canneloni, of course, my absolute favorite. Sigh. Heaven.
Then it was back to the ship and onto the next leg our cruise with only 62 back-to-back passengers and a totally full ship. 698 peeps. Argh. We shall see. We were also greeted with the news that our itinerary has changed. Instead of 2 nights in Seville, we will only have 1 night and then 2 overnights in Lisbon because there is a port worker strike in Lisbon beginning 11/21 that would affect our arrival and disembarkation. This meant our afternoon was spent scrambling to change our monastery reservations in Seville – which we were fortunate enough to do – and figuring out what to do with our bonus day in Lisbon. Gave us something to do before starting our normal evening activities and sailing off to Valencia.
Andiamo 