Thursday 15 November 2022
We started our day, as all days should, with breakfast on the roof terrace.
Once fuelled up, we headed for the BasÃlica de Santa Maria del Pi. This is the only surviving example of a pure Catlan Gothic church, so was certainly worth a visit.
As per the cathedral, this too is having works undertaken on it, but there was plenty to see outwith the scaffolding.
We went up onto the roof terrace which was actually a lot more fun than the cathedral visit, mainly because it was empty and we seemed to be able to wander all over the place at two levels.
We walked around a balcony level with the top of the stained glass windows and noticed how they could be opened to ventilate the church - this is why you can see gaps in the stained glass from the inside (I thought the panes had blown). A lot of buildings were destroyed/ransacked during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 and many stained glass had been replaced due to fire damage from this period.
It was time for another park visit, Parc de la Cuitadella. This one also has a piece of Gaudi in the form of an elaborate fountain.
As it was pleasantly sunny so we simply strolled around, and took a photo of me with the elephant as you do in Spain.
On our return, we came across ruins of the medieval Barcelona in the El Born district. They had been discovered underneath a market and debate raged about covering them over again to build a library, or keep them exposed. The latter group won and they are really interesting to view (just no photography allowed).
Then we had timed tickets (free!) for the Picasso Museum so we enjoyed an hour or two in there with the throngs also making use of the freebie. Picasso lived in Barcelona as a teenager and passed many of his sketches to the museum when it was established.
He was particularly into drawing pigeons as his Dad was a breeder, and I love these stylised ones.
We had yet another tapas meal out (hardly a surprise in Barcelona). But, before then, we'd popped back to our apartment and had a quick peep on the roof at night time. Gorgeous. We had pre-booked this restaurant, rather than randomly falling into one, which saved us the stress of trying to find that was free/Ruth-friendly.
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