Vacation Recap - Day Five

Day Five started bright and early with the alarm going off at 4:45 AM!!! Yes, you read that right. We were up so early to catch our 7 AM flight to Barcelona! After taking a nap on the plane, getting checked into our hotel and a little planning about how to go about seeing our new city, we were off!

From our hotel, we walked to go see the first of many examples of Gaudi architecture. Antonio Gaudi is a famous Spanish Catalan architect who designed in the Art Nouveau style and lived from 1852 to 1926. Below is Casa Batllo, a house originally built in 1877 and remodled by Gaudi from 1905 - 1907. Locally, this building is known as the House of Bones. You can see that the balconies look like skeltons. Still after all this time, I can't decide if I like Gaudi's work or not. I appreciate his viewpoint and his talent, but if I personally, like it, I think I am still on the fence.

From there we went and walked down Las Ramblas, the main street of Barcelona, lined with shops and restaurants and hotels. We stopped into the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch, a vacation must, and somewhere that Marissa had never been! After lunch, and continuing on Las Ramblas, we stumbled upon a market tucked in between some buildings that was absolutely amazing. Here are just a couple of the pictures I took there. Eventually I will get all the pictures uploaded to Facebook, I promise!

We continued down Las Ramblas, saw another work by Guadi, stopped into a few stores, checked out some street performers (Marissa took a lot of convincing that they were, in fact, real people!), and finally made it to the water! I love sail boats (some of you know that I took sailing lessons a couple of years ago), and just had to capture a picture of them in the harbor.

Marissa loves the water and all things related to it, and jumped on to the idea of going to the aquarium which was located out in the harbor. There were some beautiful fish inside. I decided to try and capture some of them. My first picture turned out beautifully (see below), but the rest of them don't quite measure up! On of the neat things about the aquarium was the moving sidewalk through a very large fish tank (which was to our left, right, and above our heads) with all kinds of fish, sting rays, eels, and sharks! The sharks were probably my favorite part (and made me wish Shark Week was coming back soon and not almost a year away!).

We then made our way back onto land, and tried to find another Gaudi building without much luck. We also stopped by to see one of the cathedrals, but our evening pictures just didn't work out, so we ended up going back during the day. For dinner, we had tapas at Taller de Tapas in the gothic district. Both my sister and the guide book recommended it, and I can see why. After dinner we walked down the street and got gelato, another first for Marissa and a great way to end a long day.

Below is my food for today. Today was my off day for working out. Hopefully I will wake up early and do my workout before work tomorrow. Here's to hopeful thinking!