Poor Pieds

My poor feet. We walked a lot today, but it was totally worth it!

This morning, we went to a grocery store around the corner, grabbed stuff for a picnic lunch, and hiked up Montjuic, which is a rather large hill (or small mountain) right on the edges of Barcelona. It's actually where the Olympic facilities from '92 are. It was so cool to walk up there, look out over the (urban) sprawl of Barcelona, and see all the gardens, pools, stadium, and the torch from 1992. I sort of vaguely remember those Olympics and I definitely remember how the torch was lit, but mostly I remember the opening and closing ceremonies - all the dancing and singing! It was a little sad seeing how run-down it sort of is after the spotlight is taken off of it. I mean, everything was still nice, it was just overrun with feral cats and algae. (Which make for an interesting eau de cologne.) It was still very cool to be up there though and there were quite a few other tourists and lots of tourist buses, so it's not a ghostown or anything by a long stretch.

After that, we hiked back down the mountain and cut across Barcelona to visit the Gothic Quarter (barri gothique). Not Gothic like 'goth' like Addams family (that's what my host mom thought I meant! Hee.) But actually Gothic like the style of architecture. The streets were very small and it felt like the buildings were going to fall in on me, but the ornateness of all of it was just amazing! After walking around, we went to the Picasso Museum (with apparently about 3 middle school's worth of loud kids from France). It was really neat seeing his version of "Las Meninas" after being in the Prado Sunday where Velasquez's is. We left and went to get gelato as a pick-me-up down the street, and okay, it wasn't Italian, but it was delish!

Tonight we hit up the grocery store again (not the robbing kind, the buying kind) and made a delicious pasta dinner with peanut-buttered mini biscotti, which weren't actually like biscotti at all, but were still good as an appetizer. I thought it was really nice that the hostel had a kitchen and refridgerators we could use (eggs for breakfast tomorrow maybe?). It makes eating for me more about gusto and less about worrying about the costs.