Birthday in Barcelona

We are staying in the Gracia area of Barcelona, which is full of walking streets, cafes, and plazas. There are few tourists it seems, mostly families and old couples. Our apartments in Spain, while nice and comfortable, haven't exactly been the most modern. The walls are paper-thin and the Spanish aren't known for being quiet. Our neighbor must have left town and set his clock radio to maximum volume, which awoke us at o-dark-thirty and we were serenaded for the next two hours with the Pope's Sunday morning speech. I suppose that is better than being a party to Friday night's lovers quarrel followed up by their amorous reunification. We did get out of the house by noon and walked down to the neighborhood plaza to check out the "castelers" making scary-tall human towers.



They send a little kid up to the top which is at the third-floor level. The crowd was having a ball and fortunately we didn't witness anything disastrous. Afterwards we headed to La Rambla, a famous tree-lined pedestrian street that is full of tourists. It seems to be listed in every guidebook as a Barcelona must-see, and judging by the souvenir stands and crowds people take that advice to heart. Jolene and I have always felt that it's seedy and really doesn't offer anything except good people-watching, which is exactly what we did. Our guidebook says that you're more likely to be pick-pocketed here than any other street in Europe and we wholly agree. We watched gypsies set up illegal shell games while "pickpockers" (Noelle's term) roamed the crowds. After a while we began to recognize the perps and Noelle and Allie even came up with nicknames for them. Bad things do happen to good and prudent people, but from what we saw almost every scammed tourist was completely naive and not using their heads. If you think you're going to win an easy 50 euro picking out which shell the pea is under than you're a fool. Likewise, if you walk around the crowded streets in one of Europe's largest cities with your bejeweled purse held by one finger at arm's length than you get what's coming to you. Here's a picture of us being willingly ripped-off at one of the La Rambla cafes.




Yesterday we explored Park Guell, a failed gated community designed by the architect Gaudi. Lucky for us it failed after the model homes, gatehouses, and infrastructure was built and it was turned into a public park. It's a great spot with a nice view of the city and lots of Gaudi's serpentine tile work and gingerbread houses.










It was also Allie's 12th birthday! She got a few small, airplane-friendly gifts and she elected to have my leftover alphabet soup instead of dining in her pick of Barcelona's restaurants. Noelle thoughtfully decorated the apartment with balloons and I hope we awoke the neighbors with our singing in English.