Goodbye Beautiful Barcelona

 

Sometimes it is lovely to wander without a timeline and today that is exactly what we did.  The Gothic District is too amazing for me to find words, so will post photos.

There was the large plaza, the Cathedral of Malaga, the narrow itty-bitty streets with buildings so high that our necks hurt looking for the tops toward the sky. We found several monuments and the antique archway alongside millions of other visitors.

There was a sea of people streaming through the narrow streets in the old district.  We saw street kids sleeping in doorways that broke our hearts, families with little children and old couples walking hand in hand.  There is an abundance of shops selling only socks, while others specialized in underwear.  Clothing stores that were so full of shoppers, we avoided those doorways.

And shoes.

I found shoes.  Espadrilles with thick soles to baby my feet.  It seems like I was walking on the cement and I was happy to replace my flip flops since I’d already tossed away my walking shoes. From then on, I studiously avoided looking into the doorways of the  shoe stores..  There are so many shoe shops here in Spain!!!

And sangria.  When our feet started to scream and stopped us in our tracks after walking past their limits, we found a nice little café on La Rambla to have a cold drink.  Caroline ordered her usual white wine and I asked for sangria.  When the waiter brought the glasses, it looked like a Mutt and Jeff cartoon.  My drink was huge!  I put a photo on Facebook with the promise that it took me two hours to drink it.  It’s a good thing Caroline remembered we were on the L7 metro to take us back to the hotel.  Wow.  And we did it without a problem.

Barcelona speaks a different Spanish, called Catalan.  I can understand a bit but we’ve been lucky to find many English speaking people.  The words are so different from the language I learned... for example, empanada in the south of Spain is empillada here in Barcelona. Words are close, but different.  Thankfully, people are nice and friendly here, just as they are in the other places I have been in.  It’s a beautiful country with beautiful people.  I love knowing its blood flows in my veins.

But, goodbye to Barcelona and tomorrow will be a quick hello and goodbye to Madrid.  It’s been a fun ride through Spain with Caroline.  Then, I’ll be back with cousins in one of my ancestral villages  (Toro and Fuentesauco) and speaking my Spanish again.