First Anniversary

Got a bit of a late start today - 10 AM (1 AM PST) on wait that would be early for us :)

Today was a walking day - we walked up Via Laietana to St. Jaume I and took the left into Barri Gotic. 

We took a little side walk to look at the old roman walls that are still remaining and of course took pictures.

Went into the Placa St. Jaume where the Generalist office and Town Hall are.  The architecture in Barri Gotic is amazing and made for a lot of cool shots.  On our way to La Rambla we walked thorugh streets with alot of shops with very familiar names (footlocker, quicksilver, H&M, etc...)

We landed in the middle of La Rambla and a block from the Starbucks.  (Ha!  yes I had to go a Starbucks in Spain - the mocha was great)

We walked a few blocks up La Rambla and got great pictures of street performers (mimes) and then walked back down to the Mercat de la Boqueria. 

This is farmers market on steroids - fresh fruits/vegetables, fish, meats, cheeses, bread, sweets, etc.. 

We picked up some serrano jamon (ham), queso (cheese) and bread to make sandwiches for our siesta.

Evening -

Gourmet Tapas Walking Tour

We booked a walking tour to give us a little view of the city and orient us to some of the sights.  The tour is 2.5 hours and you walk through La Rambla, El Raval and Barri Gotic.  There are 2 stops for Tapas and drinks.

We highly recommond this tour if you come to Barcelona.

Our tour guide, Marco, was great.  He walked us through a few places we hadn't seen, for example, El Call and Placa del Pi.

In the Placa del Pi - there was a little food fair.  One of the vendors had a cheesecake that was to die for.  Not you typical super sweet cheesecakes - this was light and air with a light honey flavor. 

The other highlight of our walk was to see the Roman pillars that are in the city.  There are two preserved and honestly if you didn't know where to look for them you wouldn't find them. 

Dinner

We ended up walking through La Ribera trying to find a Cuban restaurant we heard about.  Couldn't find it but it was a great walk.  We ended up at Origens  - Passeig del Born.  Very popular restaurant.  Food was okay, dessert was great.

We ended up going back to Tripode for after dinner drinks.