27th June

After a great sleep we woke early, eager to see if anyone was available to chat on Skype.  Just to add to our continuing frustration with technology since we left home we couldn’t sign in until I had uninstalled and reinstalled the program.  By now it is time to head out for breakfast and ride one circuit on the touristica bus.   We found this helped us get our bearings in Barcelona but this one is not so clearly marked on the very sketchy map so it wasn’t really that helpful.  It did take us past most of the beautiful landmarks in the city though which were lovely to see from the open top deck in the morning sunshine.  We are astounded by how many beautiful buildings and sculptures adorn this city.  The last picture in this post was the post office, how beautiful is that?  We have circled the points of interest; shopping areas, museums, parks and palace etc for return visits. While Sandy then went shopping Eric and I headed towards the Museo del Prado but unfortunately it is closed one day of the week.  Guess what, that would be Mondays!  Not to worry the beautiful, but very formal, Botanic Gardens are next door so we ambled through them and on to Museo Reina Sophia.  This is regarded as the city’s best contemporary art museum.  We particularly appreciated how cool it was inside this old building that began life as a hospital in the 1700s.  Outside in the square it is well over 30 degrees already.  We saw works by Picasso, Dali and Kandinsky to name a few.  Time passed quickly and by 2:45 we are well and truly ready for lunch. We certainly are getting used to the Spanish daily meal times. 

We had planned to meet up with Sandy at 5pm to do the second loop on the tour bus but due to the poor layout of the map we missed each other and just decided to each do it separately and meet up after.  Perhaps we should have done it even later because at 5:30 it was 38 degrees!  Too hot to enjoy!  Once we had completed the lap we headed for the cooler subway and home for a cold shower and refreshment.   We returned to the streets at about 9pm to find dinner and ended up down near Atocha Station again.  Food and wine are still amazingly cheap by our standards.