Barcelona- Sun in the Winter!

To escape the Winter grey of Belgium, we spent a few days in Barcelona in January. The next few blog entries attempt to capture our experience.

Barcelona is Spain's second largest city and the capital of the proud and distinct region of Catalunya. The city is vibrant, relaxed, sophisticated, and a little gritty...all at once. The popular nationalistic refrain is "You're not in Spain, you're in Catalunya!" It has its own language, history, and culture. So Spanish isn't of much use there. Here is a shot of Howard on the roof of our hotel with a beautiful view!


Drinking Spanish beer from a Belgian beer glass- Classic!
Breakfast is at 9am, lunch is 12-2pm (when everything but restaurants close), siesta is 2-5pm, dinner starts at 9pm. So this is hard to get used to for we Americans. But the good news is that the Tapas (small plates) bars are open all the time. That makes it easy to step in and get a quick bite to eat. The downside is that nothing they have looks remotely familiar. Here are a couple shots of places we went to.