Sunday 25 September 2016

Day 3 - Flamenco

This morning our jet lag seemed to have mostly passed, although Joe still woke up later than Monica. Today we opted for less early walking and found our way up to the Diagonal  (a major Barcelona street) and found the tour bus Orange Line. This was an easy start to the day and exposed us to more neighbourhoods. It also showed how busy Barcelona is this weekend with its local festival. Streets across the city were closed and packed with people. 

We hopped off the bus when it was near a local garden and museum, Parc Guell.  It was quite the hike up this mountain to get to the gardens. A pleasant distraction as we hiked were the small children and families just getting out of school. Of course it reminded us of our darling granddaughter, Madeline. 

When we got up to the top we discovered a 2 hour wait for the museum. We did a quick walk thru the garden and then decided that the menacing looking clouds and thunder meant we should hike toward home, which we did. Along the way we found a delightful restaurant - Le Gopal- which a patron at the Jazz cub had recommended. It was terrific. 



We spent 2 hours having lunch (of course staring at 2:30) enjoying fried artichokes, anchovies, paella with rabbit and snails along with Sangria and local red wine. Our waiter was warm and friendly and most of our fellow diners were clearly locals. Many young children and elderly grandmas were among the patrons. 

Following lunch and a siesta we headed out to the music hall, Palau de la Musica Catalan, for a night of Flamenco and Guitar.  Tonight we tried taking a local taxi to our venue. After walking quite a bit we finally found a cab. The driver did not seem to know this famous local music venue and ended up leaving us a 10 minute walk from where we were heading. The inexperience of local cab drivers develops as a theme during this trip. 

When we did arrive we were pleasantly surprised at meeting our new friends, John and Joanne, who were sipping tea in the lounge. We met these two on our two day AC flight from Toronto. It was fun to chat and enjoy their company along with a glass of wine and some tapas before the show. 

The show tonight was FANTASTIC!  There were 3 guitarists, a drummer and two Flamenco dancers, Th show was a great balance of talent with showmanship and humour. The standing ovations were well deserved, 



Sleep at midnight came easy. 




1 comment:

  1. Joe -- you need to tweet all this stuff...nobody except me reads blogs anymore...

    Tweet, tweet, tweet..

    ReplyDelete