June 10

We all decided to explore Barcelona on the hop on hop off (hoho) bus and started out together on the green route.  The Fullers were going to get off at Segura Familia, Gaudi's famous church that is still under construction, but, after seeing the long lines waiting to get in, they stayed on the bus.  A 2 hour wait in line is standard.  We all got off at Parc Guell, a park designed by Gaudi for the Guell family.  There is the famous dragon sculpture covered in a mosaic of ceramic tiles as well as various structures.  It's a fascinating place to visit.  Pat & I weren't up for the extensive hill climb the others wanted so we listened to some local musicians and went back to the hoho to continue the tour.  We changed over to the orange route and finished the city tour.  We had done the hoho on our last visit so we were fairly familiar with the locations visited.  We got off and headed for a wine bar (with toilets) and, since it was Sunday, not a lot of places were open in the afternoon.  We went down a side street from Las Ramblas and found a really nice place on a square by a church built in the 1200s.  From the bar we walked down a narrow Gothic alley past the remnants of the Roman wall & aqueduct and eventually got back to Placa Real, near our hotel.  The Gothic area has very narrow streets, more like alleys and barely wide enough for a car.  Usually the restaurants & bars on the Placa have musicians & acrobats performing out front, however Spain was playing Italy in the European Football (soccer) champion series and everyone was watching the game on TVs in the bars & restaurants.  We went to the street where our hotel was and sat in a bar close by which had the French Open tennis final on TV.  It finally was called for rain so we went back to our room and waited for Sue, Jeff & Will to get back from their hoho tours.  We had previously checked out a restaurant across the street which had a front window with chickens cooking on rotisseries in front of a wood fire, the menu looked good and that was our choice for dinner.  We had to walk through the kitchen to get to the table and were amazed at how many rooms were inside on 3 levels.  We wouldn't have guessed the size from the outside.  It was quite elegant with old casks and paintings throughout.  All of the food selections we had were excellent.  We had to head out early the next morning for the airport so we went to bed after dinner rather than go out to party.