The Richards Family

Hola. We are having a good time in Barcelona. We hung out at the beach yesterday afternoon for a few hours and enjoyed lounging about, playing in the sea, people watching and reading. It was probably the most crowded beach that we have spent time at so far on our adventure and the dirtiest, in terms of the water,but we had fun anyways. Afterward we walked back to our apartment, along past the boat harbor and the columbus monument, and along part of Las Ramblas to our home. For dinner we headed out to one of Rick Steve’s recommended restaurants, fairly close to our place. It was called, ‘La Fonda’ (yes, you can have a chuckle if you are a Napoleon Dynamite fan) and it was really good food. The restaurant opens at 8:30 pm and they don’t take reservations, so you line up and enter when you can. Because we went early, (yes 8:30 is early here for dinner) we were able to get in right away. Oh, I forgot to mention that smoking is still legal everywhere in Spain, including restaurants, which can be kind of a drag. Fortunately, La Fonda, had a no smoking option and the smokers were downstairs so the smoke didn’t travel throughout the entire restaurant. After dinner Nate and I headed back to our place and Dave and the girls went walking along Las Ramblas all the way to Placa de Catalunya. Today we walked through parts of the old town and then back across las Ramblas to an open market area called, ‘La Boqueria Market’. It was a very fun market with all kinds of fruit, vegetables, seafood, meats (including tongue, bulls testacles and lamb heads, kind of gross, oh and tripe and other intestinal organs). We had lunch at a restaurant right by the market and enjoyed olives, bread, seafood soup, prawns with garlic, cod, ice cream and watermelon. Nate loves shellfish and is really enjoying clams, mussels, prawns, and has discovered that he loves seafood soup We hung out there for a while and then came back to our place where I have just woken from an afternoon siesta Tomorrow we are heading out early to Portaventura for the day, which is a Universal studios themepark – the kids are very, very excited.