Steve's Travel Blog: Starting Our Last Week

Donna & Paul left for home. It was a delight to spend time with them.

The weather has settled into being cloudy with periods of sprinkles. It may continue until we leave on Monday washing out the colors in all our photos. That happened in Paris a couple of years ago.

This morning we were back to yoga and what a wonderful class it was! Claudia's classes are never the same. She starts out very slowly with breathing and ends with a wonderfully long savasana, but doesn't have a pattern in between. Today we worked the entire body top to bottom with stretches. We even did our feet by rolling & standing on a 3/4" dowel about 2 feet long. The bottom of my feet got their first major workout ever and complained the entire time.

Three very nice ladies have been with us in every class. Still no hangups in the single-gender changing room.

Here's the graffiti-covered door to the yoga class building and the tiny sign with the studio info. It's a shame no respect is shown.

We Metro'd up to one of Barcelona's major plazas, Catalunya and was surprised to exit through a large underground Metro station with lots of shops. Tokyo & Osaka are famous for gigantic versions. Zurich, with its severe winters has a huge underground shopping area.

There's no way to get this huge plaza in one shot. A video on a gloomy day will turn out blah. The day being what is was, the pics don't exactly pop out at you. I'm grateful for the balloons, otherwise you'd think it was in B&W.

Like any major public space, you get pigeons...

and fountains. The Spanish love boobies, too. One lady took a shower with high pressure sand, the other not.

What is the difference between Spanish & French architecture? Here are unmistakably Spanish buildings...more rounded and with flourishes that are different from the French.

These seem to be Gaudi-inspired.

Kids and pigeons are not my favorite health combination but that seems to be ignored here.

Below is a short video. If you are reading this in an email, click on "Steve's Travel Blog" at the top to get the web version. Email doesn't like large files.

I haven't been adding to the "Señiorita" collection. Here's one Susanne took, she saw the shoes first.

It began to sprinkle. Las Ramblas starts at Catalunya and meanders in our apartment's general direction, so we strolled there heading towards home. Mild hunger hit us but we didn't want to spoil dinner, so we shared a fresh fruit cup from the Boqueria market, all of 2 euros.

For dinner we both wanted Italian. Our quest actually started with Susanne jonesing for Spaghetti Bolognese, spaghetti in a marinara meat sauce. I believe this is the single most popular menu item in Europe...even in non-Italian places.

And we did not want just a local restaurant with tapas & pizza, but REAL Italian. We found one in the 'hood...not a single tapa on the menu. Another clue, the establishment lingua franca was Italian, not Spanish.

As we put in our order and settled in, the waiter took our picture with pi & delta in the background.

Why Greek letters in this restaurant? Don't know, forgot to ask. Susanne wondered where I learned the Greek alphabet. Easy answer: physics class in high school. Our teacher told us that the study of physics had a very practical application...it uses lots of Greek letters in the equations so when we get to college, we'll know the names of all the sororities & fraternities. True story.

Back to food. Here is Susanne's linguini Bolognese.

I ordered my favorite pasta, seafood linguini but my order came with a surprise. The waiter (in black with red braces...so Italian!) brought a very hot dish containing a sizzling bag of pasta & seafood.