sun and sea

On Saturday morning, I left mum at the Tarragona train station, and she left in a taxi for Camp de Tarragona, with the intention of getting an AVE train to Madrid. I'm still not sure exactly what happened, so maybe I'll ask her to guest blog, because it seems like what happened after we left each other was a very complicated ordeal.

Nonetheless, I went back to Barcelona to fly to London, to fly back to Newark on Sunday morning. I got back to Barcelona before noon, my flight was not until 8:55pm. What was I to do? Go to the Museum of Contemporary Art, perhaps? No! I did not want to engage my brain and be inside on a gorgeous day (though I did take a detour to the Setmana del Llibre en Català and El Corte Inglés, both at Plaça de Catalunya)!

Instead, I walked down La Rambla to the Mirador de Colom, and I rented a bike! It was a Monty folding bike, and my experience with it was great. It's a great city bike.

I wish I had brought the GPS with me, because rode from the Mirador along the beach all along Barceloneta to the end of the boardwalk along the Passeig Maritim de la Mar Bella. Then along the way back, I grabbed a lunch from a grocery store and then rode back through the streets of the Barri Gotic and hit the Parc de la Ciutadella, which is where all of the spiritual seekers/travelers hang out. The zoo is also there, and evidently they used to have an albino gorilla.

This was such a cool living statue on La Rambla. If you gave him a coin, he rapped!

I had been biking along the inner harbor, and all of a sudden,
there's waves and the smell of sea rather than sewage!

There had been surfers in Tarragona, too.

Self, very content.

I loved my rental bike. It was so cute and so nice to ride!

Along the Passeig de Lluís Companys. I think, although I could be wrong, that these street lamps were designed by a young Gaudí.