Barcelona (part 4)

Sunday: late start, since everyone was still tired from the footbal game the night before. We finally headed out and took the subway to Park Guell, up on the northern part of the city up in the hills. From the metro stop there is a long series of outdoor escalators, since the hill leading up to the park is extremely steep.



Weather was cool, but still reasonably pleasant.



The park was nice, but unfortunately they had a very large section of it closed off, so there were a lot of things we were unable to see. We did do a loop walk outside the edge of the park, which was quite pleasant (especially the views from the top):



Headed home after that. Lunch at "Milk", a local restaurant that had gotten rave reviews in the rental place binder. It was decent, buta little too Americanized for our tastes. At that point: rain! We did quiet stuff in the apartment for the first bit of the afternoon, then got our raincoats and umbrella and headed out for a walk in spite of the precipitation. By retracing our steps from the previous day, we were able to locate a cafe that sold cups of hot chocolate "Suisse", a local speciality.



In Barcelona, "Suisse" means a cup of very thick (almost pudding-like), very dark hot chocolate topped with a huge mound of whipped cream. Major indulgence! It was amazingly good. We also had some churros (donut-like snacks) to go along with:



After that we walked around the old city again for a while. Lots of nice window shopping; we saw any number of interesting things that we would have liked to buy (had the shops been open). Back to the apartment after that, since people were getting wet. Dinner: roast chicken, salad, rice & pasta, accompanied by a very tasty bottle of white wine ("Castillo Perelada Blanc Pescador"). We skipped dessert (in spite of howling protests from the kids) as a result of our previous chocolate orgy at the cafe.