When I came out of the church, a heavy downpour was in progress. I felt a little guilty that I had left Graham in a park with very little by the way of shelter. It did not improve my mood either than somehow I managed to come out at the wrong side and had no clear idea where I was. I started to walk around the church until I saw the park where I had left Graham. He had found shelter under a huge tree. We huddled there until the shower had blown over.
We had no other real plans. So we decided to walk to Plaza Catalunya, where the meet would take place later in the afternoon. One of possible routes to Plaza Catalunya was Avenida Diagonal. I knew that there is a Lush shop on this road. I like to visit as many different Lush shops as I can. I had not written down the address, but figured out that sooner or later I would come across it.
I had completely underestimated Avenida Diagonal. This road seems to be endless. It is supposed to be one of the main shopping streets in Barcelona, but we did not see much evidence of this on the stretch from near Sagrada Famila until we turned off onto Passeig de Gracia. Needless to say, I never found the Lush shop.
Passeig de Gracia's claim to fame is that it is the most expensive road in Spain in terms of property and rental prices. In keeping with this, it is full of high-end designer shops. Apart from this, it has some architectural gems. I wanted to take some photos of Casa Mila, which is more commonly known as La Pedrera.
Just as we were coming close to La Pedrera, the heavens opened again. Fortunately we were a matter of feet away from a Starbucks so we decided to take a break and have something to drink until the shower had blown over. By the time we had finished our drinks, the sun was shining again and we set off so that I could take my photos of La Pedrera.
La Pedrera is a gorgeous apartment building, which was designed by Antoni Gaudi. The first floor, an apartment on the second floor and the roof are accessable to the public for a fee. Considering the limited time that I had available, I decided that I was quite happy to just admire it from the outside.
Once I had taken my photos, we moved on. Soon we came up to two more architectural gems. Casa Batllu is another building that was designed by Antoni Gaudi and the neighbouring Casa Amatller, which was designed by Josep Puig i Catafalch. I had to take some photos of those buildings before we moved on.
We came across some more beautiful buildings, but so far I have not been able to identify them.
We got to Plaza Catalunya about 30 minutes ahead of schedule. Graham decided to sit down on a bench in the square and watch the world go by. I decided to have a look at the famous El Corte Ingles department store. I had heard time and time again that this is a must see and had kind of expected a Harrods of Barcelona. Well, I was quite disappointed. It was just a typical continental European department store much like the ones that I am used to from my childhood in Germany. I did however manage to find some eyeshadows to match one of my formal dresses and my semi-formal dress.
I joined Graham on the square. I have never seen so many pigeons in one place before. I am not normally nervous around birds, but the amount of birds in one place scared me a little.
Soon it was time to walk across the square to the Hard Rock Cafe. When we got there, people were just getting ready for a group photo. We said "hi" to some people that I recognized and chatted for a bit. Once the photo was taken, nobody really knew what was going on. Eventually a member of staff came and said they were ready for us.
A member of out cruise meet thread had negotiated special drinks deals for us. We were each given a special wristband as we came in. We were in the downstairs bar. The noise was deafening. Everybody was really excited and we had to compete with some rather loud music. Graham soon had enough and told me that he would wait for me outside. I hung around for a bit, mainly because I had arranged to pick up our embarkation t shirts at the meet and the person who had them had not arrived. There were two reasons why I really wanted those t shirts that evening. Normally we do not bother getting the embarkation photos. However, this time round, I was going to get the photo CD, which would contain every single photo taken on the cruise. So I wanted to make sure that I had the t shirts for this. The second reason was that I had assumed that I would get them and therefore had not packed a clean t shirt for the next day in my handluggage.
After an hour I gave up. I started to feel rather guilty that Graham was waiting outside and was not sure what the weather was doing. Graham was sitting on some stairs just next to the Hard Rock Cafe and enjoyed watching the world go by. When I got there, he was talking to some people from the cruise meet thread, who had arrived a bit later. I told Graham that I had heard that the family that had the t shirts was on an excursion and was not expected until around 18:30. This was only 30 minutes away and Graham said that he was quite happy to hang around. It was try for a change and a gorgeous warm evening. So I joined Graham.
Where we were sitting, we had a good view of the entrance of the Hard Rock Cafe. Still, occassionally our view had been blocked so I decided 45 minutes later to go back in to check if the family I had been waiting for had not arrived. I found them eating their dinner. They had come in through a second entrance that I did not know about.
T shirts in my possession, I was ready to go to the hotel. We had discussed to go and see the fountain show at Montjuic with some other people from the cruise, but that was not until 21:00. I was actually quite tired and with the weather being so unpredictable as well, I did not want to hang around until then. So we headed to the train station that is underneath Plaza Catalunya from where we could get a direct train to the town where our hotel was.
We did not have to wait for our train very long and it only took about 20 minutes to get there. We had just left the station when another downpour arrived. We took shelter in the doorway of an apartment building until the worst had blown over.
We checked into the hotel and headed up to our room. We saw an advertisement for a company that delivers pizza and pasta to the hotel. As we had not had any dinner, this sounded good to us. I had a quick look what they offered and then asked Graham what he wanted. I never got a reply. Graham had fallen asleep. So I decided to get ready for bed, too. Just as I was dropping off to sleep, I heard a thunderstorm in the background. I found out the next day that the thunderstorm was actually bad enough to close Barcelona airport. So we had made the right decision not to hang around for the fountain show.
