I had not booked a hotel in Barcelona for that night though. This was VERY uncharacteristic of me since I am such a planner. We ended up finding somewhere to stay that was right in the middle of the city. It was probably the smallest hotel room I've ever been in but the view out the back window was great.
We dropped off our bags and immediately went to Park Guell. Park Guell is a city park designed by Gaudi (whom I mentioned in previous posts).
(We thought it was neat that these were randomly on display. We did not buy them - they were just samples placed together.)
We spent the morning at Park Guell and then headed back to Las Ramblas for some lunch. We had a VERY authentic Spanish lunch (I wasn't too fond of it but David loved it) and then ran into some interesting street performers :) You never know what you might see on Las Ramblas...
We kept hearing about an outdoor market that had fresh fish, vegetables, fruits and flowers and we were determined to find it. Tucked away on a side street was this ENORMOUS market. I saw some of the most brilliantly-colored fruit and vegetables I'd ever seen. I smelled some of the foulest-smelling fresh fish I'd ever seen. And I saw some animals frozen on ice I wished I'd never seen. But it was very neat nonetheless.
The weather was really nice that day so after lunch, we decided to wander the coast line. We had yet to spend any time on the beach in Barcelona so we figured we might want to stick our feet in the Mediterranean Sea just once while we were there. We quickly realized that anything goes on their beaches. You'll see what I mean below...
This was the same ship that we had just spent 21 days on going back out to sea. Very sad.
We did a little more walking and suprisingly it was dinner time. David had wanted paella the entire time we were in Spain but had yet to have any. So we found a place that had it and he was beyond excited.
One more place we wanted to mark off our list was the Ice Bar. An Ice Bar is a drinking establishment made primarily of ice. It's so cold that you have to bundle up before you enter. We met some pretty neat folks inside IceBarcelona but it was a quick conversation because we didn't last long :)
The one thing we hoped we'd never have to mark off our list while on our honeymoon was the final thing we experienced in Barcelona. After leaving the Ice Bar, we began our trek back to the hotel. It was a pretty good ways from where we'd ended up so we were prepared to walk for at least an hour. And it was dark by this point. We continually heard about how bad pickpocketing was. We'd met a handful of people on our cruise who'd been pickpocketed and didn't realize it until it was too late. But we had been lucky not to experience that thus far. That is...up until our final night.
Long story short, 2 men came up to us on our walk back. They started small talk with us but David quickly realized the small talk was just a distraction so they could get to his wallet. Well David is smarter than the average bear and had his money concealed within hidden pockets in his pants. The man reached in David's back pocket only to be disappointed when all he found was a receipt. D called the guys out and they ran away. We were extremely lucky they didn't try to harm us and left empty-handed. But it was still a pretty scary moment.
We'd been in about 12 different countries over the last 3 and a half weeks and not until the 24th day did we run into a mugging situation. Although I hated to end our honeymoon on that note, since the outcome was okay, it did make for a good story.
We made our way back to the hotel and began packing our bags. We had to be at the airport bright and early that next morning so we needed to get our beauty rest and prepare for the LONG flight back home.
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