Day 8: Fat Tire & Picasso

(Saturday mornings are generally domestic days for me.  I spend my mornings re-setting the place and getting the monotonous but highly necessary chores out out the way.  Once that is done, I can get  to furiously squandering my day away with random musings.  This morning, as I was organizing papers (I hate administrative tasks) I came across my Barcelona box.  It’s really just a shoe box filled with various receipts, business cards, post cards, maps, etc from the Spain trip.  As I was looking through it, I realized that I hadn't finished posting all the information on here for 4 months now.  So with chores out of  the way, I sit here at Macondo (a Columbian empanadas place in the city) with my free trade coffee and a table littered with papers from my Barcelona box. So here is me trying to recount the good and bad of my trip from November...

Our first official full-day in Barcelona was idealistic.  The weather was gorgeous - sunny and warm  (neither cold nor hot.)  The morning started off with the Fat Tire bicycle tour around the city.   Fat Tire was fantastic.  We basically met at 11am in Plaza Saint Jaume, got to meet the tour guides and the 30 other random people also on the tour and went to get our bikes.  This was a great way to spend the first day as we explored the major attractions of Barcelona and had someone explaining to us why they were the major attractions.  This way, later during our trip, we could decide if want to re-visit or pass on any of the key places.  We saw pretty much everything.

We started off at Saint Jaume > Placa Reial > Cathedral > Palau de Musica > Arch de Triumf > La Ciutadella > Placa de Toros Monumental > Sagrada Familia ended at the Beach & late lunch with group.  I will try and upload a map, the ground we covered is fairly significant.  One definite plus of ending up in the beach for lunch was that we discovered an interesting twist on a grill cheese sandwich - they called a Bikini, basically a grill cheese with grilled onions and  mustard (yes, mustard) and it was yummy!

Practical information:

http://fattirebiketours.com/barcelona
Rate: 22 Euros/person
Time: 11a - 3p

So recounting all this information is hard!  I forgot to mention, later that evening, we walked around the Born neighborhood and then eventually made it to the Picasso Museum.  Ending with dinner at at place called Mosquito (the owner spoke like Chinese, English, Spanish - he was a UK transplant) In any case, this place actually had veggie dumplings! My favorite, not to mention a seriously nice selection of micro brews.
                                                                                               
Beer information: Guinea (Fox Brewery)
1. Riner
2. Antuis
3. Ales Agullons Runa
4. Montserrat Extra