Morning tour: Cathedral, Barri Gothic, and Placa Espana

I got a little distracted as I was about to tell you about our morning city tour that started at the Cathedral. As we began our tour, someone tried to pickpocket one of the ladies on our tour. She had an open purse (no closure on the top) and a woman had her hand totally in her purse. She would never had known, had she not turned towards the guide to hear what she had to say. The woman disappeared quickly in the warren of little alleyways near the cathedral. I always take a bag with a zipper on top. Anyway, pictured above is the Barcelona Cathedral.

Inside the cloisters. They were peaceful, but look like they could use a bit of cleaning (which is going on as we speak, that is what all the scaffolding is for on the front of the Cathedral).

Very peaceful, Spain uses a lot of the same plants as we do in California. The flora looked a lot like home, palm trees, cactus, grasses etc.

Inside the Cathedral, only shot I got. No pictures allowed.

These old doors looked so medieval, we had to get a picture. The Barri Gothic (old town) was built around the 1300's. I don't remember hearing anything earlier than that. It was very scenic and hot. No breeze blew through these narrow alleyways and sometimes they would smell like urine (they always looked clean though).
After we left the Barri Gothic, we were dropped off at this little shopping and restaurant area in Montjuic. They stranded us there for 3 hours. Totally a tourist trap to make you spend your money there. This is a little event center they built in the 1800's for an exposition. It takes you through all the various architecture of Spain. It was very picturesque, but 3 hours, give me a break.


Pretty door. The Handsome Husband loves to photograph doors. He really got into balconies too on this trip

We had lunch here and then we had about 2 more hours to kill. I'll show you some of the things we did tomorrow to pass the time.

I like this metal work on the window. It looks like the Sagrada Familia. A church we visited later in the day from the outside and then went back on a different day to see the inside.