I had made notes on some guide book recommended restaurants near some of the stops on our route today. Of course, none for near Sagrada Familia. There was no shortage of places to eat…. just a shortage of suggestions. So we chose pretty much at random. I figured wherever we chose had to be better than the McDonalds just out of Kaitlyn’s sight on the other side of the church.
I talked Bill into ordering some tapas to share. I mean, how can you go to Spain and not eat tapas? We got some fried shrimp, crab, chicken and beef. I don’t think Bill liked any of it. He seemed to eat a lot of Kaitlyn’s chicken nuggets. Well, at least we tried it.
From the restaurant, we walked through the pouring rain to the stop for the tourist bus. As we stood there getting soaked, we considered scrapping the bus and just taking the metro to the next Gaudi building we wanted to see. Normally it would have been an obvious decision. But in an effort to save time today, yesterday I stopped at a tourist office booth on Las Ramblas and bought the bus tickets. It was hard to just throw away 53 Euros. While we were debating the value of not standing in the rain, the bus arrived. We didn’t get on that one, too full. But moments later, two more buses pulled up… empty. Someone apparently realized the miserable rain necessitated extra buses. The dry ride put an end to any debate.
The bus was, indeed, dry. It was also packed, hot, stuffy, and had fogged up windows so you couldn’t see out very easily. It’s also a double-decker open top bus… allowing for great viewing in good weather if you sit up top. No one sat up top. No good viewing happened.
The bus was, also, going away from where we wanted to go. The stop we wanted was the last stop before where we got on. That meant we got to ride the entire two hour circuit to get to our destination… probably two stops away on the Metro. Ah, the best laid plans….