We get culture

Last night we had a great dinner in "The Seu" on Comte Borell which is one street over from our pension. It's a little Mediterranean restaurant slightly more upscale than the local bar/diner places but not too expensive. Great atmosphere and great food. Anita had duck and I had sole, both cooked to perfection. With wine and beer the total came to 29 euros, not bad for a great dinner. Tonight Anita wants to go back to "Wok Barcelona" and get the cooks to fry us up all kinds of different seafood again which is included in the buffet price of 11.90 euros. Good deal.

Today we walked in the other direction to Place d'Espanye and then up a hill to the Art Museum of Catalonia (this region of Spain). It was great. We intended to go in for only an hour or so (8.50 euros each) but we ended up spending about 4 or 5 hours. It was that interesting.

First we saw a temporary exhibit of 1920s and 1930s photography. We immediately thought that Hannah would love it, with her own ability with cameras. We also saw a short film and thought Josh would like it. Then we saw lots of paintings, sculptures, furniture and jewellry from many different periods. We even saw a pretty good likeness of Mike and later one of Joe playing guitar but they were both painted hundreds of years ago so I'm pretty sure it wasn't really them.

We walked back by just heading in the general direction that we wanted and taking shady side streets. Our urban orienteering is getting lots of practice. The main boulevards have a wide tree shaded walk out near the middle. There are bike lanes in both directions along just one side of the boulevard which have their own traffic lights (Dylan would approve). The cars and thousands of motorcycles and motor scooters amount to a lot of traffic. I think Barcelona is noted for its traffic and I can see why. Plus finding a parking spot is no picnic either which is why people seem to park in any few square inches of space.

We just went to a grocery store and a bakery for bread, cheese and fruit for breakfast in the train station and lunch on the train tomorrow to Montpellier. Anita also got 3 little tetra packs of white wine (.99 euros for all 3. she thought she'd give it a try and it's not bad) and a couple cans of beer for me in the grocery store.

We'll take 2 subway lines down to the Estacio de Franca train station, which is different from the one arrived at. We leave tomorrow at 8:45. We spend one night in Montpellier and then we're off to teh Hotel Trocadero for 3 nights in Nice. We wanted to stay in the Avignon area and see the Roman ruins but it's impossible to find inexpensive accommodation. This pension is costing us 50 euros per night. In Montpellier a nice one with ensuite bathroom (not that we need it but it's all we could find) is costing us 90 euros for one night. In Nice we're paying 70 euros per night. We're still under budget by quite a bit which is good since we don't know what will happen when we eventually start moving north.