Day 1 in Barcelona (or how I ate tapas)

Hi!  We've made it to beautiful Barcelona, and in record time.  Our flight was completely uneventful, and we landed about 15 minutes early, cleared customs and then proceeded to wait 45 minutes for our luggage....which was tagged "Sky Priority" (that's Delta speak for "bury it in the back of the plane underneath everything else so it's last off the baggage carousel") in cease you needed a translation.  All our bags arrived, and we proceded to the taxi line, where I utilized my minute Spanish skills to tell the cab driver where our hotel was.  Really, I think it was the map printout I had, but I'd like to take a little credit!

We arrived at our hotel around 945 am, and wonder of all wonders, our room was READY!  What????? So we checked in and went upstairs to take a quick shower and then head out on our adventures for the day.   I'm pretty sure my office is bigger than our hotel room, BTW.  But, it's only one night so I'm sure we can deal with it for the night.

Then we decided to get a 1 day ticket for the Hop On, Hop Off bus for Barcelona, which would allow us to visit some areas we hadn't gotten a chance to see before.   We also noticed that Barcelona has been invaded by Starbucks, if you notice on the attached photo.....

Or maybe they are just at EVERY STOP on the tour bus.  Overall, it was a nice trip, we did get off and stop at the El Poble Espanol Barcelona, which is a mini village with architecture from all over Spain that was build during the World's Fair in the early 1900's.  It's now been turned into an area with restaurants and craft sellers (along with about 10,000 11 year old kids on a field trip!) but we had a nice time and had

some excellent tapas.

This is the main square at the entrance, where we had the excellent tapas for mid afternoon snack.

Here's me to prove I'm really on vacation, in one of the little narrow alleyways.

Then we made our way back to the hotel, because Chris and I were in serious need of a NAP.  It's amazing how much energy 90 minutes of sleep can give you, and back we went onto our other Hop on Hop bus tour route. (no hopping ocurred by us on this one) Very interesting, as we went further out of old town than we had done in the past, so saw a few new things.

Then famously, we decided to try and find the restaurant we had tapas in 2 years ago.  Success! Although we ended up waiting an hour for a table, it was excellent and we really enjoyed the meal.  I've attached some nice food pictures so everyone can enjoy our meal as well.

Ham  Sandwich.  AWESOME

Mini Sliders with cheese and sweet onion

We also enjoyed a bottle of cava and some veal sirloin as well (you can see both in the above photo)

Just as good as we remembered, and a nice stroll down La Rambla to our hotel.  And so ended our day, with me trying to upload this post.  We'll see how it goes!  Heading for the ship tomorrow!