Once again, the tourist info office was conveniently located just inside the port, and we picked up a map and directions of which bus to take to get to Park Guell. Getting from the port to Barcelona was made easy by the blue port bus waiting outside the terminal, which dropped us at the Christopher Columbus statue for 8E round trip for the two.
From there we walked up La Rambla, the wide pedestrian mall that runs to Plaza Catalunia downtown.
We stopped in a food market, Mercado Bocadillo, where fresh vegetables and fish were beautifully displayed.
At the Plaza, we caught the #24 bus (2.15 E each, one way) to Park Guell and were there in by 10:45, a little over an hour after getting off the boat. The next tickets weren’t until 12, so we walked around the gardens.
It was cold and windy and we were glad we had dressed more warmly than we had in our previous ports.
Park Guell is Gaudi’s fanciful creation of what today would be a housing development for the wealthy on a property owned by Eusebi Guell. It was begun in 1900 but abandoned in 1914 as impractical because of lack of transportation up to the site. The city purchased it in 1922 as a park.
Everything from the designs of the walkways to the mosaics that cover every surface are gorgeous. There are only two buildings, one a bookshop, so the park can be seen in a half hour.
We caught the #24 bus back to town and got off at Casa Batillo, Gaudi’s fanciful house in town, but decided not to go in ($25 E each).
Instead, we explored the narrow winding streets of the old quarter to the left of La Rambla when facing the water.
We happened onto a tiny restaurant, Prado de Flores, where we had the daily special of seafood paella as a first course, followed by roast pork (for Steve) and fish (for me), all huge portions, followed by huge portions of dessert.
Afterward, we wandered the streets and headed back to the ship.
Christopher Columbus statue