Day Twelve/Douze/Doce - Walk Around Barcelona

Apparently this is another special edition blog because Robert is writing it but Laura just became lazy and is a day behind so while she finishes yesterdays blog I am writing today's, what a bludger.
She also stuffed all the dates of the blog posts, they were all in Australian time so one day ahead of our actual time.

We had a little sleep in this morning so buggered from yesterday's haul of our luggage around Paris and Orly Airport!

Once we woke up and had a long shower we had the full buffet breakfast. They had everything, cereals, savoury (bacon, sausage, eggs, selection of cured meats like prosciutto and cabanossi) and sweets (croissants, cakes, muffins).

During breakfast one of the waitresses gave Laura a Red Rose, as it was Saint George (St. Jordi in Catalan) Day (he is the patron saint of Catalonia, On this day men give a single red rose to the significant women in their lives (mother, girlfriend, sister, and so on), and women give a book in return (although, in the interest of gender equality, many men now give women a book). Thanks George saved me the trouble of getting the rose although I didn't get a book from Laura what a snob. It is a big day here (public holiday) and all the streets in Barcelona are lively as they are selling roses and books in stalls lining the streets. Today also happens to be the Champions League Semi Final Barca vs Man Utd, unfortunately I was unable to get any tickets and I suspect it got no easier with today being a public holiday.

As we were going back to our room we checked out the chillout room which has a tv and internet access, its got a funky design like the rest of the hotel:








We went back to the hotel room and plotted our walk around Barcelona with the maps that were provided by the hotel, below is a map of our walk:


View Larger Map

We went down the famous La Rambla which takes you to the water. We went to the aquarium and then had an ice cream, the weather was great!! Next we walked to the Parc de la Ciutadella which is a park with some monuments, buildings and a pond in the middle. Continued on till we reached the Arc de Triomf (which is basically cut down version of the one in Paris). We were on the home stretch now back to the hotel where we sat around for bit to relax our legs.
Here are some pictures of our day walking around Barca:
















After lounging around for a bit I went through the available channels to check if the Barc vs Man Utd game was going to be shown, to my dismay it wasn't! I looked outside our window into the square and there were still heaps of people, it looked as though the game was being televised on a big screen. Laura and I trekked into the square only to find it was the tv station that had been there all day. We trekked back to the Hard Rock Cafe which is next to our hotel and started watching the game in the gift shop (they had 3 LCDs all around the room) as the bar was full of people, the bar also had about 20 LCDs placed everywhere along with one big screen.

There was some loser American going through the store buying every possible Hard Rock Cafe Barcelona shirt and he was already wearing a Hard Rock Cafe Paris shirt. The guy walked out of the store having spent 429 EUROs (about 720 Aussie bucks!) on crap which was mostly just Hard Rock Cafe Tshirts. Most of the people walking around the shop were from the USA so they were oblivious to the importance of the match currently going on. 2 Leso's walked in, both had there hair black as black and wearing more black clothes.

Unfortunately Barcelona could not score a freaken goal and the game ended 0-0 even though Barca had 69% possession and many chances. I would say Lionel Messi was man of the match as he pulled some good moves. For full match details read this UEFA Match Details.