My Travels

After breakfast, I took a page from the Lonely Planet Spain on a recommended day walking tour. The tour was supposed to last around 2 hours but it took most of the day. The walking tour focused on the old city center and will bring you to most of the major attractions Barcelona has to offer. In the 3 mile tour, the highlights was the Mercat La Boqueria, Palau Guell, the exterior of Barcelona Cathedral and the Picasso museum. Starting point of the walking tour The Mercat La Boqueria was great, it was interesting to see what kind of produce and meats are avaliable. I'm a fan of mangos and tried some in the markets. It was suprisingly sweet. I say suprisingly because I haven't had good fruit except in Asia. I'm beginning to suspect that America just doesn't get good exotic fruits. I also scoped out the market for a vendor to buy Iberico pork to bring home. I've been eating Iberico pork all week and this was going to be my souven...

Since I was leaving for Barcelona on Vueling Airlines in the afternoon, spent a leisurely morning walking around the city shopping district. The number of shops and restaurants are incredible in this area. Customer service; however, doesn't seem to be in as abundant as evidenced at the cafe I randomly sat in for a light breakfast. I wasn't interested in buying much but I did opt to buy a paella pan given the amount of paella I have consumed thus far. If you are a shoe shopaholic, this is your nirvana. Never have I seen so many shoe stores all lumped together in one area. Before heading to the airport, grabbed a gelato on a cone. I will say that the cones used here are more of a wafer like consistency rather than the waffle cones I'm used to in the US. At the bus depot in Seville There is a 2.4 Euro airport bus that runs every 25 minutes. Given the size of the group, I opted to go via bus. It was an easy bus trip and security was simple to get through. Unlike...

The biking was fun the previous day but it also wore me out! After another light breakfast, wandered over to the Catedral de Santa María de la Sede . According to my Lonely Planet Spain book, this is the largest church of its kind. Given the amount of detail and care given to these Catholic churches makes me think the Church was pretty wealthy in its day. Either that or there were alot of Spaniards with little to do in those times. The workmanship is impressive. It is rumored that the tomb in this cathedral belonged to Christopher Columbus. There is a debate whether or not the body inside is truly Christopher Columbus but I will choose to believe it is so. Exterior of the cathedral Stained glass inside the cathedral Christopher Columbus tomb inside the cathedral The cathedral's tower is known as the Giralda. It was cool to be able to walk up and see the city views from the top. Giralda View from Giralda - bull fighting arena in th...

In the morning, acclimated to the Spanish climate. I didn't realize that the sun rose almost at 8 am in the morning. I'm usually a sun riser and the lateness threw my timing off. Started the morning a little late and headed into the city center for a light breakfast at Dunkin Donuts . I'm not sure why but the Spaniards seem to like Dunkin Donuts. Maybe it is the NY influence.... :) Another side note, wireless internet access seems spotty at the Hotel Alfonso XIII. I realized after sitting in the lobby that the internet access was better there than in my room. If internet is important, you should always ask how close you are to the router. Grabbed a prepaid sim card from Vodafone . I did not think that I needed to shop around for service/rates on the prepaid but it appears that there are significant differences. After a week's worth of use, I had to put in about 15 Euros to sustain the text and phone usage. The website nor pamphlet provided isn't much help. My sp...

There wasn't an easy way to get into Seville from the west coast. Flew on United Airlines to Barcelona. I was voluntarily bumped on my domestic leg and took the voucher credit for a future flight. I think this was the omen of what was to come. Dun dun dun.....On the bright side, I was able to use upgrade certificates to snag 1st/business class seats on the international legs of my trip. The trans-atlantic flight was on a two class Boeing 757 plane and I was curious how the seats would be configured. I was pleasantly surprised that the pod chairs were on the international leg versus the "wide" business class seats you see within the US. My layover was in Newark which makes this the third time I'm visiting this airport. By going through Newark, the equipment used is from Continental's inventory rather than original United. In being on several Continental planes, I have begun to appreciate United's inventory more for international flights. With this part...