After yesterday’s outing, we decided to take it pretty easy today, so Benton and Lucy slept in and then went for a leisurely breakfast, while Tim organized photos and read. It was nice to cross the threshold of noon without having applied any sunscreen. And 1:00, for that matter. And 2:00. And, by golly, why not go for the whole day!
We did head out for a tour of Casa Milà (La Pedrera), which was a house / apartment building that Gaudí designed that was built between 1906 and 1912. It seemed a little pricey (€25), but it wound up being a solid couple of hours and included a self-guide audio (and visual) tour. It gave really great background into how Gaudí thought about his work and how it tied to nature (and how nature tied to God), which we’d gotten bits and pieces of in our Gaudí explorations earlier in the trip, but the tour helped bring it all together.
From there we took a walk down to look at Casa Amatller (not a Gaudí design) and Casa Batlló (a Gaudí design), as they were right next to a metro stop, and we figured…why not? Both are museums, but we just looked at the facades and then ducked back underground to return to the apartment, but not before tracking down a couple of horchatas, as Lucy had gotten one at breakfast, and Benton was intrigued, and then he found a place that was only a minor detour that specialized in them (it was actually called “Horchateria,” so you couldn’t get more on the nose).
Then, it was back to the apartment to catch the second half of the GAA Seniors Hurling Finals on a stream of RTE One. Huh? Yeah. When we were in Dublin, one of the semifinal matches (Kilkenny vs. Clare) was being played at Croke Stadium, which was just a few blocks from our flat, and that match was on at the pizza joint we went to with Kim for dinner. We’d picked up that the finals (Kilkenny vs. Limerick) were going to be played (also at Croke Stadium) this afternoon, and we really are pretty intrigued with the sport—reasonably easy to understand the rules, and it’s fast-paced with a lot of athleticism and finesse. It was a tight match, and Limerick prevailed.
Tim then went for a run (to and around the Olympic park from the 1992 Olympics), while Benton and Lucy prepped to head out for a dinner for two. Tim should have realized the first part of his run would all be uphill (which he realized as he started running), but then also took a wrong turn an needlessly ran both farther than he’d intended and even more uphill.
An interesting/memorable experience of the day:
Benton: How healthy horchatas apparently are, and how, while Mexican horchatas are made using rice, Spanish horchatas are made using tiger nuts, which must be incredibly nutrient-rich, as none of the other ingredients are!
Tim: Perusing Facebook this morning and discovering that Shawn Lloyd, his sister Missy, and his son Harrison (who is doing a semester abroad in Barcelona, it turns out) were at the Magic Fountain at the same time we were last night. Through some additional photo sharing with Missy, we determined that: 1) we almost certainly were less than 30’ from each other for a bit, and 2) Tim actually captured a few pics of the Lloyds/Barlows when taking some slow exposure pics!
