Bread and Barcelona

After a day in Palma on the island of Majorca, we are at our apartment in Barcelona. Doug's nephew Marty will join us about midnight tonight. If we walk out of the balcony of our apartment we can see the Sagrada Familia, which is the cathedral that was designed by the architect Antoni Gaudi. It was begun in 1882, but Gaudi took over in 1883 and continued to work on it until his death in 1926. Its a bit funky, to say the least.

The other wonderful thing about the location of our apartment is that directly below us is a little bakery with bread and pastries. It was the smell of baking bread that woke me this morning. When I went down to buy a loaf for breakfast the woman said it would be eight minutes before the bread would be out of the oven and ready to sell. It was hot and delicious with some butter and jam.

I think I'll join the people of Spain in a siesta this afternoon, although Barcelona doesn't seem to slow down in the afternoon as was the custom in other cities we visited. It is, afterall, a large and cosmopolitan city. But I'll take a nap and dream of baguettes and surreal cathedrals and riding the Metro. Then we'll go out on a walk to hunt down some good coffee. Good coffee hasn't been easy to find but perhaps in this city that is more like Paris than Madrid, a city that has good bakeries, we will find good coffee to finish off our afternoon.