We´ve been in Barcelona for a couple days now, and today we started our touristy stuff. We rode around on the Bus Turistico and got off at two of the major Antoni Gaudí sites: the Sagrada Familia (big unfinished cathedral, construction started in 1882?, will be finished sometime in the next 30 to 50 years) and the Park Güell. I liked them both SO MUCH! The Sagrada Familia had some beautiful lines and curves, and Park Güell was just all about the mosaics. I took lots of pics, and bought postcards...

And tonight, on our way to this internet/phone joint, my mom and I hit an all-time blood-sugar low, and almost got into a fight with each other, but we managed to avoid it by making the decision to eat at the Chinese restaurant we were contemplating. We got steamed pork buns (slightly dry, but still tasty), spring rolls (more like spring chimichangas; they were big and flattish), sweet and sour chicken (very mild s&s sauce, almost bland, but the chicken was perfect, light and crispy), steamed rice, and mixed Chinese vegetables.

The "vegetables" turned out not to be the bok choy, gai lan, water chestnuts and bamboo shoots I was expecting, but, in fact, very thinly sliced carrots interspersed among one half-round of something my mom said was kind of like a soft water chestnut, and a whole big pile of four or maybe five different kinds of mushrooms. Now, those of you who know me well know that I am not a fan of the mushroom. Especially black mushrooms, which have a very strong flavor. So when my mom tasted each thing, and declared it to be a different kind of mushroom, I started cracking up so hard I almost fell off my seat. Good thing she likes mushrooms.

Sigh.

So I didn´t get a whole lot in the way of vegetables tonight, but hopefully we can find a decent produce market tomorrow. I heard about one called the Boqueteria, on La Rambla, but I don´t know if it´s open on Sundays.

Tomorrow I think we´re going to the Joan Mirò museum, and maybe to a swimming pool if it´s as hot as it was today.

Tuesday and Wednesday we´ll go to the Picasso Museum, which is apparently huge and fabulous, and will take us two days. And in between we´ll check out some more of the other stuff if we can.

We went to a shoe museum! There were a couple of Roman sandals from way back when, and lots of tiny little women´s shoes and men´s boots and high heeled shoes from the 16th, 17th and 18th century. It was only one room, really, but there was a very sweet curator, who clearly loves the history of shoes, who kept coming over and telling us tidbits about one shoe or another, in Spanish, which I was sort of able to figure out most of the time. We just said, sì, sì, alot. :-)

My Spanish is definitely improving!