2026-10-20: Busses, Gaudi, and Botanicals

It was another later start this morning. Amanda could not fall asleep last night and was awake until after 2:00am, so she slept later than normal this morning. We woke up to an email from Celebrity Cruises informing us of a change to our cruise itinerary. Instead of visiting Gibraltar on October 26th, we’re now going to be visiting Tangier, Morocco instead. Apparently there was an issue with the berths in Gibraltar and they had to bump us from the schedule.

We had some breakfast and got cleaned up and headed out into the world. We walked to Sagrada Familia. After admiring the view of the basilica again, we hopped on one of the hop on hop off busses. The bus company has two routes; red and blue. We decided we wanted to do the blue route first, but Sagrada Familia is on the red route. We rode the bus for a couple of stops until we could change to the other route. We passed Plaça de Catalunya which is a large park that now has a homeless encampment.

The stop happened to be by Casa Battlo which is one of Gaudi’s creations. We admired the building and considered signing up for a tour of the interior. The tickets were 40 Euro a person to see the inside, so we decided to pass on that activity. There was a store on the 1st floor though, so we wandered through there for a few minutes. Everything was really expensive in the store, so we didn’t purchase anything.

We walked down the street a few more blocks to Casa Mila, which is another of Gaudi’s buildings. We took a few photos, then decided to find some lunch. We walked a couple of blocks and found a coffee & sandwich shop to have a bite at. After lunch, we made our way back to the hop on hop off bus station and boarded the blue line bus. The bus took us along the North and West sides of the city. We learned about Gaudi’s relationship with the Guell family. We saw several interesting areas and buildings along the way including the soccer stadium, Camp Nou. The stadium is under renovation.

Eventually, we came to a stop that intersected with the red line again. We changed over the red line and continued the journey. The red line took us to Montjuic, a mountain on the edge of Barcelona. This is where some of the Olympic venues from the 1992 Olympics are located including the Olympic Stadium. We got off near the stadium and walked to a botanical garden nearby. We spent an hour exploring the garden. We were visiting at the wrong time of year. There were very few flowers still in the garden. Just a lot of greenery. We did get an excellent view over the city and of the Olympic stadium from within the garden though.

After exploring the botanical garden, we made our way back to the bus stop and boarded the next bus. The bus took us along the coastal area of the city including the cruise port and some of the beaches before making it’s way back to Sagrada Familia. We got off the bus at Sagrada Familia and found a nearby restaurant to grab some dinner at.

We both had paella again. Amanda had a shellfish one and Darrell had a chicken one. After dinner, we made our way back to the apartment and settled in for the night.