SPAIN - Barcelona 2

Sunday morning we woke up, got ready, packed, checked out of our hostel, and walked to Church. Russ served in that particular ward for a large part of his mission (like 11 months or something), so he knew right where to find the meeting house. 

He was curious beforehand about how many ward members he would actually recognize. The answer . . . not too many. A huge percentage of ward members there are immigrants, which generally means they aren't as permanent as the Spaniards. Russ loved re-connecting with the members he did remember though - a man who was serving as the ward mission leader when Russ was there who is now the stake president, another who was a teenager when Russ served who has since served as bishop of the ward, and a woman whose family fed the missionaries weekly. 

 After our FULL day on Saturday, we decided to take is easy Sunday afternoon. We ate some grocery store food at a park after church, then took the metro to the same area we had left the night before, Placa Espanya. Everything looked so different in daylight, and without thousands of other people around, that I didn't even know we were in the same area when we started walking around.

My wonderful husband in the city that he loves. 

Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya

We didn't even know the castle above was an art museum, we were mostly interested in the awesome view from the terrace.

We walked a bit, then sat in the shade to chat and rest, walked a bit more, took a few pictures, etc. It was a lovely afternoon.

We passed the Olympic village. This is where the torch burned during the 1992 summer Olympics.

And this is one of the MANY tour buses we saw during our stay in Barcelona. Seriously everywhere. I always knew when we were nearing a big tourist attraction because the street was filled with these red double-decker buses. 

That evening we took the train back down to Madrid. They were showing a subtitled version of the 1989 Michael Keaton "Batman" movie. We didn't ever plug in our earbuds to listen to the English, but it was pretty entertaining following along with the Spanish subtitles. We particularly enjoyed that "Bruce Wayne" was turned into "Bruno Diaz" and that the Spanish word for BAT is the 5-syllable MURCIELAGO.

We were sad to say good-bye to Barcelona, but so happy we were able to spend a few days there together. Next stop: MADRID!