Riding a Bicycle in Barcelona

So Barcelona is a bike friendly place. The local bike share program is extremely popular. It's called Bicing, and you can only use it if you live locally. It's free for 15 minutes, and you check them in and out using your account. If you keep a bike for longer than 15 mins, it gets more and more expensive. Basically they want you to use them for short trips. The bikes are hilarious, a smaller front wheel, monkey bars, all kinds of funny looking. But you see them everywhere, and everyone rides them. There are huge banks of them all over the place. It's a successful system, apparently.

For those people who don't live in Barcelona, there are about a million and one bike rental places. Most rent nice big cruiser style bikes that are bomb proof, in bright colors. We heard about a place called Green Bikes Barcelona and decided to see if we couldn't stash our fully loaded bikes with them and take a pair of their city bikes out. We had hoped to go on a tour with Steel Donkey, but they didn't have anything scheduled that day. These guys seemed fun, too. But Green Bikes was open and ready for us.

oh Barcelona

Green Bikes felt familiar. Very Bicycle Kitchen. And the guy at the counter was from Mar Vista, CA. Ha ha. They were kind enough to hang on to our bikes and we rented a couple of theirs - but they were fresh out of normal. So we had our first goofy folding bike experience. All I can say is wow.

Eventually we headed back towards the beach

look at those sexy steeds

Hey, Barcelona has bike infrastructure. We had a great time cruising around. We first tried to go to the Picasso Museum, but it was Monday and closed. We didn't make it up to Guell Park, which is another place I wanted to go. There is so much more that needs to be seen of this city by me. So much more. And next time, we'll get a bike right away. It was quick and easy and the bikes had excellent, fully-integrated super locking systems. We didn't worry at all, which is what we would have done had we brought our own bikes all over the city. Barcelona by bike is the way to go.

At the end of the day, we went back to Placa Reial for one more Campari laranja, then we ate at a Sidreria (check) and stuffed ourselves on tapas one last time. The cider was good. We made it to our night ferry - last one for a while - and snuggled up in our sleeping bags, on the floor in the seating area. We are getting pretty good at this.

Our next chapter will be tiny island life and house sitting for a couple of months. Back to work, back to caring for someone else's home, end of this tour...

Barcelona, Barcelona

What a city. We arrived in Barcelona a couple of nights before my mom and our friend Stephen, so we explored, ate a lot of delicious food, and were totally moved in to our AirBnB.com flat before they arrived. We met them at the airport and took them straight out to Placa Reial, which was around the corner from the flat.

our bicycles are here, and so is our place to stay in Barcelona. wow.

Stephen's friend Etienne, who Joshua had meet once before in Zurich was also in town, and we all sat and drank Campari with laranja, feeling a bit stunned but totally pleased with ourselves. Stephen and Etienne have been working together on creating a live version of Stephen's Music Animation Machine. Joshua has also done some work on the project, including some of the behind-the-scenes work for Stephen's work on Bjork's album/app Biophilia. To see some videos of Stephen's, check this out. They were planning to do a live performance in Nürnberg and another in Zurich... fun and creative people to be with in this incredible city.

We had dinner at a delicious vegetarian restaurant called Teresa Carles that had some of the highest quality and most delicious food of the trip (we ate there twice, it was so good). The next morning we went straight into tourism mode. Sagrada Familia. The line was long, the wait wasn't as bad as it seemed like it would be, and our time slot to go up in the tower was for about 2 hours after our entry time. It was all completely worth it. And two hours is not too much time to spend in this place. Gaudi was inspired by nature and wanted to create a place where you would feel protected by the canopy of trees. I took a lot of pictures. They do not do this place or Gaudi justice. You will have to go there one day yourself. It feels like a miracle and Gaudi truly was a genius. You try to put that much stone in the air and see what happens.

mama

The stained glass is still in process. Where it is installed the light is rainbow-undersea-otherworldy.

out front

newer and older construction - and it's not done, at all.

the chameleon

We also went up into the tower, where we saw some more magic as well as Barcelona from high above.

looking down within the tower

in awe

fruits and scaffolding

a really tight stairwell with a hole in the middle

We went for food as soon as we left, because we were absolutely famished, having not eaten lunch - here we discuss whether or not we ordered enough sangria, the consensus was: no.

Sangria, tapas, more tapas - we ate and drank our way through this city, as you do. On one day my mom was determined to get into the Mediterranean, so to the beach we went. We were greeted by people selling minty, limey fresh mojitos (mostly melted ice, mint, and lime, but incredibly refreshing) and we splurged on massages. Joshua read out loud to us.

In the evening we went for another marathon dinner at another incredible vegetarian restaurant. Really, the two coolest restaurants we went to were both veg? How? I cannot find information about that second one. It doesn't exist in Google Maps street view... the only way we will ever know is if we go there again. And I really hope we do.

After a few whirlwind days, we put my mom on a bus to Jaca, where she attended the International Mushroom Dye Symposium and taught a class on making masks out of mushroom paper. That's right. Stephen stayed one more night and then we put him in a taxi to go to the airport. We then had a full day during which we needed a place to store our bikes and gear. But we also really wanted to ride around this crazy town.

The Real Reason We Bought Hammocks

A 12 hour ferry from Porto Torres, Sardegna to Barcelona, Spain, starting at about 6am.

Gonna be awake for sunrise, better have a comfortable place to view it from.