Spain 2022: April 11th - Barcelona, Mont Junc and the Beach

 

Of course we weren't granted an exception by the jet-lag gods, and all woke up at 2am, took more melatonin and tried to sleep more fatefully.  My own Garmin said that I slept for 7 hours, proving that Garmin's sleep tracking might as well be science fiction. We ate breakfast, and in the morning light walked up the pedestrain path to Mont Junc, for which I had bought the first entrance tickets (10:00am) because I was confident of our jet-lag.

With plenty of time ahead of us, we made progress slowly, exploring every playground and seeing what the Barcelona playgrounds were like, and still made it to the castle at 9:30am, well before opening time.

The views from the castle were great, and we walked about halfway around the castle grounds outside before we were let in. The place was isolated and uncrowded, alleviating any concerns I might have had about COVID, though masks were still required.

After we had our fill, we hailed a ride to Cerveceria Catalana for lunch, a tapas place Xiaoqin had found from WeChat. The place was pretty empty when we showed up, but soon Asian tourists showed upone after another.

Boen had been asking for Creme Brulee for his birthday, and I told him the Creme Catalan was pretty much the same thing, since the French border was less than 2 hours drive away. He and his brother ordered one each and we re quite happy.

The day was young and I wanted the kids to get more sunshine, so we walked to the beach. I had forgotten my belt at home, so I took the opportunity to buy an obvious fake belt from a street vendor for 10 EUR, overpaying. There was actually a nice shop selling genuine leather belts with spanish leather for 33 EUR. In retrospect that was a better buy, but I still much prefer the fabric money belts that I've been using and don't see myself wearing the expensive Spanish leather on my travels or on any other occasion.

Dinner that evening was at a tapas bar called Quimet & Quimet, which was kinda exotic but the kids were kinda bored with it, so we ate a very light dinner before absconding to the nice gelato shop we had found the day before. We took more melatonin pills in what I was sure would be a lousy night of sleep.