Day 2 – felt much rested on this day, we had picked up apples and grapes from the previous day. Everyone had some fruit for breakfast and we planned to check out park guell before our tour at 11 am started.

We got delayed and couldn’t spend more than 30 mins at park guell. As Fred had mentioned, the place was super crowded. Walked around as best as we could, took in Gaudí’s work.

Let our guide for the day know we were running late. It was a wine and tapas tour where we would sample 4 restaurants in gothic quarter and born market. To our pleasant surprise, we thought it was a group tour but it ended up being a private tour 🎉

Natalie our guide was great! She’s originally from Brazil but born and brought up in Barcelona. Rithvi definitely liked her, she was great with kiddos. The time was perfect as we had an appetite to eat a lot. This was my favorite guided tour as I ate and drank really good stuff. It was hard to meet this standard. Natalie was also someone you could tell has a passion for food, she knows the details and what to appreciate, the specialty.

We started at the 1st place with cured meats and cheese. Omg so good, R cleaned the cheese and meat plate 😄 Natalie remarked that our kids definitely know what is good and have evolved tastes. She also talked about the skill of cutting the meat so thin you should be able to see the knife through it. The pork meat was cured for 25 days, the salt was perfect. Sanjeev had cured tuna and it was so good! The wine too, the blended red wine was so good too!!

Next stop was a place for pintxos, small pieces of bread with different toppings. This is a north Spain food. Very good again, the drink was apple cider. Sanjeev always had some cheese or fish options and they were really good too. 

Enjoyed walking all across the streets. Next stop was a place where we had cava via a pouron, something that is shared I.e. pouron is passed around for everyone to drink from. Food here was anchovies, simple and yum! 

We then walked to a sit down place, had tomato bread, Spanish tortillas, bravas, more red wine, don’t remember what else. It was really good! 

Natalie bid adieu to us at this point, she herself was recovering from jet lag flying in from Argentina. She gave us gelato and food recommendations. Tour finished at 2 pm, so we had plenty time but also had a dinner and flamenco show at 6:45 pm as well as early checkout next day to take the train to Madrid. 

We decided to check out the cable car ride to Montjuic. Had to walk quite a bit to the port/beaches to to the cable car ride. Beautiful day but feet were definitely killing me. Finally got to the place, bought tickets and got the tickets for Montjuic. Beautiful view of city & water. At the destination we could walk up to Montjuic but thankfully we talk a cab, it was an uphill walk.

Montjuic is an elevation point and fort used historically for any ships that might come to attack the city and has cannons all around to protect the city. It was a good walk and kids had a good time learning, huge square in the middle with a little cafe. R had a good time chasing pigeons. 

Before heading out we got some coffee and snacks. The trouble was there were no cabs around so we had to walk downhill until we found one. Thankfully found one and got back to the hotel without much time for packing for the next day, train at 8:30 am. Did our best, freshened up and headed for the show.

The dinner at Tablou Cordoble was buffet and very average IMO, I was spoilt from all the good food earlier. It was cold dinner. After a meh dinner we then headed to a separate section for the flamenco show. The performance was splendid! I don’t have words to describe it, the music, songs, 💃, such passion and soul! Fantastic!! 

Took the cab back home, wrapped up some more packing and cleaning up the apartment. Barely slept as we had to head out early for the train to Madrid.