Some final thoughts on Barcelona...

before switching gears to France.

We loved it. I just asked Tom what he wants to say, and he said, "There were more balconies than I've ever seen in any other city." So true, which means it was reminiscent of New Orleans.

And what's not to love about Gaudi? I really did feel like I was Alice in Wonderland while we were climbing down the Nativity Tower at Sagrada Familia. We did not go into Casa Battlo or Casa Mila (buy tix in advance or wait on lines) but we enjoyed them from the exterior.

On our last day, we went to the Picasso museum. No pics allowed inside, but this was taken in the courtyard.

It was fascinating to see so many Picasso works that were so unlike Picasso!

Then we went off to Montjuic for the Miro museum. We liked that as well, and the audio guides for both museums were well worth the few extra Euros.

Here's the view from the terrace at the Miro museum, and one of the sculptures outside.

We loved the people as well - very proud, and great dispositions - happy, helpful, and engaged. This was taken at Hofmann - a pastry shop.

And last but not least, we loved the food. These are croissants filled with mascarpone cheese from the aforementioned pastry shop. They were out of this world.

This was one of the dinners we made at home. Fresh tuna steaks, ratatouille and asparagus - all from the Santa Caterina market. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a decent sear on the tuna because the only pans in the apartment were teflon!

One night, we did as the locals and did some tapas crawling. We went to a place called Sagas. Porchetta and tongue sandwiches, below. And then we went to La Vinya del Senyor (thanks, Bill!) No pics from there, but we liked it a lot. A few glasses of wine and some very good chorizo and other snacks.

It was a busy 4 days, but we did take time to smell the roses.