Today I woke up at 7:00am naturally. I had some time to just be lazy and stay in bed. I left at 8:30am to catch Rhone Express to airport. On the way I stopped at a Paul coffee shop along the way and had a delicious pastrami sandwich, bagel and coffee. The Paul coffee shop chain gets a routinely bad review on Google here in France but I thought they were pretty good. I arrived at Lyon airport 2.5 hours before my flight to Barcelona, Spain so I had a cup of coffee from Starbucks.
I was surprised when it was time for me to go through security because despite it being a new airport it was extremely poorly setup. There was not enough staff, and the security area did not have a large enough area for people to queue so the queues backed up where the escalators and elevators to enter the area are. This prompted people to backup on to the escalators requiring people to hit the emergency stop button to stop people getting trampled to death (I’m saying this tongue in cheek but it was a gong show). Security took about 2 hours to get through in total. Once past security the airport is very nice, spacious, and had an ample supply of shops and food.
The flight to Barcelona was rather turbulent, but was actually ahead of schedule about 5 minutes. I took the airport express bus from the airport to the city centre and then walked to my hotel, which was only 5 minutes away from the bus stop. I checked into my hotel, dropped off my stuff and went out to take some photos. I visited a local street market in the Gothic Quarter (also where my hotel is), Barcelona Cathedral, and a few Antoni Gaudi buildings.
I was starting to get hungry so I stopped at Coco Vail Beer hall and has a delicious burger and two IPA pints.
After I was finished at the beer hall I walked about 10 minutes to Casa Mila, also known as La Pedrera or “the stone quarry”. Casa Mila was desined by Antoni Gaudi and was built between 1906 and 1912. The facade of Gaudi’s buildings are extremely unique and encompass the Catalan Modern style of architecture. It looks like something that you would see in a Doctor Suess book or movie.
After finishing Casa Mila I picked up some local IPA beers from a local bottleshop and went back to my hotel. It was getting late and I was getting fairly sleepy. I also saw this interesting use of a mannequin on my way back to the hotel.
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Ian Griffin Photography 