We woke up at 7am and ventured out early into Barcelona. We ventured into an open-air market (mercado), with multiple stalls of fresh vegetables, fruit, meat (chicken, pork, beef, sausage), fish, nuts, flowers, cheese, spices, and a whole lot more. There were several located throughout the city, just opening as we ventured through at 8am. There were a couple Boqueria Bars in the mercado, where we stopped for croissants and cafee con leche (coffee with milk). It was interesting to see all of the vendors opening up and layout out their produce for the day's work, and bantering with each other in the process.
Most of the stores were closed the previous day on Sunday, so we were able to enjoy a couple hours of shopping before we had to head back to the bus to the airport. There are no major department stores in the city centre, they are all little boutique stores side-by-side. We did see some familiar store names: McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Subway, Foot Locker, H&M, Nike, and Sephora, but a lot more that we'd never heard before. Prices weren't too expensive for Euros, but the conversion to US dollars would probably be fatal to the wallet.
As for trying to find a traditional US breakfast, McDonald's wasn't open until 9:30, so we headed to a little Italian place for a morning baguette, covered with smoked ham and cheese, and a glass of Fanta. Unfortunately, had little time to dawdle and back to Girona Aeropuerto for the 2-hour flight back to Bournemouth, and a return to work the following morning.
While most of Spain speaks spanish (it has some pronunciation differences compared to Mexico/Cuba), the area around Barcelona speaks Catalan, which is somewhat of a blend between French, Spanish, and Italian. So even though I had a little background knowledge of Spanish, it still threw me for a loop. But in most cases, they all spoke at least broken English, if not better.
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