Santa Caterina Market and Monjuic

 On Saturday, September 17th, we went to breakfast at L'Univers a restaurant and bar at the Santa Caterina Market, in the Born.  This, of course, was prelude to Mary Joy enjoying a thorough exploration of the market itself, which is much less touristy than the famed Boquería, next to the Ramblas.  Having been down the Ramblas on prior trips to Barcelona, we didn't see any need to go there again, especially since it is known as the pickpocket capital of Europe.

After stopping by our room, we took the Metro Green Line to Paral-lel, where we transferred to the funicular up Montjuic, then bought our cable car tickets up to the Castle.  Some good views, but not exciting.  We didn't pay to go inside, but walked around it, then took the return cable car trip.

From the cable car station, we walked down to the National Museum of Art of Catalonia, which is housed in a building from the 1929 World's Fair.  We only had time to see two parts of the museum, so we chose the Romanesque (wonderful!) and Modern (meh) sections.  In the 1920s, the Catalans were shocked when the murals in a church in the Pyrenees were sold to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and shipped to America.  This galvanized them into a proactive collection of many of the 11th-to-13th-century frescoes from the mountain valley churches.

We had lunch at the cafeteria in the big open hall. then walked down to the Plaça d'Espanya metro station.

We took the Red Line to Urquinaona and there transferred to the Yellow Line to Jaume I, hoping to get to Santa María del Mar in time for a 4:30 p.m. tour.  We were late, but it didn't matter, because there was no tour (probably, no one had signed up).  We came back later for mass.

That night we had dinner on the street in front of Tapas, 24 (tapas, of course).  Not bad.