After the hop on hop off bus tour, I came back to the Gracia avenue where there are tons of shops and Tapas places. I stopped at one to have some dinner. I was pretty tired from the day but surprised that I only realized it was almost 7 by the time the tour finished. I picked out a small hamburger, potatas bravas, roasted vegetables, and a squid on top of a crusted bread. Everything was so good and I was full by the end of it. It was nice to people watch on the boulevard along with such good food.
I then headed back to the hostel to relax a bit and did some hostel research for my new destinations of Valencia and Grenada. I found some good hostels that I booked and went ahead and reserved. After this I wanted to head out to take some night photography of some buildings here that are so lit at night. There’s one in particular that is very modern and has a lot of illumination in several colors. I headed out for my night walk slowly making my way to the building. After a half hour I started to see it in the distance and was excited for some great pictures. As I approached, I kept moving around to try to get the best vantage point with the least amount of street lights and such in the way.
As I found my position to start taking pictures, right when my finger was on the button to click the shutter, it was like I had hit the light switch. All the lights went out instantly. When hey didn’t change color, I started to think, oh my gosh, it’s 11pm, and I bet they’re out for good. Sure enough they were. After waiting about 10 minutes, I turned around disappointed and headed for the Sacred Family church to hopefully see those lights as well. On my way back, I asked a girl that I passed if she knew anything about the lights but she responded that she didn’t speak Spanish. Turned out she was American and was going to check out the lights as well. Disappointed for both of us, we then decided to walk together to the church to check it out.
She was from Chicago and was doing a post-graduation European tour. We had a nice evening chatting and making our way to the church and to our surprise, the lights were still on. We went around the church aking pictures and chatting about our experiences so far in Barcelona. We then walked back toward my hostel since hers was on the way as well.
I then got back to the hostel and went to bed after a very exhausting, sightseeing-filled day in Barcelona.