La Riberia

We explored the La Biberia district and the marina areas today starting with Palau de la Musica - a World Heritage site and most importantly a concert hall of renoun. It was built between 1905 and 1908 and is an architectural monument to Modernism. Not only is the concert hall of the highest quality acousticly but it is stunningly beautiful for both the audience and the performers. The stage is just a ornate as the hall itself. The architect used ceramics , mosaics, glass and light to create a room that appears bigger and brighter than it should. I'll let the pictures show you its beauty.

It has a 7700 pipe organ, seats 2000 people and is perfect for symphonies, choral music, dance and anything music.

We next visited the Arc de Triomf and park, the Mercator Santa Catarina (an open air market), the Mercantile del Born (a market turned into a museum), and the Parc de la Ciutadella where the parliament resides next to the zoo. As it was nearing lunch time we headed to the marina area to find a seafood and tapas restaurant.

Before wandering up the La Rambla we stopped in the Museu de Maritim. We were more impressed with the building than the museum pieces. In the 1700's it was built to be a ship building factory as it was right on the sea and ships could be moved into the water without anything in its way. Later it was used for munitions storage before becoming the Maritime museum.

The Mercat de la Boqueria was on our way just off of La Rambla. It is a huge open air market with so much fresh fruit, vegetable, meat and fish that it was almost overwhelming. We have determined that we need to eat lunch there tomorrow.
In all we walked almost 22,000 steps about 9 miles. All things considered we felt pretty good but wonder how our legs will feel tomorrow.