Placa Forum

Today was our first day off from school. Since it was our first three day weekend, we decided to get up at 8 am. We went on a tour to the Forum Plaza which was designed by the firm that Cecilia works at. We pretty much all decided that the plaza was a failure. It was not designed correctly at all. No one liked it. It was too big and didn't function the way it is supposed to (as a gathering place). We were there for a couple hours and saw one person at the plaza riding his bike through it. They did have an outdoor ice rink set up. I was amazed so I went over and checked it out. It had like 3 foot high boards and was maybe 25' wide x 50' long. I walked on it and was confused. They were like tiles that you lay down on the pavement I think. It wasn't cold but there were skate marks on it. There was a rubber path that was laid down on the pavement leading from a shed to the rink so that you don't have to walk on the pavement with your skates. I can't imagine that it is very good skating but I am going to look into it and see if I can rent skates and try it out. It was interesting to see to say the least.

We then went to another plaza, which was pretty cool. It was very family orientated with 2 playgrounds, a cazebo in some trees, and a couple of open spaces for futbol. It was an interesting space, no one really liked it a lot except for a few of us. I think it is a good place though. Good location, good size. It was about a half hour metro ride to these 2 places and we took the metro back to Plaza Catalunya. We then went to a museum dedicated to the history of Catalunya. We were there for a little over an hour, which was not enough time. I only got up to the 1600s! It was all very interesting and had a lot of hands on experiences (there was a wooden horse that we could climb on). Christi got us free tickets to go back to it because we told her we would like to spend more time. We then headed back to the apartment but stopped at a falafel place for some lunch. It was pretty good, except for the vegetables. We then came back to the apartment and took naps.

We then went out for a an official group dinner (meaning the school pays for it) to this restaurant called La Veronica. It is like a trendy pizza place and the pizza was not bad. It was good to have some pizza. My stomach needed some. We then walked around a little and stopped at a cafe for a little while on the way home.