Walking in our neighborhood.

I liked the location where we stayed.  The hotel was modern and comfortable.  Other than the heat. We discovered that people in Catalonia like heat.  We could not figure out how to adjust the thermostat in our room.  It stayed all night long at a toasty 23 degrees Celsius.  That is 7304 degrees Fahrenheit.  I like it a little cooler for sleeping.  We were not overly surprised when we went to the Barcelona airport on Thursday and saw a large display showing that the temperature indoors was 25 degrees C/77 degrees F.  

Where we were staying on Paral-lel was very close to the old part of town and the port.  We walked there one afternoon and one evening.  We people watched and looked at the old buildings and squares.  There is an ancient synagogue in the Gothic quarter where we walked but we never came across it.  Of course the "Jewish" quarter has not existed there since the 1391 when Church led riots intent upon forcing all Jews to become Christians drove Jews out of Barcelona. A hundred years later Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand expelled all Jews from Spain.   But the synagogue is still standing and the area is still referred to as the Jewish quarter.  It was another five centuries before Jews from North Africa and Eastern Europe began to settle in Barcelona again.  The beginning of the 20th century.  

We were walking in the old neighborhood close to our hotel one evening when we passed this butcher shop.  It was about six o'clock and the shop was crowded with people and there were several employees behind the counter waiting on customers.  As we continued to walk we passed two other carnicerías.  One was a very large shop with only one customer.  The other had no customers and a man was sweeping the front steps.  The two empty shops were within easy walking distance of the other very busy one.  Stores selling the same food items are frequently within blocks of each other in France and Spain.  We found it so interesting that only one of the three was crowded with people shopping for something to cook for dinner that night.

We walked down La Rambla several times before we noticed there was a covered outdoor market. While wandering through it, we stopped and bought some bananas and some oranges.  The oranges looked perfect.  One was cut in half and there were no seeds in it.  However, later when I decided to eat the orange, it was very difficult to peel

 

When I bit into a segment of orange, I am sure I made a face because the small orange that looked like a mandarin or clementine was very bitter.

Several stalls were selling fruit drinks.

I was attracted by all of the hanging peppers and these very small bananas that were hanging  on display.  You can see the drinks behind the clerk - who stepped back behind the bananas to avoid being in my picture.