Last night we had dinner Barcelona style — at 10:30pm. Paella and sangria for Paul and I, while D managed to get most of his salad and croquetas eaten before falling asleep at the table!

This morning we began the day at Camp Nou — the 99,000 seat stadium for FC Barcelona. We spent 2.5 hours on a self guided audio tour (press box, the pitch, visitor locker room, interactive displays, rows of trophy cases) all set to dramatic music. Throngs of people streaming in to pay homage to the legendary football club and shop at the 3-level gift shop.

Camp Nou is the second biggest attraction in Barcelona, after Sagrada Familia. It’s amazing how much money they take in on non-game days:

• 1″ cubes of grass, labeled for the season on which it was played, for 10 Euro;
• Childrens jerseys 100 Euro;
• The tour tickets were expensive, and you pay extra for audio tour;
• They take pics where they photoshop you into scenes with the players and sell them in an official album for a starting price of 55 Euro;
• and they even try selling you a Barca reusable bag for your purchases.

Despite all that, it was still a cool experience. If we had a few more days in Barcelona we would have been able to catch the opening game.

For lunch, we took the metro to La Boqueria Market. D kept saying he wanted to have what Phil had. The kids had sandwiches, fruit, and ice cream, and set off on their own to shop while P and I grabbed two stools at El Quim de la Boqueria for an amazing lunch. I had the house specialty: two fried eggs with baby squid. Paul had buttifara sausage with beans and garlic sauce. And we enjoyed a side of blistered padron green peppers with salt.

The kids loved exploring the market on their own while we had lunch, and loved taking us around to the stalls they liked the best.

A few blocks walk up Las Ramblas popping into a few stores before arriving back at our place for a siesta.