It's a quick 5 minute walk over to Explore Barcelona where we meet our tour guide, Cam, and wait for the rest of the group. We've decided to take a tour instead of renting a car so that we can relax and just enjoy the day. Not that we don't love doing our own thing but sometimes it's nice to be able to just enjoy the scenery without the constant focus on driving and navigation. The added bonus (as we soon find out) is that we learn the most interesting facts from tour guides!
Group assembled, we follow Cam out to Placa Catalunya to hop on the van. It's a very diverse group - a family with a 12 year old, 3 Asians, an older American couple, 2 single guys who are always walking fast in front of Cam, and they don't have a clue where they are going - we'll see how it goes.
Driving out of the city, Cam provides narrative on our route. We drive through L'eixample - which means the expanse or expansion because this area of the city was formed once the old city walls were destroyed. Then on past the sprawl of the outer city and finally into the farmland and hills north of Barcelona.
Cam gives us a brief history of the area. The Romans, the Greeks, the Moors. How Iberia was named: the Greeks heard the word ibero which is river, and started to call the people iberios, which turned into Iberian and the Iberian peninsula area.
Espagna has its name because the Romans didn't find food here, but found lots of rabbits, so they named the area Hispania - the land of rabbits. Who knew?
Another totally fascinating fact: the artwork in the paper denominations of the Euro are all architectural. The €5 is Classical or Roman, the €10 Romanesque, the €20: Gothic, the €50 Renaissance, the €100 Baroque and rococo, and the €200 19th century iron and glass architecture. Again, worth the price of the tour!!!
Soon we will arrive in Besalu.
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