Barcelona Is For The Dogs

Literally, there are more dogs in Barcelona than almost any city I have seen. Everywhere we went people had their dogs with them. It helps that so many of the restaurants have outdoor seating so dogs are welcome. 
The first few days we just admired the cute dogs. It made us all miss Shay Shay so much. But then we realized that Shay was in no way Barcelona trained. These dogs are good. Many times the dog would not be on a leash and would follow at their owners heels in lock step. We did see one cute little yellow dog waiting at the opened door of a bakery while her owner was in shopping. When the owner came out the dog started a step ahead of her to go home and the owner stopped and spoke harshly to the dog who sat at attention feeling badly that she had gone in front and not behind.
It made Carter a little crazy when I started taking photographs of dogs. She said I was stalking them. For the most part they did not know I was taking their picture and no owners were disturbed. The interesting thing was the variety in dog breeds. I am not sure we saw the same dog twice, except for whippets, which I think I saw three or four of.  
Even our apartment hotel allowed dogs. I saw one in the lobby. But never heard a peep out of any of them. That was also true of all the dogs we saw on the street. They were quiet and well behaved. Nobody jumped up on anyone or begged. We have clearly done a very bad job of training our dog.


Besides seeing dogs, today we went to see Gaudi’s famous apartment building, Casa Mila, otherwise known as La Perdera, the quarry, which is just across the street from where we are staying. Gaudi was certainly ahead of his time. Thank goodness enough of his work survived to make a whole tourism center on its own. Other cities could only hope to have such a huge economic driver.  
Tonight is the festival of Saint Joan, so there are fireworks going off across the city. Of course the noise is not helping on the night we need to go to bed early to catch our early train to Seville. I wonder if there will be any dogs on our train? If there are Carter certainly won’t let me take their picture.