Walking around the Melon District Marina residence

I live at the Melon District Marina towards the right of the main part of the city and about a 10-15 minute walk down to the beach.  Upon arrival, I received my key which functions the same way as any hotel key.  It's white, about the size of a credit card, and it has a photo of me that the reception took with an external webcam.  When I enter my room, I have to put the key into a slot by the door that allows me to turn on the lights, heating, and air conditioning.  This place is very "green".

Here's the entrance where I also have to swipe my card to get in and out.  Towards the left is the reception.  I'm allowed to have guests during the daytime, but I only have 2 free guest sleepover passes a month.  So if you want to visit me, don't stay more than 2 days otherwise you'll be paying a little more than 20 euros a night.

Here's what it looks like on the outside.  I was not lucky enough to get one of the outside-facing rooms.  Every room is part of a suite of about 10 (although I think there might be 12 in mine) where we share a kitchen/lounge area.  Everybody has 2 cubbies in the kitchen-- one is a cabinet and the other is a section of the refrigerator.

Right across the street (out of frame to the right in the picture above) and about two more blocks is the nearest metro stop called Marina.  On the way, there's a funeral parlor which unfortunately always seems to have people standing outside.  Although when I took a picture of it (below) there were only the casual passerby.

About a block past the metro station, there's a small park that's about 2 blocks long.  It has a separate area for dogs to run free (they're supposed to be leashed otherwise-- but people don't seem to abide by that rule) and the streets run overhead.

We saw some pidgeons and strangely-colored green birds fighting over some food crumbs.  It took me a second to realize that the green birds were parakeets!  I still can't believe that a lot of them roam free here.. their tropical-colored feathers make them seem out-of-place.  There are palm trees here though because the lowest temperature it gets at night is about 41 degrees F and it's quite arid.  So perhaps Barcelona isn't too foreign for them.  (Although I really don't know too much about parakeet living conditions... perhaps this is normal?)

In addition to the dog area, parakeets (and pigeons), bridges, and benches, there were also some modern sculptures.  Here's a strange blue one that resemples a water droplet (there are rings of blue around it that you can't see in the picture):

In the opposite direction from the metro stop, there's the Torre Agbar which will be a topic for another post mostly because I don't have any good photos yet.