Yvan Seth's Hole in the Internet

Halfway through our break in Barcelona. I sit on a bench in the sun near a café while I await the availability of a spot to sit in. Another bright sunny day awaits. Leading up to our visit we were somewhat concerned to see weather reports of cloud and rain. Happily, this has not eventuated.

Our first day saw us wandering the city in a somewhat haphazard fashion. Enjoying the backstreets of the "gothic quarter" and La Rambla while making our way, following a two-steps-forward-one-back route, down to the port. The backstreets are a highlight in and of themselves, some straight, some meandering, many narrow, walls seeming to (sometimes actually) lean out over you. Typical of these cities, you tend to wander around a corner and exclaim "look, a <insert-interesting-building>!" – on many such occasions it is one you've seen several times before, just from different angles.

I've moved into the café now. Caffé Fiorino, near Lesseps (less-eps) metro station, a short walk from our Hotel. A great little place to start the day, possibly a chain I suppose, but able to make coffee that puts many decent UK independent cafés to shame. I presume this is a Spanish take on an Italian-style place. Their La Cimbali coffee machine is a hit of Nostalgia, as this is the brand we had back home in the restaurant when I was growing up.

I should mention that prior to this wandering we did visit one of Barcelona's must-do sights. Gaudi's Segrada Famillia, of course. The Century-old construction project with another century to go, or something like that. It is an intriguing building, asymmetric, yet symmetric, order with a hint of chaos. It is incomplete of course, so difficult at times to tell between irregularity by-design, and that which is merely transient. They have great demonstrations of how Gaudi's design influences came from nature, and simple mathematical functions. In a way the whole site is a study in quite interesting and practical geometry. Since that visit I've been picking up the various seeds that spiral their way to the ground, then dropping them to watch the spiral. Gaudi took this and turned it into architecture.

Close up, and even from high up one of the towers, I didn't quite appreciate how huge the building is. Sure, it seems really, really big, in the same way of many cathedrals I've visited. But, lacking side-by-side comparison, it doesn't seem obviously gigantic. But stand back, several kilometers back, and you notice how the building dominates the landscape. Compared to the surrounding city it towers, reaches for the sky, even hulks.

Segrada Familia in the Distance

Anyway, after the Segrada Famillia, and our alley ramblings, we wandered down La Rambla to the port area. La Rambla is your typical tourist-heavy zone, and thus pretty horrid. I didn't come to Barcelona to buy whistles, peer at silly human-statues, or pay inflated prices for junk. Amazingly, a majority of our tourist brethren seem to stick to areas like this, leaving the best bits somewhat quieter. Can't complain about that. If La Rambla is to have a highlight it is, by far, the market. More on that another time I hope.

We strolled across the port and down the beaches to the north, nothing particularly remarkable here. Pretty in its way, but not up to scratch from an Australian coastal perspective. We simply enjoyed the sunshine, mused over the foreshore architecture, and had a beer. That pretty much ended our day out in the sun, as around now, perhaps about 19:00 the sun gets lower in the sky and we begin thinking of tapas and sangria (especially since even the Chocolate Museum is closed by now.)

Food was found, sangria drunk, and it was all very good. Spain is called a city that doesn't sleep, and this night, a Friday night, this seemed very true. After tapas, a veritable snack at some time like 20:30, we wandered some more before dinner. For dinner we found a more upmarket looking tapas venue, walls lined with bottles of wine and curios. This was at around 23:00, and thus dinner ended after midnight.

Metro, hotel, sleep.