Belated Postcard from Barcelona

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:02:00 GMT

We went to Barcelona a couple of weeks ago. As always I had big plans to write about this, but all I've really managed is to write about Barcelona's excellent Mercat de la Boqueria (coming very soon.) In summary: it was an excellent trip. Kat and I went with my sister, and we met up with a couple of other Aussie friends over there.

(Shamelessly stealing my sister's "postcard" approach.)

The first day I've already covered. From the towers of Segrada Familia, through to sangria.

Segrada Famillia, Towers

Segrada Famillia, Spiral Stair

Sangria!

Day 2

Distant Segrada Famillia

First thing on the second day was a stroll up the hill behind the hotel, we had an hour or two to kill being earlier risers than our travelling companions. The Hotel Catalonia Park Putxet, where we stayed, was just fine as a sleeping venue, though perhaps a little noisy. The best thing about it was the location, close to Lesseps metro station (good for getting to most of the city), a stroll from Gaudi's Parc Güell, and parc del Turó del Putget, just a block away, offers an excellent refreshing morning hill climb with wonderful views over Barcelona.

Above all, the second day was the day of The Picnic, and oh what a picnic it was. Jamón, cheese, chorizo, fruit, and bread from Mercat de la Boqueria plus wine we picked up along the way to our picnic site. We were going to catch the cable car up to Montjuïc, but the line thwarted us, so we walked. Inadvertently taking the back way through the service entrance of some hotel/restaurant at the other end of the cable car line.

Picnic Goodies

Once up there we found our spot: a bench with an excellent view over Barcelona's coastline. We camped out here, good food and good company for several hours. Highlights include an apparent police chase (on foot), and a buck naked old man with budgie smugglers tattooed onto his arse… and a phenomenally large penis. Finally we wandered further up the hill, then caught the metro home (they have an interesting sloped metro line running up and down the hill.)

Picnic Spot

After a quick cleanup at the hotel we headed out again to visit the Picasso museum, then then ate a late night paella before returning "home" to sleep.

Day 3

The day of Parc Güell. First we quickly wandered through the park, then climbed a seemingly endless staircase before sitting down to enjoy the view and snack on melted coffee-bean chocolate, cherries, bread, and Roquefort cheese (well, I think I ate almost all of that!) We then continued on a circumnavigation of Parc Güell before re-entering the "highlight" area of the park and paying closer attention to said highlights.

View From Hill Bahind Parc Güell

We spent most of the rest of the day drinking German lager at some random pub in a hotel district, before eating "Tarantino" pizza, then finding a bar in the gothic quarter and drinking until the metro stopped (at which point some of us taxied home, while other silly people – me included – walked for about an hour to get to the hotel!

Simply Enjoying Some Beer

Day 4

Kat was ill this morning, which was somewhat of a blessing for her I think. The rest of us found our way to Barcelona's modern art museum. In the end I think I'd have rather been sick. We wandered the whole museum, eternally hoping the next room would offer something worth the visit. But all we found were things like rooms full of TVs displaying "white noise" (bullcrap) with visible compression artefacts. The highlight of this museum was an OK, for Barcelona (i.e. excellent for England), espresso at their café. Sorry… but what a complete pile of bollocks.

Dried fruit and sweets, better than modern art

Cheese, infinitely better than modern art

Kathlene had recovered by this stage. We met up outside Mercat de la Boqueria, and bought some lunch in the market. Then meandered our way down to the beach where we enjoyed sunlight, sangria, and cocktails for much of the rest of the day. Finally heading back inland for dinner at a traditional Catalan restaurant (actually a small chain, offering quite decent food) and then home. In bed at 1AM, an early night!

Beach

Day 5

Really only half a day, since our flight departed at 14:30. We got up early and headed to the market, which I've written much about already and I'll hopefully post that in the near future. We wandered down to the harbour, saw the modern swing-bridge open to let a small yacht out, then zigzagged back through gothic quarter streets (via lunch and icecream) to a metro station. Then train to the airport, then flight to Luton, bus to Hitchin, and early bed.

All in all it was an excellent, if tiring, holiday. I expect, and hope, to visit Barcelona again – if only for their brilliant market!

Market in the morning

Jamón! Jamón!

Barcelona, Day 1

Mon, 18 May 2009 09:49:00 GMT

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.