Brekkie at a place down the road from the hotel. Bacon, eggs and chips, all laden in oil – and, you guessed it, tea made entirely with hot milk. I’m going to start drinking coffee soon enough!
Barcelona means Gaudi, so we started out on our Gaudi tour of Barcelona. We caught the train to Sagrada Familia (it’s really good, they name their stations after landmarks and streets), which is Gaudi’s main work (unfinished masterpiece is how the Spanish describe it) in Barcelona. It’s a very unconventional church to say the least. Gaudi started work on it in 1883 and he lived like a recluse on the site for 14 years and is buried in its crypt. Work continues today on it (its covered in scaffolding) following Gaudi’s original plans.
We didn’t go inside (there’s a let down), but the queues were over two hours long with zero shade. We hummed and ahhed a lot, and then decided the sunburn and heat exhaustion was probably not a good idea. So we did the full walk around instead. The church drips with sculptures – based in nature, mixed with scenes from the nativity and Christ’s childhood. It’s quite a bizarre scene actually. Eight of the twelve spires have been built (one for each apostle) and they are topped with Venetian mosaics. Around one side is the (very modern looking) ‘Passion Façade’ with very angular and sinister looking figures – it also has these angled support struts coming from its roof to the ground which are meant to represent Christ’s ribs.
We did a little shopping (got a great bracelet and matching earrings) and then caught the train to Diagonal to go and have a look at Gaudi’s ‘Casa Milá’ (La Pedrera), better known as his wavy building. We were hoping on going in there, but were starting to figure out how expensive things are to get into in Barcelona. This building is great, but it cost €23.00 each just to go in and have a look at the courtyard! By the end of the day there were three Gaudi places we had hoped to go into, but they would have set us back over €55.00 each just to go inside. Anyway, we went into the shop of La Pedrera and got a pretty good view of the courtyard just the same. Admittedly, the entrance fee got you up onto the roof as well, which would have been great, but sometimes you just have to cut your losses.
Next up was a Gaudi museum, housed a bit further down the road. This was the third exorbitant entrance fee with a huge queue, so again, we just looked and admired from the outside. The street we were on was pretty fabulous though – called ‘Passeig de Grácia’, it housed all the great designers shops in really interesting buildings. It had really elaborate street lamps as well that had tiled seats under them, one of which I partook of while Mark figured out the bus route to our next stop.
So, we had to head a few streets over to catch the bus we needed to catch, and just as we got to the bus stop, we saw a little Chinese massage place. We were both really in need, Mark in particular as his back was still in bad shape, and so we went inside. We got what we wanted across (half hour massage each) and were taken into little rooms. The lady who massaged me must have learnt to massage at the Atlas massage school of weightlifting – my goodness but she was strong! She pounded my back, and stretched every muscle along my spine. I got a full body massage, I am sure it was a bit longer than half an hour to fit all of that in. She almost killed my feet though – but gee it felt good, even the heel punching bit. Mark’s masseuse wasn’t quite as skilled in massage as mine was but he mostly got the massage he asked for and we headed on our way.
Our next stop was the Güell Park, another Gaudi creation and a UNESCO world heritage site. It was commissioned in the 1890s by Count Güell; “Please build me a garden city on this 20 hectares here”, he said to Gaudi one fine summer’s day (or something to that effect anyway). The actual building of it began in 1910, and it was officially opened in 1922. When you enter, you come to “The Room of a Hundred Columns” (once you get past the one-hundred-thousand people that is) which is actually 84 crooked pillars that are brightened with glass and ceramic mosaics. It was meant to be a marketplace, and the sellers are there now with their little sheets on the ground, full of goodies that they can quickly pull up if the police pretend to really show concern. Above that is the Gran Plaça Circular – a large open space with a huge snaking balcony of coloured mosaics which is said to be the longest park bench in the world. The views over Barcelona from here are amazing, but we couldn’t enjoy it for long as the sun was just screaming overhead. We did however, enjoy the sellers here and got a few very cool little knickknacks (like a nice pair of dangly earrings for Michelle which you will see in numerous photos)!
We caught a taxi back to the hotel after that as it was hot and sticky and we wanted to clean up before dinner. After a little rest, we jumped back on the metro and headed into Las Ramblas – the street that they say ‘if you haven’t been to it, you haven’t seen Barcelona’ – at least that’s what the barman in the tapas bar we went to said. He was pretty cool actually. An Indian who spoke good English and had his whole family in Australia. We worked out where each of us was from as the cricket was on. Ah cricket, that great game that creates bonds between the Indians and the Aussies over their mutual dislike of the English team. Needless to say, Mark was in his glory being able to talk about cricket, and I just enjoyed the view of the busy street (8pm by this stage). Both Mark and I enjoyed the yummy tapas as we enjoyed our mutual viewpoints. This place had crab thingys, and they were very, very good.
After that, we made our way out onto Las Ramblas and joined the thousands of people doing the same. This place was busy! There was something on offer for everyone, tapas, bars, stalls, artworks, buskers, mime artists, caricature drawers – all sorts of things, not to mention your regular throng of souvenir shops and clothes stores. We wandered in and out, and then took a few side streets as we were getting hungry again. We came across Plaça Reial, built in the 1850’s and meant to be Barcelona’s most lively square. It was lined with restaurants and had fabulous lamp posts everywhere which were designed by Gaudi.
We chose a restaurant and sat down to a couple more hours of tapas eating and sangria drinking. We tried the Navajo razorfish, but didn’t really like it, so we had some fried whitebait and grilled veggies instead. After that, we rolled back to the first tapas bar (the one with the cricket showing) after looking through a few more stores. One more crab thingy, one more sangria, one more taxi ride, and then we both slept very well indeed!
Placa Reial is where I stayed when I stayed in Barcelona.. Nice eh?!
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