Forward
My original draft started with the words ‘I hope to keep this post relatively brief - whether I can manage it we shall see.’ My reasons for this were dual. Firstly, I haven’t the inclination or time to draft a lengthy account of our recent ten-night holiday to Barcelona (we have more important babies to fry). Secondly, reading back on my previous holiday posts, I think I have a tendency to try and relate everything-upon-everything we did. I reckon this is not necessary.
But (as usual) when I got into my writing I found that the following tract is as succinct as I care to be this time round. My report, as ever, is based on the scrawled ramblings jotted inconsistently in my Czech notepad. The personnel on this holiday were the same as on last year’s Austria trip, minus Lee (who was missed).
Bank Holiday Monday
As four of the six live in Liverpool, we flew from John Lennon Airport in that city early on the morning of Tuesday 26th August; however, the trip for Gemma and me started the previous day with us waking up to feel our unborn daughter kicking excitedly; obviously she was aware that she was about to go on her first (unofficial) trip abroad (if you don’t include Egypt and London, which I don’t).
At Leeds train station, we navigated our way passed hundreds of young pups coming away from the Leeds Festival. Scores of those now filthy and tired urchins were literally penned into the centre of the concourse inside orange plastic barriers. We arrived in Liverpool without incident, but that city’s Mathew Street Festival gave our taxi driver the excuse not to drive to Deb and Neil’s flat, although this was perfectly possible.
Tuesday
The following morning our Easyjet plane fetched us to Barcelona in a little under two hours and a fleet of no more than two taxis completed our journey to our accommodation. Happily, no cases were lost in transit this time.
Our quarters were a fairly spacious second-floor apartment in the l’Eixample district of the city. This seemed an ideal location; close enough to most of the main sights we wanted to see, but far enough from most of the tourists. In fact the blocks around us were mainly residential with plenty of the essential local shops (patisseries, delicatessens, fruit-mongers) of the sort most of us no longer can enjoy back home.
I believe we immediately hit the streets to explore, and I felt that I was on the set of some American-made European war-time film; that’s what the gridded streets and six-floor apartment buildings reminded me of. We made our way at to Rambla de Catalunya, stopping for what turned out to be the best tapas meal of the holiday (I had patatas bravas, red sausage and octopus). At length we returned home to start thinking about what to have for tea. I offered to cook but found that there was a deficit of pans and I nearly gave up. Deb and Christina helped me through the crisis and the pasta thing I cobbled together was OK. Our first night was topped off with some cards.
Wednesday
Today we had planned to take a tour of the city on an open-top bus, but this idea was shelved for 24 hours because we got up and out too late to make it a viable option. After starting the day bumbling our way through a couple of purchases at the market a couple of blocks away, we had a brief look at a Reuters Photography exhibition before heading down to the Barri Gòtic (Gothic Quarter) to check out the shops. We ate lunch in a sweltering kebab shop, and then strolled down the famous Rambla as far as the Mediterranean Sea.
We decided to catch the cable car that glides high above Port Vell and over to Montjuïc, where we immediately stopped for a rest and some drinks (a pattern that had immediately established itself as an effective antidote to the +30°C daytime temperatures).We funiculared down the hill and headed back to the apartment to unwind after a full day of getting about.
Thursday
The Barcelona Bus Turistic is amazing. For around £20 you can spend all day getting on and off buses on three lengthy routes which take in pretty much all of the city’s sights. The first bus we boarded was full upstairs and we stayed downstairs until our first stop, Park Güell. In 1900, Count Eusebi Güell bought the hill here and invited Barcelona’s famous architect Antoni Gaudi to design a garden city in which rich people could live. Too many of the rich declined to buy property and the designing ended in 1914, but only after enough roads, paths and interesting follies had been put up to make a wonderful park.
After a brief stop at FC Barcelona’s big stadium, we swapped from red to blue, then to green and back to blue, and sat on the open upstairs deck of the buses for an the rest of the afternoon listening to recorded English commentary on blue headphones. Gemma and I went back for a lie down and a shower (I had at least a couple of cool showers per day) before meeting up with the other at the Philharmonic, a (pointless) English ‘pub’ down the street. The Spanish owner, his English wife, the Slovakian waitress nor the barman from Plymouth could stop the drafts running out one by one. After being forced to make top five lists by Christina for most of the evening, we left at midnight and, back home, played cards until after three.
Friday
We (minus John and Christina) caught the Metro to Poblenou, from where we guessed the right direction to the beach. It was a hot, dust, smelly fifteen minute walk. After a drink opposite the nudist Platja de la Mar Bella, Neil and I left Gemma and Deb to their sunbathing, walking as we did the mile or so to the Diagonal Mar Shopping Centre.
Man, it was so hot – I was glad for my hat and my factor fifty. When we arrived, we made three circuits of the food court before deciding to eat our home-made sandwiches. As soon as we sat on a bench I remembered that my sandwich was in Gemma’s bag. So we bought a hamburger each and walked back to a bar at the beach to wait for the girls to finish toasting.
In the evening we went to the Barri Gòtic, and I managed to find the large square (Plaça Reial) I frequented when I came to Barcelona on a University of Derby trip in 1997. Now, our time there managed to turn into a minor disaster. The first restaurant for which we plumped decided (after we had sat down) that they hadn’t any paella, so we de-camped to another café. Here, we were initial treated well; a table for six was found and or orders were taken. Then it became an episode of ‘When Restaurants Go Bad’ (if indeed such a show exists). The waitress set the disaster bar pretty high by dropping two paellas onto the table, her own hand and Christina’s lap. She ignored our genuine concern for her potential burns, and scuttled off. The replacement meals took a over half an hour to turn up, so we tried to get a reduction in the bill. All of a sudden, no staff could speak any English. Frustrated, we made a show of leaving the exact fare and no tip.
Another thing that happened during the meal was that numerous hawkers came to our table trying to sell either roses or flashing sunglasses (a somewhat limited product range). Most acknowledged our shaking heads immediately but one rose-seller was strangely persistent and asked me about five times if I wanted to buy one. I ended up having a little shout at him, and as he slinked off he called me ‘So Angry Man’. I laughed (eventually).
As we made our way along La Rambla, a man quietly asked me if I knew where Charlie Hashcake was. Obviously a friend of his. I confessed that I did not, and carried on walking. We got the Metro home – I can’t believe how hot and airless the Metro stations are; at least the trains are air-conditioned – where we cracked open Christina’s birthday cake and quietly sang to her on the balcony.
Saturday
Today was Gaudi day. We went to both La Pedrera and La Sagrada Familia. At this halfway point in the holiday, I will let a few of my pictures take the place of my words, which I fear could not adequately describe how rare and amazing these two buildings are.
Sunday
We left Barcelona for the day, and ended up at the Abadia de Montserrat. The transport was just as newsworthy as our destination. We got to Plaça d’Espanya station in time to see the hourly train trundling away from the platform. We had no choice (we had now passed through the automatic ticket barriers) but to sit and wait for sixty minutes on a sweltering underground platform. A clean, comfortable air-conditioned train spent the first fifteen minutes underground, and most of the rest of the hour-long journey threading through Barcelona’s industrial Northwest suburbs and dusty outlying satellite towns.
Then all of a sudden thing changed; we were climbing into the hills and the hazy skies turned dark with cloud. We alighted at Montserrat Aeri into fresher, more breathable air. Here, we boarded a cable car which whisked us up to the monastery. On the way up, thunder echoed off the surrounding hills. Gemma, in the centre of the cable car, shouted ‘We’re all going to die’. I’m not sure what the other English-speaking tourists thought of this reassurance.
We had some lunch and then had a polite look at the monastery until the Funicular de Sant Joan recovered from a power cut. This took us 250m further up (avoiding the 3km walk) Montserrat.
John, Christina and I walked through cloud up to the Sant Joan hermitage, where the fog magically lifted affording us great views of and from the mountain. Heading home, we missed the last cable car (I don’t think Neil minded too much) and so caught the Cremarella, a rack-and pinion railway that snaked down the mountain at an improbable gradient. As is common in Europe, this train was timetabled to meet up with the local Barcelona-bound train and within the hour we were back in the hazy, hot city, clinging to the memory of cool air.
Monday
The six of us piled onto a double-decked train and went to Sitges, accompanied by a busking violinist. My Lonely Planet guide tells me the once-quiet fishing village of Sitges is now a favoured haunt of ‘jet-setters, honeymooners, and international gay partygoers.’
I don’t know into which of the above categories John, Deb or Gemma fitted. Whilst they lounged on the sand, Christina, Neil and I created a new group: the Shadowseekers (UK). We three explored the nooks and crannies of town and took pictures and sat in the shadow of a church to eat our sandwiches. Later, back in Barcelona we all went for food at Ciao Bella, an Italian that Gemma and I went to a couple of days before. I think the food here was probably my favourite of the whole holiday.
Tuesday
34-week pregnant Gemma had coped well so far with the heat (it was well over 30°C in the days) but now all the walking was taking its toll. So she opted for a day off; a day in which she could relax in the apartment and read with her feet up and a fan no more than two feet from her side. Initially everyone else made separate plans but in the end the other wanted to come with me to Montjuïc. I wanted to see the Olympic venues, the Palau Nacional, and what I heard rumoured was a Jewish cemetery.
Our passage was interrupted by a power-cut on the Metro, so we got out at Plaça d’Espanya and photographed our way up Avenue de la Reina Maria Cristina to the Palace, via a cold glass of Coke.
Christina and John stayed here for the current exhibition, and Neil and Deb left the foot-journey at the Miro exhibition after we had circuited the Olympic stadia. Here began a minor odyssey. Looking at Google Earth now I can see that I took the right road to get to the cemetery but at the time it seemed like I chosen wrong. I went up a steep-ish hill then soon started heading down, but eventually I found an entry to Cementiri del Sud-oest. I was immediately staggered by the size of the place.
There are thousands of graves, monuments and tombs here, all stacked like new-build apartments on this piece of prime real-estate with 360° views over Barcelona. There are in fact four sections; for Catholics, Protestants, non-Christians and abortions. I moved around with stealth because photography was not allowed, and after an hour went back with the intention of meting Christina and John who by now were in the Botanical Gardens next door. But I found my exit blocked by a solid wooden gate; a sign said the closing time for this entrance was 5.30pm. It was 5.34pm.
Mmm, no need to panic, this surely can’t be the only way out. The cemetery is so large it has its own bus route, and although the service finished mid-afternoon I was able to use the bus stop maps to guide me over the hill and down to the front of the cemetery to freedom. It took a good fifteen minutes to get there and on the way I noticed the appearance of scores of cats, watching me and, no doubt, waiting to pounce should I succumb to the heat of the day like so many feline vultures. The main entrance is the other side of Montjuïc near the port, and I had to walk back to the front of the Olympic stadium before I could find a bus to take me and my aching legs home.
Wednesday
I wanted to go to Tibidabo for two reasons. There is entertainment enough there to justify a full day, and I wanted to clear up an eleven-year-old mystery.
Getting there is a pretty cool experience – an underground train, an ancient tram up a winding road edged by eccentric mansions, and a funicular which resembled a couple of VW camper vans coupled together. On top of the hill there is an interesting TV mast and a science museum, both of which I wouldn’t have minded seeing, but we confined ourselves to the Parc d’Atraccions, a funfair which in parts dates back 100 years.
We went on a quite a few rides, ate bad funfair food, and generally had a good time. The mystery, which I did solve, was whether I had been here before and under what circumstances. I came to Barcelona in 1997 on a university-organised holiday, and I recall walking to the top of Tibidabo. What I now realise happened back then was someone mentioned going, as I recall, to find ‘Gaudi’s house’, and four of us (me, Rachel Balmforth, Dean Vipond and Michelle Backler) striking out to do so.
I must presume that the idea was to go to Park Güell but we somehow ended up getting the wrong train, walking the tram route, and then upon finding the funicular was not working inexplicably walking for two hours though the woods and the heat to the top. I remember taking pictures of the Temple del Sagrat Cor (I must find them out) and that the funfair was closed also. We then caught a cab back down to La Rambla (where we were staying), where we most likely want directly to Plaça Reial to drink sangria.
Thursday
On Thursday, I joined Gemma in a stay-in-the-apartment-until-mid-afternoon exercise. After the hottest part of the day has passed, we went by bus to Port Vell where we had a look round the Maremagnum shopping centre, before paying into the aquarium. I don’t think it was worth €15 each but the shark tunnel was pretty cool.
Afterwards we met up with the others and went for seafood, which on reflection was not very good. In fact I think that the two worst fish dishes I have ever had were in Barcelona; in 1997 I ate the most rubbery calamari you could imagine.
Friday
Home time. We all packed and were ready to leave the apartment by 11am. We headed out for the last time; our flight was later in the evening so we left our cases in the apartment. We went to the Gothic Quarter and split into pairs to shop, before meeting for lunch at a Japanese restaurant called Udon. In no particular rush to leave, we drifted back for our cases and caught a bus to the airport.
Barcelona airport was an interesting place. It is huge, and has the ambiance of a shopping centre at night, what with its subdued lighting and strange acoustics. There was a good range of shops and no chain restaurants apart from the local Pans & Company. Yet the service in the restaurants and cafes was unbelievably slow, and as a mark of protest Deb went without any tea save for a few borrowed chips. The flight was without incident and we arrived in a damp Liverpool a little before midnight. A bus, supposed to drop us on Deb and Neil’s street, terminated early at the new Liverpool One shopping centre, the Polish driver citing as his reasons the following days La Machine.
What is it with Liverpool and street festivals, disrupting our travel plans? Anyone would think it is the capital of culture. We had further problems the next day when we tried to catch a cab to the train station; there were none to be had and we ended up speed-walking with heavy bags against a Saturday shopping crowd, only to find our train home was delayed by half an hour. Welcome home.
