Barcelona!

---

Well, we just managed to fit in a trip to Barcelona during our first week in Spain! We were up early this morning and hit the dining room right on opening time at 8.00am so that we could grab a pastry and a piece of fruit to eat on our way to the bus stop.

We caught the local bus into Tarragona and then walked from the bus station to the train station to catch the train into Barcelona. Even though the train line runs beside the sea for most of the trip we both snoozed on an off for most of the journey! Not the best thing from a security point of view, but then most of the other passengers seemed pretty drowsy too!

We arrived in Barcelona at about 10.15am and walked down Passeig de Gracia to the tourist booth selling tickets for the hop on/hop off Bus Turistic. Phew, for €21 we could spend the whole day travelling on three different routes incorporating 44 stops! We caught the bus on the red route first to tour around the northern part of the city. From the Placa de Catalunya we travelled back up the Passeig de Gracia past the Casa Batllo and La Pedrera - homes designed by Gaudi - before heading to the Sagrada Familia - the grand temple designed by Gaudi which remains unfinished some 80 years after his death.

From the temple we headed through the Gracia District before heading past the stops for Parc Guell, Tibidabo and the Monestir de Pedralbes before heading south again past the Royal Palace and Nou Camp, the home of the Barcelona Football Club. I have to report that we didn’t actually disembark for a closer look at any of these sights on the northern route!

The next stop on the red route was a transfer point for the blue route so we left the red route bus and joined the queue waiting for the bus touring the southern part of Barcelona. This route travelled through the part of the city that was extensively redeveloped for the Olympic Games in 1992. We didn’t stop to look at the Olympic Stadium, but we did leave the bus at Parc de Montjuic to take the cable car up to Castell de Montjuic.

We thought that the facilities would be plentiful on the top of the mountain, but we were disappointed!! The toilets were closed (for repairs?) so they had some lovely chemical portable toilets available instead. Groan!! But, when you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go!! After being caught out with no toilet paper in the public loos at the bus station in Tarragona last week at least I was prepared this time with some toilet paper in my bag!!! And I had some trusty disinfectant wipes to make up for the fact that I couldn’t get any water to run in the hand basin!

Next stop some lunch. Hmmnn, obviously the health department regs are not as strict in Spain as they are in Australia? The sandwiches were not refrigerated and I doubt that the hot food was being kept anywhere near hot enough??? We asked for some fresh (I use the term loosely) ham rolls to be made up thinking that might be the safest bet to avoid a bout of food poisoning. Although if you saw how they treat ham here you’d have to wonder???

Back at the bottom of Montjuic we rejoined the blue bus to continue the southern route past the World Trade Centre, Maritime Museum, Columbus Monument and Port Vell. At the Platja del Bogatell we changed to the green route to tour another area of the city that has been extensively redeveloped. This area along the sea front used to be very industrial and filled with factories and cheap housing. It is now mainly parkland, popular, sandy beaches and very upmarket housing.

When we arrived back at the Platja del Bogatell to change back to the blue bus we arrived just in time to see an almost empty blue bus departing! Unfortunately the next blue bus was almost full, but we were able to find a seat down the bottom. The remainder of the blue route took us past the zoo and through the Barri Gotic - the oldest part of Barcelona - and back to the Placa de Catlunya where we started this morning.

We popped into the Tourist Information centre where we booked accommodation in Barcelona for Tuesday night. We also booked a walking tour of the Barri Gotic for Wednesday morning and a two day transport card for Tuesday/Wednesday. After getting ourselves acquainted with the layout of the city and the sights we are going to attempt to do the rest of our sightseeing using public transport. The travel cards cost us €10.70 each compared with €27 each for another two days on the Bus Turistic!!

Bernie was in charge of the train timetable and he thought that we should aim to catch the 6.33pm train back to Tarragona. We thought that we should catch the blue bus to Estacio de Sants, Barcelona’s main train station even though we could walk there more directly. This seemed like a grand plan except that the blue bus driver was the … slow … est Bus Turistic driver that we had all day. Most of them gunned it to get through on the amber lights, but this driver made sure that he caught every single red light on the way to the station!

We arrived at the station with only minutes left to buy a ticket for the 6.33pm train only to discover that the 6.33pm service doesn’t run on Sundays!!! A minor detail that was missed on the timetable!! So, the next train was at 7.06pm and it was a regional service rather than an express. The regional trains stop at most stations so the journey back to Tarragona took about an hour and a half rather than just over an hour.
We were back in Tarragona at 8.35pm and we walked back over to the bus station. Fortunately we didn’t have to wait long for a bus and this driver drove like a maniac - more than making up for the snail paced driver in Barcelona. We were back in La Pineda by 9.15pm and even managed to have a late dinner in the dining room at our hotel. We weren’t even the last to wander in to dinner and we weren’t the last to leave the dining room tonight!!

---

Comments

[Janet]

barcelona whistle stop tour!
Sounds like you managed to get around to the sights very well. We filled in a week there without getting bored. Hope you enjoyed the walking tour, the history of the city is very interesting. We are just finishing off the last minute packing and soon will be headed to the airport. Crossed fingers that we get our business class upgrade for the first leg. We hope to find out in about 30 mins! Hope to see you later this month! love Janet