Back to Barcelona

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Well, we didn’t fall asleep on the train trip up to Barcelona this morning … and that would be because we had to stand all the way. Sort of like catching the train from Warragul to Melbourne and not being able to get a seat!! I was footsore before we even arrived in Barcelona for our day of sightseeing!

From the RENFE station at Passeig de Gracia we switched to the Metro to catch a train to the hotel we booked in the Barri Gotic district. We found Line 4 (yellow) without any trouble and two stops saw us coming out of the Metro just metres from our hotel. Even better they could check us in straight away even though it was only about 10.30am. We took our small overnight bag up to the room and then set off to catch the Metro up to Parc Guell.

Even though we had to change lines to reach the northern part of the city it hardly took us any time at all. We discovered pretty quickly that the trains are as easy to use here as they are in Paris and London. Using the trains in other cities only reinforces just how bad Melbourne’s public transport system is!! We disembarked at Vallcarca and walked across to Parc Guell. Actually I should say up to Parc Guell as the station was quite a bit lower than the hill that the park is situated on! Thank goodness that we were able to ride on escalators for some of the ‘walk’.
We entered the park from the north-west corner and walked across the top and then down towards the main entrance. Antoni Gaudi was originally asked to design Parc Guell as a suburban estate, but the project went bankrupt. The site was later bought and preserved by the city as a municipal park. The park is such a unique blend of parkland, art and architecture that it was preserved as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984. It is hard to describe what the park is like as it is so … unique. As with most of Gaudi’s work it is very ‘organic’ with lots of curves and colours that were inspired by nature to make the architectural additions blend in with the hillside rather than stand out. The whole effect is a bit like being on a larger version of the Whosville set on the back lot tour at Universal Studios!

From the main entrance we headed for the Lesseps station. We didn’t even have to use our map as the 1200m route was extremely well signposted! From Lesseps we travelled back towards the centre of Barcelona exiting the Metro at Diagonal so that we could visit the Casa Mila - better known as La Pedrera - an apartment block designed by Gaudi. This is another amazing Gaudi creation where the apartment block appears more to have grown from the pavement than to have been built!!

La Pedrera was Gaudi’s last civic work before he dedicated the rest of his life to the Sagrada Familia - which was our next stop after a bit more train hopping. By this stage we were riding the trains like locals and found ourselves never having to wait more than about three and a half minutes for a train!! Try that in Melbourne!

Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia (Sacred Family) church pretty much defies description! Before we visited we knew that it was started in 1882, that Gaudi devoted most of his life to the building of the church and that it remains unfinished … 127 years after it was started!! That little bit of knowledge left us totally unprepared for what we actually encountered when we arrived. The Sagrada Familia is an astonishing sight, bizarre even! Once again Gaudi set out to design a building that would mimic nature rather than look angular and regular like most buildings. It is a fantastic collection of spires decorated with floral motifs, animals and … fruit, yes fruit!

If Whosville had a church this is what it would look like. And inside it is a construction zone. We thought that most of the work that is still needed was on the outside, but even the inside is woefully incomplete … after more than a century. Admittedly the Spanish Civil War and Fidel Castro’s dictatorship did not help the progress of this project with little work being completed between the late 30s and 1977. Apparently they hope to complete the interior by next year and the exterior by 2030!!!

After Sagrada Familia we jumped back on the train and travelled out to Sagrera on Line 5 (blue) so that we could change to Line 1 (red) to head back into the city. We hopped off the train before we reached the Gothic District so that we could see the Spanish Arc de Triumf - which was designed for the 1888 Universal Exhibition - and wander through the Parc de la Ciutadella, where the exhibition was held.

Feeling very weary by this stage we made our way back to our hotel where I promptly lay on the bed and fell asleep!! I woke up about an hour later and washed my feet and was surprised at how much better I felt after a short nap and a foot bath! Bernie was keen to take photos of La Sagrada Familia’s Nativity Façade which is floodlit at night. So it was back onto the trains for a dusk trip to the church. Two trains and 20 minutes later we were back at the church, but it was still too light for the floodlighting to have been switched on.

To kill some time we shopped for a snow globe. One of Bernie’s teams collects snow globes so Bernie has to take one back from Spain. Mission accomplished, he now has a snow globe featuring La Sagrada Familia in his possession!

We proceeded to a bar a couple of doors along from the souvenir shop and ordered a small tapas dish, a beer and a coke. The prawns were delivered still frozen on the inside!! We have been very disappointed with the tapas so far as all of it seems to come from the freezer and/or microwave rather than being freshly prepared. I think we may have been spoiled by the delicious tapas that we enjoyed in Benalmadena when we holidayed there a few years ago??? And boy was the waiter grumpy when we asked for the prawns to be cooked properly! When we paid the bill we nearly died - €17 for a beer, a coke and five prawns!!!! We certainly did not leave a tip since we were being robbed blind anyway! BTW, that is about AUS$30.

After this fine dining experience (not!) we went to hang about in the garden opposite the Nativity Façade to wait for the floodlights to come on! The things we do for (hopefully) great photos?! Finally, as dusk settled around us, the lights came on. Ta dah!! Bernie set up the tripod and fiddled with the exposure and aperture settings on his camera and then took a couple of dozen photos of the famous Nativity Façade. I certainly hope that there are some good ones amongst them?!

From the Nativity Façade we proceeded to the Passion Façade which was completed by Josep Subirachs in 2002 only to find that this modern façade is not floodlit. Bernie took a few long exposure shots anyway just to see how they turn out.

Back onto the train and back to our hotel where we dropped off the camera and tripod and then sought out a bit more to eat. Two and a half prawns each is not really enough for dinner! We ate a few more tapas courses at a restaurant a few doors away from the hotel. More microwaved offerings I’m afraid, but an improvement on the still frozen prawns that were delivered to us earlier!!

After eating we walked to La Rambla. We will probably finish off our sightseeing along La Rambla tomorrow so Bernie wanted to check what street we should come back down to pass by the hotel to collect our bag. It will be easy as there is a McDonalds on one corner and a Kentucky Fried Chicken on the other!! These fast food chains might not be much good for eating, but they do make useful landmarks!

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