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Published: November 11th 2010
Alicia on the Barcelona Beach
Alicia standing in front of the miles of boardwalk and beachJAC- Just another church
1* - worth a look
2* - Good Times
3* - Unmissable
+ - emphasis on the rating
Readers of the last blog entry would know we had a tough start to our Barcelona arrival with a severely delayed flight then an attack of bed bugs allowing us to get to sleep on our arrival night only at 4:40am
We were therefore pretty sorry for ourselves and unenergetic on our first real morning.
After a late breakfast we headed down to the waterfront where we spent most of the day walking the beaches of Barcelona. This is a very lively area of Barcelona which stretches for many miles. The beachfront has many cafes along it and there were many people out soaking up the sunshine. We also noticed many cranes and huge swathes of land with construction huts and shipping containers which seems to indicate there's a lot of re-development going on around Barcelona.
We were lucky enough to be there while there was a beach volleyball tournament going on and we spent an hour watching people play beach volleyball which was pretty good. The tournaments seemed to be
Beach Volleyball
One of the thousand beach volleyball games going on along the vast Barcelona beach quite organised which is odd for 3pm on a Friday afternoon?! but there was plenty of matches to watch and Nick got a few decent action photos despite not having the right lens for it. We were surprised by the outfits of choice of the women playing, they invariably wore cheekily cut swimmer bottoms that show their bums and the flat chested girls wore string bikini tops too; not the most sport friendly outfits?! There was also the odd bit of beach nudity here and there at various spots along the vast beaches which Alicia always enjoys; she likes the scandal.
The beach is huge and flat and doesn't look real to Nick as it's so vast and level, it looks exactly like what Nick imagines LA will look like. There are loads of great flat surfaces for rollerbladers, cyclists, and skaters too.
After the beach we wandered about a big central park 'Cituedella' to see a large brick triumphal arch and wandered into a festival going on in town. We were fortunate have booked to go to Barcelona during the 'La Merces' festival where there's heaps going on everywhere in the city. Our highlight of the festival on
Arch of Barcelona
Barcelona didn't have any triumphs to celebrate but they built a big triumphal arch anyway! good on them our first day was a cool vertically rotating sphere where musicians of a band rotated about the others; so for example the drummer might slowly orbit around above the sax player, amazing... see the photo.
Barcelona is well known for the influence of the famous architect Gaudi who designed many stunning sights around the city which nowadays are the sight-seeing highlights. Our next day was our time to chase down Gaudi's main works. We walked the city streets northward to see Gaudis buildings and saw several very impressive and remarkable facades at Casa Battlo (3*) and Casa Mila (3*); truly inspirational and excellent, we loved them.
We then went to the giant Gaudi church still under construction the 'Sagrada Familia' (1*). There were many cranes over the top due to ongoing construction. It wasn't anywhere near as sprawling as Nick thought it would be, the tallest towers are 100m high, but the final plan is to have a central tower 170m high. We saw models indicating what it will look like when it's done; very impressive. Overall I was disappointed by the SagFam; I know it's a work in progress and it will be remarkable when done, but when
Rotating band
This band sat in a steel structure that turned like a ferris wheel so each performer hung over the others as they all played. The contraption drove along and turned the whole time, it was amazing we were there the construction on sight was so invasive it really wasn't easy to appreciate the beauty of the existing work.
We took a huge walk up into the hills of the city away from the beach and got some very fine panaromic views of the city from the very high hilltop park we found, but had frustration trying to walk to the 'Park Guell' which Gaudi designed, there's limited signage and our lesson learned was you really don't want to try to approach it from the East.
We walked Park Guell (3*) and despite billions of tourists loved it. It has wonderful benches, buildings, etc. We thought the buildings at the bottom of the park look exactly like a 'gingerbread house'.There are also remarkable buttressing and columns holding up the pathways and open plan areas. Gaudi had very interesting ideas that translate into very memorable and beautiful things.
The park also had a few oddball entertainers; one guy standing near a hilltop in a leapord leotard playing a guitar and singing for all he's worth and a band of bare footed hippy types getting a lively beat out (photo).
After our run in with bed bugs
Casa Battlo
Gaudi's building has the most impressive facade you'll ever see on the first night we were relieved to spend our last 6 nights in Barcelona in a very clean and spacious apartment building. A quirky story: one evening in our apartment we found to our frustration the gas stove tops had no lighter and no means anywhere in the flat to light them. We asked one of our fellow guests (who may not have been great at English) if we could borrow a lighter, she seemed to indicate she had one when she made a 'smoking' gesture but kept saying “what for?”
We tried to gesture the lighter was for cooking and she said no! We marvelled at this and parodied after she'd left that if we'd wanted a lighter from her to smoke she would have been ok, but since we only wanted it to light a gas stove top she was adamantly against it! Crazy.
Sunday was the final day of the festival; we headed into town to see 'Castellers'; teams of people building human towers, pyramids, etc. We watched in a moderate piazza that was incredibly densely packed and saw the amazing piles of people.
A couple of different groups stacked people as much as 7
people high!
We were fortunate to have one group start their base only 4 metres from us in the crowd and so had a great view, scarily this group got the “death wobbles” in their middle tower about 4-5 people up and the top little girl (about 4 years old) fell from the top!! Luckily this group was doing a pyramid shape and the little girl who fell toward our side (thankfully wearing a helmet) sort of bounced down the stack of people before hitting the people standing on the ground who caught her reasonably well. She seemed a bit shook up and weeping as her teammates/ parents carried her off but was otherwise ok (we were surprised they didn't lay her on the ground and assess for spinal injuries!!).
A couple of groups did a four-high walking tower of people with a little girl atop waving and smiling at the crowd. One little girl was doing a comically realistic fascist salute that amused me to no end and I made endless jokes to Alicia about the little girl taking over Europe. The Castellers were amazing, dangerous, and fascinating and we really enjoyed it.
Alicia then demanded a chicken
Street Entertainers 1
There are loads of weirdos entertaining in the streets and parks of Barcelona, these guys had a lot of energy club sandwich with Guacomole she'd spotted on our beach day so we headed down on a decent walk to the beach and had two nice good clubs in a nice cafe on the beach which despite it's amazing location for watching the world go by wasn't too expensive.
We then wandered the waterfront and admired the large Columbus statue on a high pedestal. They were having a huge wine festival and we discovered for 6 euros we could get 10 tickets to get wine and a glass. We decided to give it a go and found 2-3 tickets bought most wines. We ended up trying 4 wines including 2 x Cab Savs. The final Cab Sav a Castle d'Or 2001 Reserve was pretty good, Nick didn't like much else and Alicia ended up having to drink it all, she was a bit tipsy as a result!
As it was the finale of the festival we headed out for festival fireworks at 10pm and arrived just in time for the start, the crowd was huge and we could barely move an inch out of the metro station. Thankfully we had fair views of large decorative square brick columns in the
main square and the fireworks. The 'twist' on these fireworks is they played music clips throughout, it was an interesting to hear mixed music to fireworks, they even played 'Simply the Best' in Spanish which was excellent and the atmosphere in the crowd was fun. Not wanting our night to end we headed back to the main drag in Barcelona 'La Ramblas' and had a giant beer in a fishbowl type glass in a cafe right on the footpath, we paid a huge premium for the location but it gave Alicia good people watching and Nick was glad to have a gigantic beer to help overcome the 'tiny beer' syndrome he suffered in France.
Our next day in the city we stopped in at a coffee shop for Nick to get a traditional style hot chocolate (they are thick liquid chocolate, almost like mousse) and Alicia a berry smoothie both of which were fine. Later finding the 'Body Shop' that Alicia needed was closed for a long siesta between 2-5pm (!) we headed around the main roundabout at Espanya with it's nice monument toward the large MNAC art gallery on the hill.
Fortunately for us there's a lot of
Park Guell Building 1
Gaudi's wonderful park has some remarkable buildings in it, Nick thinks this one looks like a gingerbread house. decent free exhibitions going on in town and we popped into a nice, modern gallery called Caixa Forum which had two small contemporary art galleries both of which had enough quality that we didn't shake our fists in disgust (like we normally do at modern art) and then a gallery with images from a photographer who shot a lot between 1904-1950 the main thing that intrigued about the photos was the outfits and looks of the people in the photo from almost a century ago; it was quite good.
Next we set out to climb up past the MNAC (major museum/ gallery) which is quite a feat as it's a big hill with a LOT of stairs. They've installed a lot of escalators in the area to help slackers get up the hill, Alicia was in an energetic mood and ran up all the huge flights of stairs which will certainly do her fitness the world of good. We skirted around the impressive MNAC building and found ourselves outside the main stadium of the '92 Barcelona Olympics. The 1992 Olympic games are my second favourite after Sydney and I remember them very fondly so I was excited to be on
Park Guell Building 2
Another of the lovely Gaudi designed buildings in park guell site.
We wandered toward the Olympic stadium trying to spot the Olympic flame cauldron and to our delight found you can get into the stadium and do a little tour around inside for free! We wandered the stadium concourse for 10 mins or so reading the signs and looking around the stadium and marvelling at the Olympic flame cauldron where the arrow was famously shot to light the cauldron and start the games. We got a few photos of Nick pretending to fire the flaming arrow then left to wander back through the grounds of the Olympic area and MNAC which are all reasonably pleasant.
Our next day we wanted to go to Montserrat, a famous Monastery area set in amazing rock formations high in a mountain. We endeavoured to buy a Montserrat combined ticket from tourist info who declined to sell it to us; what a contradiction Barcelona tourist info is! They seem to have an identity crisis where on one hand they want to sell you tours, but on the other they refuse and only give info, and you can never guess which they'll do on any given subject.....
We eventually found our way to Montserrat and took
Castellers- Human Pyramid
Castellers are teams of people that make human towers, in this case a pyramid a cablecar to the top. Sadly for us the gods were displeased with us and threw up some disgusting overcast and leaden grey skies and cold wind. The mountain is formed of steep, impressive looking earthy coloured stones. At the top we find a very cool breeze and Nick cursed his shorts & tshirt; not the clever outfit choice with retrospect. Clouds were blotting out most of the sunny blue sky that had started the day and the views weren't all they could be. The monastery and other buildings are sadly dull brick and unassuming and uninspiring in architecture. We took a quick glance about town, of the fine views over the valley below, and of the impressive cylindrical chimney-like natural rocky formations above then made our way to the Basilica which appeared to have an impressive interior.
The Basilica interior wasn't bad but was partially scaffolded over. Strangely a huge and incredibly slow moving line of tourists was shuffling through to venerate a statue and kiss/ rub it's foot, we didn't know what the heck was going on but sat in the front seats of the church to relax, mock the line of clowns, and await the 1pm childrens
Castellers- 7 high tower
This human tower rose seven people high (tiny kids on top) and was amazing and unstable choir.
The choir of young teen lads sang for 5 mins and then escaped and it was all a bit anticlimactic I felt after waiting about 40 mins for them. We shuffled out of the church with the crowds to find more clouds and cool weather and sighing with resignation we decided to bid farewell to Montserrat, there was no point climbing up the mountain further to look for better rock formations since it was about to pour with rain.
Back in the city that night we had Tapas that obviously hadn't been fresh cooked and many menu items were unavailable. Alicia was unimpressed eating 'buffet' style food. We had good Sangria and some Clara (beer with lemon) that made up for the bad food and ended up going home a little hungry, a lot poorer, and not entirely satisfied. Alicia contemplated a 20 euro ice cream splurge at Hagen Daas for their Fondue & fruit dipping option but correctly abstained.
Despite our efforts this wasn't a very successful day!
Our next morning we made for Gaudi's Casa Mila (3*) (one of the apartment blocks he designed) and had a fine visit. The interiors were fairly interesting and the
Castellers- rising from the crowd
In this shot you can see how the Castellers swell up out of the crowd to start building a human tower rooftop with amazing pillar/ statue-like designs was brilliant. We loved the jelly-bean shaped courtyards too and enjoyed seeing such innovative architecture. You can't help but wish they'd built more designed by Gaudi it's all so wonderful.
Next we wandered through the main plaza in the city 'Catalunya' where we encountered a large number of protesters who were striking. We were amazed to see them pouring into shops harassing them and demanding they closed the business, which the shops invariably did. We saw KFC and even the 'FC Barcelona' shop closed in this way!
Apparently the strike was by all public sector workers (except the police) to protest wage and retirement age changes the government is looking at, there's similar going on all throughout Europe.
We stood around a bit to watch the demonstrators, amazingly no-one seized the day to make a stirring speech despite a large captive audience milling about in the plaza.... Alicia was uncomfortable and demanded we leave when a loud firecracker exploded near by, oh well.....
Next we found our way down La Rambla to the Market Bocqueria where we stumbled on another photo gallery. In this exhibition were some interesting exhibitions including photos taken
Street Entertainers 2
This creative street performer amused us on La Rambla of the USA from the train that transported the body of Robert Kennedy after he was shot and killed. It gave a fascinating look at the people in the US at the time and their reaction to the train. We finally made our way to the market where they had some nice fresh food, it looks like Barcelona's fresh food markets could stand up to some of the good ones in France. Alicia bought an expensive but excellent Mango there.
In the evening we headed out for our 6pm meeting with Michael & Sylvia a couple we'd asked to meet us via the Couch Surfing website. Couch Surfing is a website that brings people again to meet and provide free accommodation and we like the look of it.
Michael was a professional clown, Sylvia a translator and they showed us around some rougher, raw neighborhoods of Barcelona. We had a drink that was apparently made entirely of potato but tasted a bit like coconut to Nick and melon to Alicia; it was like drinking a milkshake in consistency and was an interesting and obscure local delicacy for us.
Their efforts to show us good bars and food were partially frustrated
Street Parade
Large marching figures dressed in Medieval garb that was stumbled upon parading down La Rambla by the strike closures; most of the cafes in town had closed so we ended up having dinner in a kebab shop; Alicia was brave and had a Falafel kebab. We talked to them about many things and learned amongst other things that they perceived the Barcelona police are still quite brutal due to their history under the dictator, and also that in Northern Italy where Sylvia's from they eat a lot of horse! Meeting people through Couch Surfing was really good and we enjoyed our night out.
Barcelona always has interesting and often roguish charm in it's streets and we always enjoy walking about. That evening we headed out to see the 9pm 'Magic Fountain' show which is supposed to be a very impressive lit/ musical fountain that plays a few times a week and is a huge tourist attraction. To our dismay the fountain never started despite large crowds of tourists including 'Trafalgar Tours' being there.
We stood around for an hour waiting and to bide our time bought a luminous sling-shot fired twirling toy which Alicia played with a lot and loved. Nick got some good night photos nonetheless despite the fountain never working and we
Nick and his giant beer
Nick enjoys a giant beer (like a fishbowl with a stem on the bottom), a much deserved drink after the France beer debacles had a decent time. After 10pm with still no signs of life from the fountain and the crowds drifting off in disappointment we headed into La Rambla one last time to previous trusted bar for a final Sangria and Clara (lemon-lager beer).
That was the end of Barcelona for us, we got to Athens ok, but tired and thirsty and that's where the next blog entry will be for.
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Mum G
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Barcelona Blog
So lucky to be there at Merces festival time ! Glad you loved Park Guell and Gaudi's Casa Mila We were on tour and never got inside it.Only drove quickly past Casa Battlo in the t. bus ! However, sad you missed the night fountains to music May have had something to do with the strike? I'm amazed that you found Sagrada Familia a letdown We thought it was amazing. You certainly did Barcelona well. Our tour just gave us a taste on our around Spain/Portugal 16 days. Great Blog and photos.