Buildings and Bollocks in Barcelona

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Today could have ended with a punch in the Bollocks - but they didn't sell punch so I had a beer instead. We also got free popcorn.

It's been a long and good day, starting at 7am with Glyn's alarm so that we could get to the Sagrada Família for 9am (we'd booked online and we there early enough to get clear photos before the hordes of tourists turned up to stand in our way with their selfie sticks). Outside our hostel, the quiet early morning streets contained a few stragglers on their way home from last night's revelries, looking lost and sorry for themselves.

Now during my travels I've seen a lot of places of worship, most are amazing architecturally but I'd got to the point where I could happily never see another cathedral, church or mosque again. But the Sagrada Família truly is a stunning building and if it is the last church I visit, I think I got the best one. It still isn't finished and so is covered in the usual scaffolding complete with crane between the spires. Incidentally, if like me you can never pronounce or spell any place outside of England and thus replace the sounds with something easy to remember, you can google 'Sangria Familiar', and the top results are still correct, much to my husband's disdain.

I took a million (or thereabouts) photos inside the building, including wonderfully wavey walls, staircases spiralling into distant ceilings and Jesus on his cross under a brolly.

We had prebooked a trip up the Passion Towers, a lift up to the pigeon's nests and a bird's eye view of the scaffolding. To be honest, it wasn't as good as I'd hoped but we could hardly go without going up the tower, now could we? The view was clear but Barcelona isn't a particularly picturesque or iconic city to view from above. We walked back down, along narrow and dark spiral steps that barely could be seen.

After a brief stop for food at a surprisingly not stupidly expensive cafe across the road, we headed down to La Padreda. As it goes, I've been pleasantly surprised at the prices, - not cheap, but not incredibly expensive either, in fact cheaper than our recent destinations of Turkey and Greece, which I didn't expect.

Like the Sangrada Família, La Padreda was also designed by Gaudi, and more places should be - except he is dead. Disappointingly, the outside was not only covered in the expected scaffolding, but was also shrouded in a gargantuan sized advert. But the plaster replica models inside let us know that we were inside one very amazing building. Added to to that, the interior was spectacular. The highlight was the roof: Guadi had disapproved of the rooves of Barcelona for being dull and conformist, so he's put helmets on his chimneys and air ventilation shafts. Add to that a few mosaics, some made from champagne bottles, you've got a really neat roof. Glyn reckons some of it must have been inspiration for Cybermen.

A short walk down Carrer gran de Gracia got us to Casa Batlló. And my map reading also got us there as you would think that top tourist places would be signposted, but they are not. The area was full of the kind of shops that think they do not need to display prices, but their merchandise is designer dull. During a brief stop whilst I checked the map, a homeless woman started trying to touch Glyn's face and it was a bit odd.

Casa Batlló is just awesome, start to finish. It looks like a gothic creation of a half mad genius and I would love to live in it, except all furniture would have to be bespoke to fit inside. Anything with flat edges would just look stupid. This is also a Gaudi building and I've become a fan. It is full of bright colours, unusual stained glass, curved walls and skylights as Gaudi loved his natural light. Again, we could also get on the roof, it was smaller than La Padreda but more colourful. The sun had come out, adding an eerie light to the grey-blue clouds and it was excellent for photography.

Both houses have audio tours but the headphones at the former annoyed me and you had to hold a stick to your ear at Casa Batlló which was a nuisance I soon gave up on.

After a brief stop for frozen yoghurt, we took the metro to Lesseps where to our surprise, there were signposts to Parc Güell and we walked up the hill, and to our joy we found outdoor escalators. This is where I saw my first Catalan cat, a black stray being fed copious amounts of biscuits by a loving cat lady.

There are free areas at Parc Güell, but the security guys at the entrance know how to lead tourists into queuing for the paid area, and though pre-warned on Trip Advisor, we paid. But we had to wait for our 4pm time slot, so we climbed to the highest point of the park within the free area. Good views of Barcelona swept down to the Mediterranean, past various landmarks. Naturally there were buskers, and all the ones we'd heard at this point all sang in English. The first one in the park was attempting the blues.

At the top was a busker that thought he was Joey Ramone, singing rock'n'roll lyrics to unconnected rock'n'roll tunes. His skinny legs donned leopard print trousers that must only peel off, his hair long and shapeless, and his eyes hidden behind unnecessary sunglasses in the soft light. He swore in a punk style at times and interacted with passers by, whether they wanted to or not. Very entertaining and he got a euro off me - actually his collection of coins looked a lot healthier than most buskers. He took a shine to passing women, myself included, making cat noises, clawing at the air and lowering his glasses to look. It was humourous and creepy at the same time in that it went on a bit too long.

We went into the paid area and it was smart enough. There was a house that looked amazing from outside that had a queue that would take 45 minutes, but the security lady told us it was just photos of the park inside. In other words, don't waste your time. We didn't. We spent a fair bit of time in the park and this is where I found my second cat. A big fluffy ginger tom, drinking from a pool of water right by the multi-coloured lizard that the tourists were flocking to take pictures of. But I wasn't the only one photographing that gorgeous tomcat, not by a long chalk. I doubt he was a stray, he looked far too healthy and well fed.

The light was going and we headed back to the metro to get a train to Drassanes. I'd previously researched bars in Barcelona that might play music we like and had found good reviews for 'The Bollocks' in Port Vell that supposedly wasn't touristy and served good burgers, both veggie and meat. But it wasn't open yet when we arrived, so we went to a nearby Tapas bar which was very nice.

When the Bollocks opened, we were the first customers. Yes, it wasn't touristy as the staff didn't ask us where we were from. It was dimly lit (of course, this is Barcelona) and there were fake cobwebs on the ceiling covering the graffiti. A figure of the Iron Maiden 'Eddie' was on the wall playing the guitar sitting on the loo. With a name like 'The Bollocks', you would expect punk music, but it was standard rock and it soon filled with standard tourists, not local Catalan alterative types as we'd been promised on Trip Advisor. Despite being given free popcorn, we didn't feel the urge to stay too long and were tired after a long day, so we soon headed back to our hostel.

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Comments

[taracloud]

Sangria Familia--a happy family!
Great adventures in fab Barcelona! I've visited several times, and each time I visit a few new Gaudi spots--great that you ended up at Parc Güell! The tourist office used to have a map of Gaudi buildings, but the sites are scattered all over the city, so it's a bit of a pilgrimage to visit them. Amazing that you need reservations for these places now, but so organized that you did this ahead of time--I'm impressed! Love your photos!