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Published: September 19th 2006
Hi, it´s Cathy here today. Sorry, this is going to be a pretty long entry so feel free to read it in stages, if it actually makes sense at all. You´d think after 2 weeks I´d have mastered the spanish keyboard, but I don´t think that´s going to happen. Please excuse any spelling or grammar mistakes (especially you Nicole!) since I am dead tired and half delirious after a whirlwind tour of Figueres, Barcelone, Bilbao, Segovia and another fun filled romp through rush hour in Madrid... all in the last 5 days.
We did make it to Figueres, Dali´s birthplace, with no problems. The Eurail pass that we got includes trips on the regional trains so it actually didn´t cost us anything to go there for our little day trip, which was awesome. We made our way to the train station in Barcelona, found our train, got off at the right stop and made our way to the museum all without even using a map. Pretty darn good I´d say. Are we getting the hang of this or what?
The town itself was kind of Dali-ish looking, there was some kind of structure that looked like a bus station in the middle of this big square that didnñt really go anywhere (that was kind of weird), and the roads were windy cobblestone streets with the typical high spanish style apartments on wither side of the roads that would make it eay to get lost. The outside of the museum when you come to it is a very strange sight: it´s a big reddish building with all these big egg statues on the top of it, with gold woman figures that look like mannequins. Stuck all over the sides of the building are these gold colored things that look like big pieces of popcorn. You should all check it out on the internet, or wait for our pictures, if you know anything about Dali you should be nodding and smiling by now. My travel book said that when the theatro Dali was being designed Dali said that he wanted everyone to come out at the end "misinformed". Whatever that means. There was a lot of shoulder shrugging from the 2 of us that day. I could talk about the museum all day, but instead I´ll just say that we loved it, that I have new appreciation for some of Dali´s work, and maybe a little less of an understanding than what I thought I knew about him before...
We got back to Barcelona in the late afternoon, and spent the rest of the day looking in stores, people watching, relaxing, and drinking sangria. The next day we bought a 2 day ticket for the Hop-on, Hop-off tourist bus that ran from 9am - 9pm every day, with buses running at about 5 minute intervals. That was Saturday, and boy were there a lot of tourists. IT was like a big sea of people as far as you could see in any direction from the plaza at the beginning of Las Ramblas. The first stop we got off at was the Sagrada Familia, the last Cathedral under construction in the entire world. Gaudi began construction of this monumental monster around 1880, and it will be at least another 25 years before it´s finished. If you only have a day in Barcelona ever, check this thing out. I didn´t think that it would be as cool as it was, I can see you all saying, "a building under construction, I see those every day" but no... not like this. I discovered that I am definitely a modnernist, or at least a Gaudi-ist, because I love Gaudi´s designs. Round curves, color, weird lizard things crawling down the sides of buildings... all very cool. After the Sagrada Familia we checked out Parc Guell, a park Gaudi designed for some rich friend of his named Guell who wanted the park to be like a little fairy tale town for rich people at the edge of Barcelona at the beginning of the 19th century. Ironically the park wasnñt finished because of financial difficulties, and the Spainsh government bought it in 1920-something and turned it into a public park. Here there was even more crazy Gaudi curves and colors, one of the most distinguishing features about the place is the wavy curvey long bench with designs Gaudi created out of broked tile inlaid right into this bench. In the museum at the bottom of the Sagrada Familia we learned that most of his designes are inspired by forms in nature, and you could really see them come out in this park. I think the best thing about it was the little band playing at the top of the park, we sat up there and watched them play for awhile, the girl had a wicked voice so I bought their album.
After taking the bus around for the rest of the tour and getting a sense of what Barcelona was all about, we wandered up and down the Ramblas, and sat in this outdoor cafe and each drank the hugest fishbowl of sangria you´ve ever seen and watched all the people. The buskers on this road are amazing, we saw some great spanish tumblers one night, and some spanish dancers, wicked costumes, the list goes on...
So we had that night (Saturday), and all the next day to tour around Barcelona before we caught our 10:00 train to Bilbao on Sunday night, to arrive Monday morning. We didn´t see everything there was to see by any stretch of the imagination, but we saw allt he things that were on our priority list. We both looooved Barcelona, it was kind of hard to leave but it was also weird staying in one place for so long (3 night in one place!).
Then came... Bilbao. Smelly, dirty, with grumpy people who obviously had never seen a tourist in their lives before. The only glitch in our plan happened in this dump - our plan was to put our luggage in a locker at the train station, go check out the Guggenheim and spend the rest of the day checking out the city since the train tickets we had were for the night train leaving Bilbao for Madrid at 11:00 pm Monday night. First, all the lockers in the train station were closed. Who has ever heard of a train station closing automatic lockers? Certainly not us. So we were stuck with a combined weight of approximately one million pounds of heavy backpacks with nowhere to store them. Second, the Guggenheim is actually closed on Mondays. Duh. After narrowly averting a temper tantrum we decided to keep our spirits up and would try to switch our night train tickets for one of the day ones that were listed in our Eurail Pass guide, so we could arrive in Madrid a day early which seemed like a much better option. This was harder than it sounds since no one in this city speaks a word of English, they actually speak a different dialect of Spanish than the little bit that I know too... but with my broken Spanish we managed to get across what we wanted to the lady at the ticket counter. She switched our tickets for us and actually gave us some money back. Halleluhiah!! We tahnked her profusely and went off in search of our train... hmm... no train... hmmm... the tickets the lady gave us are for a train that left at 8:55. We got them from her at 9:00. So we went back to the ticket booth where we managed to get across our problem of the missing train. Apparently the Eurail pass we have is incorrect, and the only other train leaving Bilbao for Madrid is the 11:00 night train. We give them their money back and switch our tickets back again. So then it was 9 am and our train didn´t leave until 11 pm. Do we despair? no. After cursing that train ticket lady for 5 minutes we decided that even if we couldn´t get into the Guggenheim, we could at least see the outside of it. We walked through this city with a million pounds of backpack feeling very proud of ourselves that we were still able to laugh about it. (I think the delirium was starting to settle in, since we had both slept only a couple of hours on the train the night before). I won´t say more about this looong day except that we did see the Guggenheim from the outside, and i don´t reccommend going to Bilbao. If you want to see a Guggenheim, go to New York.
We spent that night travelling to Madrid in a train car with a cute old spanish couple that brought their little dog for the ride. The next day (today) was much better, we figured out how to catch a train to Segovia from Madrid, and after a beautiful tour of some of the country North of Madrid we made it there and spent the day checking out the phenomenal Roman Aquaducts which are absolutely amazing. Apparently through the use of these big water ducts they had running water an unimaginable number of years ago. Those Romans were pretty smart. Segovia is definitely a place where you could spend a week just walking around checking out the scenery and the architecture. Besides the aquaducts I think they had about 50 points of interest on the tourist map they gave us, including the Alcazar, a fortress- turned - palace that looks like it should be the home of the Count off Sesame Street. We both realized that we are definitely cathedralled out, all the chapels of San Anton look exactly the same to me now, but we did check out the town´s cathedral too, which was also 'pretty amazing. I think it was the perfect way to end our sightseeing trip, the people were nice, it was easyto get around, and the weather was beautiful.
We tookthe train back to Madrid this afternoon, and tonight we treated ourselves to a hotel room and a cab ride instead of a crowded hostel and a crowded train. There is an enormous amount of construction in Madrid (well actually, it´s like all of Spain is being repaved right now) so the cab had to drop us off about half a mile from our hotel. Our room tonight is tiny, but at least there´s a bed. We are both exhausted, and will be ready to come home after some last minute shopping tomorrow morning...
So tomorrow it´s Madrid to London, we get to see Helen and Jane (and Scooby) for just one night, then home to Calgary the next day. The next time we post on this we should be at home!By the way, thanks everyone who posted comments for us, it´s nice to know that you guys are actually reading these entries, and it´s nice to hear from you too! I´m really looking forward to showing off all my pictures, hopefully we´ll figure out a way to post some of them on here.
Good night!
-Cathy and Jess
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Les
non-member comment
Still cold here...
Hi gals, It's Les here, your 'painting buddy'. Just want to tell you how much I enjoyed your blog. Your adventures reminded me of my trip to Italy with Margo last year - especially the long walks with heavy luggage and the sore feet, and relaxation in the sun with a dear friend. It was warm there, too...sigh. Sounds like you had a ball; thanks for letting me eavesdrop.