My Europe Holiday: Part 4 – BARCELONA

Saturday 3 November 2012

Barcelona

Our super-fast train arrived at Barcelona Sants station just after 7pm. Kim had done the research and worked out which Metro line we needed to get on to make it to Diagonal Station, nearest to our hotel. The train was fairly crowded, but it didn’t take long till our stop, and we made it without meeting any of the infamous Barcelona pickpockets I had heard about.

We got out of Diagonal station at the wrong end; there were a number of exits to choose from. But, after getting our bearings and walking for about 10 minutes past some hip looking bars and cafes, we found our hotel, the Hotel Actual.

This artwork was in the hall outside our hotel room - I liked it!

My favourite hotel of the whole trip, it is located in the wonderful Eixample area. A fantastic shopping strip called Passeig de Gracia is located just around the corner, and Gaudi’s famous buildings, Casa Mila/La Pedrera and Casa Battlo within an easy walk. The Actual Hotel is modern and air-conditioned, in a top location and our room was really comfy and had a bath and a balcony! (It doesn’t take much to please me). This hotel is recommended!

The view from our balcony on Saturday night

We took a walk along the Passeig de Gracia and saw the Gaudi buildings lit up in the night, and had some supper and wine in the bar/restaurant inside La Pedrera – a unique experience and a pleasant end to our first evening in Barcelona.

Casa Mila/La Pedrera - wavy walls and a bit spooky at night, no?

Sunday 4 November 2012

Barcelona

Breakfast was at a bar just next door to our hotel. For the bargain price of 6 Euros each, we had so much to choose from. Cereal, cold meats and cheeses, muffins, donuts, pastries, bread, all the good stuff that is not so good for us! Good cafes con leche and juices to top it off. Very good value, especially as breakfast in our hotel was 13 Euros each.

Knowing we only had a limited amount of time to see so much in Barcelona, Kim & I had pre-booked a 2 day hop-on-hop-off bus ticket before leaving Australia. After breakfast, we jumped on the double-decker bus just down the road on Passeig de Gracia, and did a round trip of the city on the East Route.

The bus took us past the Placa Catalunya (Plaza Catalonia), at the top of La Rambla, the famous street leading down to the sea; the gothic Cathedral in the old town; Port Vell and Barceloneta on the waterfront; the Catalonian History Museum; a super-phallic looking tower called the Glories-Torre Agbar (that one woman took about a dozen photos of in the 2 minutes it took to go past, to each his/her own I suppose); the ongoing, rather impressive work in progress called the Sagrada Familia; the Hospital de Sant Pau, a beautiful world heritage building, the Parc Guell, filled with works by Gaudi; and Tibidabo, the mountain providing greenery and fresh air to Barcelona, and with a cable car to get to the top for great city views.

During this time, it started to rain, so the top got put on the bus. Unfortunately, there were still no windows, and so after a while, when the bus turned left, a great gush of water came flowing in on the right side of the bus, and sloshing on a few people, Kim included. It was funny the first time, not so much the third... The people on the left side of the bus thought it was pretty funny, until the bus turned right and soaked them too! I really don’t know how much water was able to be held on top of that roof!

After completing the loop and then getting off the bus at Placa Catalunya, we had some lunch and then explored the old town, stopping at the Cathedral and very old gothic area.

Spires on Barcelona Cathedral

From here, we walked to the marina area and along La Rambla. Here we saw some great market stalls, and I bought myself a pair of earrings and a (small) painting of Sagrada Familia, which I hadn’t yet seen, but was planning to love it when I did set eyes on it; I also got my sister a necklace from another jewellery stall, and some fridge magnets (always on the lookout for good fridge magnets) from a tourist shop alongside the pedestrian mall. We veered off into a couple of side streets and found a bar/cafe where we ordered a sangria each.

Upon reflection, I was wrong thinking we had been served the largest glasses of sangria in the world when we were in San Sebastian. For 5 Euros a glass, we were not quite expecting this:

Waste not, want not

Yep, steins of sangria. With straws, as we were ladies. So, after we finished them off, at about 3:30pm, we staggered only slightly back towards Passeig de Gracia and our hotel to recover for a bit.

That night, we visited Casa Battlo, a building designed by Antoni Gaudi, with colourful roof tiles, mosaic tiles on the exterior, and no sharp corners or straight lines on the walls and doors inside, I loved it all. Gaudi was so clever and ahead of his time, designing these unique and beautiful buildings and monuments in the late 19^th/early 20^th Centuries.

Casa Battlo - beautiful and definitely not watching me with windows and balconies like scary faces

This building has many floors to explore, with people living in some of the apartments, and even the servants’ quarters, attic and roof were just amazing to behold. He was really influenced by nature and incorporated it into much of his work.

The prettiest chimneys I've seen - roof of Casa Battlo

After spending time exploring Casa Battlo with our trusty audioguides, we had a really lovely dinner at Restaurante Brown 33 on the Passeig de Gracia. I had pumpkin gnocchi and white wine, which was a yummy way to end the day.

Monday 5 November 2012

Barcelona

Today was Gaudi Day – to be spent looking at more of his famous works. After a sleep-in and late breakfast at the bar next door again – such a bargain – we took the Metro from our station, Diagonal, to the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia. As we came up the stairs from the station to street level, we saw  people lined up, waiting to get into the church. We walked around the corner, trying to find the end of the line to join. Around another corner, until finally we found the end of the line, and then queued for almost an hour. At least it was a great blue sky-weather day and not raining on us, that would have been a bit mean of Mother Nature.

Breathtaking - but hard to fit into one shot - Nativity Facade, Sagrada Familia

While lined up, we were able to examine the exterior - still incomplete after more than a century.The outside of the church is still being built according to Gaudi’s designs and exact measurements, so there was scaffolding and many construction workers around. This didn’t take away from the intricate details and greatness of the design. Once we paid the entry fee and collected – yes – our audioguides, we entered the church through the Passion Facade, which represents the death and resurrection of Jesus, with quite modern sculptures by Josep Maria Subirachs.   

The inside of the church was completed only a few years ago, and it is magnificent. Light and spacious, it has coloured light shining through the many beautiful stained glass windows, and tree-like pillars hold the ceiling up, branching out at the top. In Gaudi’s words, “The intimacy combined with the spaciousness is that of the forest, which will be the interior of the church”. Even with hoards of people wandering around, I was able to sit on the seats facing the altar and experience a wonderful peaceful, contemplative moment in the middle of it all.

Leaving through the opposite doors, then turning around, I faced the Nativity Facade, featuring the birth of Jesus and the events in the lives of the Holy Family. Gorgeous, and completed during Gaudi’s lifetime, I liked this side better than the more modern figures on the Passion Facade.

Closer details of the Nativity Facade - loved!

Underneath the church is a museum and working area, where sculptors create scale models of the different parts still to be added to the exterior, all in keeping with Gaudi’s plans, and it looks like painstaking work. Quite fascinating. I loved being in this place, and it is still unfinished! The current estimate is for it to be completed around 2025. I was and am still in awe of Antoni Gaudi’s wonderful creative mind and talent, from seeing his works in Barcelona.

As we still had a day left on our hop-on-hop-off bus pass, we took the bus to Parc Guell, where Gaudi had lived and where many of his outdoor sculptures stand. This place is up a hill and there were many tourist buses in the car park, and many, many people inside the park. We had lunch on a bench at the entrance, and then forced our way through the crowds to see a fantastic view of the city of Barcelona. It really was a lovely park, but there were so many people scrambling to take photos, it wasn’t the relaxing place we thought it would be. So we hightailed it out of there, and hopped back on the bus, went back to the start and changed over to the West Route, to see more of the city in the evening.

View from Parc Guell - and just a few people

Big Lizard by Gaudi - Parc Guell

This route took us past the World Trade Centre, up to Montjuic and the 1992 Olympic area, which was freezing at about 8pm as we were on the top deck of an open-top bus, but a really lovely area, with beautiful views over the city at night. On the way back, we passed the Estacio de Sants, the Central Station where we had arrived into Barcelona, and where this night, we saw the most taxis I have ever seen in one location! It was pretty flabbergasting at the time; you really had to be there I guess. Then we passed Camp Nou which is FC Barcelona’s home ground, and where there were quite a few people, true fans of the team or the sport, I guess. I found it slightly less than fascinating, but I am not a fan of soccer either...

Ha! How is this action shot of cars zipping past our bus by night, heading down La Rambla

I can’t for the life of me, remember the name of the restaurant we had dinner at, but it was another fantastic meal on the Passeig de Gracia, on our last night in Europe.

Tuesday 6 November 2012

Barcelona to Dubai

Today after breakfast, I set about re-packing my whole bag, which Kim had done the night before. She ventured down the road for some last minute shopping opportunities. I wanted to check out the famous Zara store, about a 10 minute walk from our hotel, so after I finished packing, headed there for a browse. Where I ran into Kim. She bought a necklace from Zara, then was heading across the road to the Guess store, and I told her I would meet her back at the hotel, where we needed to check out in about 30 minutes’ time.

To reinforce and confirm my complete lack of any sense of direction, I headed down the wrong street. For 2 days we had walked up and down the Passeig de Gracia, a straight street, but it took me about 10 minutes of walking on my last day, to realise I didn’t recognise any buildings or landmarks, and looked up to see a different street sign to the one I wanted to see. Feeling ridiculous and with no map handy, I had to retrace my steps back to Zara, and walk/run to our hotel, as Kim was waiting and I had the key to our hotel room. So frustrating. It was a warm, muggy, overcast day too, which added to my flustered “countenance”.

I made it back about 10 minutes later than planned, we checked out of our lovely Hotel Actual, and took the Metro back to Central, where we had trouble finding the train line to the airport, and receiving little to no helpful information from the Information Desk. It was really confusing. It took us so long to find the counter to buy the ticket to the airport, we were contemplating grabbing one of the thousands of taxis we knew would be outside. Then we found a very nice lady who was able to sell us the tickets and even told us which platform to go to! Feedback to the train station would be to request better signage!

Once the train got to the airport, we had to join a queue for a transfer bus to take us to the main terminal! This took about another half hour, it was so far away from where the train took us to. Very strange. Note to self and other travellers – if taking the train or bus to Barcelona Airport, allow a lot more time than you think you will need! We spotted the Emirates sign, passed it and many other airline signs, before being let off the bus at the far end of the terminal... sigh. Walked about 10 minutes (possibly an exaggeration) to make it to the Emirates counter, checked in and gratefully dumped our bags, then went through customs, over 2 hours after leaving our hotel. After gobbling down some McDonalds, I was delighted to see English language magazines at a newsagency, so I bought 3 of them to read on the plane.

The plane was packed, but our seats were at the front of the Economy section, the trip was only about 5.5 hours, and I had my magazines (that I didn’t get around to reading) and Emirates movies and TV shows to occupy my time. Did I mention that I love Emirates Airlines? We said goodbye to Barcelona and looked forward to arriving in Dubai.

Our fabulous street - Passeig de Gracia, Eixample, Barcelona