Days 23 through 30… Barcelona
Hello from a 290 km/h train
between Barcelona and Madrid. After initially ragging on Spanish trains, Karma
comes back to bite me and we are currently enjoying our nicest high speed of
our journey speeding towards to Madrid. We have spent the last week in a lovely
apartment in Barcelona, resting, sleeping, shopping and site seeing. Mainly
because of our laziness a day by day account for these 8 days wouldn’t really
be riveting reading so instead we’ll go site by site/ event by event… Here
goes…
Flamenco Night
Our first full day in Barcelona
was spent wandering around the city shopping and a trip to the markets where we
bought some supplies for breakfast that week but was highlighted by a night at
the Flamenco show. A shout out to James and Kel whose Viator voucher we
utilised for this lovely night out. The show itself consisted of two solo
female dancers and 3 male dancers, one female solo singer accompanied by a full
complement of 3 Spanish guitarists and 4 hand clapper/singer men. Flamenco is
definitely more like tap dancing than I thought it was, and all being
unamplified in a small room the power of their voices, clapping and guitars was
amazing. The only downside was not being able to speak Spanish because some of
the ballads sounded like really interesting hard breaking stories! But
definitely an awesome show much more than what I personally expected! All
enjoyed while sipping on a glass of Sangria!
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| Flamenco!!! |
Barcelona’s Gothic Cathedral
Knowing that Barcelona was famous
for its cathedral we were surprised to see that it was actually at the end of
our street. Unfortunately it wasn’t the famous Sagrada Familia which is ‘the
image’ of Barca but was an impressive gothic cathedral none the less. Due to
the rain (which would become a semi permanent feature of our week) we were
unable to catch the lift up to the roof top. Really all these Gothic era
cathedrals are very similar however this one had two interesting features. It
is ‘protected’ by 13 white geese which live in the central courtyard who
protect the tomb of the 13 year old girl buried there. This girl refused to
renounce her Christian faith and was rolled down the street in a barrel of
glass and nails, attempted to be burnt at the stake (but the flames shied away
form her and instead burnt the roman soldiers) and final crucified refusing
still to renounce her faith. The other interesting feature is the choir chapel
which accurately predicts the rise of the X-men…
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| Inside the Cathedral by Katrina Bennett |
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| The X-men pews... |
Le Sagrada Familia
Barcelona’s real cathedral. Guided by an impressively detailed audio tour, we
wandered through the last public work of well known (to some?) architect Gaudi.
Gaudi was a renowned modernist whose life’s work would be this cathedral which
he would never see finished. He envisaged the whole design but only completed
the pulpit and one of the facades (the gothic nativity façade) before his
death. Luckily for the people of the world he left a series of detailed models,
sketches and writing instructions on how he saw the completed church. Whilst a
lot of this information was destroyed in the Spanish Civil wars the people of
Barcelona have continued his life’s work and the church is still under
construction. I’m not easily impressed by the religious artefacts of the world
however I would urge everyone who reads this to see this building before they
die. It is truly breathtaking. Set apart from the typical Cathedral by it’s
modernist inspired curved lines and abstract sculptures it is amazing on the
outside (the passion façade, the only other completed façade, is a bleak but at
the same time detailed account of Jesus’ crucifixion) and only surpassed on the
inside by an amazing series of columns which rise from the floor into a ceiling
which is designed to create the allusion of a great forest towering over you.
Inside all people are welcomed to find a place to pray/meditate/worship or
merely contemplate something important to them. I fear that I cannot write
anything that would truly do this place justice and all I can say is, go see
it!
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| Le Sagrada Passion Facade |
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| Me with Audio guide, nerding it up |
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| Detail from bronze door on Passion Facade |
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| The 'treetops' inside! |
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| The nativity facade |
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| St Marc and some gold triangle that means something... |
Gaudi Parc
Containing Gaudi’s own personal
house, two other residencies designed by him, and the famous series of
mosaicked chairs and the giant mosaic lizard it is recommended viewing before
going to Le Sagrada. Unfortunately we
made the mistake of viewing it in reverse order (after Le Sagrada) and whilst impressive, it fell a bit flat compared to
what we’d just seen and coupled with the weather (overcast) wasn’t living up
the hype!
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| The Mosaic Chairs |
The ‘Cava’ bar experience
At the recommendation of the lady
who checked us into our apartment the night after Le Sagrada was spent at a little bar which serves homebrew
champagne, known as Cava to the locals. It was an amazing yet crazy experience
of being jammed shoulder to shoulder drinking 0.90 EUR cava and playing dinner
roulette by pointing at the menu and getting all sorts of warm sandwiches. Lomo was a particularly tasty pork
hamburger. It was packed with tourists and locals alike and run by 6 or so
Middle aged Spanish dudes who would wave you away if you took too long to
order, or couldn’t Spanglish your way to ordering food! Amazing!
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| Crazy times at the Cava bar |
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| Katrina with Cava and Lomo |
Parc Montijuic
Montijuic is a large park located
on a hill overlooking the city and the port of Barcelona. After another semi
wasted morning spent snoozing and reading a book I’d found in the apartment
(which as an aside was an amazing read, called Imperium, by someone Harris) we headed down to the port suburb of Barconalette to catch the cable car
across the port to the mountain. With the light fading fast I thought we’d
wasted our time but it turns out, much like our wedding photos, low light can
create some amazing scenes and the views over the city and the port lit up were
quite spectacular. These views were from the Fort atop Montijuic. We walked
back down to see the Magic fountain but to our surprise and the other hundreds
of people present, the fountain was broken and no announcement was made to this
fact, so everyone stood around for a while and then finally we gave up after
over hearing a conversation between some police officers.
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| View from the cable car |
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| View from the fort by night |
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| My arty view of fort and refinery terminal at port |
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| Palace at the tope of the magic fountain backlit |
The Nou Camp – Gets it own blog, click here...
Roxette
Katrina attended the start of the
Roxette concert while I went to see Barcelona play. I arrived when they started
playing ‘must have been lov’e but couldn’t find my way in to the massive venue,
Palou de Sant Jordi. Never fear, I made it inside to find half of the venue
‘closed’ (think black drapes hanging halfway down the Sydney Entertainment
Centre) but still inside to see them belt out the hits including ‘Joyride’ and
‘She’s Got the Look’ (second encore!). It was a solid if not spectacular
performance by an obviously ageing band. It makes sense but didn’t pick that
they would have such a large gay following, plus Katrina and I were probably
the youngest people there!
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| Rocking with Roxette |
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| 80s much? |
The beach and the W bar…
Our last day was spent meandering
along the beachside, which whilst nice in the sun, the wind kind of put a cold
chill in the air. The guys in the water were very keen, surfing rubbish waves
in steamers and booties! The night we retired to the ‘exclusive’ (their word
not mine) W bar at the top of 26 odd floors at the end of the port for
watermelon martinis. It was very nice and swank (read: expensive) and the view
was most impressive, would’ve been nice if it was open in the afternoon when it
was still light!
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| The 'surf' with W bar in the background! |
The food…
Couldn’t go past pointing out the
obvious that the food we enjoyed all week was nothing short of spectacular!
From the simplest Lomo (see cava bar
above) to the paella’s, various tapas, gelato and snails on our last night. The
Catalans really know how to put on a good feed for a reasonable price! Sangria
was a favourite for dinner either in a meal deal or a litre jug…there were many
mornings with sore heads from this magical drink! J The fresh chorizo and goat’s
cheese from the markets in some farm egg omelettes cooked at home were also a
nice touch for breakfast! Whilst hard to find, the churros that we did find was
amazing including little individual churros filled with caramel we had on the
last day down at the port. Barca has a great international selection for food
which is rare in most European countries we’ve been to, Katrina sampled Wok n
Walk (twice) to get her Asian kick. It’s definitely the city of food.
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| Paella and Sangria on Flamenco night |
All our love
M&K!
