I wish I was still in Barcelona.
The long week end we spent there went both impossibly quickly and seemed to span an immense measure of time. Time was warped all week end though. The days lasted forever; the mornings spent drinking orange juice in sun-shy squares felt months apart from the evenings - permeated with promise of something intangible - which then amalgamated into the early hours of the day after the night before.
But time's illusion is unsurprising; it's a magical city.
Day One:
We woke up horrendously early. My eyeballs felt like scotch eggs. Arrived in Barcelona at about eleven and took a taxi to our hotel, which was right on La Rambla. Checked in but couldn't get into our room so left the bags with reception, where we told to go out and explore the city until three. (Yup, kinda why we're here pal.)
It was so lovely being so central; we walked out of the hotel and were immediately in the nucleus of the city. We decided we were in urgent need of an ice cream, and so stopped at one of the many ice cream stalls that line La Rambla directly:
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We found a beautiful square just off La Rambla that became my Favourite Place in Barcelona:
We then bought an all day ticket for the open top bus tour and hopped on. (My sister referred to the buses as 'ho-hos' because they're hop on-hop off '
obviously'). We spent all day on the ho-hos, hopping off (and on again) for lunch in a cool little café we stumbled upon, where a man promised us three shots if we went to his restaurant for sushi and cocktails that evening. It sounded like my kind of jam. Our bus ticket consisted of three different routes, and so, always keen to get our moneys worth, we went on all three. Red and blue routes were fab. Green was short and mainly uninteresting. This is probably meaningless. Anyway, it was nice to sit in the sun and watch Barcelona go by. I applied lots of sparkly sun tan lotion. Polly and Vicky declined my very kind offer to share my sun tan lotion and thus missed their opportunity to sparkle like a vampire too. They used normal sun tan lotion. I just think that everything is better when glitter is involved.
We saw the beautiful art gallery:
And hopped off at the port so that we could walk along the ~ wavy ~ bridge:
We gawped at Gaudi's cathedral, which is indescribable. It's insanely beautiful and crazy in the dedication it displays and it shows off the aspect of Barcelona (maybe Spain as a whole?? Sadly I'm not well travelled enough to know) that I love the most; they respect, treasure and protect the past - and everything from the past - without being hinderingly precious about it. The beauty of Gaudi's design - and indeed, the beauty of the Gothic cathedral before him, or even just the cities apartments - doesn't hamper the future. Modern buildings sit comfortably and experimentally by the old that inspired them. Gaudi's Art Nouveau nativity façade is made all the more wonderful by the sharp contrast it was later thrown into by Josep Maria Subirachs' gaunt and emancipated figures. The old, the new and the newest (in fact, unfinished) are beautiful and crazy together. I think we should all take note of Barcelona's attitude; we can't cling on to the past if doing so will impede progression, but we can respect and learn from it. And now go Wikipedia the Gaudi Cathedral. It is soooo interesting. Or go book flights. Whichever.
We also saw the Camp Nou, the grounds Barcelona Football Club, where a game was being played that evening and was therefore full of supporters dressed in football strips. All very exciting. A man on the bus started singing.
It was now nearly seven. We took a final hop off the ho-ho and wondered into the gothic quarter, just because I love it and wanted to show it to Vicky and thought it might have disappeared in morning and think it's probably where I'll meet the love of my life.
We then headed back to the hotel and slowly started getting ready for the evening. The obscene hour we had got up at had exhausted us - Vicky had even surreptitiously fallen asleep on the ho-ho bus - so we were aiming for a chilled night.
We walked towards the gothic quarter, in hope of finding a restaurant highly recommended on trip advisor, but since the only directions were that it was 'two minutes walk' from Santa Maria del Mar, we reached aforementioned Santa Maria and gave up, picking a lovely tapas restaurant, in the del Mar square, in the shadow of it's beautiful church and stained glass window.
We ate tapas and drank Sangria (I could stop this post here. That was all we did all week end).
As we were walking back through the cobbled streets that we felt we already knew we were accosted by a promoter with a heavy Essex accent for a near by bar and inadvertently found ourselves at said bar, with cocktail in hand. No idea how that happened.
It was cool and we liked it. We sat on high stools and had a good time.
Day Two:
We hired bikes!!! Just like in New York (link), we decided it would be the best way to see the city. We had intended to hire the Boris Bike equivalent, but on closer inspection, and enquiring at Reception, we discovered that they worked on a sort of Oyster Card system and thus were only really available to locals. Instead we were recommended a bike hire two minutes from the hotel. The USP of this bike hire was the colour of the bikes; all the bikes were painted in lovely vintage hues. I chose a sweet blue shade, whilst Vicky and Polly went for equally pretty yellow and pink.
I was initially slightly anxious about the traffic and cycling in the mayhem (all European cities seem to be have entirely lawless roads) but the cycle system in Barcelona is fantastic. The bike lanes, unlike here in London, are long and useful and actually go somewhere, rather than lasting thirty seconds and then directing one into a bush. They are kept separate from the road and the kamikaze drivers, and are sometimes on the wide pavements, so that I could cycle entirely without anxiety. The bike lanes also operate on a two way traffic basis so that cyclists going in the other direction whizz past in their lane, and there are traffic lights for cyclists, so that we didn't have to randomly and recklessly peddle out into oncoming traffic every time we came to a junction. It was thoroughly enjoyable and without so much a drop of car or possible death related anxiety (unlike cycling in New York or London, where both are very much present).
Our aim was to reach the cable car that goes up to a small fort at the top of the hill to west of the city. On our way there we stopped off at the beautiful art gallery I have already mentioned:
And the 1992 Olympic stadium, which you can just wonder in to and have a look
We admired the view:
and also stopped at lots of pretty parks and had several map breaks. Every time we were inspecting the map, a local would pop out of no where and offer us help. It was lovely.
W eventually reached the cable car, but couldn't find any bike racks. But we had been told by the jolly man in the bike shop that we could only lock our bikes up to bike racks.
'No lamp posts, no railings, no fences, no trees, no motorbikes, no other bikes, no people, no dogs'.
We got it.
I went off to hunt for a place we could safely put the bikes and was told we could take the bikes on with us. We thought this hilarious, and it was a bit of a faff, and getting the bike into the small moving pod was a bit of a struggle, but the staff appeared to do it all the time. They certainly seemed entirely unfased by three girls with bikes.
The fort has beautiful views and is cool.
Then we got the lift back down and tried to find our way to the sea front. We asked directions from two other cyclists who were mental and just as lost as we were. We saw them again as we cycled through the botanical gardens, which is full of, as one of them said 'cactus on acid'. It was quite an odd place, but very cool, and it took us down to the front. We then continued to see the two cyclists and they were going to the same place as we were and we were all sort of cycling together. They were funny.
We reached the front and Vicky and Polly stopped for a waffle and we waved goodbye to them. We then continued on the FAB cycle path which ran all the way along the water front and was full of cyclists and skate boarders and roller bladers. It was cool.
We eventually returned to La Rambla, where we dismounted and pushed our bikes - very slowly - through the deluge of people promenading in the early evening sun.
We sadly said goodbye to our bikes and retrieved my drivers license. But we weren't ready to let our second day end and the city looked so beautiful, and so, in an attempt to make our perfect day last forever, we went for an explore. We walked down randomly chosen streets that we liked the look of, and discovered squares lounging in the tired sun and restaurants and bars and churches and cafes and we wished that we could know them all.
We stopped off at the market, which is on La Rambla, and scrutinized it's stalls. We had gone quite late, so it was relatively empty and therefore easier to look around, although some of the stalls had started to close. The meat and fish stalls were extraordinary in their display of flesh, eyes, organs and entrails. It didn't put me off buying a one euro fresh fruit smoothie though.
You can't make a day last forever. Refusing to return to your hotel wont make the sun stop sinking and the moon pause its orbit...
Eventually we went back and showered.
(More Barcelona coming asap - I don't want this post to be too long, which it invariably will be if I don't break here. It probably already is too long. If you've got to the end I congratulate you. Have a cookie. Still to come: night out at Razzmatazz, day on the beach, cathedral visiting, ice cream eating. Try and contain your excitement! Until next time.)
