Barcelona, Spain

From our trip to Cadaqués, the return route to Barcelona took us a dif­fer­ent way. Up at 7am, checked out by 8am, with break­fast wrapped in nap­kins, the hotel direc­tor dropped us at the bus sta­tion in his jeep. Adiós. On the Sarfa bus we went up and around the moun­tain roads again, bus sway­ing left to right to left, per­ilously close to the bar­ri­ers and sheer drops, shades of the Lesvos tour bus we’d been on. Sounds of kids get­ting travel sick in the back left us lis­ten­ing to the “500 days of sum­mer” sound­track. We were on our way to Figueres; the bus arrived late, and we had a mad dash sprint to the train, lug­gage in tow. Sam bought the tick­ets, I used the loo. Then down the steps, under the plat­form, up again and onto the train, a full 30 sec­onds to spare.

Two more hours going south, past Girona, to Barcelona–shut eye oppor­tu­nity impeded by a Span­ish woman that liked to talk, a lot. From Sants Estació we took the metro to Hos­pi­tal Clinic, then through the after­noon heat to Hotel Cen­ter, hotel num­ber two. Hello Barcelona!

In the cool, air con­di­tioned room, with its dark brown wooden décor, tiled and glis­ten­ing bath­room, thick cur­tains and huge beds, we recov­ered, in four star luxury.

Soon enough, Sam was tired of relax­ing and wanted to do some­thing. “Can we try out this Lonely Planet walk­ing tour?”. Why not. Not want­ing to waste any more of the day, we grabbed some lunch from El For­net and took the metro down to Plaça de Catalunya, the tour started with Las Ramblas.

Las Ram­blas is packed with shop­ping stalls, pet stalls and street per­form­ers; from ter­ri­ble Zor­ros and painted sil­ver stat­ues (chat­ting dur­ing their break), to per­fectly exe­cuted float­ing genies that left crowds gasp­ing. Dodgy look­ing men sold squeaky plas­tic mouth­pieces and para­noid for our valu­ables, we hugged our bags and pock­ets tightly.

First stop, Palau Güell, an early Gaudí project, closed for ren­o­va­tions. Then to Plaça de Sant Jaume a large open square with cen­tral foun­tain and sur­round­ing eater­ies. Now in the Barri Gòtic quar­ter we mean­dered through thin streets, round to the cat­e­dral (not the only cathe­dral in BCN under scaf­fold­ing) and Igle­sia Santa María del Mar. We didn’t go in, a wed­ding was going on, we instead sat on the wall nearby, watch­ing the smartly dressed passers by, and the quirky artist that appeared to be a mis­an­thrope. We stopped again at the Plaça del Rei, a quiet enclosed square with steps per­fectly placed for seating–here I strained to pho­to­graph those sit­ting near us in an artis­tic way.

Round the back of the cathe­dral we paused for straw­berry and rasp­berry ice creams, as another per­former cre­ated huge soapy bub­bles, leav­ing the air smelling of wash­ing up liquid.

The tour con­tin­ued, tak­ing us past the Museo de Picasso, we didn’t go in, then up to the spec­tac­u­lar Palau de la Música Cata­lana. We took a small detour to a tea shop (how could we not?), I think we were there for about 45 min­utes, smelling and try­ing dif­fer­ent blends. Only Sam could go on hol­i­day to Spain and come back with three bags of freshly packed tea. Oolong and Jas­mine, apple and green tea, and another one that smelt rather hor­ri­ble, so I’ve appar­ently for­got­ten what it’s called.

By the Picasso museum we stopped at the BCN design hub, dHUB, for their free wall­pa­per exhi­bi­tion. Sounds dull, cer­tainly wasn’t. Exhibits included a post-it note wall, a rucked up roll of solid paper which formed a styl­ish shelf, tex­tured papers, paper that changed based on tem­per­a­ture and designs that flowed around wall objects, like sock­ets and lamps.

Our hotel sat very close to the excel­lent and widely rec­om­mended tapas bar and restau­rant, Cerve­ce­ria Cata­lana, which I can nei­ther spell nor pro­nounce. It is always busy. You can either sit at a table, with a menu, and order dishes as and when you please, or more excit­ingly, sit at the bar where all the freshly pre­pared food is laid out in front of you. Then you just point, and keep eat­ing and order­ing until your bel­lies are full or your wal­lets empty. On this occa­sion we did a bit of both, while wait­ing for our table we ordered from the seafood bar; yummy razor clams in gar­lic, before going to our table. Plate after plate kept com­ing, as we drank our jug of San­gria. The fried baby squids, com­plete with cute ten­ta­cles, were deli­cious, not to men­tion the date, bacon and cheese flute, that I man­aged to get Sam tast­ing AND liking.

We shared tips on menu choices and Barca trips with the tables either side; a slightly drunken (three jugs of San­gria?) American-Asian now liv­ing in China, try­ing to chat up some Japan­ese girls on one side, and two Eng­lish girls on a long girly week­end of sight­see­ing and good food, on the other.