Spain Barcelona for the New Year

[PatrickLondon]

Barcelona for the New Year​

By PatrickLondon from London, England, Winter 2006
29 December 2006 - 1 January 2007. A lucky offer of a home exchange took me back to Barcelona for the weekend.

This trip report was originally published on slowtrav.com.

Some Basics​

The Easyjet flights (out from Gatwick, back to Stansted) were fine as flights (not least because there was a minor TV celebrity to boggle at on the plane), but the queue for security at Gatwick was enormous - at least 45 minutes to get through.

The flat was in Poblenou, to the east of the Vila Olimpica. This pleasant neighbourhood is clearly gentrifying from an industrial past, with a combination of car repair and other small workshops interspersed with new residential developments, and plenty of shops, cafés and restaurants. I found a pleasant enough local restaurant for my evening meals.

Public transport is excellent and cheap, especially if you buy a T-10 card (for ten journeys). But be aware that if you get a bus after midnight, you will officially be travelling on a Nitbus.

Internet access is widely available, but don't look for cafés. What you need is a "locutorio", a little shop offering telephone, fax and photocopying. They seem to be all over the place. The one nearest the flat only charged one euro for an hour.

The roof of Gaudi's Casa Batllò

 

[PatrickLondon]

What the Nudists Should Have Told Me​

On my first full day, I walked the few hundred yards down to the sea and set out to walk through the park into the city centre. Seeing the nudists, I should have realised I was actually going the wrong way, but I was so entranced by the thought that the sunshine at the end of December was warm enough for nudists to be out in force that it didn't occur to me.

Eventually I ended up in a shiny newly-developed area at the end of the Av. Diagonal and took the tram back to the Ciutadella park, where I watched the ducks solemnly circling the trees poking out of the pond, admired the oranges on the trees, discovered from a statue that the great Spanish radical republican of the mid nineteenth century was called General Prim, and then walked down to the Vila Olimpica. The restaurants at the seaward end are a bit of a tourist trap, and even a food-as-fuel man like me was a bit disappointed with my lunch.

A stroll through the Barri Gotic took me to the queue for the Picasso Museum, which I promptly passed by to see the Santa Maria del Mar church. Like other churches I saw in Barcelona, the height and austerity of the Gothic arches quite outweighed the statues and gold beneath - quite unlike the Baroque Catholicism I'd seen in Italy or Austria. I was struck by the way a party settled themselves in around the altar for a baptism - appearing not even to notice the tourist throngs milling around the nave.

Reflections in a modern office building

 

[PatrickLondon]

Around the Barri Gotic​

The next day (Saturday), I took myself back to the Barri Gotic via Las Ramblas, crammed with people. Averting my gaze from the caged birds, I couldn't help noticing that the street entertainers were out in force. In the space of half an hour or so, I saw among the living statues Roman senators, angels, martyrs, a gilded Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, a man covered in plastic flowers and another with an uncanny resemblance to Che Guevara. The musicians included rumba/flamenco and jazz guitarists, people playing the South American harp, the Chinese violin, the Hungarian cimbalom and a man conjuring strangely ethereal music from a wok. There was a juggler bouncing balls to make a back-beat for his tap-dancing, culminating in what I can only call a five-ball frenzy. And finally, at lunchtime, a group of folklore enthusiasts dancing the sardana (ring-dance). What struck me was how solemn they all looked to such jaunty music: it didn't look to require complicated counting, but there was evident relief and smiles all round when they reached the climax and conclusion.

Passing the Santa Maria del Pi church, I heard singing, and inside the Duke University choir rehearsing extracts from Handel's Messiah for a concert. And very good they were too.

In the streets round about, there are many small specialist shops with enticing windows. The inevitable confectionery and pastry shops, but also a magic shop with a window full of puppets and carnival masks, a games shop with every conceivable sort of chess set and board games (three-cornered chess, anyone?), a shop with every sort of slipper in the window.

The City History Museum sits in the former royal palace of Aragon, on top of extensive Roman foundations. These pall after a little while, but the later, early medieval, history was something new to me; and the altarpiece in the former chapel on its own is worth the 5 euro entry fee for the museum.

A sweet stall in La Bocqueria market

 

[PatrickLondon]

Gaudi, Montjuic and the New Year​

I was lucky to find Gaudi's Casa Batllò open to visitors, with no queue. Expensive (€16.75), but a fascinating combination of what looks like zoomorphic whimsy (but derives from a powerful religiosity) combined with ingenious practicality. Who'd have thought that such an airy laundry space could be inspired by the belly of a whale?

Next day (New Year's Eve) to Gaudi's Parc Guell. The sun was so warm a jacket wasn't necessary, especially since to get there required a 1500m walk from the metro station, the last part up a steep street. There is a bus from the metro station but the stop was obscured by a lot of road works (turn right, instead of left, from the metro, cross by the traffic lights and turn left for the stop). It's important to know this from the outset, because the really steep street up to the park is, for the bus, a one-way route down.

The park seemed to be the victim of its own success. There was a constant procession of people all along the route there, and once inside, I found the crowds really oppressive, especially around the "Spanish Steps" by the entrance. Up the hill and into the trees, the crowds thin out a bit, I can't pretend I enjoyed it as much as I would have liked.

So I went to Montjuic, where one could really spend all day. At the time, the cable cars were being refurbished, and all the information about the buses that go round the park was obscured behind the safety hoardings, which isn't helpful. But there are some spectacular views and very pleasant garden walks.

I don't make much of New Year celebrations, which was just as well. It seems that in Barcelona - or where I was - it's like Christmas in the UK: an occasion for families and friends to get together at home. People do go out on to the streets and squares (the metro the next day showed the evidence of how good a time they'd been having), but the bars seemed to be firmly shut. So I went back to the flat, and the time difference allowed me to catch on cable TV the spectacular London fireworks.

On New Year's Day I had enough time for a quick look to see how the Sagrada Familia was coming along - still plenty of scaffolding inside and out, but some of the vaulting is now on display. Still an extraordinary vision, especially when you see the plans and models in the basement museum.

The attic laundry space in Gaudi's Casa Batllò