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Barcelona day 2, Part 1 – Bloody tourists!

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Monday September 23. As our late neighbour, Cyril, used to point out, “tourism is ruined by tourists”. No better example can be found in Barcelona than our visit to Parc Güell, our destination for the first part of the day (the second being dedicated, we hope, to a Nice Lunch).

I have visited this park before, on a previous trip to Barcelona, so I knew what a striking place it is. Here is a sample photo from that visit.

I’d been hoping for a chance to revisit the park and try for some improved photos. I guess I should have realised how difficult this would be when I went to book tickets, a few days before we travelled; the booking system showed that many time slots were either sold out or had only a few tickets remaining. I optimistically booked an 8am entry time, which was showing that there were only a few tickets sold.

Hah!

The journey thither was easy – a few stops on the underground to a station called Alfons X then a shuttle bus (included in the entry ticket). So we were in the park by about 8.20 and

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it was immediately clear that getting nice photos of the highlights of the park without any extraneous selfie-taking tourists in was just not going to happen. So we gritted our teeth and just tried to enjoy the amazing architecture of the place, and maybe catch some photos of some of the details. I still got several dozen photos, which somewhat surprised me. Here are a few of them:

The official shop;

A ceiling detail

Columns and ceiling in the Hypostyle;

Lovely mosaic work;

Porticos;

statuary (“The Washerwoman”);

and other buildings on the site.

After 90 minutes or so, we decided we’d seen what there is to see and so decided to head back to the hotel. This gave us the chance for a couple of more views from the outside looking in.

Although we could have bussed back and taken underground, we decided to walk, a distance of some two-and-a-half miles, but basically downhill.

I’m glad we took the chance for a stroll, as we absorbed more of Barcelona’s vibe en route. As ever, some lovely architectural touches

Little Green Riding Hood

a bustling local covered market

and a fucking great church – amazingly, just a parish church, that of St. Francis de Sales.

We popped in for a look and it had some significant areas of stained glass, which left lovely patterns on the wall

After all this peregrination, we arrived back at the hotel to discover that the bar had just opened, thus enabling me to use updating this blog as an excuse for having a coffee and a couple of beers.

This afternoon, we will be having lunch with an ex-colleague of many years ago, after which – who knows? Maybe there will be more to add to the day’s story. Stay tuned!

Day 1 in Barcelona – Human Towers and towering architectural achievements

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Sunday September 22. Those of you who have been paying attention will remember that our main objective for the day was to see the Castellers, “Human Towers”, a display of which was documented as starting at midday in Plaça San Jaume. Knowing that the place would be rammed, I had researched the area on street view, and formulated a plan which had us arriving at 8am at a Costa Coffee on the square which had an upstairs and hence, I thought, a clear view. I assumed this would beat the crowds, though I wasn’t sure.

Our not waking up until after 8am put the kybosh on that one.

We breakfasted, therefore, at some leisure and headed out on to the streets of Barcelona with an hour and a quarter to spare before the official start time, thus giving us time to get there and maybe squeeze to some kind of vantage point to wait until the actual event started.

We got a little distracted on the way by the extraordinary amount of extraordinary architecture for which Barcelona is justly famed. We had, of course, planned to see the famous Gaudi buildings, of which more later, but had to stop and take photos of other sights on the way, such the music palace, which has some amazing art nouveau architecture

and some very nifty brickwork.

and what looks like the local version of the Bridge of Sighs.

We made it to the square which was, as expected, rammed, at about 1130, to find that things were already under way, so I’m glad we got there early. There was a stage upon which demonstrations were being performed. Here’s an example video:


There were many variations and I plan to produce a better quality video than the above in good time, but this will give you a good idea of the principle.

By the way, the stage upon which this was, erm, staged, had, at the back of it, the Costa Coffee, so that plan was doomed from the start and I’m glad that our sloth consigned it to the waste bin of history.

After an hour or so, we moved off (which took a while, as the crowd had built enormously even after we’d got there) and got away from the crush with wallets intact, which meant that a refreshment stop was not only possible but, by this stage, necessary. It also enabled us to plan the rest of the day; we decided to walk up Passeig de Gràcia and take in the architectural highlights, particularly Casa Batiló and La Pedrera (Casa Mila). There was some other bonkers and beautiful architecture on the way, too:

a building featuring some Japanese architectural flourishes

and many, many architectural touches, such as the paving,

lights with built-in seating,

and other buildings, including the neighbour to Casa Batiló.

Casa Batiló is justly famous and I have photos from a previous visit, so I just focused on some of the amazing detailing in the architecture.

For those who don’t know the building, here is a photo Jane took of it.

Finally, for the Gaudi trail, off we went to Casa Mila, a little further up the road. It’s one of Barcelona’s absolute highlights – an extraordinary apartment building (unkindly nicknamed La Pedrera – the stone quarry – by Gaudi’s contemporaries)

with an extraordinary roof terrace

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and some pretty special areas inside, too.

There’s an excellent audioguide available which you stick on your head and it simply plays relevant content for wherever you happen to be in the building, which is a neat trick.

La Pedrera marked pretty much the end of the tourism activity for the day – anyway all my camera batteries were as exhausted by this stage as I was – so we hopped the underground home (via a couple of unintended diversions, courtesy of my fading navigational abilities). The nearest station to our hotel, the Podium, is called Arc de Triomf, and we found out why on our journey home.

Batteries are being charged, and my plan for the human element of that – a G&T on the roof terrace – was somewhat impacted by the thunder, lightning and rain that had cropped up whilst I was writing this long screed. But I feel the need, so I’ll just have to get one in on room service before we have tea and bed; we must be up betimes tomorrow as our tickets to Parc Güell are for 8am!

You can read all about it tomorrow….

Stumbling at the second hurdle, also

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Saturday September 21. After all the agonising about photo gear, I made my choice and managed to get everything into my very heavy backpack. So, off we went to the airport – taxi on time, no significant traffic holdups, swift bag drop queue, not too long through security.

It took us a few seconds to find the champagne bar which is an ineluctable part of our airport-based holidays, but Jane’s unerring instinct soon had it pinned down and I could post my first smug photo of the holiday

However, this then happened.

In BA’s defense, they did tell us promptly about the cancellation and we were booked automatically on to a later flight – BA 486 at 1640 – which I was able to accept online. We still had some champagne left once we got the message, but I was sufficiently worried about the process of ensuring we had a seat on the new flight that I felt compelled to leave the champagne bar with liquid still in the glass and find a BA desk (a two-stage process, involving first a general information desk to point me in the right direction, ‘coz otherwise I wouldn’t have had a clue). Jane stoutly gallantly volunteered to stay behind and guard the champagne and my camera gear, although I’m not sure she cared too much about the camera gear. Unsurprisingly, I suppose, the BA desk – a not inconsiderable walk away – looked like this.

but actually, again in their defense, things moved quite swiftly and I was fairly soon able to talk to someone about new boarding passes.

Another wrinkle appeared at this stage, as I had turned up solo but with two passports and boarding cards for the original flight. Inconveniently, the lass behind the desk required to see Jane in person, for some reason being reluctant to trust a champagne-sodden pensioner. So a phone call ensued to a second champagne-sodden pensioner, who remarkably persuaded the staff to let her leave the bar without paying the bill first, and stoutly gallantly shouldered my 25lb rucksack and made haste to the service desk, where we were issued with, in order, new boarding passes, an apology and vouchers to contribute towards the soddening champagne – which was still there when we got back! Result!

We wondered what would happen next? It won’t be coffee, we thought, as the champagne bar’s coffee machine is bust….sigh.

Actually, one of the bar staff was sufficiently enterprising to get the coffee machine working, so we did have some coffee, and stayed at the bar for a while until, yes you guessed it, our rebooked flight was delayed by a further hour. At this point we decided that we really ought to take some lunch, so I looked up “fine dining” in Heathrow T3. This mentioned two places, neither of which, frankly, inspired confidence, but we selected Oriel, which was just along the way. It was clear that their emphasis was on throughput – barely had we settled ourselves when our order was solicited; and it seemed that seconds after we’d placed it the food was there. The service, however, was very engaging, and the food was OK (as was the Malbec).

After a while, we took ourselves off to seating in the general area, and Jane got in touch with our travel organisation to ask them to rearrange the taxi to meet our rearranged flight, and sat around waiting for the gate to be announced. Eventually, Gate 3 was trumpeted as our destination, so off we trotted. As we approached the gate, which looked suspiciously quiet, Jane heard someone call out that it was Gate 5 not Gate 3 – and there was a healthy-looking queue outside it, so rather like in a communist state we went to join the queue just in case it was the right one; all the signage said “Gate Closed”, but there were a lot of people in BA uniforms running about inside it so it looked promising.

Long story short – we got on the plane and – would you believe it – there was an Air Traffic Control delay, so the driver put the plane at some remote corner of the airfield whilst he awaited permission to take off. And take off we did, at around 1830, some five-and-a-half hours late according to our original schedule.

The plane made up some time en route, so we landed only five hours late, and looked for our rebooked transfer – without luck, as it turns out; Jane got an apologetic message from the travel company saying that with so many delayed flights it had been impossible to rearrange and could we take a taxi instead? So we went outside to the taxi area, and

Actually, the queue moved swiftly, as did our taxi, whose driver showed a fine disregard for speed limits as he whisked us to our hotel, the Podium, in downtown Barcelona. The final hurdle – they had no record that the room was pre-paid – was cleared after discussion and so we could retire to our nice room for a cup of tea and a night that was by no means as early as it might have been.

The story will continue tomorrow as we try to find the Human Towers!